The Three Leaps of Wang Lun

by Alfred Doblin

  While the corpses—the charred body of Wang, who had been born a fisherman’s son, lived a criminal, founded the Wu-wei for the wretched of the Eighteen Provinces and so fallen under the laws against heresy, the pierced body of Yellow Bell, the noblest and gentlest of the brothers, whoo received the spear with his soul at peace, surging tenderly towards a lovely white cloud, Ngo the weakest of all, slowly crushed by his misery, the numberless brothers and sisters who had blossomed under the peace of Wu-wei—while the corpses still rotted in the quiet streets and in the houses of Linch’ing, Hai-t’ang travelled on a great ship of mourning, surrounded by her women, along the coast to her southern homeland.

  Chao Hui, the broken victor, was held fast by Ch’ien-lung at Court. Hai-t’ang wanted to travel alone. She told Chao Hui when he sold his house in Shanhaikwan that he should take a concubine, have a son by her.

  Soft autumn came. The ship glided along the southern coast. From the towns music shrilled; harvest processions thudded in the fields. Junks streaked playfully over the dark water. Hai-t’ang still as death on the broad heavy ship. She did not journey directly to her home; the ship anchored off the island of P’ut’o-shan. Hai-t’ang wanted to go before the merciful goddess Kuan-yin, secure for herself the prayers of the most pious monks.

  Sunny jags of granite peaks. Dreaming tucked-in landscapes. Slender fan palms with clear voices. Camellias a hundred thousand. Transpiring ponds, floating lilies. Between hedges, behind stony paths a temple at the foot of the cliff. Stretched out sky.

  Supported by two women Hai-t’ang rustled along the path in grey voluminous clothes, grey veil over her face. They went through the entrance hall, across the vast terrace and the platform in front of the prayer hall. Hai-t’ang’s eyes tolerated the reliefs on the steep breastwork of the terrace, extolling childish love. In front of the altar the eternal flame smoked in its carved wooden niche. Curtains, patchwork carpets, standards, drums, incense.

  Kuan-yin huge at the back. She sat there by the wall in a white robe, left hand delicately raised; her face was golden; she wore a crown of five lotus leaves; her blue hair was fastened with a diadem. She sat on the marble plinth slender of hip, stronglegged, head leaning slightly back; violet bib; white silk flowed over her narrow shoulders. The eyelids beneath black brows were lowered but the yellowish lashes, thin, slightly parted lips seemed to flutter gently. In such mildness she kept her silence; in such absorption she heard and gave. Tablets and banners praised her: “Kuan-yin, great friend. Her merciful boat conveys all across. Her grace is vast as the waves of the sea. She arose for everyone. A mother’s heart. Her golden body will not perish.”

  Monks in brown robes pressed foreheads to the ground before her. Murmurs, tinkling, a soft chant. Hai-t’ang crumpled her veil; breathed gustily and smiled, gazed away over the monks.

  It was late evening. The island was vanishing in the darkness. Bearing lanterns a hundred monks left their cells and chapels in procession along stony paths. Hai-t’ang had donated a vast sum in order that they should pray for her to the goddess. She sat at a bend in the path under a boulder of granite. The procession murmured past, arms crossed, cowl after cowl. She paid the monks, an endless stream. Proud, triumphant she surveyed the boundless throng: she must succeed in overpowering the goddess. Peace, peace was what she wanted. Wang Lun had taken both children from her; vengeance had failed, and even had it succeeded would have been of no use. Peace for herself, peace for her dead children, endless, ever-renewed floggings for Wang Lun! It grew calm in her as the torches vanished amid chanting into the temple. She gulped the warm air. The goddess had better look out, now the monks were crowding in on her, struggling with her—for Hai-t’ang. Her maids got to their feet. Hai-t’ang returned to the ship for the night.

  The next evening she sat once more under the boulder of granite. The torches swayed past. In the darkness she turned her triumphant face, contorted with hate, towards the dark temple. She shook her arms over the heads of the monks.

  On the third evening she sent her maids away. The murmur of the procession filled the paths. Hai-t’ang stared into the dazzling torchlight. She fell down, screamed, tore her breast. The goddess was stronger; the monks could not prevail. They could pray and pray and pray. Who had the strength? Who could save her?

  Then it seemed to her the monks were back already. There was a rustling. A gleam played over the ground. In the light of the newly risen moon slenderhipped Kuan-yin walked past her, mother-of-pearl white. The diadem on her curly hair flashed grassgreen when she turned her inclined head. She smiled, looked at Hai-t’ang, said, “Hai-t’ang, leave your breast alone. Your children sleep beside me. Be calm, do not resist, oh, do not resist.”

