Four Sisters of Hofei : A History (9781439125878)

by Chin, Annping

  Hofei sits in the middle of Anhwei province, between the Huai and the Yangtze Rivers.1 The military first recognized its strategic importance twenty-seven hundred years ago. Then, Hofei straddled two rival kingdoms and so naturally became the venue of their seesaw struggles. Merchants and traders soon followed the soldiers, seeing that profits could be made from trafficking goods there. They dealt in arms and grain when there was a war, and in timber, hides, and exotic food when respite set in. Throughout Chinese history, Hofei would find herself in the same circumstances many times, especially in periods when China was divided, such as the end of the second century and the beginning of the tenth century.

  Early texts traced Hofei’s ancestry to the ancient kingdom of Ch’u. In the Chinese imagination, the world of Ch’u suggests color and darkness, playful madness, and a love for the irrational. The philosopher Chuang Tzu, the poet Ch’ü Yuan, and the patron of scholars, Liu An, all contributed to its mystery and splendor. Yet Hofei did not come into its own until the second half of the nineteenth century. A new type of elite had emerged after the imperial army had foiled the Taiping and the Nien rebels. Most did not have the credentials of the traditional gentry—no extensive schooling in Confucian thought and no degrees to prove their erudition. Yet it was these men that gave Hofei the kind of respectability it had not known before. Wu-ling’s ancestors belonged to this group.

  Before the 1850s, the Changs could call themselves only low gentry. They owned a modest plot of land, and very occasionally a member of the family would pass the county examination, which helped the family to maintain a scholarly status in the eyes of the community. Wu-ling’s great-grandfather had a local literary degree, but of his nine children, only his oldest, Wu-ling’s grandfather Shu-sheng, achieved the same distinction. Had there not been a civil war, Chang Shu-sheng probably would have sat for the next round of examinations at the provincial level and his brothers at the county (or entry) level, doing what most men in China for over a thousand years had been doing, if they had the means: getting themselves certified for civil service.

  The Taiping and Nien uprisings in the mid-nineteenth century changed all this. Four of the Chang brothers fought with the government troops under the leadership of another Hofei man, Li Hung-chang, who went on to become China’s foremost statesman and a close advisor to the Manchu rulers. When the last rebel group was suppressed, one Chang brother was dead, killed in action, while the other three were generously rewarded and swiftly posted to other government jobs. Of the brothers, Chang Shu-sheng was the most widely acknowledged for his achievements. His sterling performance as a battalion commander was backed by Li Hung-chang, whose recommendations already carried a lot of influence in Peking. The Manchu court conferred on Chang the title Cho-yung Brave (Cho-yung-pa-tu-lu) and posted him as their judicial commissioner in Chihli province. This was followed by a succession of high-level appointments, as governor-general of grain transport; governor-general of Kwangsi, Kiangsu, and Anhwei; of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, and finally acting governor-general of Chihli.

  Chang Shu-sheng’s rise to power was not unique among the Hofei men who took part in the Taiping conflict. Four of his neighbors—a peddler, a roving gang leader, and two desperately poor farmers—followed similar career tracks. Merit in war gave them titles and good jobs, while spoils of war helped them to amass huge personal fortunes, tens of thousands of mu of land in Hofei and prime properties in cities south of the Yangtze. Though barely literate, these men, after they had attained money and power, learned to behave like upper gentry and conduct business like upper gentry. They gave their genealogies a complete makeover; they hired professionals to help them collect books, antiques, paintings, and calligraphy.

  The same men also poured money into repairing and building schools and examination halls. The West Hofei Academy was established around this time with the money Chang Shu-sheng and his neighbors donated. In addition to education, the new Hofei elite supported many other local projects: poor relief and charitable estates; road and bridge repair; the construction of ponds, dams, and dikes; and the restoration of temples, shrines, and ancient relics. Because most of them were away on official assignments in other provinces much of the time, they could make only material contributions: money, land, and objects such as tables and chairs for the examination halls and religious implements and musical instruments for the temples. The other types of responsibilities, such as settling local disputes, supervising public works, and organizing famine relief, which were normally expected of the gentry, they had to leave to their family and relatives, and to the less important gentry there.

