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 mee
t 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."
14. The Board of Punishments had recommended that the runners be sentenced to strangulation for falsely implicating an innocent party. This would be in keeping with the punishments recently meted out to Ts'ai Jui, the county constable who had victimized the Hsiao-shan monks, and Chang Erh, who had attempted to frame his creditor. Funihan objected that these two cases had involved malicious intent, whereas the two runners had nothing against 'I"ung-kao. They should receive lesser penalties of beating and banishment. CPTC 856.12, CL 33.1 1. 16 (Funihan). I have not recovered the document that resolved this question.
15. KCTC CL 33.7.18; CPTC 852.5, CL 33.8.5 (Liu T'ung-hsun et al.); LFTC/FLCT CL 33.9-11 (Liu Lun et al.).
16. Chiian 43 of the Ch'in-ting li-pu tse-li (Peking, 1749) specifies the penalties for officials who wrongfully use torture. They are almost wholly in the administrative channel (dismissal, demotion, or fines). The only offense punishable by criminal sanctions is use of a certain kind of "casket bed" (hsia-ch'uang) for pressing a prisoner.
17. "Instructed confessions" (chiao-kung) were sternly forbidden in imperial instructions to provincial officials; for instance, CSL 815.38b, CL 33.7.24 (to Sacai).
18. CSL818.7b,CL33.9.4.
19. KCTC 815.6b, CL 33.7.21; CPTC 852.3, CL 33.7.23 (Liu T'ung-hsun).
20. CPTC 854.4, CL 33.7.30 (G'aojin).
21. CPTC 852.5, CL 33.8.5 (Liu T'ung-hsun et al.).
22. CSL 816.25, CL 33.8. 1 t (to Wu T'an).
23. CSL 817.24, CL 33.8.25-
24. LFTC/FLCT CL 33.9.2 (Liu T'ung-hsun et al.); LFTC/FLCT CL 33.9.8 (Liu Lun et al.).
25. CSL 818.15, CL 33.9.7 (October 17, 1768). Emphasis added.
26. CSL818.i6b,CL33.9.7•
27. Hummel, Eminent Chinese, 533.
28. On Liu's customary journeys to Ch'eng-te, see, for example, SYT CL 3o.9.5 and CL 33.8.28.
29. The movements of grand councillors during this period can be traced by examining the signatories of court letters copied into the SYT.
30. KCTC CL 33.9.24 (the court letter) and CSL 819.15b (the open edict).
31. KCTC 270, Cl, 33.9.24•
32. CPTC 860.12, CL 33.10.5. Here was more than a little hypocrisy, considering that Hungli's earlier doubts about "seeking-by-torture" stemmed from the unreliable information it produced. Vermilion on CPTC 854.2, CL 33.7.15 (G'aojin).
33. CSL 819.15b, CL 33.9.24. Those punished included Magistrate Tu, who had released the beggars of Soochow for lack of evidence. Li-k'o t'i-pen (civil government, impeachment, packet 72), CL 33-11-15.
34. CSK 477-13023-
35. The statement appears twice in Funihan's memorial of September i. CPTC 860.2, CL 33.7.21.
36. SYT CL 33.11.23 (December 31, 1768). Funihan was not called to account until two months after the interrogations were over. For clarity of presentation, I am treating these events in conjunction with the October investigations.
37. CPTC 852.9, CL 33-11.27 (December 19, 17 68) (Funihan).
38. The analogy is the Bogus Memorial case, in which the then Shantung governor, Juntai had also committed what might be called an "information crime" by failing to report material evidence. KCTC CL 33.12.5• The emperor's injunction to "do your utmost" is in CSL 813.15b, CL 33.6.23. Another governor, Ch'eng T'ao of Hunan, was also demoted to the rank of provincial treasurer for a similar case involving a cover-up of torture in securing a confession. KCTC CL 33-12-5-
39. LFTC/FLCT CL 33.9.17 (Fuheng).
40. LFTC/FLCT CL 33.9.17 (Fuheng).
41. SYT CL 33.9.28 (Fuheng et al.).
42. The "Temple of Mercy" case was originally unearthed by Yungde; it was later confirmed by Jangboo's agents who were following up leads in Chekiang. CPTC 853.24, CL 33.9.4 (Yungde); CPTC 862.19, CL 33.9.8 (Jangboo); LFTC/FLCT CL 33.9.17; SYT CL 33.9.17; CPTC SLHK 181, CL 33.10.25 (Jangboo).
43. Some "business" aspects of temples and monasteries are discussed in Welch, The Practice of Chinese Buddhism, 191--2o5.
44. The local terms were mai-sang (bury funerary magic) or mai-sha (bury baleful magic). Sha meant the baleful spiritual emanations from corpses. Both expressions meant magic that spread death pollution.
