Sold People: Traffickers and Family Life in North China 9780674977211

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SOLD PEOPLE

SOLD PEOPLE TRAFFI C KERS AN D FAM I LY LI FE I N N O RT H C H I NA

JOHANNA S. RANSMEIER

Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 2017

Copyright © 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First printing Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ransmeier, Johanna S., author. Title: Sold people : traffickers and family life in North China / Johanna S. Ransmeier. Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016038100 | ISBN 9780674971974 (alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Human trafficking—China—History. | Families—China—History. Classification: LCC HQ281 .R26 2017 | DDC 306.850951—dc23 LC record available at https:// lccn.loc.gov/2016038100

For my parents, Judith Dunlop Ransmeier and John Christian Ransmeier

CONTENTS

Conventions

Introduction

ix

1

1 A Young Woman as Portable Property

24

2 The Flow of Trafficking in the Late Qing

62

3 New Laws and Emerging Language

102

4 Fictive Families and Children in the Marketplace

138

5 Moving beyond the Reach of the Law

170

6 The Warlord’s Widow and the Chief of Police

209

7 Domestic Bonds

239

8 Talking with Traffickers

273

Conclusion

310

Appendix Notes Chinese Terms Acknowledgments Index

331 335 371 375 379

CONVENTIONS

I use the pinyin romanization system for Chinese terms, people, and place names except when a dif ferent spelling would be more familiar (Hong Kong, Sun Yatsen). Although the city of Beijing became Beiping when the Guomindang moved the Chinese capital south to Nanjing in 1928, to avoid confusion, I use Beijing throughout. In judicial and police sources for both the Qing and the Republican period, women’s names appeared as the husband’s surname, followed by father’s surname, and then the appellation shi ᦼ. I have chosen to translate these names. Thus, Wang Cheng Shi I render as Mrs.  Wang née Cheng or Mrs. Wang- Cheng. I have retained original names in the notes. The Chinese calculated age in sui ᤼, starting with one sui at birth, and counting the passage of each lunar new year. For all ages listed in this text, I have subtracted one year from the sui listed in the archival material and described individuals in terms of Western “years old.” This still risks overestimating ages for those with birth dates just before the new year, but given the nature of trafficking, this approach best conveys to the English reader an approximation of the relative youth of many of the people involved.

ix

SOLD PEOPLE

Xingjiazhuang = Xing Family Village Wujiapai = Wu Family Village Niujiapaiqiao = Niu Family Village

Gubeikou

Yongdin g

Grea

Rive r

Longwangtang

t Wa

ll

Baodi County Seat

Beijing Tongzhou

Xingjiazhuang Wujiapai Niujiapaiqiao

Zhangjiawan

Tianjin Hai River

SHANXI

BOHAI SEA

Baoding

ZHILI

er INNER MONGOLIA SHANDONG

100 km

w R iv

OUTER MONGOLIA 0

Changchun Yel lo

50 miles

Grand Canal

0

Cangzhou

FENGTIAN

KOREA

er

Taiyuan Ye l l

ow

Riv

at W al l

Beijing Tianjin Gre

Ye l l o w R i ve r

ZHILI

SHANXI GANSU

Gra

nd

Pingyao

SHANDONG

YELLOW SEA

Can a

l

JIANGSU HENAN

SHAANXI

Nanjing

NG AN

Lake Tai

Shanghai

Chengdu

Hankou

gzi R

HUBEI

ngzi River

an

SICHUAN

Ya

ive r

L I A NL I GA N J GI J AI

ANHUI

Y

ZHEJIANG

Poyang Lake Raozhou

E A S T C H I N A S E A

JIANGXI HUNAN GUIZHOU

FUJIAN

Xiamen GUANGXI Pe a r l R i ve r

YUNNAN

China before 1928, with North China detail

GUANGDONG

Hong Kong Macau

0 0

100 miles 200 km

Introduction

One autumn morning in 1922, forty-two-year-old Widow Cheng Huang stood on the doorstep of Liao Yuting’s courtyard in Beijing’s Xizhimen neighborhood fuming in the crisp air. She pointed a thick thumb first at Liao and then at herself. “Look here, Old Liao, today you are selling people, and tomorrow you will be selling people. Sell as many people as you can, but you will never sell Old Woman Huang or any of my children.”1 Since the death of her husband in 1919, the widow had been helping Liao Yuting to procure women and children from her farming village northwest of the city. A few years earlier she would have hesitated to confront the notorious trafficker in broad daylight, but she had grown bolder with time. Lately Widow Cheng Huang had become fed up with Liao Yuting’s threats and with being cut out of what she felt was her rightful share of the profits from their busy enterprise. The widow’s fighting words encapsulate an overlooked but essential characteristic of Republican North China’s market in people. Not for nothing did practitioners of the trade sometimes call it “eating people” or “eating flesh” (chi ren or chi ren rou). The widow lived in a world of eat or be eaten, sell or be sold. As she knew all too well, the populations of trafficker and trafficked frequently overlapped. This feature makes the North China marketplace revealing for understanding the persistence of the problem of human trafficking. Here, the distinction between trafficker and trafficked could be blurry, and (as elsewhere) women and children proved especially vulnerable. Even before Widow Cheng Huang turned to 1

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trafficking, she and her friends had noticed people frequently disappeared from Longwangtang village. … … … … … … … … …

During the late Qing and Republican periods a robust market in servants, wives, slaves, concubines, child brides, prostitutes, apprentices, and adopted children thrived throughout North China. Families at all levels of society relied upon sold people to address domestic needs. An extensive regional trade helped families dispose of unwanted children, acquire servants, borrow the reproductive or child-rearing ser vices of their neighbors, or incorporate new family members into their households. In this book I examine how these transactions were carried out, and the community and kinship networks that made them possible. I do this by staying close to the ground, following men and women like Liao Yuting and Widow Cheng Huang, as well as the families with whom they did business. Their world was a complex one. In the chapters that follow, I weave their stories together with the lives of late Qing abolitionists, magistrates, and police officers, as well as with the evolution of the legal system and the multilayered language that these men and women used to describe their activities. Chinese families were transactional families. With the exception of childbirth, arrivals and departures from a household involved the exchange of money (or goods) and mediation by an intermediary or broker. The rituals around the transition of a woman from one household to another established important status distinctions between wife, concubine, and slave girl.2 Those who were able to provide a dowry for their daughter empowered the bride upon arrival in her husband’s household,3 and sent the socially critical message that her natal family had not needed to resort to selling her. Even the purchase of a humble slave girl usually involved a hired matchmaker (meiren), and perhaps a paid witness or two to enforce her sale. This matchmaker might be a mobile trafficker or could be a member of the local community. Not all family-building transactions were exploitative, but they all established hierarchy in the home. Some readers may crave an explicit distinction between trafficking and legal marriages that involved the purchase of a woman. Drawing such a distinction would obscure a crucial component of why trafficking has remained so persistent in China. In this book I rely upon an old-fashioned 2

INTRODUCTION

definition: I use the word “trafficking” to describe buying and selling, as well as brokering and transportation with intent to sell. Accordingly, my examples will sometimes include coerced bride-price marriages and servants who consented to be sold. I have taken care not to allow a sold person’s complicity to disqualify his or her sale from my discussion of trafficking. The analytical impact of this choice is twofold. First, it allows us to consider an overall trafficking context in which transactions in people were widely accepted. Second, it preserves traces of the sold people’s agency in the trafficking narrative. I pay special attention to the changing position of brokers in facilitating—and profiting by—these arrangements. My inclusive definition would not be an effective one for international legislation for prosecuting trafficking, but its breadth allows us a more complete social picture of the rationale of traffickers and the families who engaged them. Trafficking as prosecuted by the Chinese courts marked the illegal end of a range of licit and illicit strategies—but the process of trafficking encompassed a capacious spectrum of activity, with varying degrees of coercion, consent, and exploitation. This is not a book about marriage. And yet marriage as practiced by the vast majority of Chinese families helped to legitimate the widespread sale of people. For the majority of the poor, bride price was the dominant form of marriage and naturalized all manner of sales, even illegal ones, in the minds of the people involved. Chinese anthropologists have sometimes claimed that the “language of gifts and reciprocity was used for wives” while the “idiom of the marketplace was used for concubines and maids.”4 In the judicial record of North China, I have not found this to be the case.5 Depositions from both the Qing and the Republican period speak of brides in clear terms of sale, and their price, employing the same terms used for other kinds of sold people. To the families concerned, and, sometimes even to the wife herself, marriage fixed a woman’s value and introduced the idea that she might be sold.6 Her domestic, reproductive, and sexual ser vices had both social and monetary value. Debt—financial, filial, spiritual, Confucian—played a significant role in shaping how household hierarchy functioned. Children understood their obligations to the parents who raised them. A young bride knew what her acquisition had cost her husband or what her family had sacrificed to arrange her marriage. A concubine fully grasped her obligation to produce a son. A slave girl could be reminded that her owner had rescued her from destitution. Brothel prostitutes calculated the fees necessary to redeem 3

SOLD PEOPLE

themselves from their house. Even panhandling street waifs expressed indebtedness to the fictive families with whom they performed on the street. As much, however, as deeply felt obligations tied sold people to their buyers, the fact of their sale—the dynamic process of trafficking, with the implication of possible resale—rendered the position of sold people in the family tenuous. While scholars have long emphasized the regimented hierarchy of the Confucian family, they have not explored the implications of the transactional nature of Chinese family formation. Family boundaries were more permeable than traditionally appreciated. More than three decades ago, anthropologist James Watson declared that China before the foundation of the People’s Republic in 1949 possessed “one of the largest and most comprehensive markets for the exchange of human beings in the world.”7 This pronouncement was the opening salvo of an ethnographic article on elite slaveholding lineages in Hong Kong’s New Territories. Yet despite Watson’s bold invitation to further discussion, his remains one of few studies to directly confront China’s trade in people.8 The present book is the first examination of trafficking practices in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century North China. Watson’s assertion went undisputed, but also unexplored. Human trafficking appeared as an accepted (and inevitable) feature on a troubled Chinese landscape. Evocative accounts of rural hardship during times of disaster often featured observations of starving families selling their women and children. Historians of Qing and Republican China have not been blind to or unmoved by these accounts. Instead, they mention the sale of people in passing, as symptomatic of a broader social problem, such as poverty, famine, war, or prostitution.9 A wealth of literature explores each of these profound social problems in both their historical and their contemporary manifestations. These crises indeed did often form the context for a surge in the market for people. Yet to look at trafficking only as a symptom naturalizes a pattern of behavior that deserves further explanation. For ordinary people and criminals alike to even think about selling someone, there had to be a perceived market, one that predated the crisis of the day. Treating trafficking as a symptom rather than a phenomenon in its own right obscures its true nature as a deeply embedded practice. This book demonstrates that this omnipresent trade—long held to be a last resort, prominent in the rhetoric of drought, famine, floods, bandit raids, and the displacement of wartime—was instead routinely tolerated and facilitated by community networks as a legitimate remedy to more pe4

INTRODUCTION

destrian concerns. Frustration with a nagging sister-in-law, shame over an adulterous wife, anxieties about future marriage prospects for daughters, irritation with a temperamental or sickly child, or with an opium-addled uncle, gambling debts, fertilizer shortages, fears about diminishing food supplies, not necessarily for tomorrow but for next year—all could inspire a head of household to consider engaging the assistance of a trafficker. Trafficking was an essential part of community-level mutual aid. It was criminally inflected, to be sure, but not considered as morally reprehensible or as extreme a measure as we have tended to think, or as scholarship has heretofore led us to believe. Indeed, because selling people was not necessarily held to be reprehensible, precipitating circumstances did not have to be life threatening. The discourse of extreme duress, survival, and “no other choice” was created by the Qing legal system. Necessity may claim that it knows no law, but it is quick to cite the law to its advantage. The survival defense, offered by both sellers and brokers, was commonplace because it was often successful. Qing jurists often honored the language of desperation when mediating a local conflict. The statutes of the Qing code forbade many forms of the sale of people, but the code also included provisions that allowed the practice to continue. Families regularly availed themselves of these provisions. Magistrates not only acquitted parents who convincingly argued that impending starvation had compelled them to sell their children, they also pardoned traffickers who could demonstrate that they had not exercised undue force or that their motivations were charitable. From the perspective of the Chinese state, and on the macro-societal level, trafficking shifted an imperiled population out of unsustainable situations into tolerable ones. On the level of the individual, the practice offered a ready and socially accepted solution to intractable problems. As we shall see, this remained the case well into the Republican period. In 1910 the Qing government tried for the last time to eliminate the buying and selling of people by issuing a ten-part edict stipulating that all references to “slaves” be struck finally and fully from the empire’s criminal code. International newspapers at the time offered cautious praise for what they called China’s abolition of slavery.10 The text outlined new rules for arranged marriages and for the hiring of indentured servants. That this abolition edict needed to be so ornate provides some hint as to just how integrated these practices had become in the lives of ordinary people. For centuries trafficking had been carried out in an ambiguous legal realm: 5

SOLD PEOPLE

illegal in principle, but accepted as a necessary tool for survival. For every criminal statute in the Qing code that forbade the selling of a person, a handful of substatutes articulated exceptions.11 The problem seemed to be that there were simply too many diverse kinds of relationships and statuses established by the deceptively unambiguous exchange of cash. But it was not money alone that made these relationships so powerfully binding. Traffickers were often acquaintances, neighbors, friends, and family, even lovers. Neighborhood matchmakers did not merely arrange marriages; they competed with one another to broker other indispensable ser vices as well. The nuanced obligations and rivalries explored in this book provide a complex portrait of local society in a time of dramatic social change. Almost every household in North China was touched in some way by the trade: Not every affluent family purchased, or even employed, servants, nor did all impoverished parents consider selling their children, but everyone from all walks of life knew of someone who had once had reason to call upon this market. Families knew how to identify the traffickers within their midst, and understood how to engage their ser vices. An enormous gap existed between these lived experiences and the goals of late Qing and Republican lawmakers. By 1911, revolution would turn this problem over to a new government. With legal reform, long-standing customary practices became new crimes. In this transitional legal environment, magistrates and police officers were forced to make fundamental judgments about who was legitimately part of a family and who was not. Through their records, I trace shifting ideas about what constituted an acceptable family. Law enforcement was not synonymous with the state, and individual police investigators often hesitated to bring the law to bear. Many of the disputes encountered on the street or in the home required police to make a curbside assessment about who belonged to whom. … … … … … … … … …

When Liao Yuting came to Longwangtang village in 1899, he brought his reputation with him: They said he had killed a man and that even the police were afraid of him. He had mistresses all over Beijing. He had once shamed a young woman into killing herself, but her family was so intimidated that they even thanked Liao Yuting for attending the funeral. Liao had then hired grave robbers to strip the woman’s corpse and to plunder 6

INTRODUCTION

her tomb. He had made himself very rich, though few could confirm how. A man who trusted Liao to look after his wife and daughters had returned home to find them all gone. Liao had befriended the coffin maker at the edge of the village in order to use his business to smuggle opium and steal from the dead. Whispers of Liao’s exploits blew from one household to the next.12 At the time, Cheng Huang was seventeen years old and just married. She liked her husband, describing him as warmhearted, kind, and eventempered, and she got along well with his parents. The couple had their first child together that year. Because her husband made his living driving a cart into town, he often left Cheng Huang alone at home with the baby for days at a time. She estimated that he spent at least three months out of every year away from home. When Cheng Huang grew bored, she gossiped with other young wives in the village. They spoke idly about “who had run off with whom, and who was deceiving whom.” They all regarded Liao Yuting—by all accounts a dapper scoundrel—with fear and fascination. They peered out of their houses to watch Liao “strut about the village.” Cheng Huang later recalled the revulsion she felt when she first encountered him on the street. Yet some of these women appreciated Liao as a worldly man who was willing to overstep the boundaries of propriety, and eventually sought his help to escape from acrimonious marriages. Although Cheng Huang was happily married herself, through her friends she came to learn more about Liao Yuting’s true business. But as she later remarked, “Even then, I did not truly understand what it meant to buy and sell people.”13 … … … … … … … … …

What did the sale of people entail in late Qing and Republican China? Did it resemble a system of ownership or even slavery? Was it merely an  extension of indigenous patterns that required each family to exchange dowry or bride price to legitimate a marriage? Trafficking drew together traditional expectations and obligations, family networks, a rhetoric of survival and subsistence, chastity and honor, commerce and contract. Throughout this book I translate the commonly used phrase maimai renkou either literally, as “buying and selling people,” or as it was most often translated during the early twentieth century, as “trafficking in people.” Throughout discussions of slavery and the growing Western 7

SOLD PEOPLE

anxiety about a “white slave trade,” Qing legal reformers described any illicit transaction in people as maimai renkou. This conflated everything from the brothel to the coolie trade, from adoption to the remarriage market. From the outset, the early twentieth-century Chinese conversation around these subjects emphasized prohibiting the transactional mechanism for initiating exploitation rather than eliminating status differences. This approach obliquely acknowledged that Chinese society encompassed a spectrum of circumscribed statuses irreducible to a binary of free and slave. While in the West the conception of individual freedom emerged from the philosophy of the Enlightenment, in China people understood their roles in family, society, and vis-à-vis the state through the organizing principles of Confucianism. No individual was free, because everyone was embedded in relationships. Inequality was natural, and Confucian obligations burdened some more than others. The articulation of citizenship and freedom as the opposite of slavery arrived in China only in the latter half of the nineteenth century as news of world events filtered into the empire and as Chinese observers came to realize that overseas Chinese “coolie” laborers were filling the vacuum produced by the dismantled Atlantic slave trade. Exposure to Western discourse on slavery led late Qing jurists and legislators to try to squeeze diverse Chinese transactional practices into an uncomfortable single category. Indeed, the words for “freedom” and “slavery” gained greater acceptance in late Qing nationalist and anti-imperialist rhetoric than as justifications for domestic social reform. After the revolution, Republican-period activists continued to seek precise vocabulary to describe domestic enslavement. Relying on the peculiar shared language of animal husbandry and adoption, newspaper editorials and police regulations alike condemned households who persisted in “raising” or “cultivating” slaves and slave girls (yang nubi / xu bi) throughout the 1920s and 1930s.14 Maimai renkou is only the most neutral of the many terms and expressions jurists and legislators used to describe trafficking. “Buying and selling” supplied the marriage market with brides and concubines, and brothels with prostitutes, but it also provided households with domestic laborers, including slave girls, nannies, wet nurses, and male and female servants. By prohibiting “buying and selling people,” the state targeted actions rather than the wide range of statuses that it could not possibly eradicate in one legislative stroke. 8

INTRODUCTION

Slavery is commonly understood as the most coercively binding claim one human being can hold over another. There were indeed slaves in both late Qing and Republican China. They, however, lived within a spectrum of compelling and often competing claims, typically exerted in the name of Confucian hierarchies and family obligation. The larger context for this spectrum was widespread social acceptance of the idea that people could be bought and sold. A popular faith in the unsavory legitimacy of trafficking prevailed. In his description of the Louisiana slave market, American scholar Walter Johnson describes the “chattel principle”—that any slave might be transformed into a monetary price at any point in time.15 While neither late Qing nor Republican-period China possessed largescale chattel markets for slaves, many people, whether enslaved or otherwise, passed their days beneath their own Chinese chattel principle—fully cognizant of the possibility that they might be sold, resold, traded, or given away. The “radical uncertainty” that characterized many slave systems also haunted China’s sold people.16 As Chinese households were acutely aware, people were an investment. The people most vulnerable to sale were women, children, and the poor. … … … … … … … … …

A relative lack of historical scholarship exploring the logistics and local justifications for trafficking in China has stood in the way of meaningful comparisons with bondage and slavery in the rest of the world. Differences between various forms of indenture, slavery, bondage, and coercion are profound. Scholars of slavery often find themselves speaking at crosspurposes, embattled over the culturally specific ways in which bondage has operated in dif ferent societies. The only way around these conflicts is to abandon the idea that there can be a universal definition and to stop seeking consistency across slave systems. Instead, it helps to consider the processes that enable dif ferent forms of bondage to persist across evolving contexts. Trafficking, like slavery, is an opportunistic process that seizes upon the most dominant and binding forces in any given society. Accordingly, historians of the economically driven Atlantic slave trade have traditionally emphasized the position of slaves as property, and as producers of wealth for their masters, while Africanists have tended to focus on the place of slaves in complex kinship networks.17 In the antebellum United 9

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States, defenders of slavery and abolitionists alike summoned biblical verse to support opposing positions. Some African communities emphasized the role of slavery in rebalancing contentious tribal rivalries, while others highlighted the importance of slavery in organizing kinship networks. One way to interpret these tendencies would be that scholars of each region have taken their cue from the justifications used by traffickers and slaveholders themselves. Slaveholders rely upon the prevailing logic of their own particular divergent social, cultural, and historical contexts to justify and maintain their claims. I choose the word “claim” deliberately; the word is meaningful no matter which culturally specific mechanism is available to enforce the relationship. A claim can be held, but it can also be exerted. Claims made upon China’s sold people represented both the exercise of proprietary relationships and power. Even illegal claims gain social traction when they are perceived as morally justified. Definitions proposed by slavery scholars can be crudely divided into two positions: those that approach slavery as a property relationship, and those that view slavery as a power relationship. In the “property” conception, slaves are considered property and regarded as alienated from their own means of production, with the result that as property they may not have the right to hold property themselves. The latter half of this definition is a conceptual assertion that is not consistently valid, as some slaves found means to accumulate property and to structure social relationships around the accumulation of that property.18 James Watson defines slavery in strict property terms.19 He observes that enslaved men (saiman / ximin) in rural southern China were treated like chattel and represented a luxury to be flaunted by status- conscious lineage leaders. Such men never became kin.20 Watson does not deem female domestics who had been purchased, whose status was not hereditary, and who could potentially join a family, to be chattel. In practice, however, very few of the region’s mui tsai ever found “freedom” within their masters’ households.21 During the Qing, one clear, technical way in which not only slaves, but also servants, concubines, and wives, were considered property was that many of the statutes relating to these groups appeared in the Qing code under the category “theft.” To abduct a man’s wife was robbery, and to injure his slave was to damage his property.22 As we will see, the use of common terms to sell both women and land further indicates that people could be disposed of as property. 10

INTRODUCTION

The “power” perspective proposed by Orlando Patterson rejects “property” as too inclusive, and defines slavery in terms of total physical subjugation, domination, alienation, and violence.23 In the Chinese case, evidence for the power definition emerges most clearly in the brutal latitude granted to masters to punish their slaves and hired laborers, and to parents when castigating their children. Those who could be sold could also be beaten. In traditional households, the collective interests of the family, as determined by a patriarchal decision maker (who could be a woman acting on her absent husband’s authority) subsumed the will of individuals. Laws existed to check the abuse of power—during the Qing a master was supposed to obtain permission from the magistrate before subjecting his slave to a potentially deadly beating—but in the heat of the moment when disciplinary demands were most pressing, masters and mistresses rarely bothered.24 (To complicate the Chinese Qing situation further, while in theory a master needed to get permission to thrash his slave to the brink of death, a father required no such dispensation to similarly discipline his son.)25 Traffickers took advantage of the vulnerabilities of those whom they sought to sell. They capitalized on the eager willingness of some and the fear of others. Seduction, false promises, enticement, trickery, coercion, and forcible kidnapping were among the trafficker’s tools. (The clever trafficker used force sparingly; his sharpest instruments were words. As Liao Yuting counseled the widow, “When you really want to trap someone, you don’t draw a knife, you catch them with your tongue.”) Just as these tools included varying degrees of force, so too did the experience of those trafficked encompass a broad spectrum ranging from enslavement to servitude, from prostitution to marriage, from adoption to forced surrogacy. Although the logics of power and property could explain the lives of sold people, neither construction aligns perfectly with the range of Chinese social statuses. Certainly the economic rights of the master, and the master’s ability to exercise arbitrary power personally or by resort to the state, law, and violence, were all significant in China. Still, focus on these relationships fails to take into account the most powerfully binding and distinctive force perpetuating Chinese trafficking practices: the family. Slaves were just one group of people within the larger category of Chinese sold people. After the prohibition of trafficking and the supposed abolition of slavery, numerous elite households around China continued to “raise slave girls,” and these women and girls provided conspicuous 11

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evidence of the government’s struggle to enforce new laws. Later, China’s slave girls would become a metaphor for a feudal past that the revolutionary nation hoped to leave behind. Trafficking itself was not slavery—the process enabled layers of exploitation that ranged from total subjugation to contractual labor, and brokered relationships from prostitution to marriage or adoption. The Western world is squeamish about acknowledging the role of money in the formation of social, interpersonal, and intimate relationships. The Chinese are more pragmatic and do not necessarily view the exchange of money as compromising bonds of affection. Western discomfort is in part attributable to the legacies of the Atlantic slave trade. The broader historiography of slavery claims that slavery has nearly universally functioned to the detriment of family. When slaves managed to form families, they did so despite their status rather than because of it. In China the sale of people took families apart, but sales also proved constitutive of family relationships. China’s transactional families continually needed to be reconstituted. Scholars of slavery note that in many contexts around the world the institution developed in response to labor shortage. In contrast, labor surplus inspired systems of competitive wage labor, not slavery. Despite China’s high population, nineteenth- and twentieth-century trafficking in China fits into the shortage / slavery pattern rather than the surplus / wage pattern. By the late Qing, bonded servile labor no longer played a major role in China’s agricultural, productive economy. My research shows, however, that the labor of sold people remained essential to the reproductive economy for at least another century: The largest market in China was not for productive agricultural laborers, but for domestic and reproductive labor. The practice of selling people was not the result of a surplus of domestic labor and women, but rather a response to a shortage of domestic help, decreasing numbers of women for the marriage market, and resulting anxieties about male offspring. Because family security and ritual depended upon the production of an heir, families did what they could to support sons at the expense of daughters. Abandonment, exposure, and infanticide of females, as well as the more mundane but equally deadly selective privileging of male children throughout the childhood years, produced a skewed gender ratio, creating a surplus of unattached men. Chinese women, however, almost universally married.26 But before doing so, many first endured years as concubines, slave girls, or prostitutes. Marriage itself 12

INTRODUCTION

could be the product of coercion and forcible sale. To bring my argument full circle, the range of transactions was made possible by a shortage of reproductive and domestic labor, not a surplus. That is not to say that there were not moments in which the market became overwhelmed with people. Refugees from natural disasters comprised a large portion of the market. Famine, drought, flooding, and other ecological crises could set tens of thousands of people in motion at any given time. So, too, could the predations of bandits and warlords. Furthermore, it is in these times of crisis that the trade became most visible, and yet most tolerated, both by local communities and by the state, and most revealing of the prevailing attitudes that allowed it to continue—in good times and bad. Prices plummeted, and a buyer’s market emerged. From the state’s perspective, refugees in motion were more destabilizing than refugees sold into ser vice beyond the disaster zone. When transactional relationships turned sour, the state intervened. When sales proceeded smoothly, the state stayed clear. In the Chinese context, narratives of traditional hierarchical obligation and kinship combined with the readily available mechanism of monetary transaction to activate and enforce relationships established through trafficking. Women in poor households were caught in a particularly difficult bind. Although Confucianism valued chastity, arguably filiality proved an even more compelling principle, as young women sacrificed themselves and their virtue for the betterment of their families.27 Contracts for the sale of people confirm that, as in other societies, participants on both sides of a transaction had a stake in preserving the legitimacy of a sale. Police and judicial records portray family members, buyers, sellers, and intermediaries competing to define their transactions before the law in the most personally advantageous manner possible. … … … … … … … … …

In the spring of 1923, a little over six months after Widow Cheng Huang pounded on Liao Yuting’s courtyard door, she found herself pressing that same accusing thumb onto the fingerprint sheet at the Beijing Number One Prison. Her former collaborator had not sold her, but he had sold her out to the police. To be entirely fair, the widow generously volunteered, it was she who had first tried to expose Liao Yuting as a trafficker. While we might assume that criminals would seek to avoid unnecessary contact with 13

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law enforcement, Widow Cheng Huang’s engagement with trafficking had made her feisty and litigious. She had entered a world in which the threat of arrest and of being brought to court was a daily risk. But where others would have urged discretion, the widow saw an opportunity for vengeance and to clear the field of rivals. “At that time, I was getting really popular.” In just the first year of trafficking Widow Cheng Huang had made over 800 yuan, ample proceeds to pay off her late husband’s debts and to redeem the plot of farmland he had mortgaged. It was, she explained, “not the kind of thing that you can do once and then never do again. Once you have the money in your hand, and everything has come off smoothly, you are completely happy. Once you have tasted sweetness, don’t you want to taste it again?”28 Liao Yuting had given the widow some good advice over the years. Indeed, even after she lashed out at Liao, Widow Cheng Huang remained more inclined to blame her mentor’s betrayal on jealousy over her growing success as a well-connected intermediary and trafficker. The year before, the two had collaborated to kidnap an especially beautiful concubine belonging to the bodyguard of a local warlord. The bodyguard identified Widow Cheng Huang and brought formal charges against her. While the widow awaited trial, she recalled some of Liao Yuting’s best advice: “If anyone ever accuses you, pretend that you don’t know or care about anything.” Her first time in the dock, this strategy worked. The second she was not so lucky. When Widow Cheng Huang realized that Liao Yuting and another trafficker had kidnapped a new bride and cut her out of their deal, she confronted him. “If Old Liao had simply handed me ten kuai, I would have let it go—but where money is concerned, he was always just so black.” She later confided that Liao Yuting was “so ungrateful, crossing the bridge to wealth and knocking it down behind him . . . the more I thought about them leaving me out, the angrier I became.” But she did not dwell on it long before running to the husband’s house and informing the family who had kidnapped his young bride. “I told them, you head out toward Xizhimen and you will find her, and I gave them Liao’s street address. They gave me 60 yuan, and went to fetch their girl back.”29 The family later brought charges against Liao Yuting, but Liao was able to use his connections with the police to escape punishment. The widow herself was not sure if Old Liao knew, or merely suspected, who had grassed on him. But later, when they both found themselves on the stand, Liao Yuting ne14

INTRODUCTION

glected to employ his reliable formula of denial. Instead, he offered testimony that sent the widow to jail. … … … … … … … … …

Liao

Yuting and Widow Cheng Huang attempted to manipulate the changing legal environment of their day. New legal mechanisms accompanied the foundation of the Republic of China. These took not only the intangible form of revised laws and procedures, but also the solid brick and mortar of courts and police stations.30 The increasing visibility of the law and law enforcement transformed ordinary people’s sense of their rights and entitlements. These institutions offered citizens the opportunity to assert both grievances and rights through litigation, as well as a new set of venues for seeking revenge. The flourishing litigiousness of the Republican era renders trafficking and accompanying socioeconomic crimes more visible to the historian. As the young Republic charged its increasingly professionalized police force with enforcing the new laws prohibiting the buying and selling of people, an abundant paper trail for these transactions accumulated in the nation’s police stations, courts, and prisons. It is there that we find not only the rivalries of traffickers like Liao and Cheng Huang, but also the varied intimate tragedies that forced both individuals and families to summon their special expertise. During the early twentieth century, interest in crime specifically as a social problem, rather than merely as a form of destabilizing violence, also took root in the nascent academic discipline of sociology. The details of Cheng Huang’s professional history survive because once her crimes finally caught up with her for good, the widow was confined to the Beijing Number One Prison, where she was interviewed by a sociology student who took careful notes.31 Over the course of her career as a trafficker, Cheng Huang sold several dozen women and children. These sales brought her 60 to 200 yuan apiece—even more when she managed to sell a woman multiple times. Only three of these transactions appear in Beijing’s court records. The widow’s personal history as an experienced trafficker confirms that court and police records represent the mere tip of the iceberg in terms of the exponential volume of the trade in people. Truly effective sales never caught the attention of the police. Few sources invite the historian into the homes of China’s lower and often illiterate classes. As a result, popular perspectives on changing laws 15

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have largely been neglected by scholars of early twentieth-century Chinese legal reform. Families’ wrenching decisions appear only when the parties involved fell afoul of the law. The judicial and police archives do not lend themselves readily to a statistical determination of the prevalence of the sale of people. But even though quantitative assessment is impossible, qualitative information about the extent and nature of the trade abounds. Fortunately, scrupulous descriptions written by investigating officials and the newly trained police, as well as transcriptions of courtroom testimony, not only portray the circumstances of each individual case but also are rich in specific evidence of everyday life in North China. The exceptional level of detail in these meticulous Chinese records provides a view of human trafficking in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that is rare for similar crimes elsewhere. From the judicial and police archives, I reconstruct the factors that led families to do business with traffickers. Throughout this book my arguments and assertions draw upon extensive reading across Republican-period police and local court files as well as magistrate’s reports from the Qing period. I gathered this judicial material from the Beijing Municipal Archive, the First Historical Archive, and the Second Historical Archive in Nanjing. The Beijing Municipal Archive contains over 3,000 records dealing in some way with transactions in people. Out of these, I reviewed nearly 400 cases, primarily police files, dating from 1911–1933. From the Second Historical Archive, I collected almost a hundred appeals to the Supreme Court originating around the country (many of which involved accusations of abduction and retaliation for wife-selling) as well as trafficking investigation records from the Internal Affairs Ministry and the Bureau of Transportation. For the Qing period, I read cases from Shuntian Prefecture’s Baodi County archive (thirty-six files, dating from 1870) as well as cases in the Qing Board of Punishments Archive (xingke tiben). To supplement the judicial record, I have consulted Qing and Republican newspapers, early twentieth-century legislation, and investigations by early twentieth- century social scientists. Rather than attempt to assimilate the vast evidence of trafficking throughout North China, however, from this material I have selected a handful of incidents for closer examination. This book situates a series of interrelated microhistories in the broader context of changes to China’s legal codes, pertinent rulings by the Chinese Supreme Court, elite rhetoric, humani16

