Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 (5 page)

Later, the suspects were brought to the county yamen, where they
were tortured again with the chia-kun. Ch'en stated that he knew
nothing about "stupefying people" or clipping queues: "The kid even
says he can't identify me. When I was at constabulary headquarters,
they tortured me with the chia-kun, so I don't dare lie to you. My legs
still haven't healed. Also, the constables searched me thoroughly and
didn't find anything illegal. Even if you torture me to death, I couldn't
tell you anything. I beg you to spare me more torture."

In the end Magistrate Tu had to let them go. His final report stated
that the three men were

persons of no fixed abode, who got together to beg. They are definitely
not respectable types. However, having put them to torture, there is still
no hard evidence of queue-clipping. Ku Ch'en-nan could not identify
them positively. The paper charms seized at the time of the arrest, we
have found, are not things for stupefying people, and nobody has made
complaints against these criminals.19 Apparently these men are not
guilty ofqueue-clipping. We have now released Ch'en, Chang, and Ch'iu
to return to their home jurisdictions, there to be placed under the
supervision of the local security authorities. We shall continue to search
for the real criminals.

But the public temper was so disturbed that Magistrate Tu could not
consider the case closed. On May 9 he posted proclamations that read, "We have found that there are queue-clipping criminals perpetrating illegal and harmful actions." Investigations were continuing. Though the beggars' guilt had not been proved, persons
who might have suffered at their hands were urged to come forward
without fear of harassment, in case the criminals had been lying.

One prisoner, it turned out, could not be released. The two county
policemen who had made the original arrests (and who were held
responsible for the prisoners throughout their custody by the county)
reported on May 5 that criminal Chang had contracted a high fever
and could not eat. Magistrate Tu ordered immediate medical care,
and physicians were summoned. A jail death meant irksome paperwork, a possible investigation, and a fine to be docked from the
magistrate's salary, should he be found guilty of negligence or mistreatment. Chang's condition worsened, the police reported; by May
20 he was near death. The physicians found his pulse weak, his skin
hot and dry, and his tongue yellow. Herbal medicines were administered without effect, the report continued, and the patient died that
night.

That a beggar died in jail surely surprised nobody. Although
Ch'ing jails were probably not much worse than contemporary jails
elsewhere, they tested even the stiff upper lip of a British prisoner
who was confined briefly in the Board of Punishments' jail in i86o:

The discipline of the prison was in itself not very strict, and had it not
been for the starvation, the pain arising from the cramped position in
which the chains and ropes retained the arms and legs, with the heavy
drag of the iron collar on the bones of the spine, and the creeping
vermin that infested every place, together with the occasional beatings
and tortures which the prisoners were from time to time taken away
for a few hours to endure,-returning with bleeding legs and bodies,
and so weak as to be scarce able to crawl,-there was no great hardship
to be endured.20

A Chinese literatus who spent a year in the same prison (1712-13)
described the treatment of his fellow inmates: "Their ordinary standards of sleeping and eating are disregarded, and should they fall
ill, no doctor or medicine is provided. That is why they so often meet
their death."21

The file of the late beggar Chang in Soochow was now meticulously
furnished with testimony to certify the cause of death. Depositions
were obtained from the police ("we by no means mistreated him"), from
a fellow prisoner (the police "by no means mistreated him"), the county doctor ("an incurable illness"), and the coroner ("died of
disease"). A coffin was provided at county expense, and his native
county was notified in case relatives wanted to claim the body.

One criminal dead, two more released for lack of evidence: hardly
a memorable piece of judicial work. Yet Magistrate Tu must have felt
relieved that a troublesome matter had been disposed of. Though he
was obliged to protect himself from later charges of negligence by
issuing a public proclamation about queue-clipping, there was no
reason to hold beggars Ch'iu and Ch'en. A silly and trivial business.
Superstitious rumors among ignorant commoners. A pesty child who
was probably imagining things anyway. A dead prisoner-but prisoners died all the time. A cause of future trouble? Most unlikely.