45. SYT CL 33.9.17 (Fuheng).
9. Political Crime and Bureaucratic Monarchy
1. Parts of this chapter were published in my "Political Crime and Bureaucratic Monarchy: A Chinese Case of 1768," Late Imperial China 8.1 (June 1987): 80-104; used by permission of the Society for Ch'ing Studies.
2. See the works by Li Kuo-ch'i, Metzger, Ocko, and Watt in the bibliography.
3. See the works by Bartlett, Chuang, Spence, and Silas H. L. Wu in the bibliography.
4. In describing such an integrated "system," if one existed, we would have to avoid the temptation of reasoning away the arbitrary component of autocracy by asserting any of the following: (1) that what seems to be "arbitrary" is actually the conventionalized activity of a monarch who is himself a mere instrument of the rules, or of conventional values; (2) that monarchs were largely manipulated by their advisory staffs, who presented them with few real options for independent action; or (3) that monarch and bureaucrat were products of a single social system, so that any apparent contradiction between their roles is illusory.
5. Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 1048-
6. Ibid., 993.
7. Ibid., II.
8. Weber, The Religion of China (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1959), 59•
9. Weber, Economy and Society, 8 18.
10. Ibid., chaps. 3, 8, 12.
11. Hans Rosenberg, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy, and Autocracy: The Prussian Experience, 16oo-18r5 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), 38-41-
12. Ibid., chap. 2.
13. Ibid. 175-
14. Michel Crozier's classic description of power relationships in bureaucracies illuminates the Chinese case: "To achieve his aims, the manager has two sets of conflicting weapons: rationalization and rule-making on one side; and the power to make exceptions and to ignore the rules on the other. His own strategy will be to find the best combination of both weapons . . . Proliferation of the rules curtails his own power. Too many exceptions to the rules reduce his ability to check other people's power " (emphasis added). The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 163-164-
15. As Crozier puts it, the bureaucrats' "struggle against centralization is not directed toward helping the organization to adapt better to the challenge of the environment, but rather toward safeguarding and developing the kind of rigidity that is protecting them" (emphasis added). Ibid., 193-
16. Ch'in-ting li-pu tse-li (Peking, 1749), 16.11b, 23.1, 38.24b.
17. Charles O. Hucker, The Censorial System of Ming China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966), 57•
18. On the organization of the Ch'ing Censorate see H. S. Brunnert and V. V. Hagelstrom, Present Day Political Organization of China (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 19"), 75-79; and Kao I-han, Chung-kuo yii-shih chih-tu tiyen-ko (Shanghai: Shang-wu yin-shu-kuan, 1926), 77-96. Both these works are entirely normative and are based on the Collected Statutes. We still lack an archival study of how the Ch'ing Censorate actually functioned.
19. Ma Ch'i-hua, Ch'ing Kao-tsung ch'ao chih l'an-ho an (Taipei: Hua-kang ch'u-pan-pu, 1974), 78-84-
20. Under general terms such as k'ao-k'o, k'ao-thi, and san-nien to-pi, periodic evaluation of officials appears in works as old as the Rites of Chou (Chouli), a text of the third century B.C. that purports to describe the
institutions of China's ancient feudal monarchy, and in the dynastic histories of the Former and Later Han.
21. The early history of the system under the Ch'ing is in TCHTSL 78-80. The system underwent a number of minor changes during the first century of Ch'ing rule, but I am limiting my discussion here to the Ch'ien-lung reign. My own thinking about official evaluation has been stimulated by Thomas A. Metzger's fundamental study, The Internal Organization of Ch'ing Bureaucracy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), especially chapter 4.
22. A parallel system (called chun-cheng) was used for military officials.
23. This system is to be seen in the numerous surviving yellow registers of routine examinations in the First Historical Archives, Peking. See, for example, the rosters of the ching-ch'a for 1753, Huang-ts'e, vols. 3861-35•
24. Ta-chi-ts'e for 1751/52, CL i6, vol. 3860; these are county-level officials.
25. Li-k'o shih-shu CL 25-12 (1761), vol. 1076; these are prefectural- or county-level officials.
26. TCSCSH 91.4 (1742). The young emperor was still formally under the tutelage of the four regents appointed by his dying father. This edict, like many others of this early period, was "heard" (that is, probably drafted) by the regents. Yet its tone is quite consistent with Hungli's later edicts on the same subject, and there is no reason to assume that it does not reflect his views. For a similar complaint by Hungli's grandfather, see TCHTSL 8o.lob (1697).
27. TCSCSH 93.1 (1750).
28. CSI. 295.1 b (1747)•
29. TCSCSH 92.3b (1748).
30. TCSCSH 92.6 (1749)•
31. Save in quotations, I shall use the term "governors" to cover both governors-general (tsung-tu) and governors (hsun-fu) in this discussion; the problems we are concerned with here affected them identically.
Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 Page 31