INTRODUCTION

tarian efforts to address famine and poverty, river administration and water control, and the rise of competing military factions. … … … … … … … … …

The Beijing District Court convicted Cheng Huang on charges of abduction and issued a two-year sentence. The widow had served only half her sentence in 1924 when, in one of the rapid political turnovers characteristic of the warlord era, control over the capital changed hands. Upon assuming the position of acting president of the Republic of China, Duan Qirui issued a general amnesty to empty the city’s prisons.32 Throughout China’s history, periods of amnesty have served as an important strategy by which rulers demonstrated their beneficence and solidified political legitimacy. During the decade 1916–1926, amnesties for convicted prisoners were an especially effective tool because they routinely created space for the latest militarist to promptly jail those who opposed regime change. The widow did not concern herself with politics, but as she reflected upon the events of her life and her career, Cheng Huang sensed that her actions fit into the long history of trafficking in her community. The widow had refined her skills and strategies over time, just as she had adjusted her own expectations of herself and her fellow Longwangtang villagers. The eternally pervasive nature of the trade seemed to absolve her of personal wrongdoing. The widow adopted a philosophy of “If everyone else has been doing this, then I can too.” She also claimed to be “caught in a spider’s web from which there was no escape.” This web stretched across time and space. After Duan Qirui’s 1924 amnesty released the widow, along with the rest of Beijing’s criminals, she managed to stay out of trouble for a few months but eventually returned to her established trafficking network. … … … … … … … … …

A small number of historical studies focus on the legal codes that governed the sale of people during the Qing period. These include, in Chinese, Wei Qingyuan’s 1982 overview, which, although it mentioned the numbers of slaves held by several prominent Qing officials and contained brief discussion about the sale of young girls, drew most heavily upon 17

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legal codes and memorials relating to government policy, as well as Marinus J. Meijer’s 1980 article outlining in English changes to the relevant statutes of the Qing code.33 These studies have provided a crucial legal background, but they do not attempt to explain the forces that propelled transactions in people on the ground. Institutionalized forms of judicial inequality had been embedded in China’s legal codes for centuries. For the Qing period, several Chinese and Japanese historians, notably Jing Junjian and Terada Takenobu, have examined the “emancipation” of debased persons in the Yongzheng reign.34 Their research has focused upon the emperor’s motives for advocating emancipation and on the literal text of his edicts (1723–1728). The Yongzheng emperor’s emancipation of categories of debased people fit within a pattern of policies by which he attempted to remedy the misallocation of resources throughout his reign, including amnesty for farmers who had illegally purchased Qing banner land.35 Intending to form an extensive program to relieve famine and poverty, the emperor sought to eliminate the legal distinction between those of debased status, or mean, people (jianmin) and honorable people or commoners (liangmin). The Yongzheng edicts can be interpreted as a limited and largely unsuccessful program to normalize socially and legislatively problematic groups. The terms became less applicable, but the stigmatized populations remained.36 Matthew Sommer unraveled the category of liangmin, demonstrating a shift from the use of the term to indicate social status toward employing it to describe moral behavior. His research on illicit sex revealed that the primary impact of the Yongzheng edicts was to transform prostitution from a debased behavior to an illegal one.37 Sommer has also surveyed the diverse ways in which poor families throughout the Qing mobilized a wife’s sexual and reproductive labor to survive. His central claim is that among the poor no clear boundary existed between trafficking, marriage, and sex work.38 While my observations confirm this blurring of boundaries, looking from the Qing into the Republican period I further find trafficking to be a substantively more inclusive and expansive practice; on the one hand, it was less explicitly restricted to marriage patterns, prostitution, and the sexual exploitation of women, while, on the other hand, it was not merely the last resort of the desperately poor. This book begins in 1870, in a village on the Zhili floodplain between Beijing and Tianjin. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, Qing rulers struggled to restore order to their empire. China had endured a succession of uprisings around the country, a bloody civil war (the Taiping 18

INTRODUCTION

Rebellion), and the country’s first humbling naval battles with European powers over opium. Physically, the vicinity of the capital remained comparatively undisturbed by rebellion, but employment so close to the empire’s political center required the region’s magistrates, governors, and administrators to navigate complicated political terrain. Questions of how the Qing ought to address rapidly emerging weaknesses, both military and bureaucratic, plagued officials at all levels, from the county magistrate to the governor general. This was an insecure time no matter where one found oneself in Qing society. The instability in family life suggested by an increasingly public trade in people, persisting so close to the center of the state, alarmed late Qing reformers. For China scholars who have previously considered related subjects, such as prostitution, migration, or marriage patterns, North China does not immediately suggest itself for a study of trafficking, and Beijing seems an unlikely center. The city is neither a port, nor is it located in China’s southern borderlands, major transition points both then and now. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the Chinese capital was one of the most highly policed cities in the world.39 But precisely because traffickers continued to operate (often quite openly) in this environment, tensions between law and practice became evident. Local records in Beijing and the surrounding area enable me to describe these practices in greater detail than would be possible for a less-regulated hinterland, while at the same time illustrating dynamic connections between rural and urban communities. Furthermore, because North China has not been as closely associated with an extensive sex trade (so notoriously prominent in southern treaty ports like Shanghai), the location allows me to expand our understanding of human trafficking beyond prostitution and wife-buying. This expansion is important. Both Gail Hershatter and Christian Henriot have ably analyzed the culture of prostitution in Shanghai.40 Henriot, in particular, outlines patterns in the regional relationship between village procurers, traffickers, and brothel madams in the greater Shanghai area. And yet the established and global appetite for commercial sex means that exploring the near-universal phenomenon of a brothel trade is not the best measure by which to understand the persistence and pervasiveness of trafficking in China in particular. Enlarging our view of trafficking beyond prostitution helps to reveal more about what is Chinese (other than the mere geographical location) about the mechanisms of the trade in people in North China. 19

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I had expected the archives to confirm a relationship between the sale of wives and the sale of concubines, and in turn, between the sale of concubines and the brothel trade. I anticipated that evidence of other forms of bondage would be more difficult to trace. I was surprised to discover that throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries kidnappers, intermediaries, and local matchmakers also made it their business to supply an even broader range of introductory ser vices. Moreover, whereas some intermediaries were specialists, others were diverse opportunists, equally happy to sell a boy to a supplicant monk, to help a working mother find a wet nurse, or to be paid to make an advantageous marriage match between two households. This book documents the rise of entrepreneurial brokers alongside efforts of the Republican state to prohibit transactions in people. These decades witnessed increased urbanization and commercialization. With these changes families encountered new pressures and challenges, and the transactional foundation of the Chinese family became more mercenary. At the same time as China developed a nationwide modern transportation system, politically its territory fragmented between competing military regimes. Traffickers had always taken advantage of times of hardship, and local matchmakers had long been essential for moving women and children between households, but changes in the social, legal, and economic structure of the new nation expanded opportunities for both to prey upon sold people. The book concludes in the 1930s, with China on the cusp of another major international conflict, this time with Japan. The six decades under consideration straddle not only the nominal abolition of slavery but also the demise of the Qing government, the founding of a supreme court, and the promulgation of new legal codes. There was a vast distance between men and women like Cheng Huang, Liao Yuting, and their clients and the rarified realm of discourses on legal reform or even Supreme Court opinions. And yet, to understand the paradoxes of trafficking in this period we must periodically traverse these realms. The book does not deal directly with the foundation of the Communist Party or the unification of China under the Guomindang in 1928, but that rivalry too began during these decades. Starting in the early twentieth century, revolutionary ideas about the individual and his or her rights under the law began to take root. Radical publications called for the patriotic restructuring of the Chinese 20

INTRODUCTION

family, or for the equality of men and women. And, with time, these goals became part of party doctrine for both competing entities. No matter how socially integrated, an ongoing trade in people eventually proved incompatible with these goals. Significant recent scholarly attention from historians of China has been devoted to exploring “modernity” and to explaining the positive developments of the Republican era: the rise of a popular press; urban growth; the expansion of railways; the foundation of Western-style institutions of higher education; the promulgation of new civil, criminal, and commercial legal codes; the expansion of manufacturing and accompanying economic opportunities; as well as the cultivation of an international approach to politics. But China in the early twentieth century did not simply become more modern, technologically advanced, cosmopolitan, or bourgeois; all of these seemingly positive changes were accompanied by equally profound transformations in an increasingly sophisticated criminal underworld. This under world did not operate in an isolated sphere of its own. Ordinary people—men and women with little notion that their needs and desires might be considered criminal—tapped into this world as well. Changes to the legal system altered their relationship with law enforcement. The popular momentum toward modernity in Republican China contrasts starkly with another dominant narrative about the period: that the Republican government was too wracked by internal strife and overcome by debt to be able to function as an effective state. The histories in this book shed light on this apparent contradiction. Even though broad social tolerance for certain forms of human trafficking severely constrained the extent to which the law could be enforced, the Republican state was not as weak as many scholars of this period have tended to assume. We should not see the state’s frustrated attempt to eliminate an entrenched set of practices as an indictment of Republican law enforcement. Instead, the ability to track individual criminals across the vast North China countryside, or to run a major campaign against human trafficking along railway lines traversing contested warlord territory, attests to the unexpected reach of the Republican state. Institutions as large as the national government, and as intimate as the family, fundamentally transformed throughout this period. Through stubbornly entrenched practices and the perspective of both traffickers and trafficked alike this book offers a social history of Republican-era legal reform and its limitations. To understand these practices 21

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only as a response to poverty shortchanges their complexity and obscures the extent to which negotiating these transactions remained a vital and familiar part of many lives. These lives and their relationship to the rapidly shifting state are the subject of the chapters that follow. By following the repeated sale of one young woman living on the floodplain between Beijing and Tianjin, Chapter 1 exposes the position of women in the Qing as movable property, as household assets that could be realized through sale. In Chapter 2 we encounter trafficking as a diplomatic, administrative, and humanitarian problem. The chapter introduces Zhou Fu, then the newly appointed Zhili commissioner for water control, and his first encounters with humanitarian crisis. It traces rumors of kidnapping and diverse manifestations of trafficking both locally and internationally. Chapter  3 describes Zhou Fu’s memorial calling for the abolition of slavery and the prohibition of trafficking, and shows how a proliferation of terms for the practice contributed to increased litigation during the first years of the Republic. Chapter 4 reveals the role that fictive kinship played among beggars who purchased children on the street, while the rhetoric of charity and adoption masked more nefarious activities inside households during the 1910s. The impact of expanding transportation networks by the 1920s is the focus of Chapter 5, while Chapter 6 shows how informal military networks enabled the widow of a warlord to establish a trafficking enterprise in Tianjin. Chapter 7 visits Republican Beijing’s courtyard homes and tenements, assessing the hierarchical relationships in urban families who both purchased and employed domestic laborers. Finally, Chapter 8 brings us into Beijing’s prisons in the 1930s to describe the ways in which traffickers themselves portrayed their crimes. … … … … … … … … …

The truth was that sometimes Widow Cheng Huang did feel guilty for what she had done. She told her interviewer, “Indeed, there are some things that when one brings them up, one wishes one could just grab a knife and cut one’s own throat. I’ve done so many things that I am ashamed of. But on the whole, my own family is not doing so badly.” She explained that her eldest daughter had married into a family in which the head of household served as conductor of an electric streetcar. Her sons had managed to hold down what she called “steady and respectable work . . . two 22

INTRODUCTION

of them are working as cooks for restaurants, and make nine kuai every month.” Asked why, despite her family stability, she had continued trafficking people, the widow explained, “You may resolve to yourself that ‘this is the last time I will do this—after this time, I will wash my hands of it and not do it again’ but then, tomorrow, someone comes to you, begging and pleading, saying ‘I can’t survive from day to day, my life is unbearable, please help me out. . . .’ Or, someone else comes to you and says they have found a way to make a lot of money. Your heart might feel heavy and you might feel ashamed, but as soon as you have that money in your hand, it is another thing altogether.”41 We will return to the traffickers held in Beijing Number One Prison at the end of the book. To begin, however, let us venture east from Beijing, into a small farming village where young women were both precious and expendable.

23

1

A Young Woman as Portable Property

Chen Yuqing’s daughter was sold four times between 1870 and 1872.1 Strings of cash changed hands for her ser vices as a wife, a concubine, a surrogate womb, and finally, as an exhausted daughter returning home. The men and women who arranged these transactions claimed they did so in order to survive. These years indeed marked the beginning of an era of dire scarcity. The decade began with floods and ended with drought and deadly famine; over thirteen million people would succumb to starvation and disease. Thousands of households sacrificed their wives and children. But it was not devastating catastrophe that led to the repeated sale of Chen Yuqing’s daughter. Instead, she was sold to solve more pedestrian hardships and practical concerns. Even the daughter of a former official and the wife of a healthy young man with acres of farmland could be sold. The capricious continuum of rural life on the North China plain meant the path to prosperity might suddenly veer toward naked subsistence and hunger. Shifting loess soil, shallow silted riverbeds, and inconsistent rainfall made North China’s families especially vulnerable.2 For much of the Qing dynasty, careful management of the imperial granaries protected hundreds of thousands of farmers from critical food shortages.3 By the second half of the nineteenth century, however, the national grain supply system had deteriorated. Hemorrhaging internally from decades of civil war and rebellion, and battered from without by the encroachment of European naval powers and the economic and social predations of the opium trade, Qing rulers 24

A YO U N G WO MAN AS P O RTAB LE P RO P E RT Y

struggled to reinvigorate their empire. Centrally administered relief contingencies no longer insulated farming villages from the periodic shocks of drought and flooding. More than ever, local officials needed to shake down their own communities to raise the funds and the labor to rebuild, and families had to turn inward to survive. Women constituted the most resilient part of a household’s insurance policy, yet poor families also considered female offspring a liability. The paradoxical value of young fertile women combined with a skewed sex ratio to propel the country’s growing trade. Chen Yuqing’s daughter shuttled between at least three dif ferent villages, and with every successive transaction it became increasingly complicated to determine where she belonged. The task of resolving this vexing question eventually fell to the local magistrate of Baodi County in Shuntian Prefecture. Although local magistrates mediated in delicate areas of village life, they typically intervened when criminal accusations, thefts, deadly violence, or villagers’ convincingly worded petitions drew them into a conflict. For every contentious incident involving the sale of young women or their children that entered a magistrate’s court, hundreds of routine arrangements proceeded according to plan. This chapter describes how four sales went wrong, and the Baodi County magistrate’s struggle to put things right. The text of the Qing code made adjudicating the proper place for women like Chen Yuqing’s daughter difficult. The legal code forbade the sale of commoners as slaves, as well as the sale of honorable commoner women as prostitutes, but it did not discourage the widespread practice of exchanging considerable sums as bride price for wives or concubines.4 Nor did the code outlaw the resale of people who were already enslaved or the descendants of slaves. With its silences the law sanctioned the trade in slave girls, bondservants, and retainers between prosperous households, effectively placing the burden of proving commoner status on the unfortunate person being sold. For each statute prohibiting the sale of people, a handful of substatutes enumerated conditions under which selling people remained acceptable. Qing law accorded husbands, fathers, and heads of household considerable authority within their families. The two justifications for selling a woman that occurred most frequently correspond precisely with two categories of misfortune that often precipitated the need to sell someone: financial adversity and moral failure. Family members were often permitted to sell one another in times of poverty and hardship, and a husband could turn to the magistrate to help sell off an adulterous wife.5 25

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Both sets of extenuating circumstances provided an opportunity for sellers to wash their hands of ethical and legal consequences. For those found guilty, these consequences could be severe: heavy fines, banishment, beatings, public exposure in the cangue, and potentially, in the case of violent kidnapping, even summary execution. Although men who caught their wives committing adultery could approach their local magistrates to request that his office, the yamen, oversee the sale of an unfaithful wife, a cuckold was not permitted to sell his wife to her lover.6 When yamen authorities uncovered a private accommodation like this, they flogged all three as criminals. The stakes were high for men and women accused of selling people, and it was in suspects’ interest to establish poverty or other virtuous justifications for their actions. Parents could receive forty lashes for selling their children. (Those who could afford to do so naturally chose to pay a fine rather than face physical punishment, but few who were able to remit a punishment would have sold their children in the first instance.)7 Sellers needed to be able to deploy the rhetoric of survival. Likewise, it was also impor tant for sellers to make their social role relative to their merchandise clear to the officers of the court. In the Qing judicial system, magistrates assessed appropriate punishments on a sliding scale. According to the delicate calibrations of traditional Chinese law, a punishment not only had to fit the crime, it also needed to suit the social status of the criminal. Offenses against superiors received sterner punishments than those committed against social inferiors: A son who struck his father had committed a greater offense than a father who struck his son; a servant who seduced his master’s wife was punished more severely than a neighbor carrying on a similar affair, and, despite laws forbidding “illicit sex,” a master could have sex with his servant’s wife with relative impunity. Confucian justice prioritized the preservation of an appropriate hierarchy: Inequality under the law did not equal injustice. Instead, the best Qing justice, by its very nature, was inherently unequal. This traditional reverence for rigid hierarchy and inequality as natural, and even desirable, lies at the heart of China’s widespread tolerance for the market in people. According not only to China’s code of law but also to deeply embedded social codes of conduct, people were meant to have a proper place. Those who did not were vulnerable. China’s market for people embodies a tension between the ideal of family as a stable bastion and its porous reality. 26

A YO U N G WO MAN AS P O RTAB LE P RO P E RT Y

The Qing legal statutes represented the accumulation of centuries of judicial experience and precedent. The philosophical core of this legal system was ancient, set in texts attributed to Confucius and his followers dating back to as early as the sixth century bce. Under the hands of Han dynasty (206 bce–221 ce) scholars, these texts took on the shape that became the foundation of Chinese thought. Across the millennia this philosophy, and the legal codes it inspired, strove to rectify offenses against a cosmically ordained system. The Qing code had expanded upon the statutes of its predecessor, the Ming dynasty’s legal code, which in turn had its basis in the seventh-century CE code of the Tang dynasty. Yet this was not an eternally hidebound system. Imperial Chinese law functioned in evolving layers. Over the course of the dynasty, the Qing code was revised some thirty times.8 Out of deference to past rulers, laws were modified rather than overturned. Outdated provisions remained on the books but were refined by substatutes and by edicts proclaimed by the ruling dynasty’s emperors.9 In practice new layers of legal text in the substatutes sometimes altered the meaning of original statutes past the point of recognition, allowing for inversions and reinterpretations of the law. At the same time, the preservation of old statutes in the code made for a system that was, in its essential architecture, conservative. Procedural regulations outlined in the Qing administrative law (Da Qing huidian shili) stipulated meticulous instructions for enforcement, further constraining legal practices. A county magistrate and his advisors needed to master not only the text of the Qing code—nearly 2,000 statutes and substatutes—but also the bureaucratic intricacies of administration. As the court of first instance for all crimes and disputes, the county magistrate’s yamen handled cases touching upon every aspect of village life.

Although magistrates were obligated to address violent criminal matters arising in their districts, they could exercise discretion with regard to other disputes, selecting cases they felt were compelling or might serve as useful examples in their communities.10 Indeed, if a magistrate failed to prioritize, he would quickly find himself inundated with every contested property line or marital squabble. Noncriminal cases occupied at least 30 percent of a magistrate’s busy docket.11 Whether a magistrate decided to hear a civil dispute—a disagreement over what the Qing code called 27

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minor, or complicated, matters (xishi)—depended upon several factors. If the conflict was likely to lead to violence, then it was obviously in a magistrate’s interest to intervene, and intervene promptly. This was especially the case because the Qing administrative law prescribed heavy penalties for officials who failed to keep the peace in their constituencies. Such penalties included substantial fines, relocation, and demotion. Similarly, a dispute involving influential members of the community, or over a large expanse of arable land, was also likely to earn an audience. Local magistrates and their yamen staff also considered the relative merits of a case based on petitions submitted by individual plaintiffs. Usually these petitions were not drafted by villagers themselves but written by scribes. The Qing administrative code warned magistrates against such plaint-writers, but the legal system needed them. These scribes, though often disparaged as litigation tricksters (songgun), played a critical role in transferring the anxieties and grievances of ordinary illiterate people to the desk of the busy magistrate.12 Cases that struck the magistrate as worthy of investigation often required legal finesse, a subtle grasp of village relationships, as well as the mobilization of resources and manpower. Resolving the problem of Chen Yuqing’s daughter would require all of these.

For officials like the magistrate of Baodi County, the second half of the nineteenth century was a trying time. The Qing state asked the impossible of these men: protect your communities from rebellion; defend villagers against outsiders; shelter the fields from natural disaster; collect taxes; mend roads; construct bridges; maintain temples; balance the aspirations of a modernizing state with the high standards of Confucian tradition; in short, rebuild the country.13 These were inordinate expectations to place upon the underfunded local government yamen. Yet the late Qing government had little choice but to rely upon its overextended civil servants; the dynasty had ceased to be the inviolable, expansionist, flourishing regime it had been in its eighteenth-century prime. Earlier prosperity bequeathed a vast territory, an ethnically diverse empire, ever-bigger cities, robust interregional trade, and an increasing population. The Qing dynasty’s nineteenthcentury officials had inherited a magnificent burden. Court expenditures that once celebrated the artistic and architectural accomplishments of the dynasty now seemed to be satirical extravagances, wildly out of touch with the needs of a country recovering from decades of civil war, rebellion, 28

A YO U N G WO MAN AS P O RTAB LE P RO P E RT Y

and compounded defeats by foreign naval powers. (When in the 1890s the Empress Dowager Cixi reallocated funds to rebuild the imperial Summer Palace, as well as a marble boat first designed under the Qianlong emperor in 1755, her profligate spending on an expensive garden folly came to epitomize the embezzlement and corruption characteristic of her reign.) Under the relative tranquility of the dynasty’s first three emperors, the population doubled, reaching 300 million by the end of the eighteenth century. By 1850 the empire’s inhabitants numbered at least 380 million.14 The Qing official bureaucracy did not expand to match the size of the empire. Instead, the number of officials remained constant throughout this period of demographic growth. Magistrates and provincial governors simply absorbed responsibility for more people and territory. In China’s more densely populated regions, a single magistrate’s jurisdiction could include 250,000 busy subjects and an infinite number of potential conflicts to adjudicate. The empire’s population had grown, but it had also grown lopsided. Infanticide and the abandonment of female children accounted for some of this imbalance, as did more subtle practices of privileging sons over daughters in the allocation of food and family resources. Patrilocal marriage patterns throughout most of China meant that any resources a household devoted to raising a girl drained her family permanently when she married. In the countryside the shortage of women was exacerbated when struggling families sold their girls to traffickers. Famine narratives feature tales of girls exchanged for a few copper coins, or wagons of women and girls bought up cheaply and carried by the cartload to cities where they would be resold to brothels.15 These stories emphasized what low value the girls had, how little rice, how little time their sacrifice had purchased for their starving families. But despite vivid journalistic literature describing women in transit, a shortage of women was a chronic problem for broader Chinese society. This was especially the case in the countryside. The following paradox sits at the center of any attempt to understand the practice of selling women in North China: When a family wanted to dispose of a female baby, she was next to worthless; when a household needed to meet certain biological or cultural imperatives, suddenly women became precious and in short supply. As much as 20 percent of China’s men remained unmarried, not by choice, but because there were not enough women to go around.16 While in other parts of the world labor shortages became the driving force 29

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behind systems of chattel slavery, in China a shortage of marriageable young women can be partially blamed for the persistence of a coercive and profitable trade in women. Men outnumbered women at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and even after the bloody armed conflicts of the middle of the century, the sex ratio of the population remained unbalanced. … … … … … … … … …

Chen Yuqing’s daughter came of age between crises. These were not just the crises of her own life, which rushed to a head in those critical opening years of the 1870s, but larger crises that shook the empire from the bottom of society—from men and women far less fortunate and much more desperate than the Chen clan—to the mighty dynasty’s most power ful generals and royal princes. Chen Yuqing’s daughter was born in a small village situated not far from the county seat. Her home prefecture encompassed both the sorghum and wheat fields where her neighbors struggled to survive and the empire’s growing capital, Beijing. Shortly before her birth, in the far reaches of Guangxi Province in southern China, a revolutionary named Hong Xiuquan raised an army of over 10,000 converts to his unique interpretation of Christianity. His divinely inspired Taiping troops clashed repeatedly with Qing forces. Hong Xiuquan’s call for the creation of a heavenly kingdom on earth to displace the Manchu dynasty appealed to the empire’s down-and- out—disenfranchised minority ethnic groups throughout southern China, entire villages of farmers weary of taxes, itinerant laborers, migrating merchants tired of competing against a state monopoly or with foreign traders. Scholars have speculated that the Taiping movement attracted the surplus men of this period, and that the skewed sex ratio contributed to the escalation of the Taiping revolution into one of the world’s bloodiest civil wars.17 Overlapping with the years of the Taiping conflict, Nian rebels threw Jiangsu and parts of Hunan into chaos, while Muslim communities in Shaanxi, Gansu, and in southwest China also revolted against the Qing. No blood was shed in Chen Yuqing’s Xing Family Village in Shuntian Prefecture, but conflict farther away reverberated across the empire. The real possibility that the Qing military might not be sufficient to suppress these rebellions raised official anxieties. Throughout this period Qing attempts to eliminate the trade in people were halfhearted at best. In the post-Taiping reconstruction era, the dy30

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nasty’s most influential officials sought to revitalize Confucianism as a foundation for Chinese culture. In this policy context, the preservation of hierarchy needed to remain a priority. Self-sacrifice and loyal ser vice to one’s social superiors persisted as central principles. Rather than condemning the traffic in women and children, post-Taiping Confucian family values inadvertently entrenched the trade. Qing rulers deliberately overlooked the sale of people during times of regional crisis. There are several reasons for this. First and foremost, they had their hands full with other responsibilities. The state could not be everywhere at once. Moving armies and grain supplies around the countryside was more critical to a greater number of people than addressing the small human tragedies of ruptured families and individual deaths. The threat of social unrest originated with large numbers of displaced people, potentially organizing themselves in rebellion, not from increasingly isolated individuals weakened by famine. The Qing state also turned a blind eye because the sale of people itself served a vital purpose. Where the state’s welfare failed, criminal networks stepped in, providing an unofficial and illicit social safety net for struggling households. The plight of individual poor women had never been of paramount importance to imperial officials, and if human traffickers removed more people from the path of disaster faster than the government could arrive on the scene, that was better than the alternative. Qing tolerance for trafficking grew directly out of the idea that sale was a substitute for death. From the transformation of prisoners of war into slaves, or the substitution of banishment and slavery for execution, to the sale of poor families other wise on death’s doorstep, bondage and servitude provided a bittersweet amnesty. In 1789, well before the crises of the nineteenth century, the Qianlong emperor declared: “Strict prohibition of human traffic is not necessarily a benevolent policy. The poor who cannot survive will die with their children from shortages of food and clothing. Thus, the benevolent ruler . . . must accept the buying and selling of people, in as much as the human market can benefit parents and children alike.”18 The revelations of slavery scholar Orlando Patterson would have been no surprise to Qing bureaucrats, who understood that the logic of survival provided perpetrators of violent socioeconomic crime with a compelling defense.19 The men and women responsible for arranging these sales rarely understood them in terms of exploitation. Although sellers’ preparations clearly involved a continuum of deception and force—embodied in false contracts, 31

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swapped tickets, forged paper money, bald-faced lies, drugs, blindfolds, rope, knives—they did not describe their plans as coercive. In their minds the violence involved was unavoidable, perhaps unfortunate, but not reprehensible. Violence was not only deployed against the women and children being sold, but easily turned against their families or against competitors in the unruly late nineteenth-century market for people.

Chinese communities have long asked a lot of their women: uncompromising fidelity, filial loyalty, consistent fertility, and reliable hard work. Elite men could afford to covet other traits, like beauty, charisma, artistic dexterity, good breeding, and small feet. Although the aesthetic desires of literati resonate throughout written records as the archetypal essence of imperial Chinese femininity, for most inhabitants of farming villages across North China these qualities were less impor tant than more pragmatic virtues. For all women, however, the Qing state strove to establish chastity as a fundamental value. By the Qing dynasty, state-sponsored Confucian cults around female virtue had raised the stakes surrounding women’s behavior to an unprecedented level.20 The state rewarded women who committed suicide in order to follow their husbands in death with memorial arches and compiled lists of chaste martyrs. But beyond the purview of the state, for the communal good, many wives and daughters made other less deadly—but equally intimate—sacrifices. Late Qing families expected women to be simultaneously sacrificing, and sacrifice-able. To survive, a woman needed to understand that she embodied the virtue of the household, and yet she might at any time be asked to compromise that virtue for the well-being of her family. Perhaps the most difficult challenge women faced during the final decades of the Qing dynasty was negotiating their position as both kin and property. Whenever a woman moved from one household to another—whether as wife, concubine, or domestic—money changed hands. To understand how women embodied a kind of “portable property” and served as insurance, one must first understand the profound extent to which local communities viewed all women as potentially marketable. Historians of prostitution in China have tended to draw a distinction between the sex trade and the marriage market. In practice, however, these two markets overlapped. Furthermore, because women and girls also provided domestic ser vices beyond sexual intercourse, they were valued for their 32

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capabilities as slave girls, servants, nannies, and wet nurses. Court records reveal a blurred spectrum of statuses rather than clearly demarcated categories. Although the text of the Qing legal codes strove to make finegrained status distinctions, the lived reality was more slippery.

The Magistrate Magistrate Ding needed to decide whose account he could believe. Spread across the broad wooden table lay reams of depositions taken from the girl’s father, her husband, her father-in-law, several neighbors, a man known by some as the village tutor, and a self-righteous widow. His clerks had transcribed these documents over the course of nine weeks of interrogation and painstaking investigation. Here and there on the depositions his personal legal secretary (muyou) had made small annotations or inserted a detail the clerk had omitted. All the same, the evidence before Magistrate Ding seemed inconclusive. Among these documents there was also a marriage contract, a marriage severance contract, and a letter that looked suspiciously like blackmail. Wearily, the magistrate summoned one of the yamen runners and asked him to bring two of the men back in for questioning.

Magistrate Ding had been at the yamen for less than a year when the escalating disputes over Chen Yuqing’s daughter came to his attention. A Qing magistrate’s administrative tasks were numerous, and if the new magistrate did not immediately sense trouble between the Chen, Li, and Wu families, he could hardly be blamed. Adhering to the dynasty’s law of avoidance, which forbade officials from serving in their home provinces, a magistrate began his tenure as an intentional outsider. The rule served to limit opportunities for corruption and nepotism, often effectively, but it also meant that a magistrate entered an unfamiliar post with some apprehension. In order to familiarize himself with his new community, Magistrate Ding needed to quickly cultivate relationships with the experienced clerks and runners who filled out the staff of the busy yamen. Most of these men came from families who had worked with imperially appointed officials in Baodi for several generations. On the whole, the appointment was a good one. Just fifty-three miles east of Beijing, the dialect spoken in Baodi would not have presented an undue challenge. Magistrate Ding was accustomed to discussing with other officials from greater Zhili Province the practical administrative 33

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problems of road building, dike construction, and the quelling of local unrest, as well as debating the thornier abstract question of how to cultivate Confucian ideals while striving to develop modern institutions and technologies. The county’s customs would have been familiar to an official who had already spent some time in the capital, and an educated man like Magistrate Ding would have little trouble maintaining his friendships and keeping up on national news. The Qing bureaucracy ranked the post as “important” (yaoque), citing three characteristics: Magistrate Ding’s tasks would be busy (chong), difficult (nan), and wearisome (pi).21 There would be a great deal of correspondence, the population could prove unruly or criminally inclined, and tax collection was recognized to be a hassle.22 Magistrate Ding arrived in Baodi when the soil was sodden from months heavy with rain. The summer of 1871 had been unseasonably wet: in July it rained for fifteen days, in August, sixteen, and in September rain fell without stopping for two whole weeks. To the southwest, the Yongding River breached its banks; from the area around Tianjin to the south, American missionaries wrote to their home parishes to call for relief contributions, reporting that floodwaters now lapped over 20,000 square miles of farmland.23 For farmers in Magistrate Ding’s jurisdiction the rains brought mixed fortune. Those on higher ground fared well, with some households closer to the capital pulling in unprecedented harvests, but for many the rain spoiled their seedlings before the sorghum could establish strong roots. Chen Yuqing’s daughter grew up in one of a cluster of farming villages located about a half day’s walk from the Baodi county seat in Shuntian Prefecture.24 The overextended Baodi magistrate relied upon forty-six local leaders, known as xiangbao, to help maintain order and to represent the inhabitants of over 900 small villages throughout the county.25 By 1872 the county had endured several consecutive years of poor harvests. These three years of flooded fields would be followed by an even more devastating drought. The resulting famine of 1876–1879 would make Baodi’s earlier water hardships look like times of plenty. In such difficult times, even a man like Chen Yuqing, who was a retired official and had attained the preliminary civil ser vice degree (xiucai), may have felt fortunate to be able to arrange a marriage for his daughter to lawfully wed Li Guozhen, a twenty-one-year-old man from a neighboring village. As a matter of custom, the Li family must have offered at least a meager bride price in exchange for a young wife from a good household. Surviving records do not indicate how much Chen Yuqing was paid for 34

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his daughter’s hand, or whether the bride brought a humble dowry to the Li household. (Had a substantial dowry accompanied the young woman, these funds or goods would have come to light during the course of later investigation.) No matter how much money changed hands, the bride price Li Guozhen paid for Miss Chen would turn out to be the only legitimate transaction. These were small villages, each consisting of several tens of households at the most, and neighbors knew one another. Many of the villages bore the name of their most historically dominant clan.26 Everyone would have known that Chen Yuqing’s wife had died, and that the widower had been raising the girl on his own for several years. Indeed, Chen’s neighbors certainly understood more about his life as a single father than we can possibly hope to glean from yamen records. They also certainly knew more than they would be willing to share with Magistrate Ding. Perhaps gossiping neighbors were aware of the girl’s initial bride price. Perhaps they whispered about the Li family and were suspicious of the match from the beginning, or maybe they thought Old Chen should count himself lucky to be able to find his daughter a husband at all. Had Li Guozhen taken Chen Yuqing’s daughter as his wife and lived comfortably thereafter, the success or failure of their youthful marriage and future lives in Baodi County would have passed undocumented. But life in the Li household was far from comfortable, and when circumstances became unbearable, with floodwaters lapping over their fields, the young husband and his father, Li Mao, saw the new bride as their last best chance to turn things around. Chen Yuqing’s daughter had cost them money a year before, and she now presented precisely the kind of liquid asset they needed. The papers spread before Magistrate Ding offered several possible explanations for what Li Guozhen and Li Mao did next. In the labored brushstrokes of someone who wrote only when absolutely necessary was an explanation of the conditions of the Li family and a contract terminating the marriage of Li Guozhen and Chen Yuqing’s daughter: This year our prospects are poor. The walls of our buildings collapse from disrepair, and the stalks of our fields stand rotting in water. It is difficult to even preserve our bodies. We have no food, and our clothes do not block out the bitter cold. To escape this desolation . . . my young wife ran away to her childhood home. Her family could not care for her either, however, and 35

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Detail from late Qing map of Baodi County. Guangxu Shuntian fuzhi ‫⛝ؗ‬㭚ஶྩ႕ [Shuntian Prefecture Gazetteer during the Guangxu Reign], ed. Zhang Zhidong et al., 1885. Detail design by Abigail Ransmeier and Heinrich Lipp.

