The first of the sorcery scares occurred during the reign of the
Qianlong Emperor. Although the period between the late 17th and early 19th centuries has been called the
High Qing era and celebrated as a period of prosperity, historians such as
Pamela Crossley argue that wealth was not evenly distributed throughout China during this time. According to historian
Philip Kuhn, this unequal distribution of wealth was largely determined by a region's amount of arable land, the frequency of natural disasters and a region's proximity to fertile river deltas. Philip Kuhn argues that because certain areas of China were relatively well off compared to other parts of the country, people migrated frequently in order to gain access to more prosperous regions despite the government's efforts to prevent internal migration.
January–May Beginning in January 1768, rumors of soul-stealing sorcerers stoked public fear in and around the Yangze river delta. These rumors culminated in court cases and acts of violence against accused sorcerers. The violence targeted at accused sorcerers was carried out during courtroom torture sessions as well as a number of assaults and killings of individuals suspected of soul-stealing. The primary target of these soul-stealing accusations were transient beggar-monks who traveled between villages and were identified as strangers or outsiders because of their dress, behavior and/or accent.
Masons accused of soul-stealing in Hangzhou In January 1768, a mason named Wu Dunming began work on a broken water-gate and bridge in
Zhejiang, when Wu returned home to buy supplies for his workers he discovered that a man named Shen Shiliang had come to his home to ask if Wu would assist Shen in using sorcery against Shen's nephews. Shen had come to Wu because after the water-gate project had started in January, rumors had been circulating that the masons workings on the project were planning to use sorcery to assist them in their efforts to hammer in the poles necessary to rebuild the water gate and bridge. These rumors played upon a belief that masons had magical powers that allowed them to bring illness and death to those who had their names written on slips of paper and nailed into the poles used as foundations for bridges. This practice was termed "soul-stealing" because by taking down the name of someone on a slip of paper and hammering it into a masonry project, the mason was supposedly able to steal the person's soul and strengthen the mason's hammering strength. Despite these rumors, Wu refused to assist Shen and alerted local authorities about Shen's request that Wu commit acts of sorcery. As a result of Shen's actions, the local authorities punished him with twenty-five
strokes. In the spring of 1768, a man named Ji Zhaomei from Deching traveled to
Hangzhou and became a beggar. On April 3, a group of locals assaulted Ji and accused him of sorcery and theft. He was then taken to the local headman and interrogated. Under interrogation, Ji admitted that he was a soul-stealer and had been given soul-stealing charms by the mason, Wu Dunming. After this accusation, Wu was brought into the local
yamen (county office) for interrogation, but was released after Ji was unable to identify Wu in a lineup. After this, Ji revealed that he had made up the story of soul-stealing in order to ingratiate his interrogators. With all four of the monks arrested, they were brought before the county magistrate and interrogated about their role in the reported accusations of queue-clipping. The magistrate brought out the scissors and hair-tying cord found in Zhucheng's bag, but also produced two pieces of braided hair that were not initially recorded as items found by constable Cai. The magistrate then asked Zhucheng how many queues he had cut and Zhucheng denied ever having cut any queues. In response to Zhucheng's denial of guilt, the magistrate subjected him to courtroom torture through the use of the
jiagun. In response to courtroom torture, Zhucheng withdrew his original statement and announced that all charges of queue-cutting were true. Deciding that Zhucheng's admission of guilt was insufficient, the magistrate proceeded to order the torture of the remaining three monks. While Jingxin eventually declared guilt as Zhucheng had done, Zhengyi and Chaofan contested the accusations and stated that constable Cai had only arrested them because they had refused to pay him bribe money. After this round of interrogation, the case was moved up to the next judicial level and the four monks were sent to the office of
Shaoxing prefecture to undergo another round of interrogation. During this round of interrogation, only Zhucheng and Zhengyi were subjected to torture, which produced another set of testimonies to add to the case. At this point in the court proceedings, the court had a set of testimonies from the four monks that had a number of inconsistencies and the case was once again sent up to the next judicial level, the provincial judge in Hangzhou. On May 3, a beggar named Qiu Yongnian was accused of carrying paper charms and tugging on the braid of a child, both of which were perceived as evidence of sorcery. After Qiu was brought in, the local constables rounded up two of his companions who were also beggars, Chen Hanru and Zhang Yucheng. Between June and July, the rumors of queue-clipping sorcerers continued to spread out from the lower Yangtze region into surrounding provinces.