  On the whole, in Hofei the newcomers to gentry status did what good gentry had done for many centuries, keeping an eye on regional affairs, looking after the interests of their home areas, and helping to finance numerous community projects. In temperament and style, however, they were noticeably different. Compared with their predecessors, these newcomers seemed more flexible and adventurous, more likely to break rules, and less afraid of change and unfamiliar ways; they were also tougher and more decisive, equally comfortable with administering a province and fighting on the battlefield, and less likely to back down in a conflict; finally, they had seen more and experienced more and so had more interests and wider concerns than the local gentlemen and were more capable of handling big problems. They preferred action, trying things out for themselves, and had little patience for theories.

  Take Liu Ming-ch’uan, Chang Shu-sheng’s compeer during the suppression campaigns. In the 1850s, when the Taiping rebels were moving violently across Anhwei, all fired up by the vision of a Christian kingdom in China, Liu was raising his own hell in the western corner of Hofei county, near Ta-ch’ien Mountain. In 1854 he killed a man, a thug who had been extorting money from his widowed mother, and became an outlaw himself. Two years after he went on the run, the Ch’ing authorities set fire to his family’s four-room house, and that night, his mother hanged herself from a cassia tree. This tragedy spurred Liu to commit even more serious crimes. He recruited smugglers and stragglers and formed his own roving band. They stayed together in a fortified camp at the foot of Ta-ch’ien Mountain and lived off resources extorted from the local community. Finally, in 1858, the prefect in neighboring Liu-an county lured him into a trap. If there had not been a war, Liu would have been dead that year, at the age of twenty-two, executed as a common criminal. But the prefect saw some usefulness in him and struck a bargain: Liu would be allowed to live if he threw himself in with the government forces. The way local historians described this episode is like a page from a knight-errant romance:

  The prefect appreciated Liu’s chivalrous nature and thought him promising, and so persuaded him to work with the Ch’ing army, saying that he should offer his undying service to the Ch’ing court as atonement for his crimes. Liu, deeply moved by the prefect’s kindness, decided to join the Ch’ing camp. Thereupon he went home to organize the local militia.

  Liu Ming-ch’uan probably had no choice in the matter if he wanted to save his neck. But once he made up his mind to work for the Ch’ing government, he never switched sides. The same cannot be said of many other men in similar circumstances. In the 1850s, during the period when the Taiping army was conducting an aggressive campaign in Anhwei, many small towns and villages in the Hofei area and in northern Anhwei began to fortify their communities with earthen walls, some eleven feet tall, with trenches dug around them. The local Nien bandits saw this as an opportunity: they could take the walled area as their base and draw an income from the residents’ land taxes. To persuade a community to come to their side, the Nien leaders might apply force or they might try to influence the commander of the local militia and negotiate a peaceful takeover. But if the government troops came and drove out the Nien, the community would swing around again and return to being the subjects of the Ch’ing court. Between 1853 to 1863, it was not unusual for a city, a town, or a village to switch sides several times. The leaders of the local militia and of the gentry
played a crucial role under these uncertain conditions. Some sparred with the Nien and the Taipings with only their own interests in mind; others worried about the safety of their communities and acted as they saw fit. According to Hofei folklore, sometime in 1858, before Liu surrendered to the Ch’ing, he and several strongmen from West Hofei got together to discuss the possibility of joining forces with the Taipings. During the meeting a violent wind snapped the flagpole that was to fly the rebel flag. An old schoolteacher at the meeting interpreted this as a bad omen. So they all went home that night, ready to confront the Taipings in the morning.