An Incident at Hsu-k'ou-chen

Monk Ching-chuang lived and worshiped at the Dharma Cloud
Temple in Hu-thou Prefecture, Chekiang Province, just down the
river from the scene of mason Wu's encounter with sorcery.22 In the
spring of 1768, it was time to replenish temple supplies (devotional
materials such as incense) in Soochow and to visit relations and
friends there. Along with six companion monks, Ching-chuang hired
boatman Yao to sail them to the metropolis along the eastern shore
of Lake T'ai. Ching-chuang and his acolyte, Ta-lai, carried with them
a string of i,ooo copper cash, and others carried cash in varying
amounts. They set sail on May 4 (the day after the beggars' arrest in
Soochow) and, on the afternoon of the following day, anchored at
the lakeside market town of Hsu-k'ou-then.

Monk Ching-chuang and the boatman went ashore to buy food
and stopped to rest at the Hsu-wang Temple. A fisherman, Chang
Tzu-fa, entered the temple and asked whether Ching-chuang was
from Hu-chou. Fearsome rumors had recently convinced local folk
that monks from Hu-chou were coming to clip people's queues. Was
Ching-chuang one of these? Fisherman Chang threatened to seize
him and find out. Ching-chuang and the boatman fled out the door.
His suspicions confirmed, Chang pursued them in full cry. The
market crowd swirled around the pair and began to pummel them,
seriously injuring boatman Yao.

A constable who ran to investigate seized Ching-chuang's belongings and searched them, along with the rest of the baggage on Yao's
boat, but found no suspicious items (queue-clipping equipment such as scissors, or powders for stupefying victims). Still, with the crowd
so ugly, he could not let the monks go. He put Ching-chuang, the
boatman, and the original accuser Chang onto the boat with all the
other monks to take the lot to the assistant magistrate's yamen at Mutu-chen, on the river route to Soochow.

The boat docked at Mu-tu-chen after dark. Taking monk Chingchuang with him and leaving the others on the boat, the constable
went ashore and headed for the yamen, stopping on the way to report
to the local constabulary barracks. Finding the assistant magistrate
out, he brought his prisoner back to the barracks. By that time the
crowd in the local market had learned that queue-clipping monks
had been arrested, and a noisy mob had gathered at the dock. Local
rowdies, led by T'ang Hua and Li San, had discovered that there
were still some monks aboard the boat. The terrified suspects and
their boatman were dragged ashore and brought to the constabulary.
Later that night, persons unnamed boarded the boat and helped
themselves to the travelers' money and clothing. Yao's boat was
wrecked. Now the constables feared major trouble at Mu-tu-chen if
the suspects were held there any longer. I n a second hired boat, the
miserable group were taken to Soochow that very night for interrogation by the magistrate of Wu County himself.

For want of firm evidence of queue-clipping, the county magistrate
determined that Ching-chuang and his companions were monks
going about their lawful business. Furthermore, fisherman Chang
should be held responsible for starting the whole affair. The monks,
not satisfied at merely being released, went over the magistrate's head
and filed charges at the office of the prefect to seek recompense for
their lost money and clothing. The prefect responded by ordering
the Wu County magistrate to seize fisherman Chang and compel him
to make restitution, even though he himself could not be shown to
have stolen anything.

The Bureaucracy: Managing Sorcery

The hysteria that spread over east-central China in i 768 was cultured
in a rich broth of local sorcery beliefs. Details varied from region to
region, but the common ingredients were these: the human soul can,
under certain conditions, be separated from the body of its owner;
one who obtains another's soul can use its force for his own benefit;
the stealing of a soul (soulstealing, chiao-hun) can be brought about by sorcery, either by reciting spells over some physical entity that has
been detached from the victim's body, such as a man's queue-tip or
a woman's lapel, or by placing the victim's written name on or under
a piling that is to be driven into the ground and/or calling the victim's
name while driving such a piling; the victim may be stupefied by
dusting or blowing a powdered drug (mi-yao) on him, so he cannot
resist being clipped; victims are very likely to be male children; victims
will sicken and die.

