Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 (43 page)

9. By regulation, all vermilion-endorsed memorials had to be sent back to
the palace for storage, which is why we have them at our disposal in
Peking and Taipei today.

10. Such as expressions of gratitude for appointments; see Chapter 9.

11. Upon G'aojin's death in 1779, Hungli's funerary poem particularly praised his rise from the lower ranks. CSLC 23.8-13; Hummel, Eminent
Chinese, 411, 413. On G'aojin's family background, see Jonathan D.
Spence, Ts'ao Yin and the K'ang-hsi Emperor: Bondservant and Master (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 16.

12. CSL 813.3ob. The memorial is excerpted here, along with the vermilion
rescript, but I have not found the original memorial.

13. Jangboo himself was to die in prison eleven years later, convicted of
corruption. CSLC 23.41-44

14. CSLC 16.44b; Hummel, Eminent Chinese, 413. Documents on the
Yangchow case begin in CSL 813.196, CI. 33.6.25-

15. CPTC 853.3, CL 33.7.10; CPTC 862.2, CI. 33.7.14 (Jangboo).

16. KCTC 27, CL 33.7.15. Jangboo hastened to assure Hungli that he was
preparing to impeach all subordinates who had suppressed information
on the spring incidents or released queue-clipping criminals. The
emperor replied that, on second thought, impeachments had better wait
until after the case was solved-or nobody would be prepared to report
events that might implicate him in previous laxity! Here was a classic
limitation on bureaucratic discipline: impeachments for withholding
information would only result later in less information being revealed.
CPTC 862.2, CL 33.7.14 (Jangboo).

17. KCTC CL 33.7.9. Though suspicions may arise here that Hungli was
using the soulstealing crisis to divert attention from a scandal that
smirched imperial in-laws, it seems not to have been so. G'aoheng and
the other culprits had already been delivered to the Grand Council for
trial, which ended in their conviction and execution.

18. Vermilion on CPTC 853.5, CL 33.7.18 (Jangboo).

19. CPTC 854.2, CL 33.7.15 (G'aojin); KCTC CL 33.7.18.

20. SYT CL 33.7.20.

21. CPTC 853.5, CL 33.7.18 (Jangboo).

22. On the development of this institution, see Spence, Ts'ao Yin and the
K'ang-hsi Emperor, 82-89.

23. CSK 325.1o864.

24. SYT CL 33.7.11. Rainfall and grain prices were considered particularly
sensitive intelligence because they were indexes of the popular temper
and hence affected state security.

25. CPTC 862.3, CL 33.7.18 (Sacai).

26. KCT, vol. 30, p. 248, CL 33.4.1 (Jangboo).

27. CSL 815.39b, CL 33.7.24•

28. CPTC 862.5, CL 33.7.26 (Jangboo).

29. CPTC 857.3, CL 33.7.26 (Jangboo).

30. The descendants of the uncles of the dynastic founder, Nurhaci, bore
the prefix Gioro (chueh-lo) before their personal names. They were more
distantly related to the royal line than Imperial Clansmen (tsung-shih).

31. Kuo-ch'ao ch'i-hsien lei-cheng, ch'u-pien (1884--go; reprint, Taipei: Wen-hai
ch'u-pan-she, 1966), 29o. 14-15b. Biographical writings on Yungde are
sparse, which perhaps reflects his contemporaries' estimate of him.

32. CPTC 853.2, CL 33.7.1 (Yungde).

33. Ibid.

34. We do not know the exact date these documents were forwarded, but
they were certainly on Hungli's desk before September i. These are the
confessions referred to in Chapter i, note 6.

35. KCTC CL 33.7.21

36. CPTC 856. 1, CL 33.8.2 (Funihan).

37. CPTC 851.1, Cl, 33.8.2 (Funihan).

38. CPTC 852.1, CL 33.6.11 (Funihan).

39. CPTC 854.2, Cl, 33.7.15 ((;'aojin).

40. CPTC 854.2, CL 33.7.15 (G'aojin). G'aojin evidently received the Suchou report even as he was composing his memorial and appended it as
a happy ending to an otherwise discouraging story.