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sent her back. I already struggle to even care for my aging father, and had considered that [we] husband and wife had already parted ways. She has relations near and far, and her own father should be willing now to support her. To forestall any future objections, here is a written contract bearing my hand and foot print to verify this agreement. For your honor’s information, the fee for this marriage severance [paid to Li Guozhen] is exactly 600 strings of [dongqian] cash.27

This formulaic litany of misfortunes was all too familiar throughout the North China countryside. The combination of poverty and ecological disaster often served as a preamble to justify the sale of an unwanted wife or child. Such excuses were so common that Qing officials frequently incorporated a “survival ethic” into their judicial decisions in order to mitigate the guilt of those they deemed truly desperate.28 This document anticipated its eventual audience, addressing the magistrate as da laoye, the colloquial honorific title a petitioner would use when before him in the yamen court. Although the law forbade “selling a divorce,” this text revealed no par ticular shame or apprehension. The sum itself was audacious, approaching the magistrate’s annual allowance, equivalent to years of work for an agricultural worker, more than enough to buy a new wife, or a handful of draft animals.29 Still, Magistrate Ding might have been inclined to overlook this transaction, especially as it seemed to propose that the girl return to her father’s care, had it not been for the peculiar way in which the document had come into his hands.

The Husband Li Guozhen stretched his fingers and winced. His right hand and right foot were cracked and dry. The skin of his palm and the sole of his foot remained blackened from the ink, a mixture of powdered charcoal dust and mule-hide glue, into which Li would later claim he had been forced to thrust them. He raised his hands to his throbbing eyes. Ears ringing from grain alcohol, and from what felt like days of shouting, Li slowly began to piece together what had happened.

Together Li Guozhen and his father Li Mao concocted a story. Theirs was only one of several accounts of the signing of that fateful document. Li 37

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Guozhen was twenty-one years old and knew little beyond the sorghum fields he tilled with his father. Perhaps his inexperience explains why his father filed the complaint to Baodi’s newly arrived district magistrate. Late in the autumn of 1872, Li Mao submitted a petition on behalf of his son. This petition called the marriage severance document a forgery. Li Mao told the court scribe that their family had indeed faced dire poverty; their fields were flooded, and like their neighbors they had considered selling off tools and dismantling outbuildings for wood. Sorghum requires regular rain, but it can take root in soil of variable quality. The year 1871 had been wet, and 1872 brought even more rain. This year’s rainfall had been too much for their crops, and the Li family was struggling to get by. Despite all this hardship, they had never intended to sell Li Guozhen’s wife. The document divorcing Miss Chen, including the stark ink print of his son’s palm and bare foot, had been obtained through coercion and ought to be disregarded. It was an unusual accusation. The Lis claimed that a middle-aged man named Wu Guangyi had detained Miss Chen in his home against her will, and, more significantly, without permission from her husband or father-in-law. Li Mao explained their circumstances to the magistrate: “My son [Li Guozhen] studied with Wu Guangyi from a very young age. Because our household was so bitterly poor, my son’s wife, Mrs. Li née Chen, went to work in Wu Guangyi’s house as a hired laborer (gugong).” This had seemed like a reasonable plan. As a young woman Chen Yuqing’s daughter had acquired some basic skill as a seamstress. In comparison with southern China, the north had a low rate of tenant labor, but few individual families owned enough land to reliably support themselves. Land cultivation patterns in the nineteenth century indicate that an average Zhili household cultivated between fifteen and twenty-four mu (2.3 to 3.6 acres).30 It was not uncommon to supplement a household income by either working as a hired farmhand or taking on additional piecework. It was in this capacity that Miss Chen first joined the Wu household. Her tasks not only included making or repairing clothing for Wu Guangyi and his aging mother. She also wove cloth and stitched embroidered handicrafts for the Wu family to sell. At the time, approximately 45  percent of China’s households produced cotton cloth which they sold locally or in nearby market towns, like the county seat for Baodi.31 Miss Chen left her new home to earn extra money for her husband and his father, who could not afford the supplies necessary for textile handicrafts. Wu Guangyi 38

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was better equipped to take advantage of her skills. According to the Lis, the young bride soon became a hostage in Wu Guangyi’s household. Dictating his petition to the yamen clerk, Li Mao continued, “[When we sent Miss Chen to work for Wu Guangyi] we could not have predicted that Wu would disregard the proper distinction between teacher and student (bugu shitu zhifen). Wu Guangyi got the idea of forcibly detaining (baliu) my daughter-in-law, and did so. He would not allow her to return home. When my son sought Wu Guangyi to discuss this, Wu relentlessly argued that because my son had not paid back money owed to him, Wu Guangyi would force my son to sign a marriage severance document. My son would not agree to sign, and so Wu locked him up, refusing to give him food or water. He would not permit my son leave his house and return to our home. [He kept him in wretched conditions] and eventually my son gave in.” Li Mao claimed that he had tried to work things out with Wu Guangyi on his own. He knew that invoking the law did not endear one to one’s neighbors. Involving local officials ought to have been a last resort, and so he told the magistrate, “I first went to Wu Guangyui to discuss everything, and try to explain that even if my son owed him money he should not detain people in this way. But there was no reasoning with him.” When personal intervention failed, Li Mao had no choice but to turn to the yamen. He petitioned: “My son and I are too weak, this deception [by Wu Guangyi] is too overpowering, and so we beg for your help. To clarify matters we ask your honor to prepare a thorough investigation and to pursue [the guilty party]. Because we have faith in imperial institutions, we, father and son, rely upon you.”32 Judging by yamen paperwork, Magistrate Ding was initially inclined to accept Li Mao’s story of Guozhen’s detention. He began to suspect that Wu Guangyi had indeed forged the severance document. The responsibilities of a Qing magistrate often tended toward the forensic. He grew accustomed to mysteriously vanishing evidence, tampered crime scenes, missing witnesses, falsified bruises, and forged paperwork.33 Even for county-level bureaucrats like Magistrate Ding, the stakes were high. A magistrate who failed to cultivate healthy skepticism could be fined heavily or lose his position. Magistrate Ding perused the document and found it “a bit strange.” In cautious brushstrokes, Magistrate Ding requested further investigation, and suggested that if the circumstances described by Li Mao turned out to be true, then Wu Guangyi ought to suffer a severe 39

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punishment. Wu Guangyi would have to be summoned to the yamen and interrogated.

The Suitor And so two runners were dispatched to Wu Family Village,34 traveling fifteen miles to collect the middle-aged gentleman. Wu Guangyi was not surprised by the arrival of two strong young men earning their keep as yamen brawn, just as their fathers and brothers had likely done before them. At first Wu was ready to put up a fight, arguing with the runners: He was a respected member of his community and had done nothing wrong. Once they had clamped shackles around his ankles, Wu left quietly, knowing too well that the runners could make things worse for him if he resisted. All of the trouble he had had with the Lis over Chen Yuqing’s daughter suggested that sooner or later they would end up before the magistrate. The inevitable had begun. Wu only hoped that he would be able to spare his friend Chen Yuqing exposure to scandal.

Wu Guangyi vehemently denied the Lis’ accusation. Where they had cast Wu as a predatory villain, he claimed to be Miss Chen’s savior, explaining, “Li Mao and his son planned to sell Miss Chen to serve as concubine for a family surnamed Jia, currently living in Niu Family Village.”35 Wu testified that the Jia family who wished to purchase the young woman as a concubine had agreed to pay Li Guozhen 400 strings of dongqian cash. Chen Yuqing was heartbroken and wanted to arrange a better marriage for his daughter. Wu reminded the magistrate: “Because Chen Yuqing was from an educated family and was himself a degree holder, it was particularly painful to see his daughter meet this fate. Chen Yuqing felt he would lose face.” To rescue his friend’s daughter, Wu approached Li Mao and volunteered to pay the 400 strings of cash himself. Wu Guangyi informed the yamen interrogators that Li Guozhen then willingly offered Chen and Wu the signed marriage severance document. Wu Guangyi told yamen clerks that his elderly mother had also urged him to take advantage of the situation. He hastily hired a matchmaker (his uncle, An Guorui) and summoned witnesses before handing Li Guozhen the money. Wu Guangyi emphasized his conscientious efforts to enact the rituals appropriate for a legal marriage and to provide for Chen’s daughter. After such care and expenditure, Wu was livid. The clerk recorded Wu sput40

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tering and repeating himself: “Then he goes and claims I had kidnapped him. . . . And, then in the second month, the Li father and son again accused me of detaining people (baliu renkou).” The bureaucratic phrase baliu renkou suggests that either the recording scribe or Wu himself adjusted his deposition to match similar language in the legal statutes. During their second confrontation, the Lis forced Wu Guangyi to shell out still more money. He explained, “In the presence of two witnesses, I gave Li Mao and his son [an additional] 550 strings of cash. I gave this money freely in exchange for a written guarantee that they would no longer harass me with these false accusations.” Wu Guangyi miscalculated in setting store by these witnesses, who turned out to be members of the Lis’ extended family network. But he began to realize a pattern in how Li Mao and Li Guozhen operated. Their recurring misfortunes had become predictable. When they ran out of cash, Li Guozhen and his father returned to extort more, demanding that Wu Guangyi renew his “antiharassment papers.” Wu implored the magistrate to put an end to the harassment and frivolous litigation instigated by Li Mao and Li Guozhen and submitted the “antiharassment promise” along with his request.36 In addition to reiterating Li Guozhen’s poverty, this document contained the first reference to Miss Chen’s baby girl. The document stipulated that this infant, who was still nursing, was to remain with her mother and join Wu Guangyi’s household. Wu must have felt he had been more than generous. Li Guozhen’s other claims further infuriated Wu Guangyi. During questioning, Wu Guangyi also denied that Li Guozhen had ever been his student. Such a claim was preposterous. Wu Guangyi was insulted to be accused of “disregarding the decorum between teacher and student.” Not only was Guozhen never his student—Wu was himself not even a teacher! Wu Guangyi himself could read and write, but he hardly considered himself a scholar, deferring to his friend Chen Yuqing, who had at least made modest progress in the civil ser vice examination system. Still, if Wu had been tutoring Li Guozhen, surely Li Guozhen would have learned to write. And Li Guozhen was illiterate. The contradictory details in these depositions left Magistrate Ding rubbing his temples, confounded. In his own testimony, Li Guozhen rattled off the names of classmates with whom he claimed to have studied under Wu’s tutelage. All these young men lived in neighboring villages and shared the surnames Li, Wu, or An. Whether actual or invented, the repetition of surnames suggests 41

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tight relationships between clans in these villages. When runners later attempted to round up the former classmates and summon them to the yamen, not a single one could be found. No one would willingly verify that Li had studied with Wu Guangyi. Another villager, You Linggui, who both Wu Guangyi and his mother had claimed helped to arrange Wu’s marriage to Miss Chen, both denied having ever served as a matchmaker and disavowed any knowledge of Li Guozhen’s educational history. Of all the various neighbors who supposedly served as mediators, witnesses, or matchmakers, You Linggui was the only witness officers from the local yamen ever managed to depose. Given that no one else would even respond to the yamen headquarters’ summons, it is not surprising that You Linggui refused to provide substantive evidence. Magistrate Ding questioned Li Guozhen several more times. The record does not show whether the magistrate employed any of the various methods of torture available to local officials in search of the truth. He may not have; this was not a murder investigation. All the same, with or without the ankle press, repeated trips to the yamen for questioning cannot have been comfortable. Several months after the investigation began Li Guozhen modified his story. His new testimony included more information about the relationship between the Li household and Wu Guangyi. Li Guozhen explained that his father often purchased things and gave them to Wu Guangyi and that Wu had shown his gratitude by not demanding tuition. North China’s villages relied upon different kinds of local leaders. Some came from established landed households, some held official position, still others drew power from influence through regional markets running local stores and conveying information throughout the area.37 Depositions indicate that the Lis were integrated with village networks, and Li Mao’s ability to “get things” helped establish local social capital. The Li family was better connected than they first appeared. Li Guozhen also told the yamen clerk that he had resorted to working in the restaurant of a guesthouse, which often prevented him from returning home. Li reported, “Wu Guangyi already had a wife of his own, and still he approached my father-in-law Chen Yuqing. Together they plotted to forcibly take my wife away for one year to be a concubine, and not allow her to return home to me. When I finally returned, I sought Wu Guangyi out to beg him for an explanation. He made me drink alcohol until I was very drunk. Because I owed him about one hundred strings 42

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of cash, he then forced me to make a print of my hand and foot. He drafted a marriage severance document. I cannot even write for myself. My father-in-law, Chen Yuqing, also insisted that I give him 200 strings of cash, and there was nothing more to be said. At the time I didn’t have that kind of money.” Li Guozhen’s confession of illiteracy contradicted his claim to have been Wu’s student, but it reasserted that he had been forced to press his hand and foot to the severance document. Manipulation, deception, and physical force played a part in cases of wife selling and wife stealing to varying degrees. Women did not always oppose these arrangements, and as Sommer has shown, sometimes they initiated them. An 1882 report from Fuzhou’s Daily Press echoed Li Guozhen’s earlier story: There was a curious case of wife selling here the other day. An iron nail-smith took a fancy to the wife of a man near the East Gate. The woman also had a fancy for the smith. . . . The piece of femininity was valued at 130 dollars, on the payment of which she was to be given body and soul to the nail-smith. Only the husband wanted to stipulate that he was not to receive the money in a lump sum. He wished to receive it in installments. The deed of sale was to be drawn, but not signed until he had received all of the money. “Why, that might last ’til doomsday,” interposed the passionate nail-beating lover. But the husband was inexorable. There was, therefore, they concluded, no help for it but to get the [husband] drunk, and, daubing his hand and feet with ink, stamp them on the paper. There was then no need even to pay the money. So the lovers were happy as happy could be.38

Whether in treaty port press or in missionary outposts, such anecdotes served to titillate, intrigue, and justify foreign philanthropic efforts. This Western observer described how a hand and foot print could be obtained by force. This style of signature on wife-sale documents was intended to prevent subsequent forgery allegations, and more carefully signed contracts bore the imprint of a cupped hand, with the husband’s name written in the un-inked center of the handprint, symbolizing the husband’s willingness to part with his wife.39 Li Guozhen’s hands had not been cupped, but instead had been pressed flat and hard against the paper. Li Guozhen strove to present his case as that of a naive young husband at the mercy of two older, more influential and experienced gentlemen. 43

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Like Wu Guangyi, Li Guozhen alluded to earlier confrontations between their households, and suggested that Magistrate Ding’s predecessor had been paid to take Wu Guangyi’s side: “In the midst of the second month of the year I contacted the previous magistrate, a Magistrate Wu, with a petition about this situation—but Wu Guangyi paid him off to settle things. It was arranged that An Guorui would be the mediator, and I would be paid 550 strings of cash. In fact, I never actually received this money, nor did I ever meet An Guorui. Moreover, I certainly never planned to sell Miss Chen to anyone of the surname Jia from Niu Family Village as a concubine.”

The Father Chen Yuqing had set his copy of the marriage severance agreement aside, knowing that sooner or later he would need to produce the papers. He had kept the agreement safe for almost a year. Chen had not been present when the document was written and signed, but he trusted Wu Guangyi implicitly. The Lis had not treated his daughter well and he now regretted having arranged the marriage. When the runners came to escort him to the yamen, Chen Yuqing asked them to wait while he retrieved the contract from a safe box.

Magistrate Ding must have hoped that the testimony of Miss Chen’s father, Chen Yuqing, would help make sense of these contradictory accounts. Chen’s allegiance was clear from the outset. He immediately offered to clarify matters and refute the accusations against Wu Guangyi. Chen described his own role to the yamen: “I originally betrothed my daughter to Li Mao’s son Li Guozhen as a wife, not knowing that between the two of them, father and son had no conscience. My daughter, for the duration of the time that she was a wife in their home, did not do anything wrong. Rather, because they were poor, Li Guozhen and his father in the 9th month of Tongzhi 10 (October / November 1871) cruelly planned to sell my daughter to a family surnamed Jia in Niu Family Village to be a concubine. This caused me great anxiety, and it was difficult to see my beloved daughter in this situation. I went then to meet with Li Guozhen to talk about this, and he told me of their poverty. Given this situation I was willing to bring my daughter home to raise myself. [But] the Li father and son wanted money. I told them that I was willing to pay up the 400 44

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strings of cash, and they promised to return my daughter. The father Li Mao was more than willing. They even gave me a marriage severance document with a hand and foot print.” In such times, raising 400 strings of cash would not have been easy. Chen could come up with the money only by borrowing against his one concrete asset. And so, Chen explained: “I arranged to transfer my daughter by marrying her into an esteemed and honorable family as a wife. I hired You Linggui and Wu Shoutai to be matchmakers and they matched my daughter with Wu Guangyi.” He omitted the detail that the arrangement with the Jia family had been a three-year lease, but in all other respects he confirmed Wu Guangyi’s earlier deposition. The yamen clerk recorded Chen Yuqing’s age as forty-four. Miss Chen was described as “young and vulnerable” but the case files do not state her age. She was old enough to bear a child during her first year of marriage. Twenty- one-year- old Li Guozhen was likely her senior only by several years, whereas Wu Guangyi, at forty, was closer in age to her father. Chen Yuqing had been a regular visitor at the Wu household, and it was logical that when Chen’s daughter’s first marriage proved inopportune he considered a match with his friend. Li Guozhen claimed that Wu Guangyi already had a wife. If true, then from a legal standpoint Miss Chen would have joined Wu as a concubine. (The Qing code forbade taking more than one wife, although it permitted a man as many concubines as he could afford.) Wife or not, Wu had no children, and a young woman of proven fertility like Chen Yuqing’s daughter was attractive. Although a concubine’s status was lower than a wife’s, from Chen Yuqing’s perspective Wu Guangyi now presented a more desirable match than Li Guozhen. Friendships between a father and his daughter’s potential husband appear in a number of Qing cases. Camaraderie between men of similar ages not only indicates a trend in terms of the age difference between husband and wife, but also hints at the entrenched paternalistic nature of marriage. Such age discrepancies were common in second marriages in which the daughter’s role was to be that of a concubine, and perhaps intended to bear a male heir where a first wife had failed. Friendship between a father and a future mate was not in all cases a bad thing for a daughter; it might keep the older husband accountable, offering the young woman protection in her new home. Hoping to finally exonerate both himself and his friend, Chen continued, “The fact is that there was no business of forcible detention. Then, 45

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early the following year, Li Guozhen came up with the dishonorable idea of bringing this ‘forced detention’ lawsuit against Wu Guangyi. The previous magistrate, Magistrate Wu, investigated the situation incompletely.”40 The two sides of this dispute, the Lis on one and Chen and Wu on the other, were equally dissatisfied with Ding’s predecessor’s handling of the case. Chen Yuqing also stated that Wu Guangyi’s uncle An Guorui had acted as matchmaker, and that Li had demanded Wu pay an additional 550 strings of cash. In exchange, Li Guozhen handed Wu a signed document promising never to harass him further about this matter. Chen also suggested that Magistrate Ding verify these arrangements by questioning An Guorui. (The yamen never managed to locate An.) Chen wanted the magistrate to understand that the Lis’ extortion was part of an ongoing pattern: The Lis’ allegations of kidnapping and forced detention were a frivolous lawsuit intended to intimidate Wu Guangyi and Chen Yuqing into paying more money. … … … … … … … … …

What do details gleaned from these contradictory depositions reveal? Both Chen Yuqing and Wu Guangyi could read. To the yamen they brought not only their literacy, but written documents to substantiate their claims: Wu Guangyi turned in the antiharassment guarantee, and Chen Yuqing presented the marriage severance document and the accompanying hand and footprint. The power of these informally created contracts was surprisingly strong. The documents not only could be marshaled as evidence to support the men’s oral depositions, but they also confirmed the quantities of money exchanged, the specific sequence of events, and the presence of townspeople and mediators as witnesses. The word of two literate community figures made Li Guozhen’s accusations harder to accept. Even though these were not official documents, for the magistrate it might have been easier to trust their authenticity than to prove Wu and Chen had forged them. Their prominence in this case contributes to our understanding of why people continued to draft contracts for illicit trafficking and labor arrangements: even an illegal agreement could serve as important evidence. Similar agreements brokered on the margins of legality appear in the judicial record throughout the Qing and the Republican period. 46

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Literacy became legal capital. If Li Guozhen is to be believed, he felt its power from the moment Wu Guangyi wrote out the divorce severance document and forced Li to make his mark. Wu Guangyi, however, emphasized his partial literacy to bolster his own credibility. He “could not have been Li’s teacher because as a young man I was never that interested in books.” Not surprisingly, Li Guozhen justified the creation of the “antiharassment” document differently. He elaborated on his earlier testimony, adding that his young wife had been working in the Wu household as a seamstress while Li Guozhen was away from home in the kitchen of a guesthouse: both Li and his wife worked as hired laborers, gugong, and it was Wu Guangyi who had tried to take advantage of them rather than the other way around. Li restated that his former teacher had betrayed his trust. He testified to the yamen court: “I sought him out so that I could pay a ransom for my wife, but Wu Guangyi being greedy and persistent, was unwilling to trade. He invited a man named Li Mingyuan to act as intermediary. Li Mingyuan then instructed us to write out a contract instructing Wu to give me 600 strings of cash so I could take another wife. Thereafter, I went repeatedly to look for Wu Guangyi to ask him for the promised money. But he never gave it to me.”41 Ordinary people used contracts and deployed pseudolegal documents in innovative ways. They esteemed the written word, but they also saw how it could be manipulated. The first document created in this case, a divorce contract, or lishu, was an effective way to terminate a marriage. Men used lishu to explain separation from unsatisfactory or unfaithful wives. According to the Qing code, a man could legally supply a variety of reasons for divorcing his wife and returning her to her natal family. Infertility, or failure to produce a male heir, ranked first among these reasons. A husband could also send a disagreeable wife home if she proved argumentative or even simply too loquacious.42 While theoretically the legal code demanded that a man have cause to terminate a marriage, in practice much was left to a husband’s discretion. Only very limited conditions could prevent a man from divorcing his wife. A man could not divorce his wife if she were an orphan and therefore had no home to which to return, if she had correctly mourned his parents for three years, or if the couple had endured poverty together and their family had become wealthy as a result of their cooperation. Even if the man’s justifications for divorcing his wife 47

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were of tenuous legality, lishu were unremarkable documents and local courts often honored them. The second document, with its protection against harassment, however, was more peculiar and suggested the ingenuity possible in local legal debacles. This document promised a safeguard against slander. What it amounted to, however, was a kind of blackmail. So long as Wu Guangyi continued to pay, then the Lis would not expose him in court. By obtaining a signed receipt from Li Guozhen restating his reasons for terminating his marriage and transferring Li’s former wife to Wu Guangyi, Wu hoped he had inoculated himself against litigation. The preservation of Li Guozhen’s “eternal antislander and falseaccusation guarantee” in triplicate in the yamen’s records attests to both the thorough care of the clerks and the power of the written word.43 Written contracts were a way of ensuring community enforcement, and an array of neighbors and relatives signed this guarantee. In addition to Li Guozhen and Wu Guangyi’s names, the document also bore the signature marks of witnesses Wang Liangan, Li Hong, An Guorui, Li Mingyuan, Li Haifeng, and a draftsperson named Lu Quwen. Kinship ties forged not only by blood and marriage but also through shared schooling held fast between one village and the next. The yamen’s depositions allow us to reconstruct a geographic picture of the community, because each text listed the residence of the person giving the deposition, including how far he or she lived from the Baodi County seat and relevant cardinal directions. (Wu Family Village, 45 li from town; Niu Family Village 50 li from town; Xing Family Village, 35 li from town.) These distances were far enough to make returning home an effort, but not so great as to provide an insurmountable obstacle to those who wished to make themselves a nuisance. Local power and influence in Baodi’s villages did not derive solely from the written word. Traditional sources of cultural capital—like Chen Yuqing’s examination success or Wu Guangyi’s modest literacy—might be counterbalanced by physical force. And in the farming villages of Baodi, the only people authorized to use force were officers dispatched by the yamen.

The Widow Widow Wu An was worried: “Of the three unfilial acts, the worst is to leave no descendants.” She never tired of repeating Mencius’s warning to her 48

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forty-four-year-old only son, Wu Guangyi. At seventy-four years old, with no sign of grandchildren, she felt entitled to be anxious about her family’s posterity. The Chen woman was a promising young thing, and as the Li household seemed unable to support the young seamstress, the widow had foreseen no problem with arranging a second marriage for her son. She had not anticipated that Li Guozhen and his father would cause their family so much trouble. After her son was brought in for questioning, the widow panicked. She commissioned a petition of her own.

Wu Guangyi’s mother brought forward new accusations that further complicated things for the county magistrate. She did not deliver her petition personally, but instead dispatched her younger brother, An Guoqing, to travel from Wu Family Village to the Baodi county seat. In her petition, the widow accused members of the Baodi County yamen staff of helping Li Guozhen and Li Mao to extort money. For a newly arrived magistrate, this was a troubling accusation. When the yamen clerks questioned the widow, they learned that she had encouraged her son to seek a wife. Moreover, she confided that when she noticed the deplorable condition of the Li family’s fields, she had suggested her son take advantage of the situation and pursue Chen Yuqing’s daughter. By and large, her claims confirmed Wu Guangyi and Chen Yuqing’s depositions. The real motive for the widow’s petition, however, was to clarify that the mastermind behind the extortion scheme was neither Li Guozhen nor even his father. Instead, a yamen runner Li Shirong and his grandfather, Li Mingyuan, were to blame. The widow accused Li Shirong and Li Mingyuan of goading their young cousin Guozhen into bringing outrageous accusations against Wu Guangyi. Not only had the yamen runners instigated this most recent frivolous litigation, but they had also pressured Li Guozhen and Li Mao to pester Wu Guangyi for money in the past. The widow claimed that they had already brought one frivolous lawsuit against her son, and that the pair moved from village to village to cover their tracks and to confuse the village baojia headman. The Li family’s previous frivolous lawsuit had been brought in the name of a local baojia head from the local township (xiang). But the baojia head was “actually a good man” the widow explained, and the Li conspirators had simply borrowed his name to besmirch her son. 49

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The involvement of yamen toughs in extortion fits the typical profile of local governance during the late Qing. Provincial magistrates deputized county functionaries to assemble tax registers. From their local position, these county clerks and functionaries gained ample access to information about arable and taxable land, population fluctuations, and the impact of natural disasters. In reality, their role as gatherers of information for the state also situated them perfectly to manipulate records, levy surcharges, and demand customary fees. Subordinates like yamen clerks could dominate local administration simply because state bureaucratic penetration was so limited. Furthermore, because the position of these local functionaries was unofficial, they drew no salary directly from the yamen. Although they operated as brokers for the state, they did not necessarily act in its interest or in the interest of their local community. Remuneration came to these local yamen agents mostly by their wits, and as a result, some level of corruption was inevitable, in even the most efficiently run magistrate’s yamen.44 The widow claimed that the two runners changed their names and represented themselves as mediators to urge Wu Guangyi to purchase the antiharassment guarantee from Li Guozhen. Less than a year after this elaborate ruse, Li Shirong returned to the Wu household in his official capacity as a yamen runner, and dragged both Wu Guangyi and Miss Chen off to the yamen in shackles. The widow was terrified that yamen interrogators might injure her son. She petitioned Magistrate Ding to fully investigate the complete history of the charges brought against Wu Guangyi. “After they came for my son and his wife and took them away in shackles, I imposed upon my younger brother An Guoqing to go into town and look into the situation. I rely upon my only son for everything, for whether I live or die. If Li Shirong has led my son away and harmed him in any way, then without my son I will have no road ahead. Because I have been very ill, I have asked my younger brother to bring this case for me.” Li Guozhen and Li Mao had been harassing her son for a long time, and she implored Magistrate Ding to punish everyone concerned. The widow’s charges against the two yamen runners were dismissed. When yet another yamen runner went out to round up the various witnesses mentioned in each of the key participants’ testimony, he found that they were ill, out of town, or missing.45 If the Li clan had indeed been blackmailing Wu Guangyi, the other villagers were evidently not eager to incriminate them. 50

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The documents of this case contradict each other. In his notes Magistrate Ding remarked that something seemed “devious and contrived” about both the antiharassment and the marriage severance documents presented by Wu and Chen. The marriage severance document’s description of Chen’s daughter running away to her natal home, and then returning to the Lis, raised his skepticism. For a young mother nursing a child less than a year old, surreptitious flight would have been difficult, though not impossible. But it was the back-and-forth that really bothered him. Magistrate Ding wrote that he could not understand why Chen Yuqing would have sent his daughter back to Li Guozhen, only to have to pay to retrieve her. Perhaps the frustrated father felt that by running away from her husband his daughter had violated traditional propriety. Custom held Qing women subject to “three obediences” (sancong): A woman should obey her father until marriage, her husband after that, and, should she outlive her husband, her son thereafter. The tangled set of relationships, competing desires, and instructions facing Chen’s daughter would have puzzled even the ideal Confucian wife. No wonder exhaustion and an unspecified illness struck her even before the ink was dry on the yamen clerk’s final deposition.

A Daughter from an Honorable Household As she lay on the kang watching her sleeping child’s chest rise and fall, Chen Yuqing’s daughter retraced the past year. How many times had she crossed the little rivers that ran between the Xing, Wu, and Niu Villages? Those treacherous streams had turned her first husband’s fields to marshland. When sewing for Wu Guangyi and his mother, she had wondered: What am I to this new man? His wife, his concubine, or his slave? Will he find me in the night, or surprise me at my needlework? And then that horrible woman who had come from Niu Village to look her over, pinching her cheeks and breasts. She was relieved to be back in her father’s house, for now. The child stirred, small hands seeking. She leaned in closer, untied her blouse, pressed her face on the warm forehead, and allowed the child to suck.