  Hai-t’ang looked again into the green trailing moonlight. She sat up, pressed shovelled hands over her cold face. “Be calm, not resist. Have I the strength?”

  A map of the principal sites, as it appears in de Groot.

  Appendix

  The Insurrection of Wang Lun, in 1774

  J. J. M. de Groot

  Alfred Döblin’s inspiration for The Three Leaps of Wang Lun was the following passage in Jan Jakob Maria de Groot’s Sectarianism and Religious Persecution in China: A Page in the History of Religions, Volume II (1904). De Groot (1854-1921) was a Dutch missionary, historian of religion, and Sinologist who taught at Leiden University and Humboldt University of Berlin.

  After the emperor had thus sent out his satrap of Chihli against the White Yang hierarch and his community, there are among the edicts of the Shing hiun (Sh. h.), for about thirty months, none which relate to persecution. This silence, as in so many other instances, will have to be simply ascribed to the fact that this Compendium is merely a selection of edicts, never enabling us to grasp the full extent of the persecutions. Indeed, if we admit that the mandarinate raged not in that lapse of time, it must remain a riddle why, quite suddenly in 1774, the decrees come forward with news of the outbreak of a rebellion of the White Yang and the White Lotus sects, under the headship of a member of the same Wang tribe that the heresiarch belonged to, and on the borders of the same Chihli province in which he had his see.

  Persecution naturally provokes self-defence. And self-defence may readily become open revolt where the defensive party is an organized religion with chieftains and leaders, zealots and fanatics all ready for self-sacrifice and martyrdom. We have seen how the persecuted Lotus church once rose in arms against the house of Yuen, and brought it to an untimely downfall. We saw the same religion play its armed part in the overthrow of the Ming dynasty. Should then the present Imperial family—which so sharply opposed Sectarianism, persecuting it certainly not less cruelly or with less antiheretical fanaticism than those two preceding dynasties—never have to keep account with religious rebels?

  No nation rises in arms against its rulers without serious reasons. Least of all can unprovoked revolt be expected of so unmartial a people as the Chinese are, timid and peaceful on the whole, merely used to handling plough and tool, never trained in arms, never using a sword or spear, hardly even ever possessing any. So we cannot but conclude that the religious revolt of 1774 must have been preceded by a horrible time of terrorism, panic, agony and exasperation, a time in which the people saw their revered religious leaders and elders, their parents, children, brethren and sisters dragged into the dungeons, beaten, tortured, strangled, beheaded, cut to pieces alive, castrated and banished, their homes pounced upon by police and soldiery, plundered and emptied; a time in which hundreds of harmless religionists saw prices set on their heads and were hunted down as dangerous beasts, everywhere imperiling also their brethren among whom they sought refuge and protection.

  Wang Lun, the man who has for ever affixed his name to the revolt, was an influential sectary in the department of Yen-cheu. There, in the district Sheu-chang, thus relates Wei Yuen in the last section of the eighth chapter of his Shing wu ki, he occupied himself with healing the sick by making them suppress their respiration, which art he had borrowed fr
om the heretical sect of the Pure Water. He also gave lessons in boxing. His followers daily increased in Shantung, and the Prefect of Sheu-chang, Shen Ts’i-i, had him arrested. But then, on the 28th day of the eighth month (Oct. 3), the rebels stormed the city, and also successively took possession of the more northern district-cities of T’ang-yih and Yang-kuh; and after that they marched up against the chief city of the Tung-ch’ang department on the Great Imperial Canal, and against Lin-ts’ing, a place even more important, on the confluence of the Wei and the Great Canal, which by its situation commanded the rice-transport from the south to Peking. This was a direct attack upon the most vital point of the dynasty; the victualing of the Imperial family, the Court, the central Government, the troops and the population in the Metropolis being thus intercepted.

  The emperor, who was at Jehol at that time, deemed it necessary to send the Grand Secretary or High Chancellor Shu Hoh-teh to the scene of the insurrection as Military Commander-in-Chief and Plenipotentiary. In co-operation with the Imperial son-in-law Lah-wang-tao-’rh-tsi and the President of the Censorate O Szě-hoh, and aided by select Manchu archers from Solon and Kirin, he was “to pacify those districts by sweeping the evil clean away to the last remains,” in other words, to exterminate the rebels to the last. The Viceroy of Chihli, Cheu Yuen-li, already known to us, received instructions to defend his departments of Kwang-p’ing and Taming, bordering on the revolting region, while Yao Lih-teh, Director General of the Hwangho, was charged with the defence of Tung-ch’ang.

