Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768

by Philip A. Kuhn

  The problem was that the elusive fortune-teller had been identified with no address, not even a county. He was "a Kiangnan man"-but the Kiangnan jurisdiction consisted of three provinces, containing perhaps seventy million people. Governor-general G'aojin now asked that the Shantung culprits be reinterrogated for more detailed information. Word came back that Chang came from a village called Wu- yueh-hu-chuang, south of the city of P'i-chou, near the Grand Canal in the northernmost part of Kiangsu, bordering on Shantung, but no such village could be found. Although the population registers contained three persons whose names sounded like Chang Ssu ju, none fit his description. G'aojin's general alarm, based on the Shantung confessions, had produced nothing.

  Quite suddenly, in the last week of August, the case broke. A report from the magistrate of Su-chou announced that a beggar called "Chang Ssu" had been arrested carrying a knife, a packet of drugs, and a severed queue. Su-chou, in northern Anhwei, was a mere eighty miles from the area where Chang had been hunted. And though "Chang Ssu" ("Chang's fourth son") was missing the last ideograph of the wanted man's name, and hence was as common a name as might be imagined, the incriminating evidence was a ray of hope to the harried Kiangnan bureaucracy.-'° G'aojin reported that he was arranging to interrogate the man personally. (Vermilion: "You should do your best to investigate this man's tracks in detail. But as soon as you use torture, he will not give you a true confession.")

  Hungli was also relieved, of course, that an "important criminal" in the queue-clipping case had at last been caught. Anhwei's governor, Feng Ch'ien, had already informed turn of the arrest at Suchou, and had reported that the local prefect had already established that the prisoner was indeed the eagerly sought Chang Ssu ju, instigator of the Shantung clipping outrages and link to the sorcerermonk Yu-shih. Hungli again cautioned G'aojin against the use of torture; the difficulty of obtaining accurate statements was by now obvious, though he offered no suggestions on how information might otherwise be wrung from obdurate criminals. On the contrary, implicit pressure to obtain accurate confessions pervaded Hungli's court letters. Furthermore, if questioning in the field did not produce reliable results, the prisoner was to be sent under close guard to the summer court at Ch'eng-te, some seven hundred miles distant beyond the Great Wall.'"

  Although Anhwei governor Feng Chien was G'aojin's subordinate, he nevertheless was responsible for sending his own memorials directly to the Throne. Accordingly, he was the official who had the privilege of breaking the Chang Ssu-ju story to Hungli. But Feng had evidently not understood the importance of his achievement: to the monarch's disgust, Feng had sent his memorial by the usual means-via a personal servant-rather than by the faster military courier service.42 Hence it had not actually been received in the summer capital until September 6, more than a fortnight after it was dispatched. The tardy document reported that the prisoner had confessed to the following facts.

  Chang, aged thirty-six, was from Chin--hsiang County, near the Grand Canal in southwestern Shantung. He and his eleven-year-old son, Ch'iu-erh, lived as itinerant beggars, pleasing the roadside crowd by singing "Lotus Petals Fall" (lien-hua-lo, a romantic folk-ballad conventionally sung by beggars). Father and son had reached the eastern gate of Hsu-chou on July 26, when they met a man from Hu-kuang named Chao San, "a tall Han Chinese, age about fifty." Chao asked what they did for a living, then offered them 500 cash for each queue they could clip. He explained that if the victim was touched with a certain drug, he would fall senseless and be easy clipping. Chao would not reveal what the queues would be used for, but gave Chang a small knife and a packet of the "stupefying drug" and sent him on his quest, with orders to meet later at the border of T'ung-shan. (Nothing here about the sorcerer-monk Yu-shih-the story so far was hardly different from that of Funihan's Shantung beggars.)43

  Beggar Chang related that he and his son had reached Chao Village in Su-chou on August 12, where they began singing before the gate of the household of village headman Chao. When the ballad ended, the crowd dispersed, except for the Chao family's hired man, Fei Yung-men. Chang approached the hired man and sprinkled him with stupefying powder so that he collapsed senseless. Chang then cut off the end of the man's queue and fled. Later when he forded a stream, his packet of drugs was drenched. After they had dried out, Chang tested them on his son and found that their efficacy had been lost. It was not long before county constables (alerted to the crime by the victim, now revived) caught up with the beggars and found the incriminating evidence of queue-end, drugs, and knife. Governor Feng reported that his subordinates were making vigorous efforts to find the mysterious Chao San, and that he personally would interrogate "Chang Ssu" to confirm that he was the fortune-teller "Chang Ssu ju" implicated in the Shantung confession and to track down the sorcerer-monk Yii-shih who had directed the plot. Even as the Kiangnan cases seemed to be on the brink of solution, however, officials in the imperial capital were facing a threat closer to home.

