Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 (39 page)

I should not like to suggest that herein lay some "constitutional"
check upon arbitrary power. In no reliable way could the Ch'ing
monarch be held subject to the law, and there was no reliable civil
protection for anyone who got in his way. Even a county magistrate
could run his courtroom with only modest danger of being brought
to book. Yet in certain extraordinary cases, it was evidently still possible for the highest officials to curb such power by invoking a superior code under which all human governments might be judged. To
do so required that they regard themselves as something more than
servants of a particular regime. Such self-confidence could persist
only among men who believed themselves to be certified carriers of
a cultural tradition. In late imperial politics, such gumption was scarce
enough, even at the highest levels of ministerial power. It became
scarcer yet after the empire collapsed, a. century and a half later,
along with the social and intellectual systems that nourished that elite
self-confidence.

Nobody mourns the old Chinese bureaucracy. The social harm it
did, even by the standards of its day, went well beyond the crushed
ankles of helpless vagrants. Yet its nature impeded zealotry of any
sort, whether for good or for ill. Without that great sheet-anchor,
China yaws wildly in the storm. Without a workable alternative,
leaders can manipulate mass fears and turn them with terrible force
against the deviants and scapegoats of our own day-anyone vulnerable to labeling, either for his social origins or his exotic beliefs-with
none to stand between.

1. Tales of the China Clipper

1. A selection of original documents on this case was published in 193031 by the Palace Museum, Peiping, in Shih-liao hsun-k'an (Taipei: Kuofeng ch'u-pan-she reprint, 1963). For scholarly treatments of these
events, consult the works by de Groot (1882-1910), Entenmann (1974),
Kuhn (1987), and Tanii (1987 and 1988) in the bibliography.

2. A Chinese province in Ch'ing times typically contained more people than
any single European nation. The twelve provinces affected by the 1768
sorcery scare had a combined population of more than 200 million.
Official population figures for 1787 are listed in Ho Ping-ti, Studies on
the Population of China, 1368-1953 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959), 283. Ho believes the population to have been somewhat
underregistered (55), so the 1787 estimates may not seriously overrepresent the population in 1768.

3. Robert Fortune, A Residence among the Chinese: Inland, on the Coast, and at
Sea (London: John Murray, 1857), 359, 363-

4. Te-ch'ing hsien-chih (1673), 4.3. The eighteenth-century silk industry is
explored in E-tu Zen Sun, "Sericulture and Silk Textile Production in
Ch'ing China," in W. E. Willmott, ed., Economic Organization in Chinese
Society (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), 79-108. See p. 91 on
the instability of the silk market and its harmful effects on small
producers.

5. The reign-period (1736-1796) of the fourth monarch of the Ch'ing
Dynasty was officially called "Ch'ien-lung," or "Heaven's Munificence."
(See Chapter 3 on the meaning of this term.) The emperor himself, whom I have referred to by his personal name, Hungli, is conventionally
referred to by historians as "the Ch'ien-lung emperor," or simply as
"Ch'ien-lung." To anyone who rightly objects that nobody called him
Hungli at the time (his personal name being taboo), I can only say that
nobody called him "Ch'ien-lung," either.

To emphasize their ethnic distinction, I have represented all Manchus
(including Hungli) by their Manchu personal names, romanized by the
Mollendorff system (except that sinicized Manchu names such as Hung
Li, which properly would be separated, are represented here as single
words for consistency). The glossary gives Chinese ideographs for all
Manchu romanizations.

6. This account of events in Te-ch'ing, Hangchow, and Hsiao-shan during
the months of January-April 1768 is drawn from a batch of confessions
relating to the Chekiang sorcery scare in LFTC/FLCT CL 33. Both the
drafts and the edited copies are preserved, with only minor differences
between them. These confessions were evidently assembled by imperial
order in late August 1768. See also CPTC 853.2 and 853.4 (CL 33.7.1
and .17, Yungde) and KCTC CL 33.7.21, all bearing on Yungde's handling of these cases. For the convenience of specialists who may wish to
consult them, documents cited in the notes are dated by the Chinese
lunar calendar.