  The badly organized rebel troops were not proof against such force. In a decree of the 10th day of the ninth month (Oct. 14), and in another, dated ten days later (Sh. h. 49), we read already of the slaughter of rebels by Su Tsih, Governor of Shantung, by Yao Lih-teh, by Wei Yih, Brigade General of the troops at Yen-cheu, and by volunteers in the Kwan-t’ao district. The last mentioned decree empowered the Governor of Shantung to bestow liberal rewards on all braves for the extermination and capture of rebels. The first victory of any importance was gained by Wei Yih, with three hundred men; T’ang-yih fell into his hands, and with eight hundred troops he defeated the rebel army a second time, and released Su Tsih, besieged in Lin-ts’ing, that is to say, in the New City, while the Old one was in the power of the rebels. Wei Yuen says this was a large place with earthen walls no less than thirty or forty li in circumference, embracing many myriads of dwellings. From this enormous stronghold the insurgents attacked the New City, and found that the cannon on the walls did them no harm at all. But the Imperialists cleverly remedied this evil by exorcising the guns with the blood of a naked woman and a virgin, and with a fowl and a dog.

  On the 14th of that month, Wei Yih, together with Koh T’ukheng, Military Commander in the city of Teh-cheu, north of Lin-ts’ing, was seen approaching the besieged town with a thousand men. This tempted a part of the garrison to a rash sally, but they were worsted by the besiegers and fled to Tung-ch’ang, where by Imperial command they were all beheaded. Attacked both on the Teh-cheu and the Tung-ch’ang side, harassed on the other by the Chihli forces, and assailed in the west from Kwan-t’ao, the insurgents had a hot time of it. A disastrous defeat was inflicted upon them on the western banks of the canal by the General of Chihli, Wan Ch’ao-hing, on which occasion their floating bridge was burned. On the 23rd, Shu Hoh-teh’s own army appeared on the scene, defeated the rebels under the walls of the Old City, and with great slaughter drove them within the walls. Then the east-gate was stormed by Shu Hoh-teh, and the city given over to fire and sword. Yin Tsi-t’u, an officer of the Imperial Body-guard who had fought with much bloody success at the northern gate, now went to find Wang Lun. He pulled down the walls of a large house into which the latter had retired, and with his own hand seized him. But a dozen rebels rushed out, released their headman, mounted with him to the top story, set fire to the building, and all perished in the flames. That gallant officer then continued his heroic feats of that day by slaying the streets some dozens of female rebels. The younger brother of Wang Lun, Wang P’oh by name, with the insurgent commanders Fan Wei, Meng Ts’an, Wang King-lung and others, were caught alive and sent in cages to Peking. More than a thousand of their relations and clansfolk were put to death. About 7,000 families, altogether numbering about 40,000 persons, who had fled for their lives, now returned. In one month the rebellion was quenched, and the empty grain fleet could safely sail south, to fetch new food-supplies for Peking and the Court.

  So far Wei Yuen’s account of the insurrection. The Old City had been the scene of most tremendous slaughter and havoc. An Imperial decree of the 12th day of the tenth month (Nov. 15) declared (see Sh. h. 82) that, according to Shuh Hoh-teh’s own report, the dead bodies lay in piles everywhere, and blocked up the streets. A statesman suggested to the Throne that, unless they were removed, infectious diseases might break out amongst the 4,000 families re-settled in the city. So the emperor ordered that the Commanders-in-chief should have two pits dug near the riverbank, one for the male and one for the female corpses; after these had been thrown therein and covered up with the debris of the burned houses, the remaining ruins and rubbish should be piled up over them, so as to form grave-mounds not high and conspicuous like whales, but just large enough to warn and intimidate the people. Foreigners who visit Lin-ts’ing, go and behold with your own eyes these hideous trophies, eloquent witnesses of Chinese religious liberty, raised on human bones! They lie in the very region where Confucius lived and labored, not very far from the place where his grave is found, and his descendants live in the enjoyment of special protection and favor on the part of a State worshipping him as the founder and patron divinity of its political and ethical wisdom.

