Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 (21 page)

Such sensitive or high-priority information followed the confidential track: a direct, personal line of communication between every
high provincial official and the Throne. Upward documents, carried
either by the sender's personal servant or by military courier, reached
the emperor's desk quickly and discreetly. His Majesty would normally brush his comments or instructions in vermilion ink directly
on the memorial, then dispatch it back to its sender. These sealed
missives we call "palace memorials" (tsou-che), because they were later
preserved in the palace.9

The "palace memorial" was a personal document. Besides urgent
local affairs, these documents dealt with matters growing from an
official's personal relationship to the monarch.1) The form was simpler (for example, the elaborate expression of the sender's complete
official rank was omitted in favor of a simple statement of the post
he held). An exchange in the confidential track exuded reciprocity:
the sender was expressing loyalty and gratitude by imparting confidential intelligence to his master; the monarch, in turn, replied with
a stern (but occasionally also warm) paternalism. The routine memorial was shaped by bureaucratic form, the palace memorial by interpersonal ritual. The routine memorial communicated office to office,
the palace memorial man to man.

The emperor's responses to official reports, as well as initiatives
taken on his own, also followed both routine and confidential chan nels. The routine response might be no more than pro forma
approval of a rescript drafted by the Grand Secretariat, perhaps
instructing that one of the Six Boards take action, or perhaps simply
that the information be filed. A more portentous matter or a normative pronouncement might be communicated by an "open edict"
(ming-fa shang-yu), which was sent to every jurisdiction in the empire
for ceremonious posting. The confidential response was nearly
always, in the first instance, a "vermilion rescript" (chu-p'i), an instruction or comment brushed personally by His Majesty on the sender's
memorial. The memorial, bearing the royal response, was then
returned to its sender, generally through the emperor's powerful
privy council, the Grand Council. Sometimes a returned memorial
might be adorned with vermilion in many places, as the monarch
responded to particular points by writing between the lines. A more
formally organized response was drawn up as a "decree" (chih), which
the Grand Council drafted at his instructions after having considered
the original memorial, and then dispatched to the field as a "court
letter" (t'ing-chi or tzu-chi). The "open edict" was a general message
to the bureaucracy as a whole; the "vermilion rescript" and "court
letter" were swift, confidential, and precise action-documents
designed to instruct or admonish particular officials.

For understanding the emperor's own role in the soulstealing crisis,
and indeed in Chinese politics in generall, the key is vermilion. Rescripts on memorials show us his instant, unmediated responses to
reports from the field. And although court letters were drafted by
those lofty ghostwriters, the grand councillors, the monarch always
checked the final copies and often added his own remarks and editorial comments in vermilion. The amended version then went out
to the field. The recipient was thus made aware of what points His
Majesty considered particularly important, and the vermilion personal touch reminded him that the court letter as a whole faithfully
reflected the imperial mind.

Cover-up in Kiangnan

Some Embarrassing Discoveries

The Liangkiang governor-generalship, which controlled the provinces of Kiangsu, Kiangsi, and Anhwei, was the empire's richest and
most demanding provincial post. At its core was the Yangtze Delta region, which, along with part of neighboring Chekiang, was the
Kiangnan spawning ground of soulstealing. In this sensitive post,
Hungli was served by the eminent G'aojin, a master of river conservancy, who was sixty-two at the time of the soulstealing crisis. G'aojin
was nothing if not well connected: a member of one of the upper
three banners (His Majesty's own), his Han ancestors had served for
generations as bondservants of the imperial household. This Man-
chuized Chinese was nephew of a grand secretary and first cousin of
an imperial concubine (which connection had led to the emancipation
of his lineage by imperial decree). Rather than follow the usual
banner-insider's route to high office, G'aojin had started his public
career as a lowly county magistrate at age twenty-nine and only
reached his first provincial-level post fourteen years later."