All the men in this case portrayed Chen Yuqing’s daughter as a victim and a commodity, a vulnerable young woman with no say in her eventual fate. The Baodi archive contains no record of a deposition from Miss Chen. 51

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From the magistrate’s papers it is impossible to discern whether Chen Yuqing’s daughter chose silence or whether that silence was imposed upon her. When the runners brought her, shackled, to the yamen, did she decline to testify? Did she speak with her father, and did he advise her to remain quiet? Or did Magistrate Ding decide that perhaps the young woman and her infant child had endured enough? At the edges of Chen’s daughter’s silences, however, we see how people harnessed her position for their own divergent agendas. Her case demonstrates not only various claims on a woman, but also claims that neighbors and relatives asserted with regard to one another. Miss Chen embodied hopes for the future. The parents emphasized Chen Yuqing’s daughter’s fertility in their testimony. Li Mao noted that Miss Chen was vulnerable because she was nursing her child, and Widow Wu An explained that her son desired Miss Chen because he had no children. The older generation’s preoccupation with the reproductive capacity of their children emphasizes their dependence upon the filial reciprocity essential to Chinese family structure. The young mother, while fixed at the bottom of a hierarchical status system, possessed a highly mutable identity. As events unfolded, Miss Chen occupied a variety of social statuses and roles. She was a daughter, a young bride, a wife, a daughter-in-law, a mother, a hired laborer, a seamstress, a concubine, a mistress, and perhaps a wife again. Male actors in this complex drama also could be understood to have had a variety of titles. Li Guozhen, for example, was certainly simultaneously a son and husband. He claimed to have been a student and a restaurant worker, and he may well have also been a confidence trickster. Yet not one of these roles altered his status vis-à-vis the law. This is where a young woman’s legal position was uniquely malleable. Her entitlements as a wife differed radically from her limited protections as a concubine, and her status under the law could have been interpreted quite differently were she considered a “hired female laborer” (nü gugong) as compared with a “daughter from a good household” (liang jia zhi nü). Similar cases from both the late Qing and the Republican periods do include depositions from trafficked women. As we will see, by the Republican period it became common even for young children to offer evidence in court. Throughout the Qing, however, male relatives typically reported to the magistrate on behalf of women, and women were not supposed to 52

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initiate court cases. While this spared some women the second humiliation of public exposure and the taint of litigation, it also deprived many of the opportunity to present their own version of events. Widow Wu An’s description of the yamen runner’s visit to their home, and Wu Guangyi and Miss Chen having been shackled, suggest that if the young woman had been willing to provide evidence at yamen headquarters, she certainly had the opportunity during this brief detention. Fear or humiliation may have kept her from doing so, or she may have been advised by her father to keep quiet. Perhaps she was spared questioning. Another woman whose presence is even more absent from the records, appearing only as a ghost in Li Guozhen’s testimony, is the mysterious first wife of Wu Guangyi. We know of her possible existence from Li’s assertion “Wu had a wife of his own,” but Wu Guangyi himself never mentions her. Neither does the Widow Wu An, who may have resented her first daughter-in-law enough to deny her existence. The first Mrs. Wu may have died, or maybe Wu Guangyi had divorced her for failing to produce children. Maybe she ran away. If Wu Guangyi’s wife remained, then Chen Yuqing’s daughter could legally join his household only as a concubine. We can be relatively certain that the first wife did not divorce Wu Guangyi herself. Throughout the Qing, the law allowed women to divorce their husbands only under very limited circumstances. The law required that a woman who wanted to demonstrate a husband’s abuse present her crippled body to the court, dangling broken limbs or missing teeth, fingers, or toes. Unveiling mere bruises only proved that the couple had argued but all too often left the magistrate speculating about what the woman had done to provoke her husband. To end a marriage a husband had long since abandoned, the wife had to prove that she had not heard from her husband in three years. The Qing code set the evidentiary bar too high to make divorce feasible for most women. As a result, women who wished to return to their natal families rarely brought their husbands to court. They were much more likely simply to run away. Some young women ran home to their natal families to lodge a complaint with more influential relatives, other bolder wives took lovers and hoped their husbands would sensibly acquiesce—perhaps dissolving the marriage without formally prosecuting for adultery, or convincing their husbands to tolerate a polyandrous relationship.46 53

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The law permitted women to divorce husbands who tried to sell them or to force them to commit adultery. But demonstrating this could be difficult, and charges needed to be brought by a male representative. A woman who dared to pursue this avenue risked her reputation. The case of Chen Yuqing’s daughter was exceptional: Parties on all sides of the dispute produced written documentation of the sales, as well as notes of extortion and letters of blackmail. None of the men involved ever questioned this young woman’s virtue. If she was the kind of virtuous daughter who could have successfully negotiated her own divorce, we will never know. Chen Yuqing’s daughter vanishes even within her own story: She is an object of desire, concern, pride, frustration. Might she later have had power to shape her own daughter’s fate? Did she remarry, and in the new household did she later gain as much stature as Widow Wu, the woman who was very nearly her mother-in-law? Did she continue to work as a seamstress? Or as a wet nurse? Or did the constraints of Xing Family Village limit her prospects, forcing her to end her days as part of her father’s estate? Did either Miss Chen or her father ever consider selling her baby girl? In the end Magistrate Ding ruled that Li Guozhen’s young wife should be returned to her father. The magistrate stated that although Li Guozhen was guilty of the crime of maixiu maixiu, “buying and selling a marriage severance,” he would still not recommend punishment. After all, each of the men involved in the case could have been accused of that same crime. Initially Li Guozhen had accused Wu Guangyi of “forcibly detaining” his wife. The phrase appears in local court documents but is not named in the legal code. Accordingly, any punishment would have had to be determined by analogy to another crime. Had the conflict between Wu Guangyi and the Lis taken a deadly turn, the magistrate would have been obligated to forward the case to the central government for review. Fortunately for all concerned, circumstances permitted the magistrate to handle things locally. Magistrate Ding’s conservative final recommendation obscures our view of whose version of these events he believed. One of the hardest tasks a local magistrate could face was to clear his yamen of corruption. This could be a considerable chore; a magistrate charged with keeping the peace in a busy center like Baodi employed hundreds of runners and clerks.47 Ding was not prepared to condemn Li Guozhen and his father, nor was he willing to rule against Wu Guangyi. (He did, however, dismiss as unfounded Wu’s mother’s suit against the yamen runner Li Shirong for 54

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cruelly shackling Wu Guangyi. As far as he was concerned, the yamen was entitled to shackle and question whomever it pleased.) … … … … … … … … …

Magistrate Ding could not decide: Had a father and son threatened to besmirch their neighbor’s good name by drawing him into a contentious legal snarl? Were they grifters? Or were Li Guozhen and his father themselves the unfortunate victims of two literate men who had reclaimed Chen’s daughter at their own convenience and without paying the Lis their due? The case is a tangle of relationships and debts supposedly paid or unpaid. By exchanging money, or even by promising to exchange money, various men asserted dif ferent kinds of access to Miss Chen. Rather than involve the yamen runners in further goose chases, District Magistrate Ding decided to return things to where they were before it all began. Wu Guangyi, Li Guozhen, and Chen Yuqing all signed documents of compromise (juganjie), agreeing to desist in their current litigation and promising to settle any future conflict through appropriate legal channels.48 The clause asserting finality in these documents echoed language used to resolve contentious land sales.49 The magistrate explicitly admonished the men against independently drafting informal documents. Chen Yuqing’s daughter changed hands for cash as many as four times: once in marriage to Li Guozhen, once as a concubine to the Jia family, once back to her own father, and once to Wu Guangyi. Miss Chen’s earnings as a seamstress went to Wu Guangyi, who may have paid the Lis something for having the use of her skills. Later Wu Guangyi purchased a certificate that he believed would guarantee him the right, supposedly, to live rumor-free with his new wife, her nursing infant, and hopefully in the future, an heir. The young bride’s version of these transactions can only be imagined. Instead, her story is subsumed in local rivalries, matters of reputation and honor, issues of greed, poverty, shame, swindling, and possibly regret. The Baodi magistrate’s decision not to apply the letter of the law was not atypical. His reasons for dismissing any criminal charges may have been twofold. First, families in his district were indeed barely sustaining themselves on poor harvests. Second, to administer his district, the new magistrate, like all magistrates, relied heavily upon experienced local staff. Whether two of his yamen runners instigated or aggravated the conflict 55

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over Chen Yuqing’s daughter was not an issue over which Magistrate Ding was prepared to risk their loyalty. The magistrate’s judicial archives for Baodi County in the capital prefecture of Shuntian contain many disputes involving the exchange of women and children for cash. The survival of local records in the Number One Historical Archive is fortunate because national judicial records allow us to see the ways in which the central government’s Board of Punishments responded to severe cases and extensive appeals. Only at the local level do we see when the local magistrate weighed and then dismissed subtle, intensely local, and often intimate concerns. National records by their very nature emphasize contentions rather than compromises. Magistrates were subject to scrutiny from above and below, creating a double standard. Capital cases were submitted to the central government for review, and in these magistrates could ill afford to be flexible in their prosecution of the code. In minor cases, however, magistrates favored stability and a compassionate but firm resolution over the literal application of prescribed punishments. The case of Chen Yuqing’s daughter, who found herself shunted from one family to another and between villages, illuminates the complicated social context in which late Qing transactions took place, illustrating the interplay between family relationships, opportunistic local social networks, and economic necessity. It shows the complicated balance sheet of favors, currency, labor, promises, and human ser vices evident throughout local records. Qing judicial officials accommodated and tolerated customary practices of questionable legality, including the dubious practice of buying and selling the termination of a marriage.50 Despite the intricacy of this particular case, brokering a young woman from one household into another was itself not unusual. Nor was it unusual for a woman’s value to fluctuate depending upon the services she might provide to her new husband, lover, or manager. Among the retaliatory accusations brought by Li Guozhen and his father was the allegation that Wu Guangyi intended only to lease Miss Chen as a wife for a limited term. Similarly, Wu Guangyi and Chen Yuqing claimed that the Lis planned to sell the young woman “for a period of three years.” Temporally limited arrangements of this kind, although illegal, were not uncommon. Conditional sale, or dian, originally described unregistered redeemable land sales. Borrowing this language, the term for leasing a wife was dianqi. Whether the property to be leased consisted of a woman or a piece of land, sellers justified dian contracts in terms of poverty. Through dian the buyer borrowed a married 56

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woman from her husband for a fixed period, usually for three years. Any children born during this time joined the family of the dian-holder and were given his surname. In exchange, the legal husband received a pre-agreed payment. In the new household such women ranked below wives or concubines. Substatutes promulgated in 1740, 1772, and 1802 to prosecute this practice attest to the Qing government’s concern about eliminating these short-term arrangements.51 Accused dian-holders typically justified their arrangement by explaining their desperation for male offspring. They deployed the language of tradition to justify their disregard for the law. As with other forms of servitude, dianqi continued long after the promulgation of new Republican laws forbidding these kinds of surrogacy arrangements.52

Red and White Contracts and Hired Labor Although Miss Chen changed hands for money several times, at no point was she sold as a slave, nor did the various documents generated during the case include either a white contract or a formal red contract, the written agreements typically used to document a sale. But such documents were also part of the landscape in which wives, concubines, children, and laborers were exchanged. An official “red contract” system existed for selling both people and land. The Qing code provided for the legal sale of people with either red contracts (registered and stamped with the local magistrate’s red seal) or white contracts drafted privately. A master’s rights over a registered red-contract slave were greater than over a white-contract slave. Once people who had been sold with white contracts had been with their masters for three years, however, the law treated them as red-contract slaves. If within three years of ser vice a master provided a man purchased under a white contract with a wife, then he would be considered a redcontract slave. When conflict arose, the Qing code treated white-contract slaves as hired laborers (gugong) and red-contract slaves as slaves (nuli). Thus, if a master killed a slave who had joined his household via a white contract, he would receive a heavier punishment than if he had killed an officially registered slave.53 Chen Yuqing’s daughter had worked for Wu Guangyi as a hired seamstress. Unlike slaves, under Qing law hired laborers were not considered mean (jian), and outside their masters’ homes they were treated as commoners. Within a master’s household, however, a hired laborer’s rights were more circumscribed. The code understood hired laborers to be members of the household for the duration of their engagement. If they committed a crime against their superiors in the 57

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household hierarchy, they would be punished severely, in accordance with the substatutes for sentencing slaves. Echoing concerns expressed at the end of the nineteenth century by legal commentator Xue Yunsheng, Jing Junjian has emphasized that although according to Qing law ordinary people (in this case, shumin) were not supposed to buy people as slaves, in practice there were so many variegated statuses among both the common people and the scholarly, official, merchant, and military classes that the prohibition against shumin owning slaves was easily circumvented. Many ordinary people knew how to claim exceptional statuses in order to legally purchase slaves.54 Contracts drafted to document the sale of a person could legitimate a sale in several ways. First, they could assert that the relationship into which the person was being sold was a legal one; cash was often exchanged for brides, to engage hired laborers, and to purchase or trade concubines. Second, contracts could show that persons being sold were indeed saleable—that they were either already slaves, the descendants of slaves, mean persons, adulterous wives, or willingly selling themselves. If the most common defense given by those who sold their family members was that they had “no other choice,” then the most common defense for those who purchased people was that they “did not know the circumstances” (buzhiqing). In late Qing cases, this phrase implied that the buyer believed his purchase to be valid. Third, a contract might emphasize the buyer’s need or right to purchase this person (expressions of need often accompanied the purchase of boys adopted as heirs). Finally, a contract might verify that the seller, as well as the women or children being sold, were truly impoverished. An early Qing law required the use of contracts and intermediaries for both the sale of people and the sale of land, and prescribed heavy punishment—thirty blows of heavy bamboo—for parties who failed to draw up a contract within three days of executing a sale. The same regulations provided only three days for parties on either side of an arrangement to express second thoughts.55 Regulations on the books also stipulated that matchmakers obtain licenses from their local yamen, but such regulations had little influence in China’s villages. Most matchmakers and intermediaries operated independently, and the turbulence of the nineteenth century gave them even greater flexibility.

The two documents drafted during the course of the dispute over Chen Yuqing’s daughter—the marriage severance agreement and the antiharass58

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ment document—resembled “white contracts” in that they were unstamped agreements signed without the oversight of a magistrate. Unlike true white contracts endorsed by substatutes in the Qing code, however, they gained no legitimacy over time. They cemented illicit arrangements (marriage severance, blackmail, extortion), yet in the complicated dispute over Chen Yuqing’s daughter the potency of documents was undeniable. Contracts documenting the sale of people could be deployed either as evidence of obligation or as evidence of wrongdoing. What hopes did the signatories entertain when they had them drafted, and how were their contracts actually used? Even contracts documenting illegal activity could be useful when negotiating with the yamen, but not all contracts were drafted with official intervention in mind.56 Most marriage contracts never involved the local magistrate. Instead, unregistered contracts relied upon social pressure for enforcement. Anthropologist Myron Cohen has suggested that the more contentious the subject of a contract, the greater the number of signatures the contract required.57 By this measure, most contracts documenting the sale of people were less contentious than land disputes. The exceptional seven signatures on Wu Guangyi’s antiharassment guarantee anticipated future disagreements. More typical was a rudimentary white contract from Zhili bearing only four signatures. This contract reads: “Because he is unable to meet daily needs, Jiang Daicheng agrees to sell his young daughter to Zhang Zhiliang as a female slave (nünu).” It confirms a price for the girl of 8,000 in standard copper cash. The text does not describe what duties Jiang’s daughter will be expected to fulfill, but outlines her new master’s obligations, and the limitations of those obligations. Her new owner agreed to provide her with a husband, but should the girl become ill, her fate was to be left up to heaven. Like most contracts, it concludes, “Because we fear misunderstanding later, we preserve our agreement with these written words.” Two members of the Zhang clan were mobilized to ensure that the sale was binding. The contract bears the names of the scribe, Zhang Zhifu (the brother of the buyer), and another relative, Zhang Sen.58 The identities of witnesses and intermediaries on a contract partially reveal the relative power of the people involved. Contracts for the sale or indenture of a person were structured similarly to white contracts for the sale of land. These documents included not only the details of who was selling and who was buying, but also why. Witnesses not only verified the transaction, but also attested to the circumstances that precipitated and 59

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necessitated the sale. Indeed, the idea that a woman could be leased through dian grew out of dian land sale practices, and as with land, a sale undertaken in desperate times could be reversed. Land contracts rarely documented whether witnesses or intermediaries received a fee; Myron Cohen believes it is likely that they did not, and that they had other social and familial motives for serving as witnesses. In transactions involving the sale or transfer of a person it was also unusual for the contract itself to disclose whether witnesses or the scribe had been paid.59 But judicial records tell a dif ferent story. When questioned by the local magistrate or by police, witnesses, matchmakers, and scribes often conceded that they had received gratitude money. (None of the mediators or witnesses in the Chen Yuqing case admitted receiving payment, however.) By the early Republican period, witness payments ranged from 2 to 5 yuan, or the rough equivalent of the wage for a month of domestic ser vice. Matchmakers and other intermediaries could receive much more. Court testimony also makes it clear that even when contracts named a sum, additional deposits were sometimes exchanged to ensure that all parties would follow through.

The Qing code forbade men from selling their wives outright, but in other significant ways the law treated women as the property of their fathers or husbands. The organization of statutes in the Qing code offers a metaphor for the ambiguous kin-as-property position of women in their husband’s homes. The code addressed the punishment for kidnapping women in the section where it discussed theft.60 Punishments for kidnappers and adulterers considered the relative status of the men involved, echoing statutes on theft and property law. Ambiguity in women’s status shaped how men with knowledge of the law exercised claims upon their wives. Common people may have possessed only a passing awareness of these legal codes, but they had a general sense of what local officials would tolerate. They learned from neighbors and friends how local magistrates had handled recent marital disputes. Scholars like to make distinctions between law and practice. For the inhabitants of the past, these distinctions did not matter. Law lived in the local yamen. Despite the written law, communities granted household decision makers considerable latitude. Husbands who could suggest that they were justified in selling their wives might do so with social impunity. It was an acceptable recourse. Because local magistrates frequently pardoned the 60

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sale of people during times of desperation, the head of a family could consider the women and children household emergency assets. Contemporary descriptions of the sale of people tended not to chastise struggling families. Instead, public censure was reserved for intermediaries and traffickers who shamelessly sought to capitalize on the misfortune of others. We will meet some of these unsavory characters later.

The men and women who sold Chen Yuqing’s daughter claimed that each sale was necessary, a question of survival. Throughout this period, many others also explained that they sold their wives and children because they “had no other choice but to sell them” (feimai buke). But what did survival mean to Chen Yuqing and his fellow Baodi County villagers? Scratch the surface of their carefully crafted explanations and a broader definition of survival emerges, one full of multifaceted motivations and goals that transcended mere subsistence. They testified about scarcity, preserving their livelihoods, tending their fields, and the future fate of a young woman, but they also spoke of guarding reputations and protecting professional interests, of reproduction, of disobedience, of threats to the family order, and of a profound desire to preserve their lineages for posterity. The case of Chen Yuqing’s daughter did not resolve the problem of poverty for Li Guozhen and his father. Nor did it solve the problem of infertility or childlessness for Wu Guangyi and his widowed mother. For us, however, her case illustrates the diverse roles into which a young woman from an honorable family could be brokered. In a society wracked by a significant gender imbalance, women became “valuable,” but they were rarely able to capitalize on that value. Instead they became prey for entrepreneurial brokers. For Chen Yuqing’s daughter, these brokers were neighbors, kinsmen, and even men who worked for the county yamen. The tangled transactions of this case cast aspersions on the village’s only examination candidate, his best friend, a household of sorghum farmers, and members of the magistrate’s own staff. By the time the magistrate issued his final judgment, everyone involved had lost money. Even so, their attempts to transform a fertile young woman into cash reveal her potential—if unrealized—value as portable property. Transactions between villagers, however, were only one aspect of the broader landscape of trafficking in that period.

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The Flow of Trafficking in the Late Qing

Forty-five miles to the southwest, the unseasonable rains that had drowned Li Guozhen’s fields spilled over the banks of the Yongding River. Zhou Fu, the newly appointed water commissioner, stood looking out over a widening breach in the dike protecting the Zhili floodplain. In 1871 he was thirty-five years old, an ambitious official with a growing family to support, and ten years into what would be a long and successful career. This was his first opportunity to preside over a major water crisis. It was one of countless disasters, large and small, that set traffickers in motion throughout North China. Water would flow through Zhou Fu’s life, carving out a course as he moved from one assignment to the next, eventually buoying him to the position of governor general of Liangjiang in 1904. During those years Zhou wrote a voluminous history of two millennia of hydraulic engineering efforts, but he was more than a technocrat.1 He described the related problems of taxation, analyzing the complex interaction between the state and ordinary people, including corvée laborers, farmers, and flood refugees. This text, along with the hundreds of administrative proposals Zhou Fu drafted over the course of his career, reveals an official striving to responsibly shoulder the demands of his official position, urgent state reforms, pressures imposed by the international community, and the interests of a needy population. He reflected upon the losses suffered by tens of thousands of families throughout Zhili in a later poem, asking: “What can be done, now that autumn has finally arrived / and all things release 62

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mournful cries? / Families are sundered, encountering many hardships. / On dangerous paths, they grieve over distant journeys. / How will they bear the winds and snows? / Those with white hair hurry to find homeward roads.”2 Zhou Fu nurtured populations driven from their homes by flooding, witnessed households compelled to leave their fields by drought, and saw parents coerced or coaxed by traffickers into parting with their children. Firsthand observation of the precariousness of rural life shaped his later views on what China could and should accomplish with regard to human trafficking. Thirty-five years after the Yongding River dike collapse, the governor general of Liangjiang would call for the abolition of the sale of people. Around Zhou Fu men strained beneath the weight of bundles of sorghum stalks that had been rushed to the site of the breach from drier land five counties away. Ordinarily, Qing officials hesitated to draft local farmers into a major repair at the end of the harvest. This year’s deluge, however, left little to salvage, and men were eager for the relief payments in imported grain that accompanied each day’s work. Zhou Fu’s advocacy of grain-for-work programming built upon ideas he had first encountered while reading policy suggestions made nearly 800 years earlier by the Song dynasty minister Wang Anshi. Some river workers received compensation in proportion to how much earth they moved, others were brought in by agents. Zhou Fu would later report that he had personally joined in the effort, staying night and day on the dikes, stepping in beside the dike laborers without fear of mud, wind, or cold.3 Trafficking was threaded through the fabric of late Qing society, as both a solution and a persistent problem. Brokered labor was everywhere, from the men at work beside Zhou Fu on the riverbank to coolies who boarded ships bound for foreign lands. Families engaged in diverse transactions to move people from one household to another. From the wealthy to the poor, the practice of buying and selling people played a crucial role in structuring family. The broad social acceptance of the activities of matchmakers and other intermediaries created space that kidnappers could exploit. Conditions in the late nineteenth century expanded such opportunities. Zhou Fu later watched his patron, Li Hongzhang, struggle to quell rumors of foreign kidnappings and negotiate an end to the overseas trade in Chinese laborers. Hearsay, rumor, and intrigue shaped popular understandings of trafficking, while the sales most families encountered firsthand relied upon word of mouth on a more intimate scale. Erosion of 63

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traditional lines of state authority in the late Qing combined with the final deterioration of the traditional Manchu banner armies to exacerbate frustration among both officials and ordinary people with the state’s inability to address the problem of trafficking. As the Qing bureaucracy confronted these challenges, the intractable sale of people became one measure of the state’s ability to govern.

Zhou Fu had found himself in charge of Zhili’s flooded landscape when his mentor and patron, Li Hongzhang, had assumed the position of governor general. Li’s appointment had been made in haste, as delicate matters in the foreign community required a man with his diplomatic tact: The Qing court asked Li Hongzhang to restore peace to Tianjin in the aftermath of a massacre inspired by kidnapping hysteria. This task would enlarge Li’s perspective on trafficking, but negotiating with angry foreigners was just one of numerous complicated tasks associated with governing Zhili. Li Hongzhang deputized Zhou Fu to manage the mounting water crisis around the capital. In Zhou, Li had identified a man he could trust. Zhou Fu was a native of Anhui, Li Hongzhang’s home province. Li Hongzhang had often placed his trust in Anhui men, and he had relied upon Zhou in the aftermath of the Taiping Rebellion. Indeed, the Anhui network remained a durable source of political power and influence for both Li and Zhou. The governor general’s faith in Zhou Fu’s abilities proved justified. A year after the floods, Li Hongzhang wrote a memorial endorsing Zhou Fu’s innovative enlargement of chain pumps’ capacity to reroute irrigation and floodwater. He also praised Zhou Fu’s management of refugees and flood workers.4 Throughout his career, Zhou Fu tackled infrastructure projects in some of China’s most economically and politically critical regions. He proved himself on the job. Unlike Li Hongzhang, who obtained the highest jinshi degree in the Qing imperial exams, Zhou Fu had not been propelled to official heights by academic success. Instead, family circumstances and civil war forced Zhou to climb through the Qing military bureaucracy by earning the patronage of more established men. Zhou Fu did have significant academic training, though. He had dedicated most of his childhood to preparing for the imperial exams. As a boy he had studied with an eccentric recluse named Ni. When Zhou outgrew lessons with Tutor Ni, his family pooled savings with six or seven other 64

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ambitious households to engage a private tutor for their boys. Zhou Fu distinguished himself as the fastest learner in the group and soon needed to find a third mentor, this time in a village even farther away. His proud father, Zhou Guangde, was fond of saying Zhou Fu had so much natural intelligence that to employ just an ordinary teacher would be a waste. Zhou Fu’s family was struggling to make their rugged land profitable and could not spare their donkey cart, and so when Zhou Fu was thirteen he walked 70 li (approximately 20 miles) through the hills to visit his new teacher. The journey took two days each way, and Zhou Fu later recalled aching legs along with his lessons. He also fondly remembered his teacher’s family setting aside food and dry clothes for him when it rained, even though they too were not wealthy.5 The young Zhou Fu was a source of optimism for his family. From a young age he understood that even landed families like his own had to make sacrifices. Zhou’s parents’ dreams for him were especially poignant because they had given away his younger brother, Zhou Xin, to an uncle. A local intermediary probably helped to outline the terms of their agreement, though we cannot know what these were. In making decisions like this, parents weighed family priorities: provisions, finances, inheritance, ritual propriety, posterity, and ensuring the tending of ancestral shrines. The Zhou family held seventeen or eighteen plots in the wooded hills nearby.6 In addition to encouraging Zhou Fu’s studies, Zhou Guangde urged his remaining son to master all the other aspects of running their 162 mu (27 acre) estate. He wanted his son to develop his physical strength as well as his mind, and he urged Zhou Fu to draw strength from “eating bitterness in the face of more bitterness.”7 The younger boy’s adoption signaled the beginning of a genteel decline for the family, and Zhou Fu’s help at home became invaluable. He hiked into the hills to cut firewood and to pick tea. He transplanted rice seedlings and oversaw the harvest. He found that “the labor strengthened muscles, fostered hard work and thrift.” During the offseason, Zhou Fu devoted himself to his studies.8 In February 1853, when Zhou Fu was seventeen years old, he traveled from the Zhou family land in Jiande County to the fortified provincial capital of Anqing to take the civil ser vice exams.9 That winter the examination room buzzed with rumors that Taiping rebels had launched a flotilla on the Yangzi bound for Anqing. Zhou and his classmates had only just begun to tackle the policy questions when Taiping troops stormed the 65

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city walls. The examination candidates abandoned their essays and ran from the hall. By September  28 the Taiping had captured Zhou Fu’s hometown. A year later, despite the Taiping occupation, Zhou returned to Jiande. He was eighteen years old, and amid the chaos he contracted a stable marriage with a local woman, surnamed Wu, two years his senior. Together the young couple moved their family into the hills. Lower gentry families like theirs hid not only from the Taiping but also from Qing troops, who could mistake them for collaborators. Zhou Fu’s family spent much of the next decade traveling up and down the seventy-mile stretch of Yangzi River between Anhui and Jiangxi. Life as a refugee forced Zhou to set aside his aspirations for an official position and to focus on keeping his family alive. They did not suffer alone. In the years of the Taiping occupation, Anqing, Jiande, and neighboring counties lost 60  percent of their population to fighting, disease, and death on the road.10 Zhou Fu’s experience in the Anqing examination hall and in the ensuing years confirms Mary Wright’s assertion that the rebellion disrupted the traditional recruitment of officials throughout much of the country.11 Eight years later, Zhou Fu’s luck would change, bringing him a second chance at an official career. Zeng Guofan’s Xiang Army finally reclaimed Anqing in 1861. The retaking of Anqing marked a turning point in the civil war; Taiping control over Anhui Province began to slip. That summer Zhou Fu visited Anqing to sell tea his family had grown in the mountains and to earn what living he could from his skills as an accountant and scribe. As Zhou Fu later recounted to friends, he set up shop at the Mawangpo produce market as a fortune-teller.12 His trade included helping local matchmakers by casting auspicious predictions for affianced couples and gave him another perspective on family transactions. Life as a refugee meant that he was willing to do whatever he could to support his family. On the streets of Anqing, Zhou heard that the new militia armies were recruiting capable men. In the market an illiterate servant from Li Hongzhang’s kitchen approached Zhou Fu for help balancing household accounts. According to one contemporary, a humble shopping list written in Zhou Fu’s elegant hand caught the general’s eye.13 Li Hongzhang was preparing to merge his Huai army troops with Zeng Guofan’s Xiang Army, readying his men for a battle to defend Shanghai. Li Hongzhang believed that the fate of the treaty port would determine the fate of the Qing state. 66

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As a busy general planning a major counterinsurgency military campaign, Li Hongzhang sought someone reliable to help with his expanding administrative burden. Initially drawn first by Zhou’s meticulous calligraphy, he was later impressed by Zhou’s skill as a wordsmith. The general required a reliable, discreet deputy, someone with sound judgment who might be willing to make necessary but unpopular decisions. Zhou turned out to be just the right man.

Three years later, in April 1864, Li Hongzhang appointed Zhou Fu magistrate for Jinling (modern Nanjing) and charged him with supervising the reconstruction of the city’s fortifications. He also left in Zhou Fu’s custody a group of 1,000 prisoners of war from the defeated Taiping. Upon inspecting and considering the fate of these prisoners, Zhou Fu deemed most of them more worthy of pity than of vengeance. They had surrendered willingly. So, after having thirty “unpardonable” leaders executed, Zhou Fu arranged for the remaining prisoners to be given one dou of grain each and ordered them to disband.14 Taiping reforms had been especially thoroughgoing in Zhou’s home county. Local leaders had sworn allegiance to the Taiping cause just to survive. Later, while many cried for rebel blood, Zhou showed judgment and compassion. Although he was a man of firm principle, his leniency reflected the knowledge that morality was not always as black and white as brushstrokes on a page. Zhou’s neighbors were among those recruited by the Taiping; the men before him could have been his own family. Zhou Fu’s judicious treatment of the prisoners won him Li Hongzhang’s respect, and he became the general’s confidant and advisor. Li would also come to appreciate the solutions Zhou proposed for hydraulic management, river control, naval recruitment and organization, reclaiming land, and creative taxation. Zhou Fu represented a new kind of official, one who had worked his way up the empire’s bureaucratic hierarchy, but outside the traditional examination system ladder. Li Hongzhang kept him occupied with practical crises. Zhou’s temperament suited the tense times of China’s late nineteenth century. When confronted with administrative problems, he summoned what he had learned both from books and from farming his family’s hilly Anhui land. From childhood he had known the physical demands of planting and harvesting. He was familiar with rationing and savvy about ways to capitalize on ambiguous 67

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patterns of land ownership and tea planting on unclaimed terrain. During the Taiping occupation, he and his family had learned to hide in the hills. Knowing who could be trusted was a matter of life or death, and Zhou Fu became a good judge of character. Wartime and the land taught him strength and pragmatism. Over nearly twenty-five years of administering the North China floodplain, Zhou Fu became frustrated with short-term solutions for river management. The Yongding River alone overflowed its course on sixteen separate occasions. Although many of these riverbeds have since dried up, in Zhou’s day the Hai River network was composed of five larger tributaries and more than 300 rivulets, fanning out across the fields between Beijing, Tianjin, and the sea. Zhou Fu commissioned measurements and dredging plans, assessing problems with the path of these capricious waterways. Much of the flooding resulted from dikes and silt forcing the river to flow against its natural course, and he petitioned for more stone to repair the Yongding’s northern bank.15 Later, when serving as water commissioner for Shandong, Zhou Fu confronted flooding along the Yellow River and advocated more permanent measures—deeper channels and dikes of stone and mortar rather than stalks and mud. He later ensured his clan’s future fortune by encouraging his third son, Zhou Xuexi, to invest in China’s first concrete company. That son later rose to prominence as finance minister under Yuan Shikai.

The first decade of Zhou Fu’s career followed the contours of Li Hongzhang’s promotions. Wherever and whenever Li required extra logistical help, he asked Zhou to step in. After Zhou Fu’s term as magistrate for Jinling, Li Hongzhang nominated Zhou Fu to mediate international maritime trade disputes in Shanghai, and when Li became governor general of Zhili in 1870, he recruited Zhou Fu to coordinate the shipment of grain around blocked sections of the Yellow River and Grand Canal for the governor general of Liangjiang, Ma Xinyi. Together Li Hongzhang and Ma Xinyi provided Zhou Fu with compelling examples for how to manage tension with foreigners.16 Ma Xinyi’s decisive prosecution of kidnappers averted antiforeign riots in the Yangzi delta. These two dealt more flexibly and creatively with foreign demands than had Li Hongzhang’s mentor and predecessor as governor general in Zhili, General Zeng Guofan. For his skepticism about European incursions Zeng earned 68

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the epithet “head of the antiforeign party” among the more paranoid Westerners.17 The following year Zhou Fu followed Li Hongzhang to Tianjin. There, in addition to continuing to manage the Yongding River breach, he helped establish the Beiyang Navy and Naval Academy. Zhou Fu found himself working for the two generals most responsible for transforming Qing China’s military structure. Together Li Hongzhang and Zeng Guofan had raised local armies to defeat the Taiping rebels. They had drawn their troops from militias known as tuanlian. Rural communities formed these protectionist militias when they felt the Qing state would not defend their interests. They were not wrong: Qing banner troops proved ill equipped to stop the Taiping’s northward advance. In many places local men banded together to protect themselves as much from the predations of the state as from rebels or bandits. Rather than view local militarism as a potential threat, however, Li and Zeng chose to harness the militias. They rallied local braves to their side through personal allegiances and native-place ties, and by offering decent financial compensation for military ser vice. It was Li and Zeng’s growing armies, initially composed of local men fighting to defend their own fields, farms, and villages, that saved the dynasty. Certainly the success enjoyed by the regional armies raised by gentry officials like Zeng and Li contrasted starkly with the lackadaisical and undisciplined performance of many Qing banner troops, which had once provided the traditional source of the Manchu’s military strength. Dissolute young Manchu men hung about their barracks, some hatching schemes for petty crime and trafficking, further sullying the banners’ reputation. Hunan (Xiang) and Anhui (Huai) armies provided the structure for salaried regional armies that would displace ineffectual banner units. They also offered military men a route to power and influence outside the Confucian civil ser vice examinations. Zhou Fu owed his later success in no small part to these massive structural changes in the Qing military and bureaucratic system. The late Qing countryside in which Zhou Fu lived as a young man was a militant place: the period’s massive rebellions forced community leaders, whether literati, merchant, or cultivator, to become de facto military men. After suppressing the Taiping and Nian rebellions, officials like Zeng and Li sought to restore order, reestablishing schools emphasizing Confucian texts as well as practical knowledge.18 Despite efforts to shore up tradition, however, the emergence of alternative military structures fundamentally 69

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High waters before the Cathedral Notre Dame des Victoires in 1871. O. D. Rasmussen, Tientsin: An Illustrated History (The Tientsin Press, 1925).

altered the landscape of power for late Qing elites. These structures shaped Zhou Fu’s ascent through the late Qing bureaucratic system. Zhou Fu’s experience as a war refugee in Anhui and Jiangxi helped him to empathize with farmers throughout the countryside. During the rebellion, he had scrambled to make ends meet as a tea merchant. He was familiar with life on the road and the pressures of the refugee marketplace. He understood that in hard times some families resorted to selling their children and that kidnappers exploited these vulnerable conditions. But the problems of families like Chen Yuqing and his daughter that had irked Magistrate Ding in Baodi County were not yet on his mind. As Zhou Fu directed his laborers on the banks of the Yongding River, if he thought about these kinds of issues at all, it would have been in relation to recent events in Tianjin.