Jiangnan investigation By the middle of August in 1768 local officials had still failed to apprehend the purported master sorcerers, Wuyuan and Yushi. As a result, the Qianlong Emperor inquired about the status of these investigations and discovered that local officials had neglected to alert him of a number of sorcery-related accusations, assaults and trials that had been occurring in the Jiangnan area since January. Upon further investigation, Qianlong determined that many of these cases had been poorly dealt with and chastised the governor of Jiangsu, a man named Jangboo, for failing to maintain order in his jurisdiction.
The search for Zhang Siru Accused by Jin Guanzi of being a leader within the suspected network of soul-stealers, Zhang Siru was a primary target during the hunt for master sorcerers. At the end of August, a beggar by a similar name (Zhang Si) was apprehended in a northern city in
Anhui about eighty miles away from where officials suspected to find Zhang Siru. Upon interrogation, Zhang Si explained that he had been approached by a man named Zhao San, who had told Zhang that he would pay him to cut queues for him.
The Baoan Buddhist sect A Buddhist sect in the upper regions of
Zhili interpreted the 1768 rumors of sorcery as a bad omen and used the opportunity to convince people in the region to convert. In response to the Baoan Buddhist sect's efforts of conversion and predictions of woe, the Qianlong Emperor had the leaders of the sect beheaded and their followers executed, beaten or exiled.
October 1768 By October 1768, the officials responsible for investigating accusations of sorcery had arrested and interrogated a number of individuals accused of queue-clipping, but had yet to apprehend any of the supposed master sorcerers. In a number of cases, the accused and the victims of the accused offered varying stories that changed after multiple interrogations and rounds of torture, which created a confused collection of reports that were added to the overall investigation. By the time the emperor returned from his summer palace to Beijing, a number of the accused had been sent to the
Grand Council for trial and interrogation, including: queue-clippers from Shandong; the beggar Zhang Si along with his son; those involved in the accusations targeted at mason Wu; the Buddhist monks accused of soul-stealing in Xiaoshan; the beggars accused of soul-stealing in Suzhou and the monks accused of soul-stealing in Xukou. During the month of October, many of the queue-clippers and suspects implicated in the investigation of sorcery were interrogated under torture and produced a myriad of confessions that contradicted previous information given. These contradictory accounts forced investigators to question the existence of any master sorcerers. Philip Kuhn suggests that the confusion in these accounts might have been due to the fact that most of the confessions acquired had been forced out through repeated rounds of torture and long-term imprisonment, which left many of the accused queue-clippers sick and dying in prison.
End of the investigation By November, the emperor and those in charge of investigating the possibility of a larger network of sorcerers and master sorcerers had been unable to find any evidence of either. Concluding that many of the cases pursued by the court had resulted in the punishment and imprisonment of a number of innocent individuals, the court set to work freeing a number of the accused. Among those acquitted were: • The monks accused of soul-stealing in Xukou, all of whom survived imprisonment and the trials. • The 3 beggars accused of soul-stealing in Suzhou, two of whom died during imprisonment and the trials. • The Buddhist monks accused of soul-stealing in Xiaoshan City • Those involved in the accusations targeted at mason Wu In the end, the case was closed without the discovery of any master sorcerers. The investigation was ended not because the emperor and the grand council deemed the case unfounded, but because they decided that the investigation had been ruined by provincial officials. ==Events of 1876==