Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 (11 page)

The crisis comprised two ominous cases suspiciously close in their
timing, one involving the literate elite and one the common people.
The "Case of the Bogus Memorial" (wei-kao an) and the Ma Ch'aochu uprising were alike only in that both remained ultimately unresolved. Yet they excited such evident alarm at court that one might
suppose they were occurring at a time of extreme social or political
instability, rather than in the middle of the most successful and
prosperous reign in Chinese history. Though there is absolutely no
evidence that the cases were connected in fact, they were certainly
linked in the imperial mind. Together, they shook Hungli's confidence that the "alien rule" issue had finally been put to rest. Yet in
neither case did Hungli feel secure enough to mention the ethnic
issue, even in his secret correspondence.

It was in August 1751 that a curious document came to the attention of 'a local postal-relay supervisor in Kweichow.2' It was a copy of
what purported to be a memorial to the Throne by Sun Chia-kan
(1683-1753), a senior official, currently serving in Peking as president of the Board of Works. Earlier in his career, Sun had become
well known to the public because of his blunt advice to Hungli's
father (who characteristically rewarded him for it) and his acerbic
criticisms of official misconduct. The "memorial" found in Kweichow
was full of "outrageous" and "slanderous" language, according to a
secret report from the governor-general, who passed the suspicious
document on to Peking. It even bore an alleged (and wholly implausible) imperial endorsement at the end. During the weeks that followed, the Throne received numerous reports from widely separated
parts of the empire that other copies had turned up. By the turn of
the year, the search for the originator of this "Bogus Memorial" had
become a nationwide dragnet. Thousands were arrested. Copies were
found as alarmingly near as the Bannerman's Academy in Peking,
and as far as the distant southwest borders. Persons accused of pos sessing or copying the document ranged from high-ranking provincial officials to merchants, clergy, gentry, and even bannermen. After
many false leads, generated by coerced confessions, the governor of
Kiangsi announced in January 1753 the arrest of a lowly military
official, Lu Lu-sheng, on whom a Grand Council tribunal soon fastened the ultimate guilt. After Lu's execution by slow slicing, Hungli
declared the case closed. Shaky evidence and a hasty execution make
the "solution" of this case exceedingly doubtful. Nevertheless, the
nature of the "memorial" and its widespread dissemination offer
some hints about Hungli's problems with sedition.

Although at the time "even coolies in the street" knew what the
Bogus Memorial contained,22 no copy of it now survives, so thorough
was the Throne in burning all that were found (the Grand Council
archives appear to contain not even a file copy, so humiliating must
its contents have been to Hungli). Circumstantial evidence suggests
that the "memorial" aimed a harsh, personal attack at the monarch,
and at officials close to him, for "five unforgivable acts and ten great
transgressions." It also seems to have alluded to the ruinous financial
burdens heaped upon the localities through which the monarch had
just passed on his first southern tour. It may further have attacked
Hungli's harsh treatment of certain high officials, particularly the
Han bannerman general, Chang Kuang-ssu, one of the two commanders he had beheaded in 1749 for allegedly botching the military
campaign against the Chin-ch'uan tribes. Finally, evidence from the
documents of the Ma Ch'ao-chu affair, which I shall turn to next,
indicates that it even impugned the legitimacy of the Manchu
dynasty.23 Certainly the white-hot fury with which Hungli sought the
originators of the Bogus Memorial, the harsh punishment he inflicted
upon anyone who possessed or transmitted a copy, and his effective
destruction of all copies, show how badly this attack frightened the
Throne-not least because of the widespread opposition it revealed
among literate men. It was characteristic of Hungli that he would
shortly begin to suspect a deeply laid plot against the dynasty: one
that linked the Bogus Memorial to a notorious literati sedition case
that dated from his father's day, and to the mysterious case of Ma
Ch'ao-chu.24

The Ma Ch'ao-chu conspiracy. We must assume that the Bogus Memorial impugned Manchu legitimacy, because Hungli came to believe
that it was connected to the avowedly anti-Manchu conspiracy of Ma
Ch'ao-chu, which was unearthed in the spring of 1752.25 The Ma affair was Hungli's first confrontation with a Ming-restorationist
movement. The vindictive and bloody campaign against it was a
melodramatic overture to the second quarter of Hungli's reign.