In a patrilineal society with high infant mortality, the protection of
children (particularly males) is one of life's highest priorities. Since
the etiologies of most diseases were either unknown or misapprehended in Ch'ing times, sorcery could never be ruled out when a
child fell sick. Sorcerers would likely be persons who customarily
dealt with the supernatural (such as Buddhist monks or Taoist priests)
and who might reasonably be supposed to possess means of manipulating otherworldly affairs (charms or spells, perhaps written down
in mysterious books).

What did provincial bureaucrats really think of all this? Here are
three possibilities. Bureaucrats may have believed that rumors that
soulstealing sorcery was being practiced were pure bunk: no such
activity was occurring. Or they may have supposed that though some
malefactors might really be clipping queues or placing victims' names
on bridge pilings, such practices were mere folk superstition, incapable of actually stealing souls. It is also possible that officials thought
that sorcery not only was being practiced but in fact was, or could
be, effective.

The way provincial officialdom handled the spring sorcery cases
suggests that they felt awkwardly balanced between dutiful caution
and agnostic scorn. When suspected soulstealers were brought before
them, careful investigation had to follow. After all, a magistrate or
provincial judge could not be seen to scoff at a crime so detested by
the general public, particularly when sorcery in a number of analogous forms was prohibited by the penal code, as we shall see in
Chapter 4. And of course there was always the outside chance that
sorcery might really exist; who could certify that it did not? But the
decisive factor was surely the potential for general panic. If evil men
were trying to practice sorcery, they had already ignited dangerous
popular fears and must be harshly punished. In the event, all the
sorcery suspects were released for lack of evidence, and their accusers
shown up as fools or perjurers. Judges must have risen from their courtrooms with discreet sighs of relief and retired to tea, confirmed
in their scorn for the fears of the ignorant mob.

Were those fears put to rest? Not likely. Whether a judge was a
believer or an agnostic, to punish the accusers, rather than the
accused, made him look soft on sorcery. 'Whatever the mental state
of particular bureaucrats, the official reaction to sorcery hysteria was
to get the case out of the streets and into the courts. Public disorder
in one's jurisdiction was an unmistakable sign of incompetence or
neglect. It could break an official career even more surely than failure
to fill tax quotas. Though a crowd might be mollified if a stranger
were lynched, no official wanted such a blot on his copybook. Of
course a suspected sorcerer could be prosecuted under the Ch'ing
Code, which made certain occult practices a capital crime. But since
all capital sentences had to be reviewed by the highest court in the
realm and ultimately by the monarch himself, the evidence had better
be good. If judicial inquiry turned up perjury or slander, the only
recourse was to punish the accuser, free the defendants, and thus
warn the public against irresponsible talk and lawless violence.

The costs of hindering the public's effort to protect itself against
sorcery, however, might be considerable. Examples from other cultures show how deeply compromised are agnostic or unbelieving
governments that prohibit antisorcery violence among their subjects.
Navahos complain that not only do the white authorities forbid them
to kill witches; they even "fail to punish people for the worst crime
we know."28 Modern governments in East Africa have suppressed
popular antisorcery measures (such as the poison ordeal) at the cost
of accusations that they "have aligned themselves on the side of
evil."2'' From the standpoint of the state's public image, perhaps the
cleverest solution is one reported from Uganda. Under the British
protectorate, a law existed to punish those who "pretend" to be
sorcerers (in order to threaten rivals or project a fearsome reputation). Here the state does not admit to believing in the substance of
sorcery and maintains it is contending only with the pretense of it.
Yet ordinary Ugandans fail to distinguish between pretending to be
a sorcerer and actually being one; consequently, suspected sorcerers
can be haled before civil authorities and jailed.25 As we shall see, such
agnosticism has some parallels in the antisorcery provisions of the
Ch'ing Code.

Be that as it may, provincial bureaucrats must have considered that
their courtrooms had worked quite smoothly in the cases of early 1768. The false charges against mason Wu and the machinations of
the corrupt constable Ts'ai had been exposed. In the Hsu-k'ou-chen
and Soochow incidents, those falsely accused had been released, and
the public had been duly warned against rash accusations. Though
lynchings of vagrant suspects would eventually come to Peking's
notice when the homicide convictions were automatically reviewed
by the Throne, there had as yet been no case of' actual sorcery that
was worth troubling His Majesty about.