41. CSL 815.46b-47, CL 33.7.26.

42. CSL 815.57, CL 33.7.27•

43. Some minor details of this story are filled in from later documents. See
LFTC/FLCT CL 33.9.5 (Liu T'ung-hsun et al.) and CPTC 854.9, CL
33.8.17 (Dingcang).

44. CPTC 865.1, CL 33.7.15 (Dingcang).

45. On the Meng Shih-hui case: CPTC 859. 1, CL 33.6.20; CPTC 851.1, CL
33.7.4 (Fang Kuan-ch'eng); SYT CL 33.6.22; LFTC/FLCT CL 33.7.11
(Liu T'ung-hsun and Liu Lun); CSL 813.15-15b (CL 33.6.22 and 23,
drafted by Fuheng et al.); SYT CL 33.7.20 (Fuheng).

46. CSL 813.15b, CL 33.6.22.

47. KCTC and SYT CL 33.7.12.

48. Hummel, Eminent Chinese, 252.

49. SYT CL 33.7.20.

50. CPTC 858. 1, CL 33.7.17 (Liu T'ung-hsun et al.).

51. CSL 815.5-6b, CL 33.7.18; CPTC SLHK 187-188, CL 33.7.26
(Toendo).

52. Chien-kuai pu-kuai, ch'i kuai tzu-pai.

53. CSL 815.5-6b, 713-9, Cl, 33.7.18-19.

54. CPTC 858.2, CL 33.7.23 (Liu T'ung-hsun et al.).

55. SYT CL 33.7.8, CSL 814.17.

56. The career of Asha (ca. 1710-1776) illustrates how the Manchu elite
was able to preserve itself by keeping mediocre men in high provincial
office even when they were well-known incompetents. Asha belonged to
one of the Upper Three Banners (those attached to the monarch himself,
and in whose personnel the monarch reposed special trust). In 1726,
probably in his late teens, lie obtained a staff position in the Grand
Secretariat directly from one of Peking's special schools for bannermen's
children (kuan-hsueh). After his apprenticeship in the lower ranks of the
capital bureaucracy, he was sent in 1745 to Kansu as provincial treasurer.
Four years later he was elevated to the plush job of governor of Kiangsi,
where he reportedly pleased his royal master with suggestions for minor
improvements in military training routines. The following year he was
transferred to the governorship of Shansi, where he blotted his copybook
by forcing wealthy households in a famine area to pay "relief" funds directly into a local government treasury. Hungli, no doubt reflecting
the outrage of the Shansi elite, was furious; the action was "vile and
erroneous" and Asha was "unworthy of the post of Governor." He was
stripped of his office and given a minor job in the Board of Civil Office.
By 1755, with brevet rank of provincial treasurer, he was assigned to the
Zungaria border camps as supply officer. Somehow, within the year, he
obtained a recommendation for "military merit," whereupon he was
made Kiangsi governor again in 1757, back where he had started eleven
years earlier.

After he had served but three years, a Grand Council commission
convicted him of bribery and extortion and sentenced him to death by
strangulation, but Hungli quickly reprieved him. Holding brevet third
rank, he was sent off to Urumchi to redeem himself. Two years later he
was again promoted to top provincial office, first in Kwangtung and then
in Honan, where we now find him. Late in his career, after Asha submitted a memorial that Hungli considered "idiotic and laughable," the
emperor finally decided that he "lacks those Manchu qualities of courage,
sincerity, and simplicity"-"how can We expect him to change?" He was
now sent to Ili, at his own expense, to redeem himself by frontier service.
Four years later he was recalled to Peking to serve on the Grand Council
staff and was shortly made a censor. Assigned to aid in the suppression
of the Wang Lun uprising in 1775, he was denounced for cowardice and
again disgraced but allowed to keep his job. The same year, Hungli
accorded him the privilege of riding horseback within the palace grounds
(an honor reserved for distinguished elderly capital officials), and in 1 776
he soared to the posts of acting president of the Board of Civil Office,
and then director-general of Grain Transport! When he died, later the
same year, he was canonized as "Correct and Reverent." CSK 337-11050;
CSLC 22.43b.