  Something Wicked This Way Comes

  Sorcery was spreading northward. As it spread, there emerged disturbing signs that the danger was not confined to village society but might have wider implications. Early in August, the governor-general of Chihli, Fang Kuan-ch'eng, alerted the Throne that sorcery had already crept out of Shantung and into his province, the one in which Peking was located.

  A Case of Prophylaxis

  Protecting oneself from sorcery involved a varied counter-technology of charms, amulets, and other ritual weapons, as we saw in Chapter 5. As soulstealing rumors spread upriver from Kiangnan in June, a popular charm jingle was heard along the Yangtze:

  Such rubbish tried the patience of sensible officials, who feared that the spread of prophylaxis-magic would fan the flames of sorcery fear itself. Provincial officials threatened to impeach local subordinates who allowed such rumors to be repeated. But the public was not easily to be denied its self-protection. Not long after, prophylaxis of 'a more alarming kind surfaced nearer the imperial capital itself.

  Peasant Meng Shih-hui, forty years of age, farmed in a village near the county seat of Ching-chou, in southern Chihli near the Shantung border.4 During the hot night of July i8, lie had been asleep in the back room of his but, while his wife slept in the front room with their children. The front door stood open to catch the night air. As (fawn approached, "I suddenly shivered," Meng told the authorities, "and felt stupefied. My wife called me but I didn't wake up. Then she discovered that my queue had been cut, about six inches." The alert wife had heard that if you cut off the rest of the queue and washed the head, you would escape harm. (Rumors about queueclipping sorcerers had been drifting in from across the Shantung border since late June. Shantung folks said that to thwart such sorcery one should cut off' the whole remaining part of the queue and wash the head with an infusion of artemisia, straw stalks, honeysuckle, and garlic.) So she called a barber and had the stupefied Meng shorn and treated. "By afternoon I gradually began to wake up." It was shortly discovered that the same thing had happened elsewhere in the county to Hsia Ko-pai, a twenty-nine-year-old baker and, in a nearby jurisdiction, to Wang Jan, a boy of fifteen.

  The sorcery alarm quickly swept through the village rumor network to the county seat, and Magistrate Chang haled the victims to the yamen for questioning. Ultimately his findings were forwarded to the summer capital, where the alarmed emperor ordered that the victims be sent immediately to Peking for interrogation by the Grand Council. Afterward they were to be released, because one could not equate such ignorant rustics with monks, who shaved their heads and abandoned their families, an unfilial act that immediately suggested possible collusion with evildoers.46 While the monarch and the chief grand councillor, Duke Fuheng, were summering in Ch'eng-te, business at the capital was being overseen by Grand Councillors Liu T'ung-hsun and Liu Lun. They examined the victims, found no evidence of suspicious behavior (aside frorn the missing queues), and recommended sending them home.

  But now Hungli was not satisfied. Though the sorcery prophylaxis
of such rustics was not quite the same as flouting the tonsure decree, another highly suspicious event had intervened: Magistrate Chang, at the instruction of' his superior, the governor-general, had personally accompanied the victims to Peking, rather than deputing an underling. Had he been ordered to do so in order to "coach" their testimony en route, perhaps to cover up either his own negligence or something more sinister? Better have the victims sent on to the summer capital, now escorted by an official of the Board of Punishments."