  The demon of war sent out by the emperor, had done his work unhampered; but the imperial bloodthirstiness was not yet satiated. Many indeed have been slain, thus he exclaims triumphantly in a decree of the 4th of the tenth month (Nov. 7), “but the arch rebel has managed to escape from being carved alive into one-inch pieces; in faith, it makes Me grind My teeth. But the sons of that culprit Wang Lun are numerous; they must of course be quickly sought and arrested at once, in order to undergo for him this severest of all punishments” (Sh. h. 256). Shu Hoh-teh has reported to Us that Wang King-lung and other insurgent chiefs have been forwarded to Peking in cages; their arrival may be expected any day, and they may then be carefully examined by Ourselves. That Plenipotentiary has already 1,372 culprits in his power. All those amongst them who held official appointments among the insurgents, or actually fought on the rebel side, shall without mercy be put to death. Those who rendered services to the rebels, or who were present at the fights without taking part therein, shall be exiled for ever to Ili, Kirin, Heh-lung-kiang and other regions, there to be given to the troops for slaves, or else they shall be banished to the inland regions where infectious diseases prevail. But the ignorant who were forced to side with the insurgents and had no chance of deserting their ranks, or young men carried off by the rebels, may, if thought advisable, be set free, or if their case is of a more serious nature, they shall undergo a chastisement by way of correction. The Governor of Shantung likewise reports that on all sides he has captured very many people. With regard to the chief rebels among these, he shall act in the same manner as prescribed above; he shall take good measures, lest any such delinquents slip through his nets. But the sectaries of both sexes who at T’ang-yih welcomed the rebels on their knees, “positively belong to the criminals of the abominable kind.” Those who took the lead on that occasion shall be put to death for a warning example; the remainder against whom sufficient proof of guilt can be found, shall be exiled, without it being necessary to pursue thorough investigation. For a long time the Lotus sect has been propagated in Shantung. Wang P’oh has confessed that Wang Lun’s teacher, Chang Ki-ch’ing from Yang-kuh, is dead; let his body be exhumed from its grave, and his wife and brothers who are traveling about be seized and subjected to a severe examination; and let the same be done to his teacher Yuen Kung-p’u from Tung-o. All
the branches of that heretical religion shall be tracked and searched; they who for some long time have occupied themselves with heresies shall more particularly be hunted up, “lest any remnant of the evil be left in existence.” At the same time, however, it should be borne in mind, that “although the heretical religions must most decidedly be searched out and put a stop to, they who have entered such a religion are not necessarily altogether rebels.” Hence they who have done so in consequence of seduction, if they change their mind and apostatize, need not positively be persecuted more rigorously than the general members of the sect-branches. “But if you are unable to strive for the extermination, root and branch, of the remainder of the rebels and the heretical religions, then neither can you fully realize the sentence I have inscribed with My own hand in the posterior hall (of the temple of Confucius): ‘If Chung-ni (Confucius) were here, he would not do it more thoroughly than Myself.’ Shu Hoh-teh, fathom the meaning of these words, and realize My intentions in the best way you can. Be not lax or lenient, be not negligent!”

  Eloquent words indeed, by which this supreme Confucian persecutor portrays himself! His delight in the sacred slaughter of heretics, now so gloriously accomplished, was equaled by his zeal in rewarding those who had been instrumental in the execution of his will. By a decree of the 5th day of the eleventh month (Dec. 7), Shu Hoh-teh, the eminent victor, was promoted to the high dignity of “Minister who stands before the Emperor” or Grand-Chamberlain, and privileged to wear a double-eyed Peacock Feather. He also was invested with the eighth grade of nobility, transferable to his son (Sh. h. 49). Even before this glorious carnage, he was a favorite of his august master, for by a decree of the 2nd day of the fourth month of that same year (Sh. h. 171) the latter presented him and two other grandees with a copy of the famous giant work Ku kin t’u shu tsih ch’ing, to become an heirloom in their families. Nor did the emperor forget the Prefects of the rebellious districts. The insurgent chiefs, conveyed to Peking, had confessed that the Prefects of Sheu-chang and T’ang-yih, Shen Ts’i-i and Ch’en Mei, when captured and garroted by the rebels and prevailed upon to make common cause with them, scolded them so well that they had to pay for it with their lives. The emperor therefore decreed on the 13th of the tenth month (Nov. 16) that these faithful servants of the dynasty, together with the Sub-director of Studies in T’ang-yih, who also for soundly scolding the rebels suffered the same fate, should be proposed by the Board of Civil Office for Imperial distinctions (Sh. h. 244). A decree issued ten days later (ibid.) ordains the same with regard to yet other officers murdered in the surprised cities for a similar display of scolding heroism.