Free Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 by Philip A. Kuhn Page B

dress and tonsure]. Now, however, because of this divisive talk, I
can but issue a decree to all officials and commoners, ordering that
they all shave their foreheads."8
    The decree sent to the Board of Rites (the board that, among other
things, set the dress code for all important ceremonies) on July 8,
1645, was nevertheless couched in Confucian terms." Now that the
empire had been pacified, it read, it was time to enforce the tonsure
on all. Since the ruler was like a father and the subjects like his sons,
and since father and sons were naturally a single entity, divergence
between them was impermissible. If their way of life were not unified,
they might eventually be of "different minds." Would not this
(reverting to the political side of the simile) be almost as if they were
"people of different kingdoms (i-kuo chih jen)"? This matter ought not
require mention from the Throne, but rather should be perceived
naturally by all. Now, within ten days of the decree's promulgation
in Peking (or within ten days of the proclamation's reaching a province), all must conform. Disobedience would be "equivalent to a rebel's defying the Mandate [of Heaven] (ni-ming)." Officials who
memorialized on behalf of those seeking "to retain the Ming institutions and not follow those of this Dynasty" would be put to death
without mercy. On the matter of "clothing and caps," a less coercive
and more leisurely approach would govern; but in the end conformity was expected in these matters as well.

    Surely such language was meant to resonate with the conventional
legal phrases that dealt with treason. The Ch'ing Code (7a-Ch'ing
lu-li) handles treason in the statute "The Ten Abominations (shih-o),"
the third paragraph of which is titled "conspiracy to revolt (moup'an)." The sole clarification of this broadly gauged rubric is "This
refers to betraying one's own kingdom (pen-kuo) and secretly adhering
to another kingdom (t'o-kuo)." The penalties for "conspiracy to revolt"
are listed in the Punishments section of the Code: decapitation for
the conspirators, with no distinction between leader and followers.
Their wives and children are to be given as slaves to meritorious
officials, their parents and grandparents to be. banished to Tur-
kestan.10 It is especially striking that the tonsure decree itself does
not appear as a statute or substatute in the Ch'ing Code, nor in any
edition of the Collected Statutes (Ta-Ch'ing hui-tien). Perhaps the monarchs of the new regime, however implacable in enforcing it, wanted
the decree to remain outside the body of formal written law: either to
be enforced without reference to the Code or the Collected Statutes, or
decorously hidden beneath the Code's general statutes on treason (the
greater part of which had been inherited from previous dynasties
and bore a thick patina of legitimacy).
    The years of the Ch'ing conquest saw stirring examples of local
resistance centered symbolically on the tonsure decree. Loyalty to the
defunct Ming political order was less powerful a rallying cry to local
communities than was the preservation of cultural self-respect
implied in resisting the shaved forehead. The famous cases of local
resistance in the Yangtze Valley exhibited the strong connection, in
the public mind, between hairstyle and self-respect." We can appreciate the importance of this cultural sticking point to the invaders as
well: it channeled the application of force toward the most obdurate
centers of resistance. In this respect, the tonsure decree was it shrewd
move: better to flush resistance into the open and destroy it quickly
than to nourish a sullen passivity toward the new regime.
    But what are we to make of the continued ferreting out of individual cases of defiance in the conquered provinces? The zeal and ruthlessness with which the conquerors persecuted local hair-growers
suggests that even the slightest deviation from the tonsure decree
might prove a nucleus for