7. Te-ch'inghsien hsu-chih (18o8), io.6. Mason Wu later denied that the water
level had presented any unusual difficulty; but that was what he had to
say, given the nature of the charges against him.

8. All ages referred to here are calculated in the Chinese style, in which
the person is reckoned to have attained one year at birth. The Western
calculation would make each man one year younger.

9. For information on this folk practice (kao yin-chuang) I am indebted to
Professor Li Shih-yu, personal communication.

10. 1 am not sure why Shen was questioned in Te-ch'ing, rather than in Jenho County where the solicitation took place. Perhaps it was because Tech'ing was the locus of the intended crime.

11. CPTC 853.2, CL 33.7.1.

12. LFTC/FLCT CL 33•

13. None of the monasteries or temples referred to in the confessions can
be identified with certainty in the 1784 edition of the Hang-choufu-chih,
which indicates that they were all very minor establishments, probably
of the "hereditary" type discussed in Chapter 5. To assume the monastic
tonsure (a wholly shaved head) was the first step in entering the clergy.

14. A Jesuit prisoner in Peking in 1785 recorded the circumstances of his
interrogation: "The prisoners were led before the tribunal, and while
being questioned, were chained with three chains, on hands, feet, and
around the neck, and had to kneel bareheaded on the floor before the
officials." Bernward H. Willeke, Imperial Government and Catholic Missions
in China during the Years 1784-1785 (Saint Bonaventure, New York:
Franciscan Institute, 1948), 138.

15. Thomas Allom, China: Scenery, Architecture, Social Habits, &c., Illustrated, 2 vols. (London: London Printing and Publishing Company, [ 18-?]), II,
85.

16. On government runners, see Ch'ii 'I°ung-tsu, Local Government in China
under the Ch'ing (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962), 5673; on runners' "mean" status, see Anders Hansson, "Regional Outcast
Groups in Late Imperial China" (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University,
1988), 47-49-

17. The lynchers in both cases were arrested and convicted of manslaughter.
I have succeeded in locating the original and review judgments only for
the An-chi case (Hsing-k'o shih-shu, vol. 2772, CL 34.3.29, and vol. 2781,
CL 34.6.23).

18. Chiang-su an-ch'a-ssu lu-ch'eng Chang-thou-hsien na-huo ch'i-kai Ch'en Hanju teng i-an ch'uan-chuan ch'ao-ts'e, LFTC/FLCT Cl, 33.8. The Soochow
case is documented by this ninety-page booklet, submitted by provincial
authorities to the Grand Council as the complete record of the case of
Ch'en Han ju et al. The interrogation of the suspects by the Grand
Council and the Board of Punishments is summarized in LFTC/FLCT
CL 33.9.17. Except when another source is cited, all material on the
Soochow case comes from these documents. Three similar cases
occurred within the province at about the same time: in K'un-shah (April
30), again in Soochow (May 14), and in An-tung (May 28). All involved
suspected queue-clippers' being attacked by mobs, placed under arrest,
and later released. For reasons of space, I have not related them here.
They are summarized in CPTC 855.4, CL 33.7.30 (G'ao_Jin).

19. Persons suspected or accused of crimes were routinely designated "criminals" (fan) in official documents. In order to preserve the Havor of this
Chinese judicial bias against the accused, I have used "criminals," in both
direct and indirect quotations, wherever this Chinese term appears.

20. Henry Brougham Loch, quoted in Derk Bodde, "Prison Life in Eighteenth-Century Peking,"Journal of the American Oriental Society 89.2 (1969):
329.

21. Quoted in Bodde, "Prison Life," 320.

22. LFTC/FLCT CL 33.9.17 (Fuheng).

23. Clyde Kluckhohn, Navaho Witchcraft (1944; reprint, Boston: Beacon
Press, 1967), 116.

24. "Introduction," in John Middleton and E. H. Winter, eds., Witchcraft and
Sorcery in East Africa (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), 21.

