Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 (26 page)

As Magistrate Shih's superior, Governor Funihan of course also
received Shih's report about beggar-woman Chang and the lapelclipping case. Because he was busy with other court cases, he had
both women reinterrogated, and both now recanted. Beggar-woman
Chang lamented that she had simply gone onto the grain boat to beg,
when suddenly the trooper's wife began shouting that her lapel had
been clipped, and she had been nabbed as a likely suspect. The new
team of interrogators saw no evidence of evildoing and even suggested that the scrap of cloth might have been planted. Funihan then
called the culprits up for his personal interrogation, but was told that
beggar-woman Chang had just died of illness in the county jail ("a
cold contracted on her journey here" ).h

However shaky the case, Funihan was stuck with the women's
previous confessions and the names of their collaborators. Under
imperial pressure, he could hardly let the matter rest. He assured
Hungli that he had sent the names of implicated persons to the
authorities in neighboring Chihli, where beggar-woman Chang said
they were located. Such assiduity impressed the emperor not a bit.
Why, he demanded in a court letter, had Funihan not personally
compared the cloth from beggar-woman Chang's bag with that of
the clipped garment? Women's clothing was particularly easy to distinguish: the darkness or lightness of the cloth and the length of the
piece (Vermilion: "and the looseness or closeness of the weave") could
quickly distinguish true evidence from false.' If the Lord of the
Civilized World could direct his attention to such details, how could
a dutiful official do less? Fuheng and Yenjisan, grand councillors on
duty at the summer capital, were giving the case their closest attention. They noted shrewdly that the question of the "two monks"
brought up in Yang Hsi-fu's original memorial had not been
addressed by Funihan and drafted an additional court letter to be
sent to Shantung.8 "Since these monks are culprits in this case who
ought to be rigorously investigated," how could Funihan have let
them go so easily? Governor Funihan replied that although beggar woman Chang had originally spoken of them, she had since recanted
her confession. Further investigation had shown that the monks
indeed had no criminal associations. As for the cloth, it clearly had
been cut by sharp scissors, which beggar-woman Chang's were not;
and cut along a curvy, meandering line, obviously not in a way that
could be done in a hurry. Despite these "doubtful aspects," Funihan
could not but forward the names of implicated persons to the summer
capital.`'

We cannot tell whether torture was used on the old women, though
the law forbade the torture of females. Their confusion and shock
are evident in the record, and beggar-woman Chang's death in jail
suggests that neither their sex nor their advanced age had earned
them much solicitude from their jailers. Their testimony, impeached
as it was on many counts, had nevertheless generated new leads,
which were now treated as valuable in themselves. Accordingly, seven
new names were dutifully entered on the investigators' docket.

Round Up the Usual Suspects

Meanwhile, officials in Chekiang, where it all had begun, were still
without a plausible master-sorcerer. But after two months of vermilion abuse from the Throne, Governor Yungde had at least found
an acceptable way to run the queue-clipping campaign. He reported
on October 4 that numerous suspects had been rounded up and
rigorously examined. Soldiers and constables had been posted at
temples and pilgrimage sites to arrest suspicious characters, and
county authorities had garnered a promising batch. These feats
apparently sat well with the Throne, if we can judge by the fact that
the abuse ceased. A brief inspection of Yungde's police work in
Chekiang reveals his formula for dealing with queue-clipping and
the sorts of people it brought into the case.''

Yungde emerged from the examination hall on the evening of
September 3o and the next day joined his provincial treasurer and
judge, along with the Shao-hsing circuit-intendant, to examine the
criminal Kuang-ts'an. This "wandering monk" (vu fang) and fortuneteller claimed no fixed abode. He had been picked up for his suspicious looks and was found to be carrying some written material. He
said that in March and April of the present year he had taken lodging
with a monk, Te-ts'ao, at the Chueh-huang Temple. There he spotted
a book of charms for curing sickness and persuaded Te-ts'ao to lend it to him. His obliging host also gave him twenty paper slips on which
were printed charms for ridding houses of evil spirits and protecting
crops from pests. Kuang-ts'an denied any criminal activities and
apparently managed to convince his captors. "Nevertheless," the
shrewd Yungde reported to the Throne, "the writings he was carrying
are all absurd and uncanonical, which makes him liable to punishment." In accordance with His Majesty's edict that prisoners found
innocent of queue-clipping might be released (citing Hungli's edict
of September 14 back at him), Yungde was merely convicting Kuang-
tsan and Te-ts'ao (who had also been arrested) under the substatute
forbidding "possessing books of prognostication which are absurd
and uncanonical and failing to destroy them," for which the penalty
was to be beaten one hundred strokes." Then they were to be
remanded to their home county and forbidden to leave it.