  Liu Ming-ch’uan’s career took off as soon as he was put on the battlefield. He scored several victories against the Nien rebels in 1859, and by the year’s end was made a first captain (tu-ssu). Fighting was what Liu knew best. For years he had been fighting the Ch’ing authorities, the Taipings, the Nien, other hoodlums, and even other militia corps. Li Hung-chang once described the kind of life his Hofei generals had led before they joined the regular army: “When the enemies came, they helped one another; when the enemies left, they fought one another.” Even women fitted their lives into this rhythm. The local history tells us that whenever Liu Ming-ch’uan’s camp was under attack, Liu’s wife could be seen busily loading the ammunition.

  Liu Ming-ch’uan’s real break came in 1861. That year, Tseng Kuo-fan, the commander-in-chief of the anti-Taiping forces, persuaded Li Hung-chang to organize the Anhwei Army, whose main task was to help the Ch’ing government secure Shanghai in case of an enemy assault. Tseng had high regard for Li, who had studied with Tseng when he was a student in Peking and had served on Tseng’s personal staff; Tseng also knew that Li was experienced in working with the local militia in his native Hofei. Soon after he received his command, Li Hung-chang enlisted Liu Ming-ch’uan’s Ming Battalion as one of the thirteen that made up the original Anhwei or Huai Army. It seems unlikely that the two had known each other well before 1861. They had little in common and could not have traveled in the same social circles. Li had earned the highest civil degree and was a compiler at the imperial Hanlin Academy; Liu had only on occasion attended a village school and was nicknamed “the hood.” But family background and education did not interest Li Hung-chang when he was considering someone for employment. He always said that the world needed “more talented men, not more Hanlin scholars.”

  As a military commander, Li Hung-chang followed his own way. He demanded loyalty and courage from those he had promoted, and he did not like to be disappointed; in return, he let these men fight the enemy as they saw fit and hoard as much spoils as they liked. Li’s style suited Liu Ming-ch’uan. By the end of the Taiping war, Liu held the rank of baron of the first class, and he had hoarded enough silver to buy tens of thousands of acres of land—he was handsomely rewarded because Li Hung-chang’s own reputation had profited from his service. If Liu had retired to his estate permanently then, he would not have been different from most of the enterprising heroes of the past, and his relation with Li Hung-chang could have been seen as purely one of convenience. But as it happened, his public career did not conclude with the suppression of the Nien in 1868. In fact, Liu Ming-ch’uan is best remembered today as Taiwan’s first governor—the man who, after having blocked the French from invading Taiwan in 1884, introduced economic and educational reform on the island, and laid the foundation of a vast communication network that included railroads, telegraph, and a modern postal service.

  Li Hung-chang once remarked that the battalion commanders in his Huai Army “rose to fame at the same time and swiftly” and so must have had “talents,” and that they should not be compared with “the self-promoting, cliquish type,” because these men “worry about their country in the same way they worry about their family and regard matters far away as something near at hand.” But how did this come about? How did a rabble-rouser like Liu Ming-ch’uan come to worry about the broader questions regarding his country? How did he make the transition from knight-errant to statesman, from perpetual scrapper to enlightened reformer? Chang Shu-sheng’s life might offer some clues. Chang “rose to fame” together with Liu. He exhibited talents on the battlefield and had the same instinct and foresight about China’s future, and the same drive as Liu. But he was another kind of Hofei man, someone with more gravity, less charm, and probably little flair. Chang also made a lot of money because of the Taiping war but was too preoccupied with work to enjoy any of it. Liu had at least eight concubines; Chang had one, an ugly one given to him late in life by a wealthy friend.

  Through his great-granddaughters and a tomb inscription, we know something about Chang Shu-sheng’s own family. His father, Yin-ku, was a tough and principled man. In the 1840s and 1850s, when it was common for local leaders around Hofei to broker deals with rebel forces, Chang Yin-ku refused to do so. At the same time, he knew that he could not rely on the government troops for protection, so he organized a local detachment, fortified his own base, and did whatever he could to safeguard the areas around him. He waited out this volatile period and told the people in his village to do the same. No threats or gainful prospects ever swayed him from his purpose. In this way his oldest son was like him.