25. John Beattie, "Sorcery in Bunyoro," in ibid., 27-55•

26. CPTC 865.1, CL 33.7.15 (Dingcang). The reader may wonder at the
term "panic." I have used it advisedly, because that is what Western
observers called it when they saw it on other occasions. A correspondent
of the North China Daily News who witnessed a queue-cutting scare in
1876 (see Chapter to) wrote that the "commotion which has been witnessed here [Wuchang] since Friday last" was caused by a belief that
queue-clippers were abroad, and that their victims would die within three
days: "The news spread like a panic through the city ... Grave men are
to be seen walking along the streets with their tails hanging down over their shoulders in front. Others are tenderly carrying them in their
hands, and evince considerable anxiety on the appearance of 'a foreigner
or any suspicious-looking character ... [N learly all the children carry [a
magical charm] in it red hag at the lapel of their dress or have it written
on a piece of yellow cloth and tied into their hair." August 4, 1876,
p. 1 19.

2. The Prosperous Age

1. Scholarship on these trends is ably synthesized in Susan Naquin and
Evelyn S. Rawski, Chinese Society in the Eighteenth Century (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1987).

2. A recent bibliography lists, on the subject of China's late imperial economic development (called at one time "sprouts of capitalism"), 565
articles, 26 monographs, and 7 documentary collections published in
mainland China between 1951 and 1984. T'ien Chu-chien and Sung
Yuan-ch'iang, eds., Chung-kuo tzu-pen chu-i meng-ya (Chengtu: Pa-shu shushe, 1987), 1o16-1o63.

3. Naquin and Rawski, Chinese Society, loo.

4. The works of William S. Atwell have led the way to understanding the
role of monetized silver in the late Ming- economy. See especially his
"Some Observations on the `Seventeenth-Century Crisis' in China and
Japan,"Journal of Asian Studies 45.2 (1986): 224, and "Notes on Silver,
Foreign Trade, and the Late Ming Economy," Ch'ing-shih wen-t'i 3.8
(1977): 5; on the money supply and its effects in the seventeenth century,
see Frederic Wakeman, Jr., "China and the Seventeenth-Century Crisis,"
Late Imperial China 7.1 (1986): 1-26; on the Ch'ing money supply in
general, see Hans-Ulrich Vogel, Central Chinese Monetary Policy and
Yunnan Copper Mining during the Early Ch'ing, r 644-r8oo (Cambridge,
Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, forthcoming);
and [.in Man-houng, "Currency and Society: The Monetary Crisis and
Political-Economic Ideology of Early Nineteenth-Century China" (Ph.D.
dissertation, Harvard University, 1989).

5. Naquin and Rawski, Chinese Society, 222.

6. The regional-systems analysis, worked out by G. William Skinner, is the
most influential modern effort to make sense of the functional divisions
of the Chinese economy and to relate these divisions to the politicaladministrative system. See, for example, Skinner's "Regional Urbanization in Nineteenth-Century China" in his (edited with Mark Elvin) The
City in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1977),
211-252.

7. Liu Shih-chi, Ming Ch'ing shih-tai Chiang-nan shih-chen yen-chiu (Peking:
Chung-kuo she-hui k'o-hsueh ch'u-pan-she, 1988), 61.

8. Liu Shih-chi (ibid., 63), quoting Ts'ai Shih-yuan, who is arguing that
government restrictions on rice export from Fukien should be lifted.
The stability of rice prices was, unfortunately, not to last long.

9. Liu Shih-chi (ibid., 17), quoting a gazetteer from the Sung-chiang area.

10. The classic description of the "standard marketing community" is based
on fieldwork by G. William Skinner in the Chengtu plain. Although it
has had to be modified somewhat for other regions, the "marketing
community" is a concept that has been borne out by historical study of
earlier periods. Skinner, "Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China
(Part I)," journal of Asian Studies 24.1 (1964): 3-43-

11. Naquin and Rawski, Chinese Society, 114-123.

12. The emancipation decrees are summarized in TCHTSL 158.3ob ff. See
also Hansson, "Regional Outcast Groups"; Naquin and Rawski, Chinese
Society, too; and Philip A. Kuhn, "Chinese Views of Social Classification,"
in James L. Watson, ed., Class and Stratification in Post-Revolution China
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 22-23-