57. The Honan scare and the Hai-yin story are in CPTC 861.1-3, 6, CL
33.7.13-8.1 1; CSL 815.14b, CL 33.7.20.

58. CSL 815.14b, CL 33.7.20.

59. CPTC 861.2, CL 33.7.24 (Asha).

60. CPTC 861.3, CL 33.8.1 (Asha).

61. CPTC 861.6, CL 33.8.11; CSL 816.20-22, CL 33.8.9. Hungli's characterization of Asha as a formerly "conscientious official" must be taken
as conventional rhetoric in the light of the governor's actual service
record; see note 56.

62. Funihan conceded that belief in "whole-queue" prophylaxis was common
in Shantung. CPTC 860.7, CL 33.8.2.

63. CSL 815.53; this court letter is dated 7.27 in the SYT, but 7.25 in the
CSL.

64. Susan Naquin, Shantung Rebellion: The Wang Lun Uprising of 1774 (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1881), 48; Daniel Overmyer, Folk Buddhist
Religion: Dissenting Sects in Late Traditional China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), 113-114.

65. SYT CL 33.8.9; this was a secret "in-house" order to the Grand Council; secret court letters were to be sent to Chihli officials. Pao-an was subject
to Hsuan-hua Prefecture, and the sect is sometimes referred to in documents as being in Hsuan-hua.

66. "Disasters and good fortune" (huo-fu) is the phrase used by the Ch'ing
Code to mean illegal prophecies about high-level political events. TCLI.
16.1 1. On P'u-ming and the millenarian visions associated with his tradition, see Richard Shek, "Millenarianism without Rebellion: The
Huangtian Dao in North China," Modern China 8.3 (1982): 305-336.
67. SYT CL 33.8.16.

7. On the Trail of the Master-Sorcerers

1. SYT CL 33.8.12.

2. Kuo-ch'ao ch'i-hsien lei-cheng ch'u-pien 173.34•

3. CPTC 866.3, CL 33.8.23 (Mingsan).

4. CPTC 86o.3, CL 33.7.28 (Yang Hsi-fu). Boat-troopers were specialized
detachments of soldiers assigned to grain transport on the Grand Canal.

5. I suspect this is an exorcism ritual in which paper representations of the
offending entity are burned as homeopathic magic.

6. CPTC 860.4, CL 33.8.2 (Funihan).

7. KCTC CL 33.8.4•

8. SYT CL 33.8-5-

9. CPTC 86o.6, CL 33.8.9 (Funihan).

10. CPTC 864.5, CL 33.8.24 (Yungde).

11. This substitute, 162.04 in the Ch'ing Code, also proscribes a kind of
"farmer's almanac" (Ti-mou-thing) that, among other things, predicts natural disasters. It was listed as a "book of sorcery" (yao-shu) by Hungli in
1744, because natural disasters were believed to be omens of dynastic
collapse. See TLTI 423-

12. In 'I aoist mythology, the Immortals dwelt on an island in a vast ocean.

13. This is actually not a substatute, but a statute (lu), number 178 in the
Ch'ing Code, under "Ceremonies," TI:I'I 441. Wang's case does not fit
neatly under the statute, which refers to sorcerers' practice of their art
"in the households of ... officials." The statute specifically exempts those
"prognosticating according to canonical [i.e., Confucian] texts." The official commentary, added in 1646 to this inherited Ming statute, specifies
that the prognostication of "disasters or good fortune" has strictly political significance: it bears on the dynasty's legitimacy and longevity.

14. A similar roundup of monks, beggars, and other suspicious characters
was going on in Kiangsu, directed by the chastened G'aojin and Jangboo,
who now smothered Hungli with names and details. CPTC 856.2, CL
33.8.7; CPTC 862.12, CL 33.8.20.

15. CSL 815.53, CL 33.7-25-

16. Material on the Chueh-hsing case: CPTC 865.14, CL 33.8.27; CPTC
865.16 and 865.19, CL 33.9.1 1; CSL 818.25b, CL 33.9.' 1; LFTC/FLCT
CL 33.9.18.