  With that, peasant Meng and the others, under guard, set out toward the hills of Ch'eng-te to testify at the summer court. There, perhaps somewhat scrubbed up, they knelt before Grand Councillor Duke Fuheng, brother-in-law to His Majesty, who personally interrogated them about how they had lost their queues. This devoted and able servant of Hungli was the great-grandson of an illustrious military leader and grandson of one of the K'ang-hsi emperor's most trusted ministers. Fuheng had cemented his position beside the Throne by subduing the Chin-ch'uan aborigines in 1749. But his close personal relationship to Hungli was founded on more powerful feelings: the sovereign's memory of Fuheng's late sister, Hungli's beloved first empress, who had died just the previous year.48 Only in his late forties, and twenty years a grand councillor by the time of the soulstealing crisis, Duke Fuheng was involved in drafting most of Hungli's edicts and court letters on the sorcery question.

  Before the duke now groveled three men at the very opposite social pole of the Chinese world. All three stuck to their original stories: the boy, Wang Jan, was clipped while walking along the street; Hsia Ko-pai was sleeping in the outer room of his mother's house. But Meng's case was still suspicious. Since he was sleeping in the inner room, how could the queue-clipper have reached him unheard? Meng maintained that his wife was sleeping soundly and heard nothing. "If she had heard anything," Meng protested to the duke, "why wouldn't she have shouted right then, instead of waiting until dawn to wake me?" As for Hungli's suspicions about Magistrate Chang's "coaching," Meng and Hsia insisted that, en route to Peking, "our food along the road was all provided by His Excellency, Magistrate Chang. Aside from that, His Excellency didn't say anything to us.

  Duke Fuheng was inclined to believe them. Wang Jan was a child and not to be held responsible. Peasant Meng and baker Hsia were "rustic villagers." Though they had "temporarily" cut off the rest of their queues, they now were regrowing them in normal fashion. Apparently there was nothing to link them with the "bandit gang," and they should therefore be sent home, as Liu T'ung-hsun had recommended. "Noted," Hungli wrote laconically on Fuheng's report, in effect endorsing the recommendation but reserving his inner thoughts on the case.'`-' This meant that the three self-clippers could be released, but on the responsibility of his ministers. What had to be determined, in the weeks that followed, was whether this case could be treated as sorcery aimed at common folk, a crime grave enough in the Ch'ing Code; or whether the tonsure aspect of the case made it sedition against the ruling dynasty.

  Meanwhile, Hungli was receiving alarming reports from Peking that the capital itself was being infiltrated by sorcerers who were clipping hair and clothing. Although none had yet been caught, there was increasing evidence of their presence: new victims were reported every day. Many were so powerfully affected that they fainted and collapsed on the spot. Others were completely unaware, until later, that they had been clipped. Some had their whole queues stolen, others cut off the remainder of their queues themselves as prophylaxis in the manner of peasant Meng. Never was the sorcerer seen, either by the victim or by bystanders. Among recent cases were two women: the wife of a cart-puller who had suddenly been stupefied and had her lapel clipped. Another was the sister of a soldier; her hair had been clipped while she was asleep at night next to her mother. The hair was later found abandoned in a back courtyard. Although she "did not feel very faint," she complained of "a strange feeling of romantic longing," as if the sorcerer had cast a spell upon her.50 To protect themselves, prudent householders pasted antisorcery charms on doors and walls. A tense populace was further alarmed by rumors of "strange insects," flying in from neighboring Shansi Province, whose bite was harmful or fatal. Drawings of this insect had been posted in public places by persons unknown. And handbills were being passed among Peking residents that foretold famines, mass deaths, and ghostly visitations.51

  Hungli immediately perceived that the Peking Gendarmerie, under bannerman Toendo, must be incompetent if such criminals could move about the city with impunity. After all, he wrote, Peking was densely populated and at night its neighborhoods were sealed by guarded barriers. What good were guards and barriers if these evil creatures were free to come and go, stupefying and clipping at will? Furthermore, he had heard through private channels that many queue-clippings were performed while the victims were in a vulnerable posture, urinating against walls in Peking's narrow back alleys. If local security forces were doing their job, how could the clippers get away with this? Toendo had a concurrent rank of provincial military commander (t'i-tu); what sort of job could he be doing? These matters were best handled by a combination of vigilance and restraint. Street security by the Gendarmerie was to be heightened-no excuses. At the same time, the populace had to be calmed: the author ities must seem to take no notice of rumors. They were not to question victims, nor even to insist that every clipping incident be reported. Door charms, however foolish, were to be left alone. As the homely saying had it, His Majesty reminded them, "See strange things but not take them so, strange things themselves away will go."52

