Hunting for Witches: from Salem to the Lower Yangtze

Thinking of witchcraft in history brings to mind images of hysterical bonnet-clad women having seizures and hallucinations in New England courthouses, poor European wenches being burned at the stake by righteous Inquisitors, and medieval Christians drowning pagans based on Monty Python-style logic. The more enlightened may picture solstice rituals at Stonehenge or the quirky lady at the New Age bookstore. And the more anthropological-minded would point out that people in cultures all over the world have and continue to use witchcraft to ostracize quirky, outcast, or otherwise undesirable people, often using them as scapegoats for disease, bad weather, acne, or bad traffic. While Chinese history is certainly no stranger to unorthodox religious movements, it generally is not the first place most people associate with witchcraft.

Of course, these modern concepts of witchcraft emerged in relation to Christianity and a concept of religion that cannot encompass the vast range of Chinese religiosities, rituals, and superstitions. Those who use supernatural means to harm others are described in culturally specific terms, but the widespread belief that such people exist and the dangerous panic that ensues when fear of them runs rampant both appear shockingly similar from Salem, Massachusetts to the Lower Yangtze Valley.

Traditional Chinese belief holds that the soul contains two parts: the po 魄 and hun 魂. The lighter hun can drift away while one is sleeping, and it sometimes wanders too far and needs to be called back to awaken the comatose. In 1768, a rumor circulated that certain heretical monks had developed a technique to steal these souls and force their owners to do their bidding. Some alleged that workers building a bridge were enslaving souls by attaching people’s hairs or even just a paper containing someone’s name to wooden pilings, using the unfortunate soul’s power to drive the pilings into the ground. Other master sorcerers reportedly were using hair and paper to make voodoo-like dolls of numerous people. Then, they would send these enslaved minions to steal for them. (Doesn’t seem like the most imaginative use of stolen souls, but it apparently made sense to people at the time…)  

In several incidents, peasants accused begging monks passing through their villages of attempting to enslave children and unsuspecting villagers. Numerous wandering monks were rounded up and searched for scissors, hair or a “stupefying powder” used to temporarily incapacitate victims for a pernicious trimming. Of course, cutting off all the hair is part of initiation for Buddhist monks, so scissors and locks of hair kept as mementos were not uncommon among monks’ meager possessions.

Enough disorder and arrests resulted to draw the attention of the Qianlong 乾隆 emperor himself. Imperial involvement made this witch-hunt much more far-reaching than the one in Salem, but it functioned in an all-too-familiar way. People began accusing shady strangers and old enemies of witchcraft. Accused sorcerers were tortured into confessing and implicating others. Such forcefully obtained evidence portrayed a vast conspiracy led by an elusive master enchanter, which further exacerbated fear, producing more accusations, more arrests, more torture and more panic. Soon, kids were ditching school and blaming witchcraft. And eventually, after multiple deaths, numerous broken bones and countless damaged reputations, confessions were recanted and survivors released from prison.

It would be too easy to blame these events on the gullibility of the aging (and arguably senile) Qianlong who urged his magistrates to vigorously prosecute queue clippers and soul stealers and to root out the mysterious head sorcerer. But anything related to the hairstyle the Manchu rulers imposed on the populace was politically sensitive, and ridiculous-sounding movements have caused immense disorder and suffering throughout Chinese history. Indeed, a few decades later, a man claiming to be Jesus Christ’s little brother would found a “heavenly kingdom” provoke one of the bloodiest conflicts in world history.

Indeed, nightmare scenarios like this do not result from the frightening power of government run amuck or the eerie potential of the supernatural, it is the much more real, omnipresent, and terrifyingly powerful potential of humans to turn on each other. It would be nice if there were only a few isolated schemers murmuring incantations and hatching nefarious plans for petty theft and bridge building. Instead, whole villages of apparently decent people actually beat up and even killed poor and dirty outcasts, neighbors turned on each other over petty grudges, and courts founded on noble virtues became coercive instruments of false accusation. And if Joseph McCarthy (or the Cultural Revolution) taught us nothing else, it is that this can happen again, anywhere and anytime. So perhaps the real reason people are willing to believe that isolated pockets of unadulterated evil live among us is that it’s a comforting thought compared to the reality that real, diffuse evil lurks inside all of us, and it too easily and too frequently congeals us into an unthinking, intolerant, and violent mob. Scary, huh?

For more on the sorcery scare of 1768 and what it reveals about Qianlong and his bureaucracy read Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 by Philip Kuhn.

100 Years Later: The Difficult Offspring of Xinhai 辛亥的辛孩

Portraits of Sun Yat-Sen adorned Tiananmen Square for this year's anniversary

This fall marks 100 years since the Xinhai Revolution 辛亥革命 brought an end to China’s millennia-old tradition of monarchy and began the Celestial Empire’s long slog toward modern nationhood. Anyone who lived through the ensuing decades of feuding warlords, brutal invasion, more civil war, and social upheaval would scarcely recognize the emerging world power that China has become today. But even though the strength and unity of China’s government and economy has increased dramatically since those early decades, many underlying tensions remain.