Another criminal, reported Yungde, was the Taoist priest Wang
Ta-ch'eng, who deposed that he was from T'ung-lu County in the
west Chekiang prefecture of Yen-chou. He used to make a living as
a geomancer. Because business was bad, he "assumed the habit of a
Taoist priest." He copied out Taoist paper charms bearing the six
ideographs meaning "Golden Seal of the Home of the Nine Elder
Immortals" (chiu-lao-hsien-tu chin-yin).12 He carved wooden seals, one
each for the "Techniques of the Five Thunder-Spirits" to stamp on
charm-slips for the protection of houses and crops, "to cheat the
country people out of their money and goods." The local Taoist
headman (tao-chi) confirmed that the charms and seals were indeed
such as were customarily used by Taoist priests. Although Wang
stoutly protested that he had nothing to do with queue-clipping
sorcery, "We have nevertheless convicted him under the substatute
that forbids `Yin-Yang sorcerers speaking wildly of disasters or good
fortune"3 and have sentenced him to be beaten and cangued."

The criminal Ts'ao Tzu-yun, reported the assiduous governor, "says
he is a beggar from Jen-ho County. This past spring he traveled as
far as Soochow, where he fell ill. Because his queue was full of lice,
he cut it off. By late summer it had grown back." Because the queueclipping bandits have lately been "frightening the ignorant people
into cutting off their queues entirely," the interrogators felt they had
to persevere. But even under exhaustive questioning, beggar Ts'ao
maintained that his actions had nothing to do with queue-clippers.
"At present this criminal is critically ill; we have released him to local
officials with instructions to watch him carefully."

The next criminal on Yungde's list, the monk T'ung-yuan, was a
more complicated case, because his name was homophonous with one
of the head sorcerers revealed in the Shantung confessions. Surnamed Ts'ao in his former lay existence, he lived as a wandering
beggar. Not only was his manner suspicious ("looks stupid but is not
stupid"); he also had suspicious writings tattooed on his body. On his
forehead was the character wan, a Buddhist swastika ("he says he saw
it on a Buddhist statue"). On his right arm was tattooed "Leading
Me to the Western Pure Land." On the paper slips he gave out in
return for alms was written, incomprehensibly, "Worshiping the
Buddha in Shantung, tender-trifling." In Shantung: surely here was
a culprit. But under questioning, the monk explained that these slips
had been printed for him by a man named Chin in Chia-hsing, and
that "Shantung" had been written wrongly for the homophonous sanlung, meaning "three winters" (southern speech lacks a retroflex, so
that shan and san are indistinguishable). Similarly, the character
"tender," nen, was homophonous in southern speech with "cold," leng
(many Yangtze Valley dwellers cannot distinguish between an initial
"1" or "n," nor do they have an "ng" ending). The monk insisted that
the ideographs, correctly rendered, meant "For three winters I have
worshiped the Buddha and have accounted cold but a trifle." This,
he claimed, was simply to convince his donors of his will to suffer.
As for his suspicious name, he claimed that the yuan character was
the one from the expression meaning "to beg for alms" (hua-yuan),
and was not the one meaning "origin," as was written in the confession of the Shantung queue-clipper, beggar Ts'ai, whom he had never
met.

It was highly suspicious, though, that no printer named Chin could
be found in Chia-hsing. The monk then said he had written the
ideographs himself, but when asked to write them in court, he could
not. Anyway, Yungde noted, the characters san-tung were of no great
complexity, so why should the suspicious "Shantung" have resulted?
Moreover, leng for "cold" was a character in common use, so why
should the more complicated nen have been written? It was all too
much to believe. In any event, this monk was clearly "not a good
type" (fei shun-lei, a common phrase for labeling deviants). (Vermilion: "Have this man sent under close guard to Peking.")