  The insect rumors, however, were another matter. These were obviously concocted by troublemakers who wanted to profit from sorcery fears. The security forces should track down and prosecute those responsible for printing and distributing the drawings.'s

  Meanwhile, the grand councillors in Peking wrote to Ch'eng-te to reassure Hungli that the queue-clippings in the capital were gradually subsiding, perhaps because of vigilant police work. Vermilion: "Just because they are hiding their tracks is no reason to close the case ... Now Jehol [the vicinity of the summer capital] has turned up six cases. You have to prosecute with utmost urgency." Sorcery was creeping beyond the Great Wall and into the Manchu homeland."

  Justice in Honan

  jarred by these events close to home, and perhaps frightened by the public hysteria reported from Hupei, Hungli's advisors in the summer capital suggested a general roundup of suspicious characters in the strategic crossroads province of Honan. Hungli agreed and ordered a court letter sent to Governor Asha.55 That ingratiating but incompetent bannerman immediately set about his task."'' Indeed, he reported, rumors about the rise of sorcery had reached him as early as mid-July. He had "verbally ordered" his provincial judge to pass the word down to the prefectures. A few days later, three men were clipped within the prefectural city of Chang-te, north of the Yellow River near the ancient capital of An-yang. They had felt nothing at the time and had discovered the crime only later. Though it was generally believed that clipping victims would die (the three felt "dizzy" with shock and fright), none had actually succumbed. It was learned that one could avoid harm by washing the remaining hair with cinnabar and the blood of 'a yellow rooster (both agents would lend the red color that symbolized good fortune and shielded one from death pollution in funeral rites). Where that idea came from, Asha's agents could not discover; and no culprits were caught. "7

  Soon afterward, in nearby Tang-yin County, a commoner named Shen was asked directions by a monk on the road. When lie reached home, he discovered that his queue had been clipped. The monk, as the only stranger he had met, was the logical suspect. A crowd from Shen's village, along with county constables, gave chase and caught the culprit. They found that at the end of his carrying pole hung a dozen braided cords made of hair, each about six or seven inches long. Shen's own stolen hair was not found among them. Fearing the monk might escape, Governor Asha had him brought to his court at Kaifeng, where he personally interrogated him under torture.

  The m
onk, whose dharma-name was Hai-yin, said that his lay surname was Jeri and that he came from near the western gate of the city of Hsu-chou, some 16o miles downstream on the Yellow River. There he had taken the tonsure at the age of fifteen in the Shang-hsing Temple and studied under the monk Hsing-yuan. After his master died, he set out wandering. He denied clipping queues or practicing any other evil arts. The short lengths of hair he claimed to have obtained in previous years. This story he clung to during repeated interrogations. He pointed out that, if these lengths of hair had really been stolen, he would hardly have displayed them at the end of his carrying pole. But he was very evasive, reported the vigilant governor. It was easy to see why it would be necessary to have cords at the end of his carrying pole, but why should a monk find it necessary to make them from human hair? The culprit could only mumble, "I didn't steal them."

  He was interrogated day after day, but still refused to reveal the truth. Very suspicious, wrote Asha: such criminal queue-clipping "must have an instigator behind it." It was necessary to apply torture to find out who. But the monk, having been interrogated many times, now seemed somewhat broken down. "If we torture him more just now, he might die, and then we would be unable to uncover anything." (Vermilion: "Right.") Asha had his local authorities pressing the investigation in the counties; "later we can put him to the torture again." He pointed out that clipping in Honan had been limited to Chang-te and Kaifeng, as reported. Popular fears had died down and the people were tranquil. "It is because we have not caught the main criminal, and the monk has not made a true confession, that I have not earlier memoralized Your Majesty."

  Hungli shot hack an urgent court letter agreeing that, in such cases, torture could defeat its own purposes. "These traitorous villains are very crafty." Though the evidence against them was obvious, they continued to resist torture, "hoping to die from the rod or the presses." Thus there would be no discovering their secrets. "The tricks of all these treacherous vermin are basically the same." Asha should press the investigation, but should "not exclusively rely on interrogation by physical torture" (hsing-ch'iu). He should continue to round up suspicious characters, whether monks, priests, or laymen.58