The governor-general had ample reason to feel secure in offering
a bland response to his master's inquiry about sorcery in Liangkiang.
In early August, he wrote that indeed he had heard rumors of
soulstealing in Chekiang while temporarily in Soochow as acting governor the preceding spring. Local officials told him that the rumors
came from the Hangchow area, and that Kiangsu itself had experienced no queue-clipping outrages. Once the rumor-spreaders were
arrested and the spreading of rumors prohibited, the problem vanished. But Hungli's vermilion rejoinder showed that he believed not
a word: other provinces had reported queue-clipping, so "how can
Kiangnan alone have none?" The Kiangnan bureaucracy was "substandard," and its "practice of making something appear to be
nothing is really hateful."12

The monarch now turned his ire on G'aojin's subordinate, Governor Jangboo of Kiangsu, where the Shantung confessions had
revealed that several important sorcerers were hiding. An experienced Manchu official and wily bureaucratic infighter, Jangboo had
risen steadily through the provincial ranks, gaining Hungli's trust for
his effective prosecution of a Shansi corruption case of 1766.13
Another corruption scandal confronted him when he moved into the
governor's yamen at Soochow in the spring of 1768. This time the
trouble was in the Yangchow salt administration. The most prominent
official culprit, G'aoheng, was embarrassingly well connected: his first
cousin was none other than Jangboo's superior, G'aojin, and his sister
was the imperial concubine whose charms had won freedom for
Gaojin's lineage." It was just as Jangboo was prosecuting this awkward case that the hunt for soulstealers began in earnest. Governor Jangboo quickly found himself the target of heated court letters from
Peking.

The latest Shantung intelligence (confessions of beggars Ts'ai and
Chin, complete with names of ringleaders) had been distributed to
all high provincial officials in the east. By mid-August, however, it
was apparent to Hungli that his province chiefs were not following
up leads to the chief sorcerers, monks Yu-shih (Kiangsu) and Wuyuan (Chekiang). Though numerous arrests had been made in Chihli
and Shantung (Funihan had now caught five more queue-clippers),
the hotbed of soulstealing in the Yangtze provinces had yielded no
culprits.

To his embarrassment, Jangboo now had to admit that certain
"rumors" about queue-clipping sorcery had seeped across the Chekiang border the previous spring. He had seen no need to report
them, because his "investigations" turned up no evidence that anyone
had actually been clipped. In early August, however, the plot thickened, as reports came in from northern Kiangsu districts near the
Grand Canal. Back in the late spring, in the county of An-tung, a
certain Liu Wu had clipped the queue of a man named Tsou and
was now in official custody. In a P'ei-hsien market crowd, a Shantung
man named Yao was reported to have "bumped" the mother of one
Yang, causing the lady to feel "dizzy." And in P'i-chou, a man named
Wang had hidden in some bushes, accosted the wife of Ch'iu Ta-
feng and clipped a piece of cloth from her lapel. Of the last two
criminals, the first had been beaten to death by the crowd, the other
hounded to suicide. The surviving culprit was a wily rascal: Liu Wu
had convinced county authorities that he had clipped the queue only
so he could cut purses during the ensuing uproar. Governor Jangboo
assured the emperor that he would interrogate him "personally." He
was also rushing agents to Hai-chou to intercept the master-sorcerer
Ming-yuan, who was scheduled to turn up there August 26, according
to the confession of his apprentice, Harr P'ei-hsien. He had also
instructed local officials to be on the watch for the master-sorcerer
Yu-shih, who was hiding in Su-chou across the Anhwei border,
according to Chin Kuan-tzu's confession, lest he try to enter
Kiangsu.'5

Hungli snapped back that Jangboo had done "extremely improper"
work: how could county officials have relied on cutpurse Liu's "slippery confession" and put such an important case on ice for several
months? (Vermilion: "How could you have failed to impeach such a refractory subordinate?") And if the spring rumors had been followed up rigorously, the "little people" would not have had to lynch
the culprits but would have reported them to officials, as in Shantung.
The gap in quality between the administrations of Shantung and
Kiangsu was all too plain. jangboo's failure to cross the Anhwei
border in pursuit of Yu-shih was further evidence of bureaucratic
laxity: although in ordinary criminal cases hot pursuit across provincial boundaries might be thought excessive, how could it be so in a
case like this?'s

On an encouraging note, Jangboo cheerfully informed his master
that the corruption case in the Yangchow salt administration had
yielded clear evidence and would soon be solved. Not the least mollified, Hungli hectoredJangboo on priorities: salt administration is only
"one of the normal affairs of local government. Moreover, once it is
dealt with, there's an end to it, and it should not be unduly troublesome. But if criminals conceal themselves and carry out their evil
plots, troubling the villages, the damage to people's lives will be
great." Jangboo seemed to have "reversed the serious and the
trivial." 17