Ma Ch'ao-chu was reportedly a peasant from Ch'i-chou in Hupei,
in the Yangtze Valley about forty miles downriver from the provincial
capital, Wuchang. While sojourning across the border in western
Anhwei, he had fallen under the influence of a monk, who (according
to the government's investigation) instilled in him visions of a grand
destiny. Ma began to claim connections to a remnant Ming regime
inhabiting "The Kingdom of the Western Sea" (Hsi-yang-kuo), ruled
by a "Young Lord," a scion of the Ming royal house of Chu. In the
kingdom there supposedly lived descendants of the defeated southwestern warlord, Wu San-kuei, along with 36,000 armed soldiers.
There too lived a certain Li K'ai-hua, a well-known folk vision of a
future emperor, and a woman called "Niang-niang," the name of a
popular fertility goddess. Claiming to be a general in this kingdom,
Ma told his followers that magic flying machines could bring his
armies from their western stronghold to central China in a few hours,
and that an attack on the Yangtze Valley was imminent.26

All this came to light when alert officials discovered newly forged
swords along with rebel proclamations in the mountains east of Lot'ien, about seventy-five miles northeast of Wuchang. Just outside the
highly commercialized regional core, this was a poor, rugged area
where settlers eked out a precarious living from slash-and-burn agriculture. Though Ma had fled, numerous followers, including some
of his relatives, were captured. So many culprits jammed the provincial jail in Wuchang that the authorities hesitated to try them all at
the same time, for fear of inciting public disturbances. Hungli, however, ordered them to go right ahead.27

Shaken by the Lo-t'ien discoveries, Hungli ordered that the local
magistrate, who had earlier failed to prosecute Ma's group, be summarily executed, a rare penalty in such a case.28 The ferocity of the
manhunt for Ma himself (who was never caught, if indeed he ever
really existed) resulted in the arrests of hundreds of suspects and
continued for many years.29 Emerging as it did just as the authorities
were in hot pursuit of the Bogus Memorial culprits, the Ma Ch'aochu affair evidently convinced Hungli that the dynasty was the target
of a large-scale plot.

There can be no doubt that the Lo-t'ien plotters rejected the Manchus as aliens: they violated the Ch'ing tonsure decree. According to confessions by two men who had been "enticed" into selling their
land and joining the band, "When people entered the stockade [Ma's
stronghold, known as the `Heavenly Stockade' (t'ien-t'ang sai)], they
smeared their mouths with blood [to sanctify their oath of loyalty]
and swallowed paper charms. Also they let their hair grow and didn't
shave their foreheads. '130 Yet Hungli phrased his response with great
care. However unpleasantly surprised by these threats to his Prosperous Age, lie kept his reaction well within the cosmopolitan mode.
The rebels were simply attacking the universal monarchy, not an
alien regime. The closest he would come to acknowledging the existence of the tonsure question was to acknowledge that the rebels had
"offended Our Imperial Ancestors": "Our great Ch'ing Dynasty has
reigned humanely and benevolently for more than a century. It is
inconceivable that there should now arise such ungrateful and
immoral monsters, secretly brewing such poison. They are truly
unbearable to Heaven and Earth."31 But the governor-general's
report about the tonsure violation is never mentioned, even in Hungli's secret communications to his provincial officials, to say nothing
of his public edicts.

Yet the fury of his response must have given him away: those
rounded up were to be "tortured with extreme severity," their lives
to be preserved only so that they could confess.32 Hungli clearly
preferred to avoid mentioning the ethnic issue altogether, even in
secret correspondence with the upper bureaucracy. His primary
motive for secrecy seems to have been the need to avoid shaking
public confidence: even though these petty rebels are "not worth
consideration," he wrote, yet this group must be crushed swiftly,
because "a single spark can start a prairie-fire." And the facts of the
case (he means here the anti-Ch'ing symbolism) must be kept secret.83
To breathe a word about the tonsure, whether in public or private,
was asking for trouble.

Here we first meet what I shall call the "panic factor": an imperial
belief that the credulous masses were ever on the brink of violent,
panicky reactions to hints of political crisis or cosmic disorder. This
belief arises again and again in the course of our story. It conditioned
imperial policy to avoid, whenever possible, the public acknowledgment of either sedition or sorcery. It even affected the language of
internal official documents, as if the very mention of an evil would
evoke it in reality. As a general rule, it meant that extraordinary
threats were to be described in conventional language. Were we to judge the public temperament from Hungli's fears about it, we would
have to call it highly volatile and unstable. Such fears were very much
alive during the sorcery scare of 1768. That, I believe, is why Hungli
initially forbore to mention the tonsure violation, even in secret correspondence with his highest officials.