17. CSLC 17.39b-41b.

18. Emphasis added. Hungli was referring here to his decree of September
7-see Chapter 6.

19. CSL 817.166, CI. 33.8.22 (to governors in the affected provinces); CSL
817.24, CL 33.8.25 (to all province chiefs in the empire).

20. Wu wang-yeh t'i seng was probably a reference to a local cult of the popular
religion, which originated in Tainan, Taiwan (then part of Fukien), and
spread to many other locations. See Schipper, "On Chinese Folk Religion," 6.

21. CP"I'C 853.5, CL 33.7.18 (Jangboo); CPTC 856.2, CL 33.8.7 (Yungde);
CPTC 853.18, CL 33.8.29 and CPTC 853.14, CL 33.9.17 (Feng Ch'ien).
Christina Larner recounts the use of sleep deprivation in seventeenthcentury Scottish witchcraft interrogations. Enemies of God: The Witch-hunt
in Scotland (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), 107.

8. The End of the Trail

1. CPTC 866.2, CL 33.8.22 (Syda and Surde; also CSL 816.7b, 817.37)•
The law specified that a false accuser was to receive the same penalty
that would have been meted out to the intended victim-in this case,
death by slow slicing.

2. Han bannermen were to be reduced to cut back on the escalating cost
of their stipends.

3. SYT CL 33.8.10 (Fuheng et al.).

4. CSL 816.23, CL 33.8. i o.

5. CPTC 861.1 o, CL 33.9-11 (A-ssu-ha).

6. CPTC 862.28, CL 33.10.17 (Jangboo).

7. CPTC 854.4, CL 33.7.30 (G'aojin).

8. Emphasis added.

9. For economy of presentation, I have assembled the above account of
Chang Ssu's interrogation from the records of several days' court sessions. All translations are, however, integral. CPTC 854.5, Cl, 33.8.3
(G'aojin); CPTC 863.6, CL 33.8.14 (Jingsan); CPTC 854.12, CL 33.12.7
(G'aojin); LFTC/FLCT Cl, 33.9.5 (Liu T'ung-hsun et al.); LFTC/FLCT
Cl, 3.9.1 1 and CL 33.9.17 (Liu Lun et al.).

10. LFTC/FLCT CL 33.9.8 (Liu Lun et al.). Emphasis added.

11. LFTC/FLCT CL 33.9.2 (Liu T'ung-hsun et al.). I have not recovered
the document in which Han replied.

12. The following details of T'ung-kao's recantation are all from Fuheng's
written report of October 25. SYT CL 33.9.15•

13. The Chinese practice of keeping large numbers of prisoners in a single
cell must have made for a lively prison culture of shared misery. Stories
of all kinds, including sorcery lore, were presumably a common diversion
for inmates undergoing the common torments of jail life, described in
Chapter i. (Bodde, "Prison Life," 317, describes the practice of largegroup confinement.) The "stupefying powder" must have been part of
this prison scuttlebutt, too. Yet we cannot entirely rule out the possibility that there may have been certain preparations capable of inducing something like stupefaction. Peter Goldman, M.D., Professor of Clinical Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School, writes (personal communication,
June 13, 1989): "Current experience with cocaine powder shows that
pharmacological effects can occur rapidly when drugs make contact with
the nasal mucosa." One of his correspondents, a specialist at the Chinese
Academy of Medical Sciences, suggests that a powder might have been
concocted from various flowers or seeds containing atropine or scopolamine. This Chinese informant also recalls that his father often warned
him, when a small boy, not to venture out in the evenings "because I
might meet some sorcerers" who would "take me away by sprinkling me
with some powder." Later he learned that the powder consisted of the
flower of Solanacia plants (a narcotic herb). I)r. Goldman points out,
however: "A purely pharmacological explanation for the legend is not
tenable, however, until it can be explained how the sorcerer can insert
a powder into the nose of an unwilling victim without getting enough
of the powder on himself to produce the same symptoms."