The Cathedral In Tianjin, the same rain that had burst the Yongding River dikes also raised the waters of the Hai River as it ran its course through the heart of the city’s international concessions. Water lapped at the steps of the recently repaired Cathedral Notre Dame des Victoires.19 But these waves could not cleanse the stones of blood shed the year before. 70

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The cathedral stood on contested ground at a bend in the river. French Catholics had torn down a Chinese temple to clear the way to erect their church, and if the desecration of temple land was not offense enough, according to local fengshui beliefs the height of the spire would bring famine to the area.20 Around the Chinese countryside it was widely whispered that foreigners commissioned kidnappers to gather eyes and hearts to concoct medicines and for alchemical religious sorcery.21 Inflammatory handbills and placards portrayed Jesus as a wild boar (a Chinese pun yesu / yezhu) and depicted missionaries molesting women and children. Anti- Christian propaganda and suspicions had circulated across the empire throughout the 1860s. Fear of outsiders was nothing new, though anti- Christian agitation had become more vehement. The Qing government had just suppressed a quasi- Christian civil war, and officials hesitated to discourage propaganda that might dissuade potential converts. These materials, however, did not prevent Chinese households from availing themselves of charitable ser vices offered by missionaries both in the countryside and in treaty ports. In Tianjin, where there was ample cause for anger with the foreign presence, sick and injured people still came to the mission hospital for treatment and hundreds of families had sent their children to the Catholic school run by the Sisters of Mercy. On the morning of June  21, 1870, however, half of the 450 Chinese children enrolled at the mission school did not come to class. Still more parents came early in the day to take their children home, leaving only about 200 on the school grounds near the cathedral. Foreign residents of Tianjin would write that these parents possessed foreknowledge of a premeditated massacre.22 The foreigners were quick to see conspiracy. Some even believed that “the day was fixed, the hour, the signal, the points of attack.”23 More likely, fear of the nuns had motivated the Chinese parents to pull their children out of school. Over the past two weeks the Tianjin yamen had arrested, tried, and summarily executed a handful of kidnappers. It was widely believed that these kidnappers had been in league with the Sisters of Mercy. Just three days earlier, yet another kidnapper named Wang San had confessed to selling children to a janitor who worked for the mission. Parents had still further reasons to be nervous. A recent cholera epidemic had killed dozens of children at the orphanage. Children and adults who entered the Catholic hospital seemed never to return home.24 The practice of waiting to deliver the sacrament of baptism until just before death 71

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led some Chinese observers to blame the baptismal water itself. Groups of Chinese came to the cemetery to inspect burial practices. They did not like what they found; nuns at the mission hospital had made the ill-advised decision to bury two or three orphans in a single coffin. For its part, the foreign community was alarmed to see “crowds of Chinese” who “daily raided the little cemetery and forcibly disinterred their bodies.” With news of kidnapping and bodily mutilation flying from house to house, the Catholic cemetery became a place of evil. Church attendance plummeted; the sisters were “shunned wherever they went.”25 Shops along the streets nearest the cathedral shuttered their doors. In nearby villages, farming families peered through their windows or crouched in their fields or hid behind sheds when missionaries passed through town.26 In this tinderbox the best efforts of Qing imperial commissioner Chonghou to placate the people of Tianjin mattered little. A Chinese-led investigation into the kidnappings had absolved the Sisters of Mercy of wrongdoing, and the commissioner was drafting a proclamation to reassure the Chinese populace when French consul Henri-Victor Fontanier stormed into the yamen. Someone had hurled bricks at a group of Chinese converts, and an altercation had broken out near the Notre Dame des Victoires. Fontanier accused Chinese officials of maligning the Catholic mission. A crowd had trailed Fontanier from the cathedral. From outside the yamen, they heard a shot. In his anger, the consul had fired at the Qing commissioner and missed. (Faced with the truculent Frenchman, Chonghou demonstrated remarkable presence of mind and charity: He tried to dissuade Fontanier from confronting the throng, and offered an escort for protection. Fontanier refused.) When an incensed Fontanier came face to face with Tianjin’s district magistrate on the street struggling to subdue the crowd, the consul again drew his gun. His next shot missed the magistrate but killed one of his attendants, and the throng rose from frustrated confusion to fury. They fell upon Fontanier and killed him. For the righteous citizens of Tianjin, Fontanier’s shots confirmed the kidnapping rumors. For petrified foreigners in the city, the tolling of the drum tower bell seemed to call the enraged masses to action.27 (It rang instead to summon a brigade from the yamen to suppress the mob, but how were Tianjin’s foreign inhabitants to know? No brigade could stop the vengeful anger coursing through the crowds.) Their rampage continued: The crowd set fire to the cathedral, plundered the orphanage, mission buildings, and the French Consulate, and then torched those buildings as 72

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well. “Every French man or woman who could be laid hands on was killed.”28 In just three hours the mob slaughtered ten of the sisters, a French priest, two consular officials, and seven foreign bystanders. All but two of the foreigners killed were French Catholics, but four Protestant churches also burned to the ground. The crowd also murdered thirty to forty Chinese converts who worked at the various Catholic missionary establishments. The nuns were singled out for special violence. An account from British Methodist and Astor hotelier John Innocent relates that “the sisters were stripped naked, and one after the other, in full sight of the remainder, their bodies were ripped open, their eyes gouged out and their breasts cut off. As each one was mutilated the body was hoisted up on long spears and thrown into the burning chapel.”29 Four charred corpses were found in the smoking remains of the mission, while the rest were later pulled from the indifferent waters of the Hai River. About thirty of the Chinese children who had remained at school that day sought refuge in the vault of the cathedral.30 This sacred hiding place offered no protection; they were later found huddled together, dead from smoke inhalation. Not surprisingly, the surviving children were removed from the care of the Sisters. As part of his investigation into the origins of the massacre, Zeng Guofan questioned these school children: “I have repeatedly examined all the boys and girls, one hundred and fifty in number . . . and they unanimously maintain that they had been instructed only in religious matters. They had been brought to the church spontaneously, by their parents, to be educated there, and that they had by no means been dragged there forcibly by kidnappers.”31 It is difficult to imagine the imposing governor general of Zhili, in his embroidered silk robes, bending down to personally interview these children. Was he gruff? tender? empathetic? Did he smile behind his delicately trimmed mustache and beard to reassure them? Were their parents present? Perhaps some more kindly or approachable deputy assisted with the questioning. Both Chonghou and Zeng knew from the inconsistent results of their earlier interrogation of Wang San and the other kidnappers (interrogations that certainly involved coercion and the application of some form of torture) that the kidnappers concocted at least some of their story. The schoolchildren would have heard frightening rumors as well. What ideas must have flown through the children’s minds after witnessing such brutality? Surely after such an ordeal they were glad to return to their 73

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parents, but they may also have mourned the deaths of their teachers. It would have been impossible for these boys and girls to comprehend that China and France were on the brink of war, and that their answers might have any bearing at all on the outcome of the delicate negotiations Zeng Guofan would have to undertake. Nor could they or their parents have conceived that the massacre would mark the twilight of Zeng Guofan’s career. To the south, similar rumors had also circulated around Jinling (modern Nanjing), but Liangjiang governor general Ma Xinyi tolerated none of it. He had local Chinese summarily executed as kidnappers before they had time to offer testimony alleging the involvement of foreigners. In this way he was able to prevent dangerous speculation from gaining traction among the people of Jinling. Ma Xinyi’s decisive action gave a clear message: Chinese kidnappers were to blame, not the foreigners whom they maligned. Ma’s efforts to appease the foreigners may have cost him his life.32 A patriotic assassin’s knife found him shortly after the massacre in Tianjin. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, Chinese officials faced increased pressure from foreigners. Throughout the middle of the century, internal rebellions had proved the more immediate threat to the dynasty. With these threats largely resolved by the time of Tongzhi’s reign, the dynasty could now devote time and official manpower to handling their intransigent Western guests. At the time of the First Opium War the Qing had been slow to perceive the foreigners as a threat,33 but losing a second conflict made foreign encroachment more evident. The 1858 Treaty of Tianjin won foreign missionaries permission to proselytize freely throughout the Chinese interior. By the 1870s, after several decades of gunboat diplomacy, the foreign presence had become more than a nuisance. The expansion of foreign investment in China’s treaty port cities and foreign missionaries throughout the country presented challenges for traditional Confucian officials like Zeng Guofan. In Tianjin, after the massacre at the cathedral, the demand for revenge from the now influential foreign community affronted Chinese sovereignty. French diplomats insisted that the culprits behind the massacre be tried and punished. Local Tianjiners urged Zeng Guofan not to cave to foreign pressure. Zeng struggled to appease the foreigners. He reported that the rumored gouging of eyes and hearts was “mere invention” and any attempt to substantiate the baseless accusations was like “trying to catch the passing breeze or to seize a shadow.”34 74

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It was perhaps an impossible situation. In the end, Tianjin forces rounded up and publicly beheaded eighteen alleged participants in the mob. Zeng bemoaned the difficulty of identifying the true perpetrators of the murder and mutilations, conceding that some of those executed were likely mere scapegoats. Twenty-five more were sentenced to hard labor, and the prefectural and district magistrates were cashiered and sent to Heilongjiang.35 Still, foreigners found the “reparation for this terrible deed tardy and halting” and expressed doubts about whether the true villains had been apprehended. One foreign account of the executions remarked that the scapegoats “went to the block with much bravado, clad in silken robes provided by subscription, and accompanied by an admiring populace.”36 Rumors spread that the martyrs were volunteers from Tianjin’s jails, members of the city’s notorious hunhunr gangster community grasping for a final heroic gesture. In addition to these blood sacrifices, the Qing government also paid France 250,000 taels, but the French deemed the sum and the Qing’s attitude grudging and inadequate. Zeng Guofan’s actions satisfied neither vengeful foreigners nor incensed Tianjiners. As a concession to both frustrated groups, the Tongzhi court relieved Zeng Guofan of his position as governor general of Zhili, summoning Li Hongzhang in his place. (Zeng Guofan’s dignity was assuaged by a new assignment to the lucrative position of governor general of Liangjiang. The court charged Zeng with investigating the recent assassination of Ma Xinyi. It was widely speculated that this parallel appointment, while not a demotion in rank, was a reprimand. That being said, the opportunity to investigate the murder of his Liangjiang predecessor also gave Zeng a chance to clear his own name.) On August 17, 1870, as Zeng Guofan and his entourage took leave of the city, an advance guard of 500 men arrived to welcome Li Hongzhang.37 Thus it was in the wake of a massacre set in motion by kidnapping rumors that Li Hongzhang and Zhou Fu arrived in Tianjin.

The allegations that launched the Tianjin Massacre seemed preposterous to the city’s foreign community—the missionaries were there to do good, and it was a testament to the Chinaman’s own venal ignorance if he could not believe in such altruism—but the rumors were fed by real fears all the same. In her study of infanticide, Michelle King asserts, “The Tianjin Massacre represents one of the first historical moments when the problem 75

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of unwanted Chinese children was articulated as one requiring a particular Chinese solution.”38 In the late nineteenth century, for the first time, officials and elite commentators drew a distinction between legitimate Chinese charities and potentially nefarious foreign ones. Other indigenous ways of handling unwanted children had long existed, however. Selling them was one such method. Thus, by offering cash for children, the Sisters of Mercy slid into an existing framework. As King has shown, Christian missionaries, whether the Sisters of Mercy or members of the Holy Childhood Association (Oeuvre de la Sainte-Enfance), justified their mission in China by pointing out the perceived avarice of Chinese parents who were willing to part with their children.39 The American minister to China, Frederick Low, however, interpreted the payments offered by the Tianjin Sisters of Mercy differently. The Chinese were “adverse to placing children in their charge” and so a payment was proffered to guarantee that no one would return to claim the children.40 While the payments scandalized Low, they fit with familiar Chinese practices. Sellers often negotiated a final termination payment at the end of a contractual exchange, whether selling a parcel of land or a person. (Confirmation could be appended to a contract in the form of a tiaotie, and resembled the antiharassment guarantee seen earlier.) To foreclose later demands, traditional Chinese contracts for people typically included a sentence asserting the finality of the sale. For Chinese who delivered children to the orphanage, that the Sisters of Mercy required payment would not have caused alarm. The Tianjin Massacre has been examined from different angles to serve a variety of legitimate analytical ends. Paul Cohen looks at the massacre as the epitome of violent anti- Christian agitation during the nineteenth century.41 For Mary Wright, the massacre pronounced doomsday for the Confucian Tongzhi restoration and cooperation between Qing officials and the West.42 Michelle King shows how “allegations of infanticide lay at the heart of both Chinese and Western reactions” to the violence.43 Barend Ter Haar identifies the anti- Christian violence as part of a larger pattern of scapegoating outsiders.44 For our purposes, one of the most curious aspects of the massacre is how it informed the mentality of both kidnappers and those who would later enforce and inspire antitrafficking legislation. Publicity around the anti- Christian activities in Tianjin spread throughout all levels of Chinese society. It added to the repertoire of excuses proffered by Chinese kidnappers. Some would now claim they stole 76

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children at the behest of malevolent foreigners. The 1870 incident was nearly repeated in March of 1886, when Tianjin police again arrested several kidnappers who had attempted to implicate French missionaries. Old suspicions resurged, and the local English-language press hinted broadly at renewed danger.45 Apprehensions around kidnapping once again raced through both the foreign community and the local population. Only carefully balanced diplomacy and publicity around the kidnappers’ prosecution prevented a recurrence. Perhaps too, the devastating floods and famine had left the Chinese population sobered. The Westerners’ experience of the floods of 1871 varied. Mission workers who remained in the countryside tried to stay dry sleeping underneath their broad dining room tables and paddled in boats between buildings that stood “like little islands” on their raised foundations. In the following winter, the frozen fields treated foreign inhabitants of Tianjin to their first ice-yachting experiences.46 They strapped on their skates and hoisted their sails high, and winds blew memories of the massacre and the inclement weather into the past. But while they frolicked, officials like Zhou Fu were busy dealing with the repercussions of heavy rain, spoiled harvests, and displaced farmers.

Li Hongzhang also had to grapple with kidnapping on a global scale during the early 1870s. His responsibilities as the new governor general of Zhili included management of the waterways, military affairs, and food supply. The Qing court further entrusted Li Hongzhang with diplomatic negotiations. When a succession of tragedies aboard ships transporting forcibly enlisted Chinese laborers drew national and international attention to the coolie trade, it fell to Li Hongzhang to facilitate treaties restricting the exportation and exploitation of Chinese labor. It stretches beyond the mission of this book to argue whether or not the conditions of Chinese laborers in any of the diverse foreign labor contexts to which they were dispatched constituted a form of slavery. Those who asserted that coolie labor was not slave labor pointed to signature marks more or less willingly obtained on contracts, Chinese migrants’ relative freedom upon arrival in some locales, and the limited terms of their indenture. Nineteenth- century proponents of Chinese labor as a morally legitimate substitute for the vacuum left by the end of the slave trade strove to cultivate the idea of the “free Chinese emigrant” despite the kidnapping and 77

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deception that were violent hallmarks of the trade.47 Chinese laborers might not have been enslaved at their destination, they might not have been purchased individually at their point of departure, but they were locked in barracoons, sold in lots to brokers in Macau, and treated as chattel below deck as they crossed the wide Pacific. At the height of the coolie trade, over a quarter of the human cargo on board ships like the Waverly, the Delores Ugarte, or the Fatchoy died en route.48 Shortly after taking up his position in Zhili, Li Hongzhang expressed concern that increasingly stringent restrictions on forced emigration from South China could drive the trade north. He was anxious to keep kidnappers at bay. Even though the predations of coolie traders had little to do with the massacre at the cathedral, in the governor general’s mind the two crises were intimately interconnected. In a memorial written from his new Tianjin office on August 21, 1870, Li reminded the Zongli Yamen of the terror that had so recently swept through his new city. He instructed the Maritime Customs office to call upon foreign consuls to block the recruitment of Chinese workers at ports along the coast and especially on the docks at Tianjin. To set a strong precedent, Li Hongzhang ordered the summary execution of two kidnappers who had sold young boys to foreign sailors. In his memorial he recommended revising the law to authorize severe, expeditious punishment for such cases.49 The rapid execution of kidnappers by provincial officials like Ma Xinyi, Li Hongzhang, and even Chonghou and Zeng Guofan (though each of these men was accused in turn of not acting decisively) fit with an overall trend toward increased summary execution in the post-Taiping era. When high-level Qing officials uncovered kidnappers who might threaten local order, they moved swiftly to make an example of the criminals. Even this did not guarantee stability; some kidnappers commanded sympathy in their communities. In South China, justice was further compromised when local brokers known as crimps collaborated with foreigners to procure laborers for coolie ships bound for Latin America. The prosecutions of J. H. Edwards, Nicolas Sanco Amero, Otto Wermoth, and Juan Serrano—notorious international traders—were incremental triumphs for Chinese sovereignty.50 In 1874 the American vice consul W. N. Pethick suggested to Li Hongzhang that both foreigners and Chinese should be subjected to the same strict antikidnapping measures.51 This would have been a considerable exception to the extraterritoriality privileges of the day. That Chinese officials and Western officials in China perceived and em78

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phasized a link between foreign and Chinese practices, however, foreshadowed the Chinese state’s later top-down approach to the problem of human trafficking. Ultimately, when late Qing legislators took up the question of prohibiting human trafficking within China, they would concern themselves primarily with impressing foreign powers with their efforts to abolish “slavery.” It was easy to overlook and oversimplify the widespread manifestations of a domestic trade in people. Both the Tianjin Massacre and contemporary disputes over the coolie trade served to mark kidnapping and the trade in people as a problem that involved contact with foreigners. In the popular imagination, abduction and trafficking became evils associated with urban treaty ports. Although recruiters combed the countryside for labor, it was in the treaty ports that the trade was most conspicuous. Kidnappers and coolie brokers now sometimes pleaded their innocence by blaming foreign recruiters and the combined pressures and temptations of international trade. Coolie brokers trafficked in able-bodied men, and sent those men over routes traversed by slave ships. Chinese empires had long prohibited emigration, and men who left were by definition lawbreakers, but they were also entrepreneurial adventurers with economic interests extending throughout Southeast Asia. Crimps resorted to deceit and force, not because Chinese laborers were necessarily unwilling to emigrate, but because they had to compete with long- established routes and more desirable destinations.52 For Qing officials, Chinese indenture in the West constituted an affront to Chinese sovereignty. Presiding over the demise of the coolie trade in 1874, Governor General Li Hongzhang hoped to usher in a new era of international respect for China and Chinese subjects. Qing rulers gradually came to appreciate the importance of protecting overseas subjects as one of the responsibilities of a modern state.53 The protection of emigrants became one of the central missions of the Zongli Yamen, the Qing’s recently established institution for managing foreign relations. As commodities, these able-bodied men and their labor represented the demographic opposite of the women and young children who constituted the most conspicuous portion of domestic trafficking. As much as Hong Kong and Macau were notorious points of departure for the coolie trade, southern China also sustained its own local market for domestics. In Hong Kong, Chief Justice John Smale tried to draw attention to the 10,000 to 20,000 domestic slave girls (mui tsai) who waited on elite Cantonese households. In 1879 he likened the situation of these young women to “that 79

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in the Southern States of America when slavery was dominant” and called upon Britain to intervene.54 Other British administrators defended the use of mui tsai, asserting that, as every social arrangement in China was “based on a money bargain,” eliminating the system would require dismantling the entire Chinese social structure.55 The logic of the Chinese transactional family was so pervasive that it prevented colonial interference. Wu Tingfang, the first Chinese barrister admitted to the English Bar and an acting police magistrate, weighed in on the side of distressed parents who sold their children for “honest purposes.”56 Nearly thirty years later, as commissioner for the revision of the legal code, Wu Tingfang would help draft legislation to prohibit such sales, but in the 1880s the logistical and humanitarian challenge of finding homes for sold children was, he felt, too great for the British colony to manage. Such reservations meant that the liberation of men indentured abroad became a national cause decades before the general plight of women and children trafficked at home became a source of national shame. Crises like the Tianjin Massacre and mutinies aboard coolie ships simultaneously elevated the problem to the level of high diplomacy, while for the most part international attention obscured the local social and familial issues that propelled Qing China’s most common sales.

Punishment The intimate and communal nature of transactions in people made prosecution difficult and sentencing complicated. The recent reinvigoration of antikidnapping laws—implemented in the wake of coolie crises and the Tianjin Massacre—offered little help for magistrates grappling with the intricacy of family arrangements. Moreover, local officials who encountered kidnapping did not enjoy the same level of personal impunity as their superiors. In the kinds of delicate situations that district and county magistrates typically confronted at the county yamen, summary execution was rarely an appropriate or plausible resolution. For provincial officials wishing to demonstrate their efficiency and determination, however, execution remained a significant tool. This was especially true when officials confronted destabilizing crises. In 1877, as the Qing administrators slowly began to recognize the extent and severity of the spreading famine, Zeng Guofan’s younger brother Zeng Guoquan took office as governor of Shanxi, the province most devastated by drought. He had helped Zeng Guofan raise the formidable Xiang Army in their 80

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home province of Hunan at the height of the Taiping Rebellion. The two brothers were pragmatic, and could be ruthless. They took seriously their obligation to the stability and integrity of the Qing dynasty. But after their experience with recent rebellions, they sustained little nostalgia for the ineffective Manchu trappings of the dynasty, and saw no need to rely upon a dysfunctional banner system when local forces could be mustered. Like his brother, Zeng Guoquan valued direct action. The deteriorating situation in Shanxi required a proactive official like Zeng Guoquan. Witnessing starvation on a large scale forged Zeng Guoquan into a vigorous advocate for aid. He lobbied Li Hongzhang to reassess his budget priorities and redirect money from defense to the immediate welfare of the people. The stores of both commercial suppliers and state granaries in neighboring provinces were too depleted to help. Although the epicenter of starvation was in Shanxi and its mountainous terrain, the famine swept through five northern provinces: Shanxi, Shaanxi, Henan, Shandong, and Zhili. There was grain to be had from farther away, but transporting grain to Shanxi merchants meant wheeling carts through constantly eroding mountain passes. Pack animals were as likely to be killed for meat as to starve on a road crowded with famine refugees and lined with corpses. State relief efforts were energetic but insufficient to stem the disaster.57 In this context, provincial officials exchanged information not only about the primary crisis of food supply but also about the attendant problems of crime, corruption, and human trafficking. Henan especially had seen an increase in the trade in destitute children. Upon arriving in the Shanxi capital of Taiyuan, Zeng Guoquan learned that his counterpart, the governor of neighboring Henan, had applied to the emperor for special permission to “inflict summary decapitation on any persons offending in this manner.”58 Zeng Guofan recognized that the traffic in people knew no borders and initiated investigations in Shanxi. Zeng’s deputies uncovered evidence that a man named Zhang Wan’an who had been residing in Taiyuan prefecture carried on a regular trade in young girls. He was just the sort of predator whom the Shanxi governor hoped to eliminate. Zhang Wan’an coordinated the logistics of his business with the assistance of a notorious woman surnamed Wang, but who was better known in Taiyuan as “the Wooden Tiger.” Yamen investigators learned that, at Zhang’s encouragement, Wooden Tiger Wang had burned the legs of one disobedient young girl so she would not run away. 81

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Under oath, Zhang Wan’an denied these charges. He tried to explain his presence in Taiyuan by claiming to be a retired soldier hailing from Sichuan Province. He had fought the Taiping rebels as a child soldier under a general named Chen Guorui.59 Perhaps this experience made Zhang callous toward traumatized children. Zhang Wan’an told the Shanxi magistrate he had hoped to join the local garrison and even maintained that he had climbed the ranks to brigadier-general, but when the Shanxi-based corps mobilized for Gansu Province, he chose to stay behind. Governor General Zeng Guoquan may have been particularly offended by the accused trafficker Zhang Wan’an’s audacity in claiming to have been a loyal military man. Zeng himself had fought alongside Chen Guorui against Nian rebels in Anhui and Shandong. In his memorial to the throne, Zeng insisted upon a decisive response. The governor general feared that anything less would prove a dangerous precedent. The famine offered too many opportunities for crimes of this kind, and required an attitude of zero tolerance. Zhang Wan’an should be sent back to Sichuan and, upon his arrival there, immediately decapitated by local authorities. Governor Zeng Guoquan dispatched the Wooden Tiger to her home province of Henan for incarceration. In the closing lines of his memorial to the emperor, Zeng Guoquan related that the kidnapped girl seemed to be the daughter of a man living in nearby Pingyao, and he promised to ensure that the girl returned to her family. The Shanxi governor’s personal intervention was but a tiny droplet in the dry sea of famine distress. More substantively, he persuaded Li Hongzhang to authorize several large shipments of grain from Fengtian Province. Through both official and private donations, Zeng Guoquan mobilized as much as ten million taels and one million shi of grain to be distributed throughout Shanxi.60 Not all officials were as conscientious as Zeng Guoquan. An 1880 case in Henan uncovered several entrepreneurial officials who were themselves engaged in the trade in people. Before being cashiered, these men insisted that they were “executing commissions for friends” and that the young women they traded were relatives for whom they were providing introductions and marriage matches. These men claimed that they had not profited by their actions (coyly adding, “with the exception of a modest honorarium”). They were adamantly “not in the business.” Their ringleader was still executed. The rest were removed from their positions, but they did not all meet as grisly an end as the former mercenary Zhang Wan’an. Six were sentenced to one hundred blows and a three-year banishment, while the 82

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seventh, a military man, was condemned to military servitude.61 Abusing a military position to traffic in people exacerbated the crime, yet even Qing bannermen indulged in the trade. Boys who fled their homes commended themselves into service as military squires, and both ranking banner officers and soldiers traded these young attendants among themselves.62 As we will see heading into the Republican period, military men were often in a strategically advantageous position to transport and sell people. Like all states, the Qing strove to sustain a monopoly on punishment. The law stipulated that all capital crimes be reviewed by the emperor. Death sentences fell into two categories: immediate execution or lijue; and deferred execution after review at the Autumn Assizes (Qiushen), or jianhou. The former, immediate sentence was typically reserved for those guilty of treason, whereas the latter, more common sentence precipitated a protracted review process.63 The required bureaucracy created an inevitable backlog of jianhou cases in Qing jails, but it also demonstrates the dynasty’s history of relative reluctance to carry out executions. In the midst of decades of rebellion around the empire, however, the legal and social environment changed, enabling severe sentences and extrajudicial action. This increased latitude for officials dated to an imperial edict in 1853 authorizing the summary execution of local bandits (tufei).64 The famine, too, helped create a further “state of exception.” Not only were military commanders now empowered to execute criminals on the spot, but with the increased militarization of the countryside, that power extended to most provincial officials charged with keeping the peace. The phrase officials used to describe such executions is interesting: judi zhengfa literally means to “implement the law on location.” Thus, imbedded within the phrase itself was an assumed justification for the legality and legitimacy of any extreme measure. Typically these rapid executions were subject to approval by provincial authorities but were carried out without a trial and without the painstaking centralized imperial review process. Routine death sentences required authorization from the Board of Punishment, the Court of Judicial Review (Dalisi), the Censorate (Duchayuan), and finally the emperor.65 When the official asking for the execution and the governor general were one and the same person, judicial oversight stopped there. These harsh sentences were not intended for North China’s faminestricken and desperate population. Rather, they were meant to attack predators who sought to take advantage of a state of emergency. Yet we cannot help but wonder about the father of the young girl with the burns. 83

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Did he sell her to Zhang Wan’an and Wang the Wooden Tiger? Even if he did not, in a time of scarcity, did he really want his daughter back with him to starve together in the walled Shanxi town of Pingyao? What recourse remained for a desperate father? Both popular and official understandings of the sale of people played an important, though often neglected, role in formative events in China after the Taiping Rebellion. Trafficking became a diplomatic issue, a question of sovereignty, and a measure of environmental and social disaster. Most sold people did not benefit from the intervention of august figures like Zeng Guoquan and Li Hongzhang. Both popular and official conceptions of the sale of people grew out of an accumulation of the numerous instances in which people were sold as a way to cope with routine, smallscale exigencies and opportunities, sales that either never came before the law or were merely part of any yamen’s routine caseload. Let us look now at a couple of “ordinary” cases—ordinary in that they touched neither national politics nor moved the elite tears, and ordinary in that they show how readily some people turned to trafficking. But for all that ordinariness, they were no less disruptive for the families concerned. Qing law tolerated some sales as part of an unofficial welfare mechanism. Men and women who could present evidence of hardship—this might be as concrete as an attestation / protestation of poverty written on a bill of sale or contract, or as tenuous as the word of a neighbor—clung to a reasonable (and precedented) expectation of leniency before the magistrate. Unscrupulous parents could take advantage of poverty exemptions to serve their own ends. Families usually initiated a sale as a way to remedy a household crisis. The archive, with its predilection for the contentious, transgressive, illicit, and violent, tells us most about when these sales failed to resolve that crisis, for one reason or another. As we have seen, women, whether wives or concubines, could represent a substantial investment. Family members did not always agree on how to manage their human assets.