In neither the Bogus Memorial case nor the Ma Ch'ao-chu uprising
could the Throne mention the ethnic issue. Hungli's initial inclination
was much the same in the soulstealing crisis of 1768, despite its
provocative tonsure imagery. The "ethnic mode," though vital to the
survival of the conquest regime, had to be pursued in other arenas.
One that soon commended itself to Hungli was the literary purge:
bullying literati for alleged written slurs against Manchu origins, a
device that Hungli eventually used in a major national campaign in
the 177os. However he may have shrunk from mentioning such a
blatant anti-Manchu threat as tonsure violation, Hungli showed hairtrigger militancy against petty slights to Manchu honor. Wording that
offered even the subtlest suggestion of an ethnic slur could cost a
writer his head. By contrast to large-scale sedition cases with a potential for mass unrest, the literary purge was an arena in which the
Throne could control both the pace and the scope of events. Here
was a kind of "sedition" case in which ethnic pride could safely be
celebrated.

Literary purges prefigured. The rhetorical usefulness of a literary
purge was demonstrated only three years after the events just
described. In 1755 a Han author, Hu Chung-tsao, was accused (in
what even then must have seemed a far-fetched textual construction)
of using expressions in his poetry to stir up ethnic hatred for Manchus. Hu was a disciple and factional booster of the late Ortai, one
of the two powerful grandees inherited by Hungli from his father's
administration. Hu also cultivated Ortai's nephew, Ocang, with whom
he exchanged letters and poetry. Hungli's vicious attack on Hu ("does
not belong in the human race") has been interpreted as an attack on
factionalism.34 What I find striking about the case, however, is how
Hungli linked his attack on Hu for slandering the Manchus with an
attack on Ocang for conduct unbecoming a Manchu. The two sides
of the case can only be understood together: they were Hungli's
recognition that sedition and assimilation were two facets of a single
threat.35

In denouncing Ocang's literary pretentions, the outraged monarch
wrote that Manchu culture "has always based itself on respecting the sovereign and revering those in authority; and on personal qualities
of simplicity and sincerity, loyalty and respect. Confining its concerns
to riding and shooting, it has had no place for frivolous or decadent
practices." But recently, he declared, contact with Chinese culture
had led many Manchus into pompous literary affectations, which had
worked evil upon their characters. Originally, Manchus had not spent
their time reading books, but merely understood "the great principles" of obedience and of reverence for authority. Although the
followers of Confucius used literature to spread their teachings, they
also placed respect for ruler and father before anything else. If one
knew only literary affectation and had no sense of basic social obligations, then of what use was learning? Hungli warned that he would
punish Manchus who forgot their roots, and strictly forbade them to
cultivate literary relationships with Chinese.36 Such a warning, if
observed, might indeed have curbed factionalism, because such relationships were the sinews of literati cliques. Yet we cannot overlook
the substantive message, which was about sedition and assimilation.

The Rot of Assimilation

Courage and vigor, honesty and simplicity: such were the self-proclaimed virtues of the Manchu conquest elite. Here was a carefully
polished mirror image of the vanquished. Not only had these qualities
been victorious in battle; they were ideally suited to ruling well the
empire that the defeated Ming house had ruled badly. This sturdy
vision was nevertheless blemished from the outset by the need to
govern the empire with the help of Chinese institutions and Chinese
personnel.

Even before the Manchus had crossed the Great Wall, the struggle
within the Manchu nobility had led the Throne to adopt Chinesestyle bureaucratic and centralizing measures. Thereafter, the need to
represent the conquest regime as a legitimate successor and a worthy
vessel for Heaven's Mandate required the dynasty to promote the
ideology of imperial Confucianism (whereby virtue, not ethnicity, was
the basis of legitimate rule), and at the same time preserve what it
considered to be its special Manchu ethos. The conquerors were
separate and uncorrupted, and must remain so. How could they, at
the same time, weld an alien culture to their own? It was an insoluble
puzzle. Add to this the need to "get on" in the Chinese world, to say
nothing of enjoying it, and one can begin to grasp the Manchu problem of the eighteenth century. To Hungli sedition and assimilation were linked dangers, but assimilation was the more insidious
and may indeed have generated in him the greater anxiety. For the
Manchu ruling elite, the Ch'ien-lung reign (1736-1796) was a painful
time of transition. The threat of assimilation was ever more
apparent-but it was not yet apparent that nothing could be done
about it.