What a cultural distance separated these ragged wanderers from
their interrogators! Confronted by the everyday language of popular
religion, Yungde and his silk-gowned colleagues professed to be astonished and baffled-who could guarantee that these bizarre
expressions were not cryptic references to sorcery or sedition? The
everyday malapropisms of the illiterates and semiliterates who were
dragged into court night be a secret language, once they were objectified into real ideographs of written Chinese. Who would write nen
for leng without some deeper intent?

In any event, the official system was well equipped to deal with
miscellaneous deviants. The Ch'ing Code was full of rubrics under
which almost any noncanonical popular writing could, if necessary,
be classed as heterodox and illegal. Possessing such writings was a
crime, even though not one as serious as writing them. Such a prohibition could be applied selectively to label marginal people of whom
no more serious crime could be proven. In the last resort there was
the catch-all statute 386, "doing what ought not be done" (pu-ying
wei), which could subject the perpetrator to a severe beating.

Yungde's roundup in Chekiang apparently had got him off the
hook. His detailed report was graced with no vermilion abuse. It even
received the somewhat more approving rescript "noted" (chih-taoliao), a tiny but significant step up from the laconic "seen" (Ian), which
Hungli inscribed even on the most boring of palace memorials. After
all, Yungde had clearly exerted himself, had personally questioned a
number of criminals, and had managed to pack one suspicious character off to Peking, where the Grand Council would have ways of
making him talk."

An Affair of the Heart

An increasingly frustrated Hungli had urged special vigilance on
officials in Hunan and Hupei, where the inhabitants were "crafty
and dangerous." In the past they had followed "deviant ways and
perverse principles," and rebels would likely hide among them.'s Just
as he suspected, a report from Hunan reached him a month later to
the effect that placards had been found in Ch'i-yang County with
"uncanonical expressions" predicting imminent disasters. More
promising, a thirty-year-old wandering monk named Chueh-hsing
and four traveling companions had been picked up on suspicion of
queue-clipping. On Chueh-hsing had been found a small bag of red
silk containing it lock of hair and two Ming coins. Chueh-hsing's
interrogation by local officials had revealed that a monk named Maoyuan had showed him how to concoct a magic potion from human hair and old coins that could be used to beguile women. He protested
that he had only shaved the hair from someone on request. Hunan's
governor, Fang Shih-chiin, ordered the suspects brought under close
guard to Changsha, the provincial capital.'6

Serving Hungli as governor-general of Hunan and Hupei was
Dingcang, a veteran Manchu bureaucrat who had served in high
provincial posts for two decades. An imperial collateral relation, son
of a governor-general whom Hungli had particularly trusted,
Dingcang was solidly in the upper crust of the Manchu elite." When
he received copies of the interrogation reports on the shifty monk
Chueh-hsing, he realized that he had better not leave such a sensitive
matter entirely to his subordinate, the Hunan governor. He decided
to leave immediately for Changsha and "handle it in concert" (huipan) with Governor Fang. In keeping with the gravity of a sedition
case, Dingcang and Fang, along with the provincial judge and the
local circuit-intendant, examined the prisoners personally in the main
hall of the provincial yamen. Back in the summer capital awaiting
the results, Hungli was evidently on the edge of his seat. (Vermilion:
"This time, we finally have a clue.")

But to everyone's astonishment, monk Chueh-hsing recanted his
original confession, insisting that it had been extorted under torture.
Now he told the following story: after being thrown out of his master's temple for unruly behavior, he had wandered about southern
Hunan. At the prefectural city of Heng-yang, he stayed at an inn
run by one Liu San-yuan. There he made friends with innkeeper
Liu's young wife, nee Ch'en, who served him food and drink. He
returned to the inn often and became a close friend of the family.
Innkeeper Liu's father even loaned him i,ooo cash to sustain him on
the road. On one visit, he and wife Ch'en found themselves alone
and had intimate relations. The affair went undetected, and the
wanderer returned to pass the New Year's holiday with the family.
Unhappily, this time he quarreled with innkeeper Liu, and his frightened lover told him he must leave and never return. Chueh-hsing
begged her for a memento, but took to his heels without receiving
any. Later, he sent his boy-servant back to the Liu inn for a pair of
cotton shoes that his lover had been making for him. Wife Ch'en cut
a lock of her own hair, sewed it with two old coins into a piece of red
silk cut from her purse, and stuffed the present into one of the shoes.
Chueh-hsing had carried the precious keepsakes ever after.