  Chang Shu-sheng’s wife was another steely figure in the Chang family history. When the Taiping soldiers first came to the Changs’ ancestral home in West Hofei, it was this woman who faced them down. The men had gone to hide in the nearby mountains because they would have been killed if they stayed. (The Taipings spared no men from the gentry class when they captured a town or moved into a village but would let the women go.) According to Ch’ung-ho, who heard this story from her adoptive grandmother, Chang Shu-sheng also had put his wife in charge of his youngest brother, who was only five at the time and so too young to take flight with the rest of the family. When the Taipings arrived, they searched through the family compound, poking everywhere with their spears. The five-year-old had been carefully concealed and told not to make a sound no matter what happened. When the soldiers were gone, the boy was found bleeding from a neck wound but still alive. Madame Chang placed a piece of skin from a freshly killed chicken on the wound to stop the bleeding. The boy was saved. There is no way of knowing if all the details of this story are true, but they suggest a capable and sturdy woman, a right match for Chang Shu-sheng.

  Chang Shu-sheng did not leave any personal writings behind, no letters or poems or even tomb inscriptions for friends or colleagues. In fact, nearly all the writings we have of Chang Shu-sheng are memorials—letters and reports he sent to the emperor. These are official documents, written in a formal language, yet they surprise us with just how much they tell about his thought and action, his bearing and temperament, and how he made distinctions and apportioned weight. Because this man had, for many years, fought for his own survival and for the survival of his neighbors and the Ch’ing dynasty, he possessed a greater sense of urgency than his contemporaries about the problems his country was facing. He felt that the dangers were real and immediate, and that they could threaten China’s existence. But Chang Shu-sheng was not a pessimist: he worked without stop, trying to find solutions for these problems. His daughter-in-law, Ch’ung-ho’s adoptive grandmother, accompanied him to Kwangsi and Kwangtung in the early 1880s, when he was posted there as governor-general. She was a young woman then, married for only a few years to Chang Shu-sheng’s middle son. Her father-in-law impressed her deeply: “Even though he had a good confidential secretary, he always insisted on reviewing every letter and document delivered to him from the Transmission Office before he passed them on to his confidential secretary. So he was always swamped with work.” His secretary took care of many things for him, matters that he could not attend to personally, and often his letters would be in his secretary’s handwriting. But the instructions came from Chang Shu-sheng, and he would always have a first glance at all his correspondence so that he would not be misled or misinformed.

  Chang Shu-sheng’s work took up nearly all his waking hours, and summers
in South China were taxing. The weather was hot and moist; mosquitoes were everywhere and always thirsty. They stuck to skin and thin gowns, and they swarmed around you and above you. Chang slapped as he read, his palms stained with blood. He also had a habit of eating sugared rice dumplings as he worked, correcting the drafts of his secretaries with red ink. Occasionally he would dip the dumplings into the wet inkstone instead of the sugar bowl, and his beard would be streaked in red.

  Chang Shu-sheng’s collected memorials show us the nature and range of the problems he had to consider. Most were questions that needed his immediate attention: collection of land and commercial tax; border and coastal defense; local banditry; funding for the construction of steamboats, arsenals, and schools; recommendations of meritorious officials. Others had to do with local habits and practices, which Chang felt needed redress. Then there were the more fundamental issues: educational reform, the Ch’ing government’s policy toward foreigners in China and foreign nations, and a more effective approach to Western technology and Western knowledge. His writings on these problems tell us that he disliked inflexibility but favored expediency only if it did not deviate from propriety. He wrote:

  I have made this observation about men of the past and of the present. Those who are sincere and truthful, pure and prudent—in other words, men who carefully guard their character from corruption—often end up holding on to old theories, unable to adapt themselves to change. These men are so impractical and obstinate that they simply cannot take on any responsibilities.