In Taiwan this year, they will celebrate the centennial of the Republic of China, while the mainland commemorates the end of Qing emperors’ feudal oppression.Both lionize Dr. Sun Yat-Sen 孫中山, as “father of modern China.” Both governments agree that there is only one China, but just which government is Dr. Sun’s rightful heir is the subject of intense and emotional debate. Sadly, Sun Yat-Sen died of cancer in 1925, when he was just 58. Two years later, a tenuous communist-nationalist alliance violently and enduringly ruptured. One can only wonder how modern Chinese history would have been different if Dr. Sun had lived to see old age.

In the 19^th century, China was plagued by bloody rebellions and humiliating conflicts with marauding foreigners. But the Qings’ hold on power really began to crumble after a military coup successfully took over the city of Wuchang 武昌 on October 10, 1911. To put down the rebellion, the Qing court summoned Yuan Shikai 袁世凱, the head of China’s powerful and modernized Beiyang army 北洋軍, wooing him out of retirement with the title of prime minister. He won substantial victories against rebel troops in the Battle of Yangxia 陽夏之戰 (pictured at right), and was poised to crush the leaders in Wuchang before agreeing to a ceasefire on Dec. 1. With the rebels still controlling the city of Wuchang and widespread uprisings leading 16 provinces to secede, Yuan controlled the only force strong enough to defeat the rebels and was in an ideal position to make demands. The general-turned-prime minister protected the Qing government from his northern base of power in Beijing 北京 (which translates to “northern capital”), while the revolutionaries began organizing a provisional government based in Nanjing 南京 (which translates to “southern capital”).

Although Sun Yat-Sen is recognized today as the major architect and fundraiser of the revolution, the uprising began without warning, and he did not return from exile until Dec. 25. His fame and prestige still led the provisional government to elect him as president of the new republic by January 1. The next day, Yuan Shikai perceived a threat to his power and called off peace negotiations. Fearing protracted civil war and the possibility of invasion since no foreign governments would recognize the republic, Sun Yat-Sen offered to resign the presidency in favor of Yuan if the general would persuade the royal family to give up the throne. Yuan informed Empress Longyu隆裕皇后, who was ruling as regent for her six-year-old nephew Puyi 溥儀, that the rebels would slaughter the royal family if she did not agree to the terms of abdication being offered. She signed the abdication agreement on Feb. 12, 1912, and the royal family continued to live supported by public funds in the Forbidden City until 1924. 

This poster celebrates the ill-fated Yuan-Sun alliance

After the Nationalist Party won a large victory in the democratic elections of Feb. 1913, conspirators with ties to Yuan assassinated Song Jiaoren宋教仁, a nationalist party leader who vocally advocated an independent parliament and controls on presidential power. Shortly thereafter, the nationalist party was banned and its members ejected from the legislature. Sun Yat-Sen organized a second revolution, but it was no match for Yuan’s powerful army. In 1914, Yuan dissolved parliament and replaced provinces’ civilian leaders with independent military governors, sowing seeds for decades of warlord-fueled regional divisions and intermittent warfare. In late 1915, Yuan completed the return to autocracy by announcing his plans to become emperor. Widespread protests vociferously denounced this blatant power grab, and the southwestern provinces of Yunnan 雲南, Guizhou 貴州, and Guangxi 廣西 seceded in rapid succession. In light of this tremendous opposition, Yuan canceled his coronation and died of kidney failure three months later.

Warlords eagerly stepped into the power vacuum, forming cliques among themselves and contending for supremacy. Eventually, Chiang Kai-shek 蔣介石, commandant of the Nationalist Party’s Whampoa Military Academy 黃埔軍校, reunited China with a military campaign known as the Northern Expedition that began in Guangzhou 廣州 and ended in Beijing in 1928. But warlords nominally loyal to the Nationalist regime maintained independent armies that periodically rebelled and fought with each other. And while the expedition began with an alliance between Nationalist and Communist forces, a brutal purge of communists in 1927 brought an end to such cooperation and foretold decades of insurrection and civil war to come. 

Japan took advantage of China’s weakness to seize Manchuria in 1931, and the imperialist nation began a brutal campaign against China proper in 1937. Despite huge territorial losses, it took being kidnapped by a former warlord in 1936 to force Chiang into an uneasy truce with the communists. Still, the two forces jockeyed for advantage and sometimes openly fought each other during the war of resistance, and all-out hostilities quickly resumed after the Japanese surrender. Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalist government eventually lost the civil war and fled to Taiwan in 1949, 38 years after the Xinhai Revolution. An uneasy peace ensued as both governments focused on consolidating control and quashing internal dissent; the two sides still have never reconciled. 

In retrospect, some would argue that a more gradual transition away from absolute monarchy could have avoided much heartache and bloodshed. Others would claim that the tumultuous strife among warlords, ideologues, and aristocrats was a necessary, if horribly unpleasant, transitional phase between archaic and modern governments. And still others would claim that the Xinhai Revolution accomplished little and really fruitful change would not come until after the communist takeover, or later still, after the party veered away from dogmatic Maoism in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But virtually no one wishes for a return to autocratic monarchy, so even though we can all argue about its precise significance, we can all agree that this centennial is worth celebrating.

The three flags of the early Republic of China