On the Floodplain Born just a year apart, brothers Chu Fuzhong and Chu Fukui tilled adjoining plots of land in a village bearing their surname.66 Chu Family Village was located eighteen li west of the county seat on the Hai River floodplain in Shuntian Prefecture. The decade had been difficult. The 1871 rains had continued into 1872 and 1873. Floods had washed away 84

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rich nutrients, leaving the Chu brothers to coax crops from depleted soil. In a cruel climactic twist, a severe drought followed. Baking in the sun, this soil once covered in water dried and cracked. A white salty residue crystallized on the surface of the formerly fertile plain.67 The ensuing drought set in motion the Incredible Famine of 1876–1879. The famine claimed upward of thirteen million lives across North China.68 Situated in the capital prefecture, Shuntian villages did not face the dire starvation that killed so many in Shanxi and less-well-provisioned parts of Zhili and Shandong. Still, even in Shuntian the Chu brothers were having trouble making ends meet. In the spring of 1879 the younger brother, Chu Fuzhong, thirtytwo, was especially anxious. The Chu family land had been subjected to several generations of household division. Each generation of sons had inherited successively smaller tracts of land. Accordingly, like many small landholders in North China, after tending their own plots the Chu brothers also supplemented their income by working for neighbors. This past season, however, no one needed help bringing in the scant harvest. After taking stock of the family’s limited provisions, Fuzhong determined that he had better find work as a hired laborer (gugong) in another more fertile village. Chu Fuzhong left behind his wife, Mrs. Chu née Liu, and his son Dun’er (who he said was three, maybe four years old), and daughter Chun’er (age twelve), when he set forth to earn some money to buy more grain.69 Fuzhong managed to contract himself out to a family surnamed Wu who had rented banner land in Li Village. He later testified that in his absence he had entrusted his wife and young children to his older brother’s care. Returning in midsummer two years later, Fuzhong found his family gone. He went around the village asking his neighbors what had happened, but “no one there dared to tell him.” He submitted a petition to the magistrate reporting his family missing. Fuzhong finally spoke with his fifty-nineyear-old aunt, Widow Li née Chu, who bravely informed him that his older brother, Fukui, had taken the family away to sell them.70 When the widowed aunt was later brought before the magistrate, she offered a concrete explanation for why Fuzhong’s wife had followed her brother-in-law, Chu Fukui, out of the village: Fukui had convinced his brother’s wife that she needed to work. It was on this premise that Fukui lured Mrs. Chu-Liu and the two children to Liusongzhen in Xianghe. From there, he contrived further plans to sell the family. 85

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If Mrs. Chu-Liu indeed planned to work in Liusongzhen (and we only have the widow’s word that she did), she would have joined a category of woman that has been much overlooked in the study of late Qing China, but whom we often find inhabiting the archives: women who left their homes in order to make economically significant contributions to their families. As we saw with Chen Yuqing’s daughter working as a seamstress, many families could not afford to cloister their women. And yet Qing women who left their homes to work for their neighbors were not the direct forbearers of later female economic migrants. Rather than moving into a more independent and essentially more public life (as female factory workers would later do), these women traveled from one domestic space into another. The private and secluded space of an unfamiliar household in the countryside was not necessarily safer than an urban factory floor. For women like Fuzhong’s wife, these transitions were dangerous. The widowed aunt, Mrs. Li-Chu, explained that when her nephew Fuzhong left his wife and children behind, “Fuzhong naively failed to realize his younger brother, Fukui was so corrupt (xinli buliang).” Chu Fuzhong learned that his brother had conspired with a broker named Guo Er from the Xianghe market center to sell his wife in Tongzhou, and that his two children had died on the road. Upon reading Fuzhong’s accusations, the magistrate had Chu Fukui taken into custody at the yamen. Fukui then launched a series of countercharges: He claimed it had originally been Fuzhong’s idea to sell off the wife and children, and he was only acting on his brother’s behalf. He claimed that Mrs. Chu-Liu had sought out the broker Guo Er on her own. Fukui also insisted that Mrs. Chu-Liu had wanted to sell the children. Statements in the archive gathered over the course of several months of interrogation revealed an evolving story. Chu Fukui eventually confessed that he had indeed colluded with Guo Er to bring Mrs. Chu-Liu and the children to Xianghe Village. Guo Er owned a cart, which made it easier to arrange the trade in people from his home in Xianghe. They then contacted an intermediary named Zhang Tiesi, who brought Mrs. Chu-Liu and her son and daughter to Tongzhou, where Zhang Tiesi had made arrangements to sell Mrs. Chu-Liu to a widower named Zhang Da, whose family lived in the village next to the wharf at Tongzhou. Correspondence from the magistrate for Tongzhou County indicates that investigations at the village on the canal wharf uncovered no evidence of the sale of Mrs. Chu-Liu, or any significant leads as to her whereabouts. 86

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The Tongzhou magistrate questioned Zhang Da’s mother, but learned only that she knew nothing about where Chu Liu Shi had come from and that Zhang Da had not returned home for some time. Nor was the Tongzhou magistrate able to supply any information about Guo Er or Zhang Tiesi. The Tongzhou County magistrate found the lack of information frustrating (fan), and hoped that his Baodi counterpart would be able to resolve the situation. (Any charges against Zhang Da would have to be brought in Tongzhou, as local regulations required that cases be heard by the yamen responsible for the defendant.71 As Zhang Da was missing, however, there was little the Tongzhou magistrate could do other than forward “frustrating” news.) In his initial statements Chu Fukui also denied knowledge of the money exchanged. He testified that he did not know the sum of any “betrothal fees” (pinli) exchanged. This claim may have been an attempt to obfuscate or mitigate his guilt. When first discussing the fate of Chu Liu Shi, he referred to any money (about which he professed his ignorance) as betrothal money. When it came time to confess, however, his vocabulary reverted to the language of commerce; he spoke of buying and selling. After months of questioning, he conceded to the yamen clerks that Zhang Da had bought Chu Liu Shi for 150 strings of dongqian cash, which Fukui split equally with Guo Er and Zhang Tiesi.72 A female intermediary who facilitated their arrangement received an additional 10 strings. The narrative that coalesced showed Chu Liu Shi handed from one broker to the next, staying at hostels and way stations in Xianghe Village, in Xiang township, in Liusongzhang Village, and eventually arriving at the docks at Matoucun in Tongzhou. Several transport routes departed from this area. Tongzhou was situated at the northernmost point of the Grand Canal; mule carts hauled both commercial goods and tribute grain from the canal terminus into the capital. Barges also made their way to Beijing via smaller canal routes. From there it would also have been possible to sell the children southward. The children seem to have died in Tongzhou, before arrangements could be made to send them on to a prospective buyer in Shamao Hutong in the entertainment district outside Qianmen Gate in Beijing. Chu Fukui was also a father. We learn in a single line that he had a son who was seven sui and a daughter who was four sui. None of his statements to the yamen mention their mother. We could speculate that Fukui’s life had also been touched by tragedy. Perhaps his wife had died, and this made him callous to his brother’s family. Maybe she ran away because he was as 87

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unscrupulous as widowed aunt Li Chu Shi suggested. It is not impossible that Fukui genuinely believed that by finding his sister-in-law a new husband he was helping her to a better life (albeit while gaining a little profit for himself and his family). Whatever Fukui’s motivations were, once Fukui had endured a long ordeal in the yamen cell, and after Fuzhong had gathered one season’s harvest from their meager land himself, passing the winter in Chu Family Village on his own, Chu Fuzhong decided to forgive his brother. (Was he taking care of his brother’s young children at this time? Or were they instead with the widowed aunt who had so vehemently testified against Fukui?) After the spring festival of 1882, Chu Fuzhong hired a scribe to help draft a new petition to the magistrate asking that his brother be released. The petition represented a bittersweet reconciliation at best. Fuzhong reiterated his brother’s confession, describing Chu Liu Shi’s passage from one set of hands to another, and the deaths of his children. Fuzhong redistributed some of the responsibility for the children back onto his missing wife, saying that it was Chu Liu Shi who took them away. He expressed his opinion that the children may have already died at the point that Chu Liu Shi disappeared with Zhang Da. And he asked—in rhetoric tinged with desperation—that as she had already been united with another man, would it not be for the best if she stayed away? Fuzhong anticipated disgrace and shame in the village. He “no longer wished for his wife’s return,” and instead “hoped to find another honorable woman with whom to have more children.” As for his brother, Fuzhong now stated that he had renewed feelings of kinship and familial sentiment for Fukui, and asked that the magistrate set his brother free. Although a Qing magistrate could take mitigating circumstances into account, on its face wife-selling was illegal. It was illegal to sell one’s wife to her lover as well, although if such arrangements were arranged amicably, they proceeded unnoticed. If, as Chu Fukui claimed while in jail, Chu Fuzhong had been the one to suggest (or merely tacitly approved of) the idea of selling Chu Liu Shi, then Fuzhong too was guilty of a crime. By obtaining his brother’s release, and convincing the magistrate to dismiss the case, Fuzhong also cleared himself. At least, he cleared himself before the magistrate. He left himself open to local speculation at the time as to his true motives for dropping the charges against his brother. The magistrate’s investigation lasted almost nine months, starting with Fuzhong’s petition and accusations in July 1881 and culminating the fol88

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lowing March (1882) when Fukui finally signed a bond of confirmation (ganjie) agreeing to abide by the law and pass his days with his brother peaceably (anfen duri) when he returned home. In the end the magistrate dismissed the case, scolding the two men that they were in danger of becoming the town laughingstock. (Thus echoing, perhaps even confirming, Chu Fuzhong’s fears.) Even though Chu Fukui had confessed, the sale of Chu Fuzhong’s wife and the death of his two children went unprosecuted. Chu Fukui had not found it difficult to locate brokers in his community to help him sell his sister-in-law. When Fuzhong returned, his neighbors were not forthcoming about what had transpired, but while their reticence suggests other villagers understood that something unfortunate had transpired, they were not sufficiently appalled to report Fukui to yamen officials. Arranging sales like this was a family’s prerogative. Widespread social acceptance throughout the Qing dynasty and well into the Republican period for the trafficking of women and children coexisted with a general awareness that the violence that sometimes accompanied the trade was itself undesirable. Late Qing society fully acknowledged that kidnapping constituted a growing form of crime; newspapers regularly described local abductions. Essays intended to forewarn an expanding readership offered lists of the kinds of strategies a kidnapper might use to entice an unsuspecting child and stern warnings directed at women about the dangers of traveling alone by steamship. Serialized articles dramatized the arrest and resulting prosecution of particularly notorious kidnappers, sometimes quoting the criminals’ unrepentant admissions of thwarted schemes. For the most part this cautionary literature did not take into account the simple truth that most traffickers were relatives and friends.

Critics later accused Li Hongzhang of prioritizing naval spending over the hunger that swept the land. Together, however, Li Hongzhang and Zeng Guoquan mobilized and cajoled funds from sources around the empire. They established contribution bureaus, tapped revenue from the internal customs lijin taxes, and sold official titles.73 Few of these funds reached households like the Chus, families who lived outside the direst famine zone but still felt its effects. It is hard to overstate the competing priorities Li Hongzhang faced at this moment. The encroachment of foreign powers threatened Qing sovereignty in the treaty ports, but ensuring provisions for 89

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the capital was equally important to stability. Starting at the time of the floods, both Beijing and Tianjin became major destinations for refugees from the countryside. As early as 1874, Li Hongzhang lifted the traditional Qing ban on exporting grain from the traditional Manchu homeland in Fengtian Province to respond to the flood crisis. Qing rulers lifted this ban periodically to alleviate food shortages, allowing wheat from North China’s breadbasket to flow south. People too were on the move. By 1877, at the height of the North China drought, more than 100,000 famine refugees had arrived in Tianjin.74 When harvests failed year after year, families throughout Baodi abandoned fallow land and made their way to the city.

Kidnapping in a Banner Community Scarcity compelled many to find their way from the hardest-hit provinces into cities. Beijing was the empire’s political capital, but it was also simultaneously a center of Manchu ethnic identity and a military base for the banner system. Toward the end of the nineteenth century the population of Beijing was gradually shifting: 65  percent of the inhabitants living in the Inner City were banner households.75 (This represented a decline from an estimate of at least 75 percent earlier in the dynasty.) While the core of Beijing remained populated primarily by banner households and Han Chinese official families, Chinese merchants and shopkeepers found their way into the capital. By the middle of the century there were 15,368 Chinese shopkeepers and merchant families working within the Inner City (nei cheng).76 Although banner families outnumbered nonbanner Chinese households, Chinese merchants soon dominated the markets of the Inner City.77 Streets and alleyways were increasingly crowded with new arrivals from the food-strapped countryside, as well as with notoriously idle young men from banner families. Many of these men had not undergone military training, and they were too young to have had experience in any of the massive rebellion suppressions earlier in the century. Those great military campaigns had relied upon new-style armies recruited by provincial military leaders Zeng Guofan, Zeng Guoquan, and Li Hongzhang rather than on banner troops. If young Manchu men were not assigned to military ser vice, they were no longer entitled to their banner allowance.78 Inflation in the cost of rice during this time extended across China, not just to regions affected by the latest cycle of floods, drought, and famine. Throughout the first century and a half of Qing rule, the govern90

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ment had managed to stabilize grain prices by setting aside special famine reserves and by monitoring and capping merchant pricing. The environmental conditions of the 1870s made it clear that old reserves had long been exhausted. Even under these conditions, food security in the capital helped ensure public stability. Accordingly, Beijing’s grain supply received special protection. Although Tianjin served as a shipping point for grain destined for the countryside, grain that came to Beijing stayed in circulation nearby. Rations of tribute grain, although often stale currency rice (laomi), could be traded and sold for fresh, locally grown millet, wheat, sorghum, and fragrant rice. As a result of the tribute system, Lillian Li writes, Beijing “did not drain resources away from the countryside, rather it served as a stabilizing force for the entire region.”79 Li Hongzhang, in his position as governor general of Zhili, began to sense growing anxiety among the Inner City’s Manchu population. He initiated special annual allocations of rice rations for banner families living in the capital.80 Despite these efforts, the underemployed banner population became increasingly dissolute. The expansion of this banner underclass created significant social pressures. In 1882 there were approximately 670,000 Manchus living in Beijing, with around 500,000 of these living within the Inner City. The population of the inner and outer cities combined was around one million. While the number of Manchus living in Beijing would decline over time—a census taken in 1910 placed the number of individual Manchus living in the greater capital area at 448,172—the overall population of both the Inner City and the Outer City (wai cheng) grew.81 The Outer City’s population climbed steadily with new arrivals, both from outside Beijing’s walls and families relocating from the Inner City. For a time the Manchu population of the Inner City experienced something of a hollowing out, as banner families sought dif ferent work in the Outer City and in the suburbs. Due to outmigration in the dynasty’s closing years, the population within the city’s walls grew more slowly; although newcomers continued to arrive, Manchu families moved on to livelihoods outside the banner system and outside the city’s barracks. Proportionally, however, more strangers bustled and begged on the streets of the capital than ever before. Republican Beijing also became an overwhelmingly male city; between 1912 and 1931 there were 175 men for every 100 women.82 Beneath this busy surface of strangers going to and fro, the overall population in individual neighborhoods was not so great as to offer the cover 91

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of true anonymity. Families who resided in the capital remained familiar to one another, and many shared marital ties. Ethnic communities recognized one another by their dress, footwear, official garments, and caps, and by women’s hairstyles. One could sit on a street corner, or linger on a bench at a noodle shop, and watch the passersby go about their business. Amid the medley of idleness and activity, a twenty-five-year-old named Zhao Er passed his days, taking note of people coming and going on the street. Zhao Er lived with his mother, father, and brothers in Xixinsi Hutong. They were members of the plain white banner and had lived within the Inner City’s walls for some time. Zhao Er was unmarried, and like many of his banner peers, he had never completed military training. Because he had not been assigned to military ser vice, Zhao Er did not receive a regular stipend. The original quantities of tribute grain granted to a low-ranking banner household were based upon a family of four. Court assessors deemed one shi of grain per month sufficient to sustain a small household.83 In 1862 the court reduced grain rations for ordinary banner households still further, to only enough to support a man and a wife. As part of an effort to fight corruption and the forging of registries, no allocations were made for young children or for men not currently engaged in active duty.84 Zhao Er’s parents’ allowance was not enough to feed the household, and so Zhao Er sold things on the street for a living.85 He found himself competing with newly arrived Chinese peddlers who made their way from the predominantly Chinese Outer City into the Manchu and Banner realm of the Inner City. Some would remain within the gates, while others came for the day and left in the evening. Hawking wares on the street, Zhao Er had plenty of opportunity to observe people. In the fall of 1875, Zhao Er noticed that a girl of about twelve walked past him on the street each day. He watched the girl closely, listening to her interactions on the street. He soon learned that the girl’s name was Zhang Fujie. Seeing Zhang Fujie walk back and forth unaccompanied day after day gave Zhao Er the idea to try and kidnap the girl, and to see if he could find a way to sell her. Zhao Er must have realized he would require help to pull this off. He approached a friend, a twenty-six-year- old Mongolian named Lin Dehai, to tell him about the plan. Like Zhao, Lin Dehai had not married and still lived with his parents, also in the same hutong. Lin’s family belonged to a Mongolian banner, and the racially mixed neighborhood suggests how official urban designations had deteriorated by the late nineteenth century. Lin Dehai often drove a cart to 92

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make extra money. He listened to his Zhao Er’s plan and agreed to help him transport the girl. When one evening Zhang Fujie did not return to her home in the former military barracks, her mother, Mrs. Zhang née Zhai, immediately set out to search for her. When she could not find her daughter anywhere, she approached the local constable. Mrs.  ZhangZhai explained to the patrol officer (bujun) that her daughter, Zhang Fujie, often worked in the area near the Yongding workshops, where she gathered coal that fell from delivery carts and unburned pieces of coal from the kilns. Her child was one of hundreds of urchins who gathered discarded coal dust and small chips of coal from around the city. Mrs. Zhang-Zhai was wracked with guilt. Zhang Fujie’s father had died when the girl was only five or six.86 The widow had remarried, but her new husband was lazy, and so she sent her daughter out to work, arranging for Zhang Fujie to help gather coal for her kinswoman (a Mrs. Zhang née Yang). Together they would then combine coal dust, earth, and water to form the balls of coal that served as the primary fuel for many Beijing households.87 Mrs. Zhang-Zhai told investigators that her daughter had been promised 300 cash (qianwen) for each day of work, and insisted that Mrs. Zhang-Yang must have detained the young scavenger rather than pay her wages. Convinced she knew precisely what had happened, Zhang Fujie’s mother tried to articulate a case against the relative who had employed her daughter. In the meantime, the Manchu bannerman, Zhao Er, who had observed the scavenger so intently on the streets, succeeded in abducting Zhang Fujie. The young girl later described events as follows: My mother had sent me to Mrs.  Zhang-Yang’s house to help scavenge for balls of coal. On the thirtieth, I lost track of time and it was dark as I was leaving our storage place. That is when I ran into Zhao Er, whom I did not know previously. He restrained me and forced me to get into a cart. When I tried to cry out he pressed his hand across my mouth. He took me out of the city through Yongding Gate, frightening me by saying that he would have me beaten if I continued to cry. We passed a place with a double bridge, and late that evening we stopped at a hostel on the edge of the city. Zhao Er lied to the innkeeper, claiming that I was his relative. The next morning he brought 93

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me back toward town, stopping first at the Temple of Agriculture, and then at the Guangming Temple. We spent that night on the temple terrace, and Zhao Er raped me (jianwu) twice during the night.88

That October night on the terrace must have been harrowing. The Guangming Temple was only a short walk from Xixinsi Hutong, where both Zhao Er and Lin Dehai lived, but Zhao Er was not yet sure what to do. The twenty-five-year-old street peddler was not a professional trafficker. He was ner vous. Zhao Er confessed to forcing Zhang Fujie into the cart in almost precisely the manner she described above, but also included the detail that he “looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was around” and mentions threatening to strike her if she cried out as they passed through Yongding Gate.89 He lacked the network and confidence of experienced criminals like Zhang Wan’an and the Wooden Tiger. Zhao Er had borrowed Lin Dehai’s cart, but that night he was on his own. Zhao Er took his aggression and uncertainty out on Zhang Fujie. For the young girl, the city’s gates, altars, and temples provided a kind of orienting geography. She knew, more or less, where she was. Later, she would be able to describe her forced journeys in and out of the city. But the arches and terraces of these public religious spaces offered no solace or protection. The sentries who oversaw the flow of people through the gates beneath Beijing’s giant towers and barbicans took no notice of her distress. The next morning Zhao Er instructed the young girl to wait in front of the temple. He told her he was going to buy them some food. Zhang Fujie told gendarmerie investigators that she waited only a short time. The record offers no explanation for why she did not seize this fleeting chance to escape, but she must have been frightened, and she was certainly also hungry. Zhao Er returned hastily with his Mongolian banner accomplice, Lin Dehai. Zhao Er proposed that Lin Dehai take Zhang Fujie to Tianjin to sell her there, but Lin Dehai worried that he might get caught on the road. Instead, they tried to bring Zhang Fujie to Lin Dehai’s mother’s house in nearby Xixinsi Hutong. His mother, a circumspect woman of fifty, was leery of helping them. She later stated that, as she “wasn’t at all clear on how the two men came to have this girl, she was not willing to help detain her.”90 Lin Dehai next suggested that they solicit help from a younger aunt who lived outside the city walls, in a house located by a bend in the city moat known as the Paozi River. This time the two bannermen tried a more 94

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convincing explanation: They told Lin’s aunt that Zhang Fujie was the orphaned cousin of a friend.91 “They kept me at that place on the riverbank for five days,” Zhang Fujie told investigators, “and then Lin Dehai came back for me. He brought me to Zhaihuamenwai, to his family’s burial plot, where we spent the night. There, Lin Dehai raped me, before bringing me to his friend’s house in Zhangjiawan. I stayed with his friend for ten more days, and then Lin Dehai brought me be back into town, where he raped me again—I don’t remember how many times.” Lin Dehai’s mother later testified that she became angry with her son and told him to take the girl away.92 From there, Lin Dehai brought Zhang Fujie to his cousin’s house, and enlisted this cousin and the help yet another aunt. This aunt agreed to help facilitate selling Zhang Fujie as a child bride (tongyangxifu). Lin Dehai’s cousin then volunteered the information that the younger brother of a friend of his was looking for a wife. Lin Dehai left the girl in the custody of his aunt and cousin.93 The aunt would later claim that she knew nothing about the young girl’s background, nor did this aunt realize that the kidnappers had raped Zhang Fujie multiple times. Not knowing where Zhang Fujie had come from did not prevent her from trying to turn a profit. She arranged to have the girl sold as a child bride. The new mother-in-law dutifully inspected Zhang Fujie for her son. Lifting up the girl’s clothes, she discovered that Zhang Fujie’s body was covered with sores and bruises—not surprising, considering what the girl had endured during the preceding weeks. Disgusted, the prospective mother-in-law told the cousin who delivered Zhang Fujie that her son could not possibly accept Zhang Fujie as a bride, and sent the girl back. At this point, both young bannermen seem to have abandoned the idea of extracting a profit for her. They had exhausted their own trusted network of friends and relations. Moreover, Zhao Er had caught wind from neighbors of the lawsuit Zhang Fujie’s mother had initiated against her coalgathering kinswoman. He may have suspected that an investigation could somehow lead to him. Both Lin Dehai and Zhao Er tried to simultaneously distance themselves from the problem of disposing of the girl while keeping an eye on the situation. No longer entirely welcome at his own mother’s house, Lin Dehai made the curious decision to board in the former barracks where the kidnapped girl’s mother still lived. Now the burden of finding a placement for Zhang Fujie lay with Lin’s aunt. Guessing there would be no way to sell Zhang Fujie until after her 95

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sores had healed, Lin Dehai’s aunt arranged to have her stay with a woman named Mrs. Gao née Jia who lived immediately to the south of a shrine to a medicine god not far outside of the Beijing city walls. Mrs.  Gao-Jia claimed that proximity to the shrine would heal Zhang Fujie’s wounds. Mrs. Gao-Jia had a reputation as a matchmaker, and even acted as the local yamen’s “official matchmaker” (guanmei) in her village. She told the aunt that she would keep the girl at her house, where she could rely upon the healing powers of the shrine. While Zhang Fujie stayed with her, perhaps Mrs. Gao-Jia let it be known that she had a young girl on hand. In any case, after only a short time, while Zhang Fujie was still recovering, an elderly female hereditary servant from an affluent household living in a courtyard along Dongsi Pailou Santiao Hutong contacted Matchmaker Gao-Jia. The family she served, of the surname Qing, needed another serving maid to wait upon one of the master’s concubines, and this elderly servant had been instructed to buy one. Matchmaker Gao-Jia had recognized immediately an opportunity to unload the scarred girl, and rapidly set about making arrangements. As a professional, Mrs. Gao-Jia knew a bit more than the young bannermen about the kind of paperwork necessary to safely close a deal. She found a fortune-teller (suanmingren) to forge a document authorizing the sale. She sold Zhang Fujie to the Qing family for 180 taels. Of these, Matchmaker Gao-Jia gave 25 to the Qing family’s servant by way of a commission and sent 80 to Lin Dehai’s aunt. She kept 75 taels for herself. Later all three women told investigators that they had already spent the money, and therefore could not possibly be required to give it back. The servant who approached matchmaker Gao-Jia was seventy-twoyear-old Mrs. Yang née Zhang. She confirmed that she had been deputized by her master to obtain another servant for the Qing household. She also clarified that neither she nor her master knew Zhang Fujie’s history. Matchmaker Gao-Jia had told her that Zhang Fujie’s parents themselves wished to sell her. No one from the Qing family was questioned with regard to Zhang Fujie’s case. A younger male retainer, Wang Guoxiang, supplied the Qing family’s perspective: My master arranged that the elderly servant Mrs. Yang-Zhang should be a go-between. She contacted [the professional matchmaker] Mrs. Gao-Jia who brought Zhang Fujie to our residence to sell as an enslaved lady’s maid (binü). Her price was set at 180 96

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taels. There was a contract, and last year on the first day of the fifth month Zhang Fujie secretly left the house and ran away. We searched for her to no avail. Then we learned about her abduction when her mother brought this case and officers of the gendarmarie arrested Zhao Er and the others. My master does not know anything about this business of Zhang Fujie being abducted. The money that he paid to Mrs. Gao-Jia has already been spent, and cannot be returned. My master is willing to give up the girl.94

During the ensuing investigation the older female relatives of the two kidnappers did not tell Qing investigators whether they asked how the young men got hold of the girl. Lin Dehai’s mother is alone in raising any suspicions or objections. If the other women were aware that their nephews took sexual advantage of Zhang Fujie, they did not admit it, nor do they seem to have questioned whether it would be legal to sell her. Instead these aunts hid Zhang Fujie in their homes and immediately busied themselves making arrangements to sell the girl.

Zhang Fujie’s mother bore some responsibility for these events. By sending her daughter out to work gleaning on the street, she placed her daughter at risk. At a time when it was illegal to sell honorable commoners, but the code still permitted the sale of mean (jian) people, there was room within the law for traffickers to maneuver. Poverty and working for a relative in public spaces did not place Zhang Fujie in the category of jian in any legal sense, but her circumstances certainly contributed to her vulnerability. By the time the kidnappers brought the girl to Lin Dehai’s aunts, Zhang Fujie had already been working on the street collecting coal, endured a violent kidnapping, and been repeatedly raped. This ordeal itself transformed and debased Zhang Fujie to such an extent as to make selling her plausible to the older bannerwomen. Because as a scavenger Zhang Fujie had walked throughout the city, the Dongsi area where the Qing family lived was not entirely unfamiliar. Although Zhang Fujie’s new mistress beat her—almost every day, as she told the official clerk of the Beijing gendarmerie—her mistress also took her out around town. Zhang Fujie’s perseverance in the face of such abuse enabled her to figure out that she had been returned to the Inner City, and that 97

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this new household was not situated far from where her mother lived. In the spring—seven months after her ordeal first began—twelve-year- old Zhang Fujie managed to slip away from the Qing residence and find her way home. Upon arriving at her mother’s house, she saw that Lin Dehai had also taken up residence in the same neighborhood. She told her mother the whole situation and was able to identify one of the men responsible for her kidnapping. Zhang Fujie’s mother then persuaded Beijing officials to pursue a thorough investigation. Zao Bao, the chief of the Beijing gendarmerie, whose memorial described these events to the Board of Punishments, asserted that the case revealed indisputable evidence of “selling a girl to be a wife or concubine” and of “illegally detaining a person.” The former charge he applied by analogy to the child bride and serving maid sales. The case against both young bannermen he felt was clear, whereas their relatives and friends were not deemed to be guilty of any crime. “Understandably, they were not aware of Zhang Fujie’s background, and could not have known that to sell her was illegal.” Zhao Er and Lin Dehai were each sentenced to receive a beating of one hundred strokes and banished to a distance of 3,000 li. … … … … … … … … …

The earlier case of Chen Yuqing’s daughter showed power leveraged in villages not far outside Beijing. In his efforts to maintain order in his rural yamen, the local magistrate struggled to balance his interpretation of the legal code with the needs of his community. The position of a young wife, bought, sold, or brokered through a marriage severance, was just one factor within a larger calculation that valued keeping the peace and maintaining good relationships between neighbors, yamen functionaries, and families. The magistrate who handled the later case in Chu family village scolded the Chu brothers for the disappearance of Chu Fuzhong’s wife and the deaths of his children before dismissing the case. The ethical calculus inherent in trafficking was dif ferent when the goods being sold were not the seller’s kin. The Beijing officials who handled twelve-year-old Zhang Fujie’s abduction faced slightly dif ferent challenges. With the population fluctuating in the cities, these officials bore responsibility for a more transient population. A sense of entitlement may have prevailed among some members of struggling banner households. Suspended in an identity that precluded certain occupations, young bannermen who were not 98

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dispatched on a campaign found themselves to be hard up. Stipends to banner communities were regularly in arrears. For Zhao Er, the opportunity to try to kidnap and sell a young girl simply proved too tempting to resist. Like the runners in Magistrate Ding’s yamen, Zhao Er and Lin Dehai relied upon extended family to aid them and to cover their tracks. In both of these cases, a young woman’s sexual availability marked her as marketable and informed potential buyers of her value. Her biological ability to contribute to a family—whether as a surrogate mother, as was the case with Miss Chen, or as a child bride, as was the case for Zhang Fujie—further contributed to her perceived value. As happened regarding Chen Yuqing’s daughter, Zhang Fujie’s value became subject to debate among neighbors, kin, and brokers. Too battered to be a presentable child bride, Zhang Fujie eventually found herself sold as a concubine’s slave girl.

In these “ordinary” cases the legitimacy of transactions in people itself was not called into question, by either local magistrates or by the Board of Punishments. Although officials like Zheng Guoquan, Zhou Fu, and Li Hongzhang linked trafficking to questions of provincial stability, national sovereignty, and the Qing empire’s place in the world, what mattered to jurists was whether or not the people making the transactions were legally entitled to buy, sell, or broker the young woman concerned. Moreover, as the example of Zhang Fujie demonstrates, ignorance of a person’s status could provide an adequate defense. Because they pleaded ignorance with regard to Zhang Fujie’s kidnapping, Lin Dehai’s aunt and the other intermediaries were not held responsible for selling Zhang Fujie, nor was the more affluent Qing family blamed for buying her. Without their extended families, and without friendships with other young criminally inclined idle bannermen, Zhao Er and Lin Dehai would have found it more difficult to detain Zhang Fujie. As it was, they were able to move her between four or five dif ferent families, as well as stay for stretches of time on temple grounds and in a hostel. When they slept rough, they chose to do so either in a public religious space or on the family’s burial plot. If at any point Zhang Fujie tried to tell the people she came into contact with what had happened, they either did not believe her or were not concerned enough to offer help. With the exception of Lin Dehai’s mother, relatives and friends took at face value Lin Dehai and 99

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Zhao Er’s claims that they had somehow legitimately acquired the girl and needed to sell her.