Although Jangboo insisted that he was pursuing all leads, the information from the Shantung confessions led up one blind alley after
another. He could not find the Three Teachings Temple in Haichou, where master-sorcerer Ming-yuan was supposed to be
awaiting the return of his queue-clipping acolytes. Nor could he find
any monk remotely resembling Han P'ei-hsien's description of Mingyuan. One promising lead, extracted from a vagrant arrested in
Anhwei, pointed to a certain Soochow "mason" named Chu, who had
hired agents to clip queues. But the tip proved worthless; no such
man could be found. Finally, the fortune-teller Chang Ssu ju, named
in the confession of the Shantung beggar Chin Kuan-tzu, was supposedly to be found in a certain village near P'i-chou; but the village
did not exist. To Hungli, however, the clue about the "mason" merely
proved that officials were bent on a cover-up. Chekiang masons were
also involved in sorcery, but rascally local officials had tried to cover
up the case-to "turn something into nothing" (hua-yu wet-wit).
Obviously Kiangsu officials were up to the same tricks. As a result,
sorcery had spread into many provinces. "The administration of your
two provinces is really despicable.""

Where was the harried governor to turn? Could something be
wrong with the Shantung confessions? jangboo wrote to Funihan asking that he reinterrogate his prisoners. The answer came back:
the Shantung prisoners had been grilled again and had now changed
their stories. Master-sorcerers Wu-yuan and T'ung-yuan were not
"Kiangnan men" after all, but natives of Wan-p'ing County, in the
western suburbs of Peking!'`' At this astonishing news, Hungli issued
a frantic order to sweep up all suspicious monks in the capital area,
"not sticking to niceties" when names seemed not to match those in
the confessions. After all, could not monks change their dharmanames at will?20

The following colloquy (Hungli's side its preserved as vermilion
rejoinders between the lines of Jangboo's report of August 29) shows
that the case was serving as a lightning rod for deeper tensions
between Throne and province. Jangboo had now brought cutpurse
Liu to Yangchow for interrogation. Liu confirmed that he was a
homeless roving thief. A certain "Bearded Wei," proprietor of an
herbal medicine shop, had commissioned him to clip three queues,
for which he would get 150 cash each. Liu was soon caught in the
act. Jangboo quickly sent agents to see whether Bearded Wei really
existed. (Vermilion: "You are saying this because you intend to claim
later that no such thing happened. Your subordinates, trying to close
the case, will claim that the confession was false." )2'

(Jangboo): These criminals who are caught in the provinces give out
names and addresses that are later untraceable, or only give names
and no addresses. This is the result of the craftiness of the criminals,
who cover up clues and depose falsely by covering up the truth,
hoping to delay the investigation.

(Vermilion): That's for sure. If you officials are like that, why be surprised
if the criminals are too?

(Jangboo, showing sincerity): Every day these criminals are not caught ...
is a day local society is not at peace.

(Vermilion): That's just why We are pushing you officials. But your
indecisiveness, in both high posts and low, is incorrigible. What can
be done about it?

(Jangboo): In my humble jurisdiction, [ordinary criminals], who merely
harm a particular locality, are objects of ceaseless prosecution . . .
How dare I be even slightly remiss in prosecuting these vile, traitorous
sorcerers?

(Vermilion): Highly improper. Memorialize promptly on the present
situation.

The prosecution of the sorcery case had run into a problem
endemic to the Ch'ing system, and indeed to any system in which field administrators are the main sources of information on field
conditions. Although the palace memorial system had the potential
for universal surveillance (one official privately tattling on another
for personal advantage), it seems in practice not to have developed
that way. The Throne presumed that the interest of the field official
was always to reduce his risk of failure by underreporting the
problem at hand. In this situation, the routine auditing process that
checked performance against norms (as, for example, in the transmission of tax receipts) was useless: there was no norm against which
to check the number of sorcerers arrested. An urgent, nonroutine
prosecution like this one immediately set Throne and bureaucracy
in competition for control of information and gave their relationship
a keener edge of tension. But the monarch was not helpless. He now
had recourse to an agent within the Kiangnan bureaucracy itself.