The twentieth-century trade in people grew out of Qing practices; however, several hallmarks of trafficking specific to the Qing changed in the new era. Qing society offered limited opportunities for women, especially poorer women. Urbanization and commercialization had yet to open for women horizons that would expand exponentially in the Republican period. Local intermediaries rather than professional traffickers still controlled the market. Qing women could act as matchmakers, and some were traffickers, but most arrangements required an additional male guarantor. Long- distance travel began to influence the trade in people only toward the end of the century. Routine sales had kept women within a relatively small geographic radius of their homes, whereas floods and famines sent refugee women and children farther afield. Even in the context of the Qing state’s cultivation of chastity cults, this was also a period during which a Confucian rhetoric of martyrdom helped women come to terms with virtue lost in times of famine and displacement. Official concern around trafficking was driven by international pressures, while the phenomenon of interfamilial domestic trafficking was largely tolerated. At the national level, trafficking came up most frequently in discussion of larger flows of people, whether refugee crises or emigration, yet for local Qing officials, adjudicating disputes involving trafficking meant balancing community interests, personal rivalries, and a logic of survival and sacrifice. Arrangements made through local matchmakers and through family introductions cemented sales throughout the Qing. Although these transactions were carried out beyond the purview of the law, local communities and family networks sought to uphold them through customary practices. Family played a role in enforcing sales, even in the face of local corruption. This intimate relationship between hierarchical family structures, locally accepted practices, and corruption that later made the buying and selling of people difficult to eliminate. Traditional transactional strategies remained essential to the constitution of the Chinese family decades after the fall of the dynasty. By the turn of the century the practice of buying and selling people would become more visible for a number of reasons, not least due to the expansion of the Chinese popular press and an increasingly penetrating 100

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international gaze. Revolutionary nationalists began to harness the language of slavery to describe China’s oppression by Western powers, and to exhume the purported shame of Han Chinese serving a Manchu dynasty. Chinese advocates of women’s rights, in turn, exclaimed that if China were a land of slaves, then its women were “doubly enslaved.”95 The burden of extraterritoriality and its challenge to China’s sovereignty grew heavy, and even the Empress Dowager’s conservative court had to recognize the need for reform. The rough handling China had received during the foreign suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in 1901 made change imperative, and both Britain and the United States promised to reevaluate their policies of extraterritoriality if China could bring its legal system into accord with international standards.96 As part of the Qing dynasty’s final reform effort, the court charged legal scholar Shen Jiaben with revision of the legal codes. A commission was established in 1906 to consider the development of a constitutional government. Zhou Fu submitted his memorial urging the court to seize this occasion to join the modern world by prohibiting human trafficking, but viable protection for individual sold people was not a primary concern for late Qing legal reformers. International opinion, as much as domestic legal inconsistencies, motivated the commission’s reforms. In 1910 the Qing court issued an edict prohibiting the sale of people. Around the world, newspapers ran headlines proclaiming that China had at last abolished slavery.97

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Within China, news of the prohibition legislation met with minimal celebration: the decree was, after all, only the most recent in a series of emancipatory gestures dating back nearly two millennia. It had always been an emperor’s prerogative to liberate slaves and pardon convicts. And yet both the political circumstances and the construction of the 1910 edict differed dramatically from imperially initiated antecedents. Politically, the edict emerged at a moment when the legal system was undergoing unprecedented scrutiny. When Zhou Fu submitted his memorial to the newly assembled Constitutional Commission, he addressed a small group of judicial scholars already committed to transformative legal reform. Zhou Fu had recently been promoted to the position of governor general of Liangjiang, and was now responsible for one of the most fiscally and internationally significant regions of the empire. His memorial was backed by decades of administrative experience and authority. With the Xinzheng New Policy Reforms well under way, the imperial court had already recognized that China needed to change. Intended both to impress the West and to rejuvenate China, these changes uprooted and transformed core institutions. The civil ser vice examinations were eliminated in 1905. Army troops and police squadrons trained in new academies. Builders broke ground for modern court houses and prisons. China’s first law school opened in Beijing. Reformers outlawed physical punishments like flogging and the cangue stockade, as well as the extraction of confessions through torture. Revisions to the law also abrogated aggravated forms of the death penalty, 102

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including death by slicing, the exposure of severed heads, and the extension of punishment to an entire household. Led by Shen Jiaben, the commission for the revision of the laws drafted new legal codes, and the empire seemed to be on the cusp of establishing a constitutional monarchy.1 In this environment, the prohibition against selling people passed without great fanfare. The North China Herald observed: “In any other country, the Edict would have been looked upon as one of its history: here it has scarcely raised comment among Chinese or Foreigners.”2 Even for late Qing jurists, it was easy to lose track of the prohibition of trafficking amid the sweeping changes undertaken since the Boxer Rebellion. Although late Qing reformers were committed to institutional change, they gave little consideration to the impact that prohibition would have upon the most fundamental institution in Chinese society. Chinese households were transactional families. Reciprocity marked the exchange of people, goods, and ser vices between households, and the sale of people was an indispensable part of this market. As part of their attempt to accommodate local customs in their development of a civil code, reformers sponsored an investigation of customary practices from around the country.3 Organized by topic and by county, their investigation documented diverse patterns of inheritance, credit systems, tenancy, contract, land sale, agricultural management, mourning, marriage, and divorce. The very act of cataloging divergent practices designated local customs as non-normative, even in the case of dominant and well-accepted behavior. The transactions in people most frequently uncovered by investigators involved the sale of wives, ranging from the routine exchange of bride price to kidnapping and (on occasion) polyandry. In some regions, investigators also noted the exchange of deposits for mortgaged prostitutes, the engagement of child brides, and terms for indentured ser vice. The overall result was that, rather than provide a handbook of exceptional but legal customary behavior, the investigation generated a multivolume list of irregularities to be targeted and standardized. This offered no clear advice for how to navigate transitions in family structure or practice. Guidelines for when or how jurists might honor the place of custom remained vague, especially with regard to the transactions in people that continued to play a constitutive role in households throughout China. Whether or not trafficking was indispensable, Qing rulers had already acknowledged that it could be destabilizing. The 1910 prohibition was not the dynasty’s first attempt to curtail the sale of people. The Qing code 103

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contained numerous laws to limit these practices: Statute 79 forbade selling stray children of unknown origin into slavery.4 Statute 367 prohibited wife selling by outlawing the sale of marriage severance (maixiu maixiu). This statute also prohibited the sale of prostitution services (maichang).5 Statute 275 forbade abduction lüe and the “abduction for sale” (lüemai) of people.6 This statute specified that it was illegal to sell commoners, or liangren, to be slaves (nubi). It was also a crime to sell one’s wife to be a slave or a prostitute. The clarity of the statute’s language is misleading. Written for a different age, the statute presumed that distinctions between those considered commoners (liang) and people considered mean / debased (jian) were verifiable and transparent. By Zhou Fu’s day this was no longer true; the shifting social structure and hierarchy of the Qing had greatly complicated matters. As Matthew Sommer has shown, the term liang had accrued new meaning over the course of the dynasty.7 By the mid-Qing, the term not only meant “commoner” but also connoted “honorable.” Moreover, since 1723—the year in which the Yongzheng emperor issued the first in a series of edicts emancipating different groups of “mean” people—the category of jian no longer applied to the disenfranchised populations it had once described. The transformation Sommer describes, from a status hierarchy to a moral category, changed the meaning of prostitution. The dynasty’s law once considered women who engaged in prostitution to be jianmin, mean people, engaged in a debased but not illegal profession. Sommer demonstrates that after the Yongzheng emancipation edicts, sex outside marriage became illegal. What looked like streamlining of the law for one newly criminalized behavior, prostitution, however, complicated the issue of trafficking. The prioritization of chastity over the course of the dynasty further compounded Qing jurists’ burden when assessing whether a sale was justified.8 Thus, a commoner woman who was not deemed to be virtuous might be eligible for sale. A magistrate could facilitate the sale of an adulteress. This was not the only exception embedded in the code. People could be lawfully purchased into an array of roles. Many of these roles occupied critical positions in Chinese family structure. A local, personal traffic in people not only provided wives and concubines, it also supplied bonded laborers, child-care providers, and even heirs for adoption. The legal codes stipulated that adoptions were valid only between relatives of a shared surname9 (like Zhou Fu’s uncle, who adopted Zhou’s younger brother), but these laws were often disregarded, and when necessary, families adopted children from outside the clan. Substatutes pertaining to adoption prac104

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tices among dif ferent ethnic groups attest further to significant regional variation throughout China. The Hong Kong New Territories communities studied by James Watson sold heirs both within and between lineages, and purchased male slaves, known in Cantonese as saiman (ximin), and serving maids, mui jai (meizi).10 In southern China these domestics enhanced the prestige of their owners but were a drain on household resources. Elite lineages throughout the south treated both men and women as chattel, and these sales were widely tolerated no matter what statutes Beijing kept on the books. Off the books, the crimes of kidnapping (youguai) and abduction (lueyou) responded to the demand for wives, concubines, and domestic slaves and servants. The sale of people brought China’s most desperate into the kitchens, courtyards, and bedrooms of the affluent. Bonded household servants offered a daily reminder of trafficking’s invaluable contribution to elite life. Domestic servants and slaves may not have contributed funds to the household economy, but they freed up time and space for their masters and mistresses. For many households in North China, domestic slaves and servants were a sensible expense rather than a luxury. Increasingly devastating natural disasters, population growth, and internal displacement during the late nineteenth century made the supply of people seem limitless. In this labor environment, the position of servants in a household could at one moment be essential and at another become tenuous. Descriptions of the North China famine of 1876–1878 and of the plight of flood refugees throughout the 1890s reveal human traffickers penetrating famine zones in a way that even a well-intentioned state could not. Western missionaries hypothesized that traffickers had enabled women to survive famine in greater numbers than men.11 Trafficking solved a problem, shifting an imperiled population out of unsustainable situations. It is no wonder, then, that the police and judicial institutions eventually charged with routing this practice approached the task with ambivalence. China’s tolerance of trafficking served domestic needs, providing a kind of release valve for impoverished communities while supplying people to satisfy the labor demands of households, the sexual demands of brothels, and the reproductive requirements of heirless families. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, the trade had become an embarrassment to China’s international standing. Increased foreign presence in the treaty ports and investments in Chinese infrastructure subjected China’s ability to enforce its own laws to criticism. Industrialization 105

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contributed to the strain. By the turn of the twentieth century, differences between urban and rural life were rapidly becoming more pronounced. Suddenly Chinese cities had access to unprecedented technologies. Railways, steamships, the telegraph, and the growth of a newspaper industry brought cities into ever- closer contact with each other and with the rest of the world. In this interconnected modern environment, opposition to traditionally tolerated trafficking practices found voice in the popular press, shaping opinion about the sale of people. At the same time, increased mobility and expanding communication systems enabled traffickers to operate more efficiently. By the end of the nineteenth century, popular newspapers issued warnings about kidnappers operating on Yangzi steamships.12 Acknowledging the resulting paradox of popular condemnation in the press and local tolerance in reality adds a fresh layer to our understanding of the often-bemoaned divergence between Chinese law and practice: the discrepancy was not simply due to entrenched old customs, but was also a response to evolving mechanisms for evading the law. The forces that motivated Qing reformers to finally insist upon the explicit prohibition of buying and selling people and a formal abolition of slavery came from multiple directions. Domestically, efforts to reform the judicial system coincided with attention to a broad array of social ills in the popular press, including trafficking. As the problem became increasingly visible to the general public, the populace responded with fresh hysteria, declaring their fears about kidnapping in new periodicals and in petitions to local officials. An 1895 article in Shenbao reported a dramatic rise in the number of notices posted on the walls along Beijing’s streets by families whose children had been kidnapped.13 Beijing’s courtyard dwellers could be busybodies, and they quickly understood how to manipulate both the press and the police. Police records reveal neighbors reporting one another for supposedly kidnapping a child. Avid Beijing readers contacted journalists to inform their papers of suspicious activities in their neighborhoods. Sometimes the press provided a crucial lead to the police—rather than the police offering the journalists breaking news. Even so, neighborly meddling could be misleading, and an unfamiliar wailing child more than once turned out to be the homesick son or daughter of a family of relatives from outside the city. In times of desperation, blood ties seemed to inoculate families against prosecution for selling their offspring while increasing coverage of human trafficking in the popular press heightened fears among literate commoners. 106

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Their anxieties inspired innovative ways to combat expanding kidnapping and trafficking networks, and the public was quick to incorporate available technologies. A more rapid postal system and newly efficient inventions like the camera provided ways to search for young women and children who had disappeared—possibly into the trade in people. As early as 1893 an editorial in the daily Shenbao newspaper described the clever use of photographs in the case of a lost child who was found by a shopkeeper on Shanghai’s Fuzhou Road. In order to locate the parents, the shopkeeper posted photographs of the child along the street and in neighborhood shops. The boy stayed with the shopkeeper, assisting in the shop until he was at last reunited with his parents. After describing the surprising success of this search, the Shenbao author advocated creating a system for the regular use of photographs in kidnapping and missing person cases.14 Although many families privately engaged brokers, public fears of kidnapping and an impersonal traffic in people grew. Visitors to China’s cities felt this menace keenly. To respond, local guilds and native-place organizations mobilized protective ser vices and networks to search for the disappeared. As public expressions of concern mounted, perceptions of the domestic slave trade continued to tarnish China’s reputation overseas. In 1900 the Boston Sunday Globe reported that there was “one slave for every eight families” across China, and that numbers were “greater in Southern China, where nearly everyone owns slaves.”15 The paper called China “The Greatest Slave Country in the World” and ran the stunning headlines “Girls for Sale at $10 and Upwards,” “What Wives Cost and How Their Husbands Sell Them,” and “Women at the Price of Pork.” Eventually, concerned Chinese citizens, Western Christian missionaries, and their converts allied themselves with bereft families to establish “antikidnapping societies.” Hundreds of letters poured into the headquarters in Shanghai.16 Chapters were rapidly founded in Tianjin, Changchun, Shaoxing, Shenyang, Dalian, and Hankou. These organizations offered shelter to local victims and forwarded correspondence across China. The most wrenching letters came from remorseful parents who had sold their children believing that they had their offspring’s best interests at heart. By the first decade of the twentieth century, concern over the sale of people in China had ceased to be local. Moreover, the metaphor of slavery gained traction, and Qing representatives enthusiastically entered the international discussion of the nature of law and the obligations of national governments. Wu Tingfang, China’s foreign minister to the United States, 107

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made addressing this problem a rhetorical priority.17 In his 1901 address to the New York Bar Association, Wu praised recent humanitarian developments in the West: “We have just passed out of an old century and into a new one. The nineteenth century has furnished many examples of noble achievements of men and nations for our admiration and emulation—such as the abolition of slavery, the emancipation of serfs, the extension of intercourse and commerce between peoples, the mitigation of the horrors of war, and the gradual recognition of the principle of arbitration in the settlement of international disputes.”18 His comments reveal not merely admiration for the West, but also considerable political acuity. The justice and equity at the forefront of Wu’s mind was that between nations rather than individuals. He was well aware of how the term “slavery” was being used back home. While some radical Han Chinese intellectuals used the term “slave” to describe China’s subjugation to Qing Manchu rule, others denounced China’s “enslavement” to Western powers.19 Restating the accomplishments of the West, Wu sought to reify international standards for the equitable treatment of foreigners in foreign lands. He remained angered by the United States’ renewal of unequal immigration policies. Although he acknowledged the abolition of slavery in the United States as a “noble achievement,” Wu Tingfang ultimately compared the United States unfavorably with his own country. When an American journalist asked Wu to comment on the lynching of blacks, the foreign minister offered this indictment: “I don’t understand it at all. You brought the black man here against his will. You made him free, or the great Lincoln did. Then you declared him equal to the white man, but you denied him equality. He cannot hold office—that is, you seldom elect him to one. He can’t serve on a jury, though he has the right, and he is still a slave socially.”20 China’s own abolition project would also encounter discrepancies between apparent law and social reality. But because the social hierarchy of China had never been a binary of free and unfree, antislavery discourse fit poorly with lived circumstances. To demonstrate to the world that China had abolished slavery, reformers targeted trafficking. When he returned to China, Wu Tingfang would serve together with legal reformer Shen Jiaben on the commission to assess the feasibility of transforming the Qing into a constitutional monarchy.

Two events, one international, one domestic, immediately precipitated Zhou Fu’s call for the prohibition of the Chinese trade in people. The first 108

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drew attention to China for lagging behind her neighbors. In the spring of 1905, Thai king Chulalongkorn (Rama V) abolished slavery throughout Siam, earning himself praise across East Asia as an enlightened ruler who had resisted colonization. The Shanghai-based Chinese philanthropic newspaper Datongbao used the occasion of the emancipation of Siam’s slaves to call for similar changes in China.21 Datongbao was published by the Christian Literature Society, a group that claimed Liangjiang Governor General Zhou Fu as an illustrious friend and patron.22 The following December riots broke out in Shanghai during a controversial kidnapping trial. This second event, at the heart of Liangjiang, impelled Zhou Fu to take action. Tension between foreigners and locals was already running high. Reports of the abuse of Chinese laborers abroad and recent discriminatory immigration legislation had prompted the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce to boycott American goods. This galvanized ordinary people throughout China, and the boycott spread. With its hybrid Chinese and foreign administrations, Shanghai offered a smoldering environment for these frustrations. On December 8, police charged two men and three women with kidnapping in Shanghai’s Mixed Court. They had traveled to Shanghai from Sichuan with fifteen young girls. As the court adjourned, a dispute erupted over where to hold the female prisoners and their purported cargo. The British assessor instructed municipal police to bring the girls to the Door of Hope Mission, a Western-run charitable home, but the Chinese magistrate disagreed and instructed his runners to escort everyone to the court jail. Fighting broke out between police officers employed by Shanghai Municipal Council and runners from the Qing government.23 The ensuing riots exposed pressing jurisdictional issues. The Chinese jail at the Mixed Court was in ill repair and eventually was deemed by both Chinese and British administrators to be “utterly unfit for the reception of any women.” (Zhou Fu later requested a tax increase to fund a foreign-style jail. Rather than raise taxes, the Qing government offered to remodel the current structure to meet sanitation requirements and to house more inmates.)24 But in the moment the Chinese Mixed Court magistrate was less concerned with poor prison conditions than questions of both personal authority and national sovereignty. He was therefore reluctant to hand prisoners over to the British police. As the North China Herald explained to its foreign readers, “The question . . . amounts to whether the Settlement shall be administered under a Chinese authority, or whether it 109

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shall continue to be a Settlement for the Foreign Community of Shanghai. No one benefits more by the maintenance of the latter than do the law abiding Chinese in the Settlement.” The stakes were potentially high, and the North China Herald seemed determined to make much of the event, two days later describing the dispute as “a premeditated incident in the plan to attack foreign rights in the Settlement, and it is necessary a firm stand should be made for these rights.”25 Chinese citizens also found reason to take affront at the detention of the accused kidnappers. One of the women in custody was the widow of a prominent Cantonese official, formerly posted in Sichuan. The widow and her entourage were accompanying his coffin. The widow explained that the girls had been legally purchased from their parents, and produced documentation—contracts bearing the parents’ signature marks—to verify her story. Her evidence, combined with indignant telegrams from prominent members of the Cantonese business community protesting the shoddy treatment of “Chinese ladies of family and standing,” eventually pressured authorities to release the widow and her attendants. As governor general of Liangjiang, Zhou Fu governed a jurisdiction that encompassed three Yangzi delta provinces, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, and Anhui. This position made Zhou the highest Chinese official responsible for maintaining order in Shanghai. When British settlement officials demanded the Qing pay for property damage sustained during the December riots, Zhou Fu crafted a stern response: Foreign regulations had prevented Qing officers from acting within concession areas, and he blamed the municipal police’s own failure to adequately defend the settlement for the damage. Even though he successfully refuted British claims, the riots had revealed vulnerabilities in Chinese policy. The Qing government was too preoccupied with the “insult and iniquity of arresting an alleged high official’s widow” rather than the fate of these girls and the “hundreds who are undoubtedly kidnapped and sold along the Yangzi Valley.”26 He lifted his pen, and in the elegant hand that had captured Li Hongzhang’s attention decades earlier, drafted his proposal.

On March 26, 1906, Zhou Fu submitted a memorial advocating that the government abolish slavery and prohibit the buying and selling of human beings. Both Zhou Fu’s proposal and his broader policy agenda complemented ongoing Xinzheng reforms. He strove to bring China in line with 110

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evolving international norms while simultaneously tending to domestic interests. Zhou Fu already had a reputation for advocating penal reform and developing creative solutions for the rural poor, especially in times of disaster. As surveillance commissioner for Zhili Province, Zhou had written a series of recommendations calling for the “sympathetic treatment of prisoners.” He decried ongoing abuses in imperial China’s detention system. The Qing government needed to act to curtail the beating of prisoners by guards who were, Zhou felt, little to no better than the criminals they watched. Zhou Fu suggested severe punishment for prison officials who were found to have accepted bribes. Attuned to both administrative pressures and moral questions, Zhou Fu was interested in reducing the burden on jails in general. A memorial he wrote in 1905 warned of a significant backlog in the Qing government’s current system.27 Zhou Fu considered the imprisonment of women to be unnecessarily cruel. Even though he could envision the emancipation of slaves and an expansion of rights for women, he remained staunchly paternalist and protective.28 To alleviate the crowding of prisons, his memorial advised that most women convicted of crimes ought to be fined and released into the custody of their husbands or other male relatives. Only under exceptional circumstances— such as in cases of dangerously violent women or women without responsible male kinfolk—should the state hold women in custody. This suggestion ignored the simple reality that most of the women who found themselves in custody had nowhere else to go, or that for some convicted women, the men in their lives were dangerous or likely to incite crime. Studies of prisons in the coming decades would reveal that trafficking and enticement were two of the most common reasons for female incarceration.29 Zhou Fu’s own great-granddaughter would conduct one such study.30 Zhou Fu’s memorial bounced between reorganizing bureaucratic departments that were swamped with conflicting priorities, until it eventually landed on the desk of the Qing commissioner charged with overseeing the revision of the legal codes.31 Members of the Board of Punishments had expressed reluctance to take on a project that would involve overhauling substatutes “so intricate that their revision would affect the whole legal structure.”32 Fortunately Commissioner Shen Jiaben took a more sanguine view of the proposal, arguing that “the emperor would simply be taking the final step on the road already followed by his illustrious predecessors.”33 Even with the commissioner’s support, the proposal languished 111

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for two years. Shen Jiaben was himself busy drafting potential legal codes for China. These included entirely new civil and criminal codes, as well as a more conservative revision of the old Qing code. On February 6, 1909, another reform-oriented official, Wu Weibing, the Shanxi Province circuit court censor, submitted a second memorial endorsing the prohibition.34 By the first decade of the twentieth century, change was very much in the air. Intellectuals debated whether reform could happen fast enough to forestall revolution. While revolutionaries spoke of throwing off the Manchu yoke, even reformers found the language of liberation a potent rhetorical tool. A new vocabulary of “citizens” (guomin) and “free people” (ziyoumin) took hold in the minds of educated elites. Chinese intellectuals read Western philosophers of rights and shaped them to fit a changing China.35 This imported vocabulary provided tantalizing theoretical benchmarks for measuring the success of the modernizing Chinese state. Thus, when Zhou Fu sat down to write his memorial advocating the abolition of slavery, he decided not to belabor the particular nature of an especially insidious, entrenched traffic in human beings. Nor did he highlight the problems generated by Chinese society’s broader general tolerance of the trade, although both as a refugee and as water commissioner he had personally witnessed much distress. Instead, Zhou Fu opened his memorial comparing China’s law to other modernizing nations. Both he and Wu Weibing expressed admiration for the British and American emancipations of the previous century. They argued that slavery was inconsistent with a constitutional government. For these officials the ongoing traffic in people embodied China’s failure to meet international standards. This approach helped secure the attention of the officials charged with revising the Qing code. Zhou Fu’s promotions had forced him to become diplomatically astute. The Liangjiang region supplied an active luxury trade with the West and was home to the international financial center of the Orient. In Shanghai, Zhou had witnessed the International Settlement’s frustration with Chinese law and Qing administrators. It was imperative to establish China as a civilized country. To do so in a world of nations that had already nominally abolished slavery required that China make a similar effort. The arguments deployed by loyal Qing reformers like Zhou Fu, Shen Jiaben, and Wu Weibing indicate that in the end the prohibition legislation was not propelled merely or even primarily by a desire to address social ills. Unlike the earlier memorials from provincial officials that had inspired the Yongzheng emperor’s emancipation edicts, they did 112

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not discuss local conditions. Instead the reformers turned outward, seeking a stronger China reflected in the eyes of other nations.

Skepticism about Implementation Western newspapers commended China for its reform efforts and ran headlines announcing the abolition of slavery, yet on the whole international accolades for the prohibition were expressed with reservation. One New York magazine called the prohibition a “notable event” but cautioned readers that “certain forms of slavery are still to be tolerated.”36 The Baltimore Afro-American described the abolition as “a nominal, rather than actual manumission,”37 and the Times of India remarked, “The value of the edict is significantly lessoned by the obvious loopholes that exist for evasion of its application.”38 An increasingly cosmopolitan legal community took a more generous view of China’s efforts, and in 1910 the American Journal of International Law published a translation of the edict in an appendix of internationally significant legal documents.39 The edict was more technical procedure than stirring proclamation. Its text consisted of a series of ten regulations for implementing the prohibition, as articulated by the Qing government’s Commission for Constitutional Reform. The turbulence of revolution the following year overshadowed the dynasty’s apparent move toward a more egalitarian society. The Qing never had the opportunity to administer its abolition; revolution left the task in the hands of the succeeding Republican government. Sun Yatsen reiterated the prohibition during his abbreviated term as acting president of the Republic, though in both domestic and international media his pronouncement went unnoticed amid the more dramatic events of the revolution. Foreign critics of Chinese society quickly returned to railing against the ill treatment of slave girls and coolie laborers, and the plight of young women in Chinatown brothels. In the United States, “rescuing angel of Chinatown” Helen Clark and suffragette Carrie Chapman Catt denounced slavery in China as part of their feminist call to arms.40 But although Western feminists deployed descriptions of “white slavery” (the term was, as Catt herself argued, “a misnomer, for girls of all races and nations are among the unfortunate victims”)41 to demand a political voice for women, their rhetorical efforts did not translate into freedom for trafficked Chinese women and children within China. Back in China’s treaty ports foreigners bolstered their own superiority by complaining about local elites’ reliance upon bonded servants. Rising numbers of trafficking reports 113

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in police records suggest that one can hardly blame these meddling but well-intentioned sojourners for withholding praise for a paper abolition. Shen Jiaben assessed the extent to which trafficking had been woven into the old Qing code: “The statutes forbid the slave trade, but the substatutes again allow people to draw up contracts and buy slaves at a price.”42 All of the substatutes regulating the sale of people and the standards for their ongoing enslavement needed to be removed. But routing out an entrenched practice would prove more daunting than removing terms from an outdated code. Shen predicted that three influential groups within China would object to the prohibition. Two of these three drew legitimacy from their status as rulers; their claims would dissolve with the demise of the dynasty. While drafting the Qing legislation, Shen and the other members of the commission feared that Manchu princes (qinwang) would balk at having to give up their retainers and hereditary servants (baoyi). These retainers occupied an anomalous position in the Qing social and political hierarchy. Baoyi had held prominent roles since the beginning of the dynasty, staffing most of the Imperial Household Administration (neiwufu). The emperor charged these hereditary personal servants with sensitive tasks. Many were powerful men in their own right, and a few had taken the examinations and attained official rank—a privilege historically denied to jianmin. Shen explained that such men “could not be classed as slaves (nuli) in the ordinary sense” and yet their existence was at variance with the abolition project.43 Similarly, Manchu and Mongol banner officials had also enjoyed the privilege of slaveholding since the inception of the dynasty. Although the imperial custom of bestowing slaves on meritorious officials had been discontinued, and men no longer surrendered themselves into slavery for military or tax protection, some banner households continued to hold slaves. The commission explained, “Established and well-to-do families formally bequeathed to their descendants the sons and grandsons of household slaves. As a result, there was never a shortage.”44 But history did not mandate slavery. The Qing statutes included a “provision that descendants of several generations of faithful slaves may, if they so desire, ransom themselves” and permitted “the emancipation of those who are descendants of successive generations of bondservants.”45 As it turned out, hypothetical objections from both of these formerly influential slaveholding constituencies mattered little after the Manchu dynasty’s collapse in 1911. 114

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The third group that relied upon the ser vices of trafficked people would prove more intransigent. A 1908 Shibao editorial related, “Among even families of modest means (xiaokang zhi jia) there are none that do not possess female slaves (binü).”46 Shen Jiaben expressed concern that many of these families preferred purchased domestics to hired women. They feared that employment afforded servants excessive autonomy. Hired servants could refuse to obey orders, and might steal for their friends and family. Wu Weibing assured Shen, however, that a disobedient slave girl could cause even greater headaches for her master. Slaves ran away in stealth, but hired laborers tended to give their employers advance notice. Slaves entailed paternalist responsibilities and maintenance, whereas an unsatisfactory hired laborer could be dismissed.47 These were considerations the head of a Chinese household needed to take seriously. The flip side of the predatory traffic demonized in the popular press was a personal trade in people that supplied households who required domestic labor and relieved poor families of extra mouths to feed. Transactions among these families would evolve throughout the Republican period.

Regulations on a Prohibition In form and content the 1910 edict to prohibit the buying and selling of people and abolish slavery was no eloquent Emancipation Declaration. In the preamble its authors explained their reasoning: “If conditions are such that people can buy and sell one another; treating each other like dogs and horses, then that is manifestly inconsistent with the imperial declaration of constitutional government. Other nations can not possibly consider this nation just.”48 Four years earlier Zhou Fu had launched his case with more inspiring rhetoric; he quoted classical history and implored the state to appreciate that “of the ten thousand things under heaven, man is the most precious” before also suggesting that China lagged behind on this issue.49 Whether articulated in terms of the value of life or international political concerns, China’s prohibition of trafficking proved a cumbersome proposition. Enthusiasm for abolition in principle was tempered by concerns about how to implement it in practice. In the end, legislators focused on criminalizing actions and abuses rather than overhauling deeply embedded social statuses. The document enumerated ten regulations or mechanisms for implementing the prohibition. Close examination reveals legal reformers struggling to balance social reality against the demand that China “abolish” a 115

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highly mutable set of practices. Each regulation delineated how jurists should execute the new law. Loopholes embedded in the legislation permitted old forms of exploitation to persist and new forms to develop. Of the ten regulations, several had the effect of simplifying the law, thereby making the prohibition appear stronger and easier to enforce. Others, however, introduced complexity and opportunities for those charged with enforcing the prohibition to exercise subjective judgment. These undermined the success of the prohibition. The first regulation took the most explicit step toward prohibiting trafficking. It outlawed all sale transactions, whether for male or female slaves, heirs, wives, or concubines. The regulation expunged from the code all previous laws written to regulate the sale of people or calling for the use of written deeds. Significantly, however, this regulation did not confront the question of bride price and matchmakers’ fees. Furthermore, while the law instructed judges not to honor deeds of sale, this did not prevent families and traffickers from relying upon contracts in their private arrangements.50 The second regulation called for a fixed punishment for the crime of human trafficking. This was compatible with the wider legal reform agenda of the day. In the commission’s view, existing laws already prescribed adequate penalties for kidnappers who sold people against their will, but no law specified punishment for those who sold their offspring because of poverty or for individuals who purchased slaves. In the past, if a buyer demonstrated ignorance of the circumstances precipitating a sale (buzhiqing), then he or she was not considered a criminal. The prohibition made even ignorant buyers guilty. But it also expressed sympathy with buyers who traditionally relied upon purchased people. This contradictory second regulation demanded both standardized punishment for trafficking and a sliding scale under which buyers would be held less culpable than sellers. Zhou Fu and Wu Weibing’s memorials had heralded a noble endeavor by propounding equality and constitutional government, but in practice late Qing legal reformers exercised caution. The third through eighth regulations show the commission’s reluctance to overturn traditional hierarchies. The third regulation sought to remedy discrepancies between punishments for slaves and commoners. Status hierarchies had long been a central preoccupation in Chinese legal codes. Studies by Philip Huang 116

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and Matthew Sommer, however, suggest that by the nineteenth century this was largely an abstract preoccupation rather than a concern that had direct bearing on adjudication.51 Whatever the reality in practice, however, the authors of the regulations on a prohibition clearly felt the discrepancies merited attention. Their proposed solution, however, did not extend to egalitarian punishments. Former slaves were now to be treated as servants under the law. If they committed a crime against their employer, they were to be punished according to statutes that still understood this relationship as aggravating the severity of a crime. In one phrase the edict emancipated slaves, and in the next it reinscribed unequal statuses under the law. The fourth regulation addressed questions of ongoing practice, rather than punishments or the persistence of slavery language in the code. This regulation allowed poor families to contract out their children as hired servants, effectively recasting in more palatable terms the Qing acceptance of the sale of people as a rescue mechanism. In years of famine, poverty could be so dire that “ those, who even in ordinary times are hard-pressed, are unable to preserve themselves.” Reformers feared that forbidding traditional emergency measures during such times, without devising an alternative provision, would leave the children of the poor to perish. The new laws permitted poor families to demand “payment for their children’s services be agreed and received in advance.”52 Qing magistrates had applied this “survival ethic” in their compassionate application of the law, and the “poverty defense” appeared frequently in cases ranging from the level of the local yamen to the Board of Punishments in Beijing.53 Throughout the Republican period the inevitable refrain of “no other choice” became re-enshrined as the alibi of the guilty poor. Openly permitting the poor to broker their children undermined efforts to end the traffic in people. The commission tried to incorporate several protections for children. Poor families were required to hire their children out with contracts stipulating a limited term, and not extending beyond the age of twenty-four. The text of the fourth regulation emphasized that “hired servants are not the same as male and female slaves sold under written deeds” and mandated that “the master must treat them as hired servants and not oppress them.”54 In exchange, the bonded child or youth was to hold up his or her end of the bargain, and dutifully obey the master. Unfortunately this regulation incorporated no guarantee as to how the condition of these hired servants would be better than slavery. 117

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In addition to the right to an advance payment, the commission granted impoverished families a limited mechanism for retrieving their children: Should an indentured child be mistreated, or should the family wish to retrieve the child for any reason, they could do so—but only if they returned an amount of money in proportion to the remaining term of ser vice. Most families did not have the necessary funds, and for them repurchase proved impossible. As a result the indenturing households often maintained total power over their laborers. This regulation, moreover, reintroduced a legitimate contract for bonded labor, thereby clouding the previous regulation forbidding deeds. It was an area of ambiguity that abusive households would not hesitate to exploit. The fifth and sixth regulations redefined existing slaves as hired laborers. To eliminate the term slave (nupu zhi ming) from the legal and administrative codes, household slaves serving in banner households were now to be considered hired servants (gugongren). These included slaves bestowed by the emperor, people who had commended themselves into servitude, and slaves purchased with deeds of sale.55 Hereditary slaves (yiliu zhi shipu) serving Han families were similarly “emancipated” through redefinition. Like the children of the poor, young former slaves were not to serve past the age of twenty-four. While the regulations required explicit terms of service, they also emphasized the importance of a master’s willingness (qingyuan) and discretion. The commission explained that many of these former slaves had no experience beyond the households they served, and justified these policies as protection, both for former slaves and for society at large. A pattern of compromise emerges across the ten regulations: The commission sought to reconcile the prohibition with ongoing traditional practices. Unabashedly paternalist, the seventh regulation reminded masters of their obligation to provide husbands for any young women in their service. To prevent masters from being remiss in their duties, deeds of sale often reiterated this traditional obligation. In theory, the edict prohibited such deeds. In practice, even illegal contracts often stipulated “when the girl has reached maturity, it is the master’s responsibility to find a match.” The new law additionally designated a precise time within which a former female slave must be provided with an arranged marriage. While young men were free by twenty-four, a woman of the same age could find herself brokered onward. 118

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This requirement was intended to ameliorate the difficulties that a female slave turned servant might encounter entering society. (Concerns about social integration reverberated throughout both domestic and international discourse as late as the 1920s and 1930s. Even the British approached with caution the potential liberation of mui-tsai slave girls held by many Hong Kong families. Both London Parliamentarians and Hong Kong Legislative Council members worried that former mui-tsai would be unable to fend for themselves.)56 In trying to protect women by ensuring their marital futures, the seventh regulation also reinforced the paternal control that a household head (jiazhang) could wield over his domestic staff. Republican-era novelists illustrated the traumatic influence a jiazhang’s whims could have on the life of a young servant. In his classic novel of early twentieth-century family life, Family, Ba Jin described the powerlessness of serving maids.57 Mingfeng, a seventeen-year- old indentured servant, entreats her mistress to keep her on as a slave girl (binü) in the Gao family rather than give her away as a concubine. When this fails, she takes her own life. Wan-er, another maid, is sent in Mingfeng’s place. As she leaves for the home of the old man to whom she will become concubine, Wan-er asks her friend who serves in a neighboring household: “When you burn incense for Mingfeng, burn some for me as well, for sooner or later I will also die.” Set over a decade after the supposed abolition of slavery, Ba Jin’s novels depicted subordinate family members struggling to resist the reign of the master of the house.58 Oppressed social statuses were renamed rather than restructured. The nominal status of bonded or enslaved persons would be legally altered, but for many, day-to- day labor and living conditions remained unchanged. According to the eighth regulation, men who wished to acquire a concubine could only do so through an intermediary. Neither that intermediary nor the concubine’s family should profit from the arrangement. This requirement did not discourage men from taking concubines, or indeed, from compensating the brokers who made their relationships possible. Tradition permitted matchmakers to receive a fee for their ser vices. The new law declined to address the resemblance between the traditional tasks carried out by matchmakers and shadier dealings prohibited by law. This loophole for acquiring concubines offers a metaphor for the regulations as a whole. The stakes were often simply too high to prosecute families who engaged brokers and sold people in one capacity or another. 119

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The ninth regulation was more straightforward. It struck from the code laws forbidding the marriage of people from different social classes. Statute 115 of the Qing code had prescribed a punishment of 80 strokes of the heavy bamboo for a head of household who had arranged for the marriage of one of his slaves to a daughter of honorable birth.59 If the daughter’s parents were also aware of the circumstances, they were to receive the same punishment. The slave husband was also to be similarly punished. The various substatutes for 115 also called for 90 blows for anyone who misrepresented a slave in order to help the slave to marry an honorable person. These substatutes contradict substatutes elsewhere in the code, in which concubinage and marriage were presented as legitimate means by which a debased person might cong liang or “become honorable.” In practice these contradictions meant Qing women could improve their status through marriage, but men were restricted from doing so. The commission also reemphasized the elimination of all statutes that differentiated between slaves and commoners, as well as references to jianmin and liangmin. Language would prove more conservative than law in preserving rhetorical distinctions in status and virtue. Rape cases from the 1920s and 1930s still weighed whether a woman was honorable (liang) as a valid piece of evidence. The tenth and final regulation demanded improved enforcement of existing laws prohibiting the purchase of prostitutes. Despite the commission’s attempt to reinvigorate the existing law, young girls continued to be sold to procurers, who in turn supplied brothels. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as patterns of urban life changed and a new industrial workforce developed, an expanding traffic in young girls fed growing cities’ appetites for cheap thrills and instant gratification. The commission acknowledged that while terms could be eliminated from the code, uprooting prostitution was another matter entirely. The traffic in slaves of their day could easily be replaced with an even more robust market for both male and female prostitutes.60 New transportation systems greatly extended the reach of this traffic, and also caused considerable difficulty for those who sought to enforce the law. Despite these challenges to implementation, on paper the tenth and final assertion of existing law was the most unequivocal. The edict’s ten clauses did less to regulate the sale of people than to control the scope of the prohibition itself, and how it was to be enforced. Prohibition legislation was compromised from the outset. The commission 120

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never advocated the wholesale abrogation of a hierarchical system, or even of bondage. To do so would have required an ambitious national enforcement campaign. Rearranging unequal status systems did not become a priority even in intellectual discourse until decades later. Beijing’s municipal police records indicate that even within the capital, total abolition proved impossible. By 1910 Beijing had developed one of the most robust police forces in the world, but the capital’s freshly trained constabulary faced an array of other pressing challenges.61 In practice, most of the ten regulations required little direct action from the government. Courts were to cease to recognize some deeds and bonds but not others. The edict clarified the criminal nature of certain transactions, while simultaneously creating new categories of servitude to absorb displacement caused by the prohibition. Dizzying contradictions persisted even within one document: People were not to be sold via contract, but contracts must be used for indentured ser vice and the poor should be paid in advance. Intermediaries should not initiate contracts, but a man acquiring a concubine must engage an intermediary. The new law transformed former relations of enslavement into contractual hired labor, while retaining legal privileges for masters. The burden of enforcement fell first to the conscience of individual households. The text of the edict not only indicates the desire of the Commission on Constitutional Government to prohibit the trade in people, but also reveals the limits of that desire. The accommodations imbedded in the regulations suggest the breadth of relationships potentially disrupted by the prohibition. As a policy decision, the edict had been propelled, not by conditions at home, but as part of a larger campaign to impress the international community with China’s reform efforts. Later that spring China also acceded to the “International Agreement for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic.” This convention specifically targeted the international sex trade, and called for greater vigilance in ports and train stations as well as the repatriation of trafficking victims. International delegates to successive congresses to suppress the trade in women expressed pleasure when a Chinese representative joined them, for they understood the sale of people to be rampant within that country, but back in China, revolution abruptly eclipsed the problem of trafficking.62 The Qing government would not have the chance to test the efficacy of its prohibition. Within two years the dynasty came to an end. On October 9, 1911, an accidental bomb explosion at the revolutionary headquarters of 121

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the Tongmenghui in the city of Wuchang sparked a hasty mutiny within local units of the New Armies. These modern military troops had been trained as part of the dynasty’s own reform initiative. The New Armies were an outgrowth of the late nineteenth-century principle of “self-strengthening” designed to preserve the dynasty, but their ranks included many men who had come to believe that China needed a new government. A succession of uprisings around the country dismantled Manchu rule, and province after province declared their independence from the Qing. By January 1912 the young emperor Puyi had abdicated and a new republic was established.

Judicial Conundrum On June 16, 1913, the Jilin Local Court sent a telegram to the Supreme Court [Daliyuan] requesting instructions for handling cases involving the sale of people.63 The court wanted to know how to adjudicate cases of human trafficking among the rural poor and refugee populations. It was one of scores of similar queries on trafficking the Beijing- based Supreme Court received during the opening years of the Chinese Republic. The Supreme Court had been founded barely seven years before, as part of the Qing dynasty’s Xinzheng reforms. After the dynasty’s fall, the provinces of the young republic flooded the new court with cases and hundreds of requests for guidance.64 Their requests touched on widely divergent issues. A message from Suzhou Superior Court inquired whether injured parties were allowed to send their own legal representation to the court. (Yes.)65 The provincial court in Heilongjiang asked if members of the former Qing banners ought to be considered soldiers. (They were not.)66 Assessing the fine for a gambling offense, a court in Fengtian wanted to know if the amount of money staked should have any bearing on the severity of a gambler’s punishment. (Sometimes.)67 To answer these questions, the court could refer to two bodies of legislation: the recently promulgated criminal code that the Republican government lifted from drafts completed during the final years of the Qing, or the last text of the Qing statutes currently in force. Questions about trafficking hardly dominated the court’s time, but they amounted to a confused refrain from around China about how to apply new laws in times of change. In another telegram, jurists from Shanghai explained that they were struggling to determine how best to implement the government’s recent 122

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prohibition. Officials from the Shanghai municipal government acknowledged receiving a stern reprimand from President Yuan Shikai urging them to uphold the Republic’s latest legislation and to rigorously enforce the recently passed criminal code. President Yuan sought confirmation that these new laws were producing results (youxiao).68 Eager to demonstrate their region’s compliance with Beijing, the jurists reported that local courts throughout Jiangsu were now hearing a large number of cases involving just these sorts of illegal transactions. Several issues confounded the Shanghai court. The market for people supplied households with so many different kinds of labor—installing people into positions as wives, concubines, apprentices, indentured workers, domestic servants, and child-care providers—that it was difficult for prosecutors to assess when the law had indeed been violated. Day-to-day life in the city depended upon the peaceful negotiation of human transactions. Exasperated jurists explained, “We have found cases in which a woman has without question been bought and sold as a bride, in violation of the law. However, sometimes that woman has herself been willing. Moreover, in some instances genuine feeling has developed between the husband and wife, or the two have had children together. In these cases we don’t want to force them to separate. This would turn men into widowers, and children into orphans. To proceed like this would be inhumane.”69 The new code criminalized practices that had been tolerated under the previous regime. Some of the discretion permitted under the Qing criminal code had been lost, but what took its place? Shanghai jurists did not demand that the legislation be repealed or revised; they simply requested clarification. Although the new laws for abduction and enticement provided specific punishments for the parties on either side of a transaction, under the new system the guiltiest individuals, the intermediaries, often evaded punishment. In this respect they felt that the old code had done better. Some situations called for leniency, but trafficking remained a violent and persistent problem. Its deep ties to other forms of urban vice made it a particularly vexing crime for city law enforcement. Although these laws applied to a wide range of circumstances, loopholes as to who could be charged persisted. Furthermore, the court expressed dissatisfaction with the enforcement tools at its disposal: thus far fines had failed to deter buyers and sellers of people, and prison sentences could be applied only in limited circumstances. 123

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Jurists were especially preoccupied by contradictions between the law as written and the law as it would continue to be understood by traffickers. Courts wanted to know how to proceed when buyers produced contracts documenting their purchases. Many kidnappings involving young children eventually involved a sale and a contract. The contract might record the name of the buyer, but the names of those facilitating the sale could be omitted, allowing the real kidnappers to “blow away like smoke in the wind.”70 Criminal contracts placed a curious strain on the legal system during the first half of the Republican period. These tensions are not surprising; the edict outlined parameters for contractual indenture even though laws did not yet exist to resolve these kinds of transactions. The Republic promulgated a criminal code shortly after taking power, but legislators decided to wait before approving a civil code. Instead, jurists were instructed to adjudicate civil matters by referring to the old Qing code and to established customs, and by deciding what was “consistent with a modern state.” The Republican legal codes were in effect left half-finished until the early 1930s. The interim legal environment forced judges to balance custom and modernity. Cases involving family life often tipped this balance. Brokered domestic labor blurred the boundaries between criminal arrangements and civil disputes. Savvy traffickers sometimes employed contracts to induce prosecutors to adopt a more flexible attitude toward their arrangements, to demonstrate poverty and desperation, as well as to exert psychological pressure on the parties involved. Police, prosecutors, and jurists were in a double bind, and they went to great lengths to verify contracts. In response to the 1913 petition from Shanghai, the Supreme Court offered this advice: “It is not the responsibility of the law to determine whether contracts for the purchase of people are authentic or forged. Instead the law should only be used to determine guilt.”71 Yet despite explicit discouragement from the Supreme Court, both police and judicial investigators continued to struggle with the question of contract legitimacy. Why was it so hard for local police and judges to follow the Supreme Court’s advice? The answer lies in the relationship between law enforcement and local communities. Although ordinary people gradually became aware of the new republic’s goals, old ideas proved durable. Expectations of the law continued to be shaped by traditional ethical hierarchies and the notion that public welfare and stability should be 124

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paramount goals. This could mean deciding to uphold an existing agreement of questionable legality if it appeared to be in the best interests of the community. Police on the beat were expected to behave as Confucian gentlemen (junzi).72 The environment was one of competing ideas about the law.73 In any village marketplace or outside any county yamen (for in the earliest years of the Republic these magistrates’ posts had yet to be replaced with modern police headquarters) ordinary people could still find literate scribes to draft documents. Some of these documents were petitions, destined for the police or the courts. Other contracts, however, were retained privately, as part of a household’s records. They documented the addition of a concubine, the engagement of a servant, or the adoption of an heir—and only saw the light of day if a conflict ensued. The legal codes no longer promised to uphold these agreements, but law was not the only arbiter—and logistical limitations on law enforcement meant public tolerance usually trumped legality. In nearly 400 cases from the Beijing police and local courts involving the trafficking of people (instances of one or another related violations: selling people, abduction, coercion, enticement, kidnapping, injuring freedom), approximately onethird mention the creation of some kind of written agreement. Still more emphasize the failure to draft an agreement. It was certainly not always the master who drew investigators’ attention to the existence of a contract; sometimes sold people or their family members asserted that the terms of an agreement had been violated. Matchmakers or intermediaries who felt undercompensated also wielded contracts. These cases attest to the meticulous work of Beijing’s freshly trained police force. Police inspectors investigating suspected instances of trafficking almost always asked whether a contract had been signed. Although contracts were frequently cited in police investigations and mentioned in courtroom testimony, rarely were their pages retrieved from where they had been stowed: the wide drawer of a butcher shop’s counter, the trousseau chest in a mistress’s bedroom, or tucked inside a little tin box on a curbside barber’s cart. These could be incriminating documents. Even when a bill of sale was found, more often than not it would be hastily disposed of rather than filed. Only very occasionally was a contract uncovered, submitted, and transcribed in the court record. Indeed, intermediaries created contracts despite the fact that the existence of a contract 125

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might put them at considerable risk. This was because agreements brokered on the margins of legality carried social weight long after being deprived of legitimate legal value.

The Language of Enforcement Late Qing reformers chose to phrase their legislation on trafficking in terms of prohibition rather than abolition. They had a pragmatic reason for doing so: Actions were more readily identified and criminalized than statuses. Even so, the legal landscape was confusing. Police, courts, and the popular press used inconsistent language to describe these actions. This language betrays just how challenging it was for police to pin a specific crime on any given set of complex circumstances. The 1911 Revolution altered ordinary people’s expectations of their government. The Qing had started establishing modern courts in 1906. By the time of the newly founded republic, these new courts began to seem accessible. Changes in the law did eventually have an impact on the practice of buying and selling people, although that took time. The custom of buying and selling people continued to shape family relationships well into the twentieth century, as the new Republican government strove in various ways to regulate, control, and prohibit the practice. And although law provided one check against the market in people, other powerful new forces propelled the expansion of the trade. During the Republican period, North China’s police and local courts handled thousands of cases prosecuting family members, traffickers, and matchmakers for kidnapping, abduction, and the illicit sale of people. The careful records of these institutions offer a sense not only of a changing legal system in action, but also of citizens’ evolving ways of evading the law. Most of these cases involved a delicate balance of coercion and complicity on the part of various family members. Table  3.1 lists the diverse terms police used to describe arrests involving abduction or the sale of people. The unit of measurement is the contemporary archival file. Because these files often contain more than one police record, the numbers are only approximate; some files might enclose only one record, where others might contain ten. Archive file titles were transcribed from dossier titles recorded by police officers, prison officials, or clerks from the local court of first instance. Accordingly, if one were to include cases in which the buying and selling of people (maimai renkou or fanmai renkou) was alluded to during the course of the investi126

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TA B L E 3 . 1

Beijing municipal police files, 1916–1926 Total number of files containing phrase in file title

Crime name Youguai ヰዝ (kidnapping) Lüeyou ⃋ヰ (abduction / enticement) heyou ࡫ヰ (milder / consensual enticement) maimai renkou ㊨㋊Хߡ (buying and selling people) Fanmai renkou ㊝㋊Хߡ (illegal sale of people) Qiangmai renkou ဝ㋊Хߡ (forcible sale of people) Lüemai renkou ⃋㋊Хߡ (deceptive sale of people) Guaidai ዝམ (deceive and drag off) Guaizou ዝ㌿ (deceive and lead away) Fanghai ziyou ఒඊ⨙₭ (interfering with personal liberty)

1,295 215 152 133 113 3 14 138 364 190

Total

2,617

gation or suspected, but not explicitly named as a formal charge, then related cases would be even more numerous. Even allowing for these flaws in the data, the table provides a valuable sense of scale and the relative dominance of certain phrases. Although by no means exhaustive, the list captures both the diversity and the distribution of the terms police used to describe dif ferent forms of coercion. The terms listed in Table 3.1 align only imperfectly with crimes articulated in the Republican criminal code. It is evident from the various descriptive prefixes (illegal / forcible / deceptive) for the sale of people, as well as the colloquial guaidai and guaizou, that police inserted their own variations on the criminal vocabulary. Within individual case files, the use of a term could be quite slippery. An investigation dossier that a police clerk entitled “consensual enticement” (heyou) contained testimony in which a criminal confessed to “buying and selling people” (maimai renkou) but then was charged and sentenced by the local court for the crime of abduction (lüeyou). Only when a formal charge was brought in a higher court did the descriptive language of criminality stabilize and become consistent throughout a file. In fact, like their higher-court counterparts, both police and lower-court jurists found the official terms for enticement (lüeyou and heyou) exceedingly cumbersome. This was attested to by repeated requests submitted via telegraph to the Supreme Court asking for clarification about how to use these terms. As we have seen, local courts were frustrated because the new 127

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criminal code seemed to allow the guiltiest traffickers and intermediaries to slip away. The term “consensual enticement” (heyou) proved especially elusive, and its meaning changed considerably over time. Under the Qing the phrase had described a crime in which the victim seemed to acquiesce to her deception. This provided imperial jurists with a sliding scale describing varying degrees of force, by which to assign gradations of guilt for trafficking. These gradations resembled similar terms in the Qing code for consensual illicit intercourse (hejian) and rape (qiangjian).74 The Guomindang’s revision of the legal codes in 1928 narrowed the definition of heyou to apply only to the enticement of minors under the age of twenty. The new definition credited women with greater autonomy but also deprived them of recourse to legal protections. According to the law, older victims could no longer claim to have been trafficked unless they were able to demonstrate that they had been forcibly abducted. Philip Huang argues that provincial judges upheld this restriction in the Guomindang period.75 Local police, however, continued to intermittently employ the term in the old manner even after 1928. Given the loose way in which police used these terms in their interrogations and summaries, it is unsurprising that heyou continued to have two meanings: the less forceful enticement of minors (as defined in the new Guomindang code), and the residual meaning of implied consent. The residual meaning influenced how police handled ambiguous cases involving collaboration between abductors and their apparently willing captives. Later the inclusive phrase “interfering with personal liberty” (fanghai ziyou) absorbed some of the crimes that once fell under the old definition of heyou. To draft the documents tallied above, police drew upon multiple layers of information. They relied first on the events as they were described to them by their fellow patrol officers; second, upon the depositions taken from parties involved in the case; and third, upon their knowledge of the law and how a particular incident might fit a specific charge. With such an array of colloquial and official terms to choose from, and with multiple perspectives to represent in their reports, consistent language was difficult to maintain—even throughout a single document. This proliferation of terms is not necessarily a bad thing for the historian. Variation across an individual deposition, as opposed to the accompanying officer’s report, as compared with the ensuing court record (which might replicate the wording of a legal code) suggests that the recording clerk had yet to tamper 128

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with the original individual deposition. Unstable terms suggest less editing and bureaucratic intervention. Rather than despair at these contradictions within a case, then, the variations in language signal that perhaps such documents preserve a slightly less processed version of events, and retain some of the participants’ original perspectives. The phrase “buying and selling individuals” (maimai renkou) itself occurred frequently in police summaries, interrogations, and reports, but it is not how traffickers would have described their activities. It is worth putting this phrase in context. Although the phrase did not appear in the Qing criminal code, maimai renkou was the precise expression employed by the Qing reformers who proposed prohibiting the sale of people and in their prohibition edict. This was also the expression used to translate the English word “trafficking” during the coolie trade and throughout the widely publicized panic over “white slavery” and at international congresses to prevent trafficking in women. A similar crime, “deceiving people for the purpose of selling them” (lüeren lüemai), had been prohibited by earlier versions of the Qing code.76 Maimai renkou was an inclusive phrase intended to resolve what Shen Jiaben had described as the “numerous discrepancies in the law,”77 and its resonance with international trafficking fit well with international priorities as well as domestic circumstances. Beijing police also used this phrase to convey a degree of professionalism on the part of the intermediary. Criminals were said to “buy and sell people for a living” (maimai renkou wei sheng) or to “illegally sell people for profit” (yingli fanmai renkou). The expression maimai renkou occurs rarely as a formal charge in court. At the municipal level, lüeyou or youguai were more typical; even so, maimai renkou appeared in depositions and officers’ case summaries with increasing frequency. Provincial courts and the Supreme Court employed more legally precise language, articulating crimes that aligned with designated sentences. While police could get away with using terms interchangeably, the higher courts could not. At the upper levels of judicial decision making, accusations stabilized. Thus, by the time a case reached the Supreme Court, prosecutors had assigned a charge matching a specific crime in the Republican code. Testimony in a case file would then be revised, so that a young woman who had once told the local police or yamen clerk that she had been “tricked and sold” (pianmai) was now quoted as making the considerably less vernacular claim “I was enticed for profit” (wo bei yingli lüeyou le). The establishment of the Supreme Court in 1906 clarified the 129

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“Making a Report to the Police.” Qianshuo riri xinwen huabao [Elementary Daily News Pictorial], issue 1676, September 2, 1913.

road to appeal for accused criminals. This could mean a second or even third chance at leniency, as Republican judges experimented with reading across multiple legal codes. The proliferation of terms describing the trade in people presented another challenge to the courts and to local police. On the whole, the new system offered people the opportunity to be more litigious.78 Although it is very difficult to measure the extent to which the general populace might have been aware of textual changes in the legal system, the administration of justice in Beijing had become more visible in several concrete ways. Newspapers now regularly reported descriptions of crimes and the resulting arrests and trials, and pictorial editions of these papers broadened their appeal to include people with limited literacy. These images simultaneously encouraged and satirized people who hailed police on the street or accused their neighbors of crimes. Beijing police officers now wore conspicuous Western-style uniforms. Construction projects were under way for new prisons and courthouses within and around the city. Law and law enforcement were more visible than ever before. In this context, ordinary 130

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people gradually learned new terms for old practices. Given the flexible nature of local Qing justice, it is little wonder that in later decades the legacy inspired an entrepreneurial approach to litigation. After prohibition, not only did police confirm more instances of trafficking and abduction; both judges and police were more likely to encounter accusations of trafficking or abduction. The provincial courts were swamped with appeals. They, in turn, passed this burden on to the Supreme Court. Table 3.2 provides a snapshot of Supreme Court appeals. The provincial distribution of these appeals was shaped by limited access to courts as well as divergent awareness of new laws.

Personal Language of Rationalization and Vendetta Police language was just one of several vocabularies employed in the Republican courtroom. Arresting officers spoke in a creole of the legal language of administration and colloquial terms for crime. Judges in provincial-level courts were more disciplined; in their writings, at least, they confined themselves to the language of the code as best they could. Plaintiffs and defendants had their own way of describing the circumstances that brought them to court. The new legal terminology for recently criminalized activities did not necessarily enter everyday spoken language. But through newspaper coverage and the presence of police on city streets, these terms began to seep into public consciousness, and to inform citizens of the new Republic’s sense of the law and potential opportunities for litigation. People now had a fresh set of accusations to hurl at each other, and new language to wield in court. This was especially the case for residents of the capital. Some of the most vivid disputes in the police and court record occurred around marriage. Arrangements made between families in Beijing’s courtyard neighborhoods could easily become contentious; families faced an array of new pressures and considerable local anxiety during these years. The city’s population was growing exponentially; between 1910 and 1935 the population of the greater Beijing area grew by approximately 42  percent, from 1,128,808 to closer to 1.6 million.79 Municipal planners grew concerned that the center of the city had become overcrowded. Major changes to roads and public space accompanied this growth, and competing military factions meant that control of the capital was frequently up in the air. Although the classic image of a Chinese family features a dominant patriarch, records from Beijing’s Republican-era courts tell a dif ferent story. 131

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࡫ヰ

࡫ృ ဝృ

㋊Ⓡ㰏೎

⃋ヰ

2 2 1 1 1

1 4 6 7 1 22 6 15 5 9 4 9 1 8 1

⃋ヰ

3 1 7 1

2 3 15 2 2 2 2 13 2

1

1

2 3 2 8 1 1 1

9 2 7 2 2 6

1

6

1 1 2 3 1 1 5

1 4

1

1

1

1 1 2

1

2 9

1

1

1

3

1

3

1

1

1

(milder / (consensual (consensual ⃋ヰ (selling ⃋ヰ ‫ܥ‬㋯ ဝ㋊ illicit sex and (rape and (abduction / (enticement consensual enticement ヰዝ (rape and (kidnapping (forcible a child enticement) for profit) bride) enticement) for profit) (kidnapping) enticement) enticement) kidnapping) for ransom) sale)

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Appeals to the Supreme Court relating to abduction and trafficking, 1919

Source: Second Historical Archive, tallied from the index for the Daliyuan.

Heilongjiang Fengtian Beijing Zhili Hunan Shandong Anhui Jiangsu Zhejiang Fujian Jiangxi Henan Guizhou Hubei Shanxi Rehe Jilin Shaanxi Gansu Sichuan Guangxi

TA B L E 3 . 2

1

(illegally buying a prostitute / paying for sex)

㊝㊨౾

1

(milder sale / sale by mutual agreement)

࡫㋊

NEW LAWS AND EMERGING LANGUAGE

Many households left the making of arrangements to the senior woman of the family. A 1920 squabble between two such women, Mrs.  Li and Mrs.  Liu, who lived in neighboring courtyards in Chunshuxia Santiao Hutong, highlights women’s leadership role. Astute female household decision makers understood the opportunities afforded by this new legal vocabulary, and they could use their newfound knowledge to bring venomous charges against each other.80 The trouble between the two households escalated when Mrs. Liu accused Mrs. Li of maligning her granddaughter’s reputation, disregarding the obligations of marriage, and trafficking. When both of their children were still young, Mrs. Liu had arranged, through a matchmaker, for her granddaughter to marry Mrs. Li’s son, Li Guijin. At sixteen, Mrs. Liu’s granddaughter first crossed the threshold of her husband’s home. Shortly thereafter, however, her new mother-in-law became frustrated. Mrs.  Li complained that the young wife from the Liu household was foolish (chisha) and incompetent at housework. Grandmother Liu proposed a solution: The Lis should obtain another servant. Even after they did, Mrs. Li continued to find her son’s bride irksome. After four years she made plans to find another wife for her son. Mrs. Li strategically laid the groundwork for breaking off the marriage; she first accused Mrs. Liu’s granddaughter of adultery and then threw her out. Down the hutong, back with her natal family, the young wife reported what she had endured at the Li household. She later told police: “They treat me like a servant, every day demanding I cook food, which they get to eat, but I don’t get any for myself. I have to do all the cleaning up after dinner before they let me eat even a little white rice. They don’t give me any proper dishes to eat. My mother-in-law says I am uncooperative, and she can’t stand me. My husband and I haven’t consummated our marriage. My mother-in-law often uses her walking stick to beat me, and I have scars all over my body.” For four years Mrs. Li had tormented her daughter-in-law: “When the weather turned cold Mrs. Li would not allow me any heat, and when it grew dark at night she would not give me a lamp. She made me wear black clothing so filthy I could never wash it clean.” And now Mrs. Li had contrived a plan to rid herself of the young wife for good. “Recently my mother-in-law said she no longer considered us (her son and me) to be married. At the same time she told me that my husband had some kind of disease, but from what I can see, my husband does not have a disease. . . . 133

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This year, after taking on the servant recommended by my grandmother, my mother-in-law sent me home.”81 Grandmother Liu was furious. She marched her entire family to the Li residence and demanded Li Guijin restore her granddaughter’s reputation by taking her back. The two women shouted at each other in the courtyard doorway. Mrs. Li repeated her accusations of adultery and venereal disease, and she elaborated, claiming that the young wife had returned from her affair hungry for more sex: “I heard her tell my son that if he didn’t want her, then there was someone else who did.”82 Seething from this insult to her granddaughter’s virtue, Mrs. Liu hastened to the local police bureau where she begged the officers to force the Li household to honor the marriage. In her vengeance, she mentioned that Mrs. Li had been involved in trafficking in servants, bringing charges of maimai renkou. Police investigations revealed that in addition to an older servant suggested by the bride’s grandmother, Mrs. Li had also purchased a sevenyear-old girl named Shunxi. Mrs. Li confessed to buying the girl for 40 yuan, and to giving a neighbor a finder’s fee of 2 yuan, and to later selling the girl. She used her son as an excuse, “Because my son was not welleducated (bu nian shu), when I asked him to punish the serving maid for not tidying the house, he beat the girl nearly to death.” Seeing how frequently her son beat the maid, Mrs. Li decided to sell her. She claimed the little girl would be able to confirm the story of her daughter-in-law’s infidelity.83 The grandmother and the mother-in-law hurled insults and accusations before local police as their dispute escalated from a domestic disagreement over shoddy housekeeping to a criminal investigation. Police tracked down the seven-year- old serving-maid, known as Shunxi, and asked her to tell them what she knew. Shunxi testified that she was from Stone Cistern Hutong in Beijing’s Dongcheng district.84 Her mother had died of some illness a couple years earlier, and she did not know her father’s name or where he had gone. She described being beaten by her mistress (taitai), the young wife (shao nainai), and her young master (shaoye), and she blamed the young wife for these beatings. The wife was apparently messy, and Shunxi found herself always tidying up after her. For this reason Shunxi couldn’t keep up with the chores. Shunxi confirmed that she had indeed been purchased, beaten, and resold. She could not, however, confirm the story of the wife’s adultery. Instead, she told police that, at her young 134

NEW LAWS AND EMERGING LANGUAGE

master’s request, the daughter-in-law slept alone in a different wing of the courtyard.85 Several neighbors—all middle-aged women—also stated that Mother-in-Law Li had purchased and later sold the seven-year-old. In the end, the police magistrate sympathized with the wife’s family. His clerk recorded that “the results of this investigation revealed Mrs. Li had been crafty, cunning, and strange, and her son Li Guijin was not very bright. Moreover, the evidence we gathered proved Mrs. Li was indeed guilty of buying and selling a serving-maid.” After dismissing the question of adultery as idle slander and the young man’s supposed illness as hypochondria, the police court determined that, although they did not feel the young wife had been treated with undue cruelty (despite her claims to the contrary), it was clear the couple did not get along. The magistrate did not insist that the young couple be reunited as the grandmother had initially wished. This family dispute consumed all the time, effort, and local bureaucratic attention of a criminal matter, only to end up with the police resorting to the sort of mediation required from the outset in most family disputes. Grandmother Liu may not have known for certain how her neighbor found or disposed of Shunxi when she made her accusations, but trafficking was a good guess. She initiated police intervention by blowing the whistle on the illegal sale of people in her neighborhood. Neither the grandmother’s insistence that the Li household should retain domestic help nor her role in introducing an older maidservant were scrutinized by the police. In instances of malicious accusation, like this one, police typically faced two entirely separate problems. They had to address the alleged criminal activity, of course, but they also had to resolve whatever domestic conflict had brought the activity to their attention. Addressing these contentious family disturbances required discretion, judgment, and a nuanced grasp of Republican China’s changing laws. Cases like the dispute between Grandmother Liu and Mother-in-Law Li show that ordinary people in Beijing could, and did, keep apprised of changes to the law. Both the police and local judges maneuvered between new laws and local interpretations of tradition. In broad strokes: When people brought accusations against their neighbors, disputes often featured the new criminal terminology on the side of the plaintiff bringing the accusation, while the defendant—whether he or she be a trafficker, a kidnapper, an intermediary, or a matchmaker—marshaled the language of family and tradition. Young children were adopted out of charity, payments 135

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were gifts, and a leased wife was a concubine. Intermediaries claimed to have been moved by compassion, rather than by profit, to provide soughtafter introductions.

Zhou Fu’s 1906 proposed abolition did not offer a concrete plan for how to excise the sale of people from layers of society where the practice persisted. The ten regulations on the prohibition of trafficking people of 1910 did more to articulate loopholes than to provide practical solutions to the question of enforcement. If there was no clear guide for implementing these social reforms, then even less was there a roadmap for how to change China after the fall of the dynasty. When the revolutionaries of 1911 promulgated their criminal code, they retained the prohibition against buying and selling people initiated by late Qing reformers. Transition from imperial to Republican rule required extensive institutional and structural change. Despite the rapid collapse of the Qing state, bureaucratic transformation could not happen overnight. There was little consensus on how to implement or enforce newly drafted laws. The old Qing legal system itself had contained provisions for handling all manner of disputes, but a distinction between criminal and civil law had recently been imported from the West.86 Although early Republican jurists implemented the new criminal code, they sent Shen Jiaben’s draft civil code back to the drawing board. As a result, during the first two decades of the Republican period, judges navigated between two dif ferent legal codes: the modern Western-influenced code drafted by Shen Jiaben and Wu Tingfang during the dynasty’s last years and the old Qing code. For judges serving on the bench between 1912 and 1928, this multilayered legal framework provided significant latitude for interpretation, especially in cases involving family, marriage, and property.87 More often than not, the sale of a person involved two, if not all three, of these sensitive areas. Local police also exercised personal discretion when investigating these cases. Although trafficking was a process that on its face might seem overtly criminal, it usually involved family members and relied upon kinship networks. Late Qing advocates of a constitutional government moved to prohibit the sale of people, yet with their extensive caveats and loopholes they also acknowledged the very real social purpose these transactions continued to serve. As the Republican government would discover, it was often difficult to determine whether a case was 136

NEW LAWS AND EMERGING LANGUAGE

indeed an example of the criminal “buying and selling of individuals” (maimai renkou) or instead some other, perhaps more palatable arrangement—a mercenary marriage, adoption, or indenture. Chinese legislation often made this difficult. In March 1927 the government ratified further regulations to emancipate (jiefang) slaves throughout the country. This legislation prohibited owning people more explicitly than the 1910 regulations, but it contained similar loopholes. The law stated that, henceforth, young girls of slave girl (nübi / mui tsai) status should be called “adopted daughters” (yangnü). Such girls were to attend school from age twelve to sixteen, and be provided with the opportunity to marry at twenty-three. If “adoptive parents” failed to supply adequate food and clothing, then the local magistrate should place the girl in a girls’ home or industrial school.88 Police reports depict the ways in which affluent Beijing households understood the role of the new constabulary, as these families negotiated for the enforcement of a private domestic hierarchy beyond their own courtyard walls. Meanwhile, jurists struggled to create effective, inclusive, and yet specific terms to label long-standing customary practices as new crimes. Among the general population, people’s sense of their own rights under the republic evolved as they gradually made the transition from subject to citizen. Their new identity remained informed by durable hierarchies, and a personal familial logic continued to enable transactions in people.

137

4

Fictive Families and Children in the Marketplace

In the early evening hours of March 3, 1916, Police Constable Ma Zhaokui rounded up seven men and eleven children in front of the doorway to the Beijing brothel known as the Huangheyuan (Yellow River Courtyard).1 Set back from the main thoroughfare, in the dwindling light, lanterns hung from the gateposts indicated the brothel was open for business. Visitors referred to the road as a “lotus flower stream” (lianhuahe). The name evoked a literary tradition of connecting lotus picking with visiting courtesans, and it was associated with one of the water channels that fed the city moat. Municipal police recorded numerous registered and unregistered brothels along the stream’s banks. A survey from 1931 showed that each hutong branching off of the main road sheltered anywhere from three to twelve brothels.2 In its heyday, the neighborhood had more than seventy.3 The opening years of the Republic marked a transition in the status of commercial sex. Prostitution had been illegal but often tolerated under the Qing.4 In the new Republic, government policies on prostitution shifted in favor of registration and regulation.5 Long-standing institutions— teahouses and banquet halls where sex and short-term intimacy were for sale—could now operate more openly. In 1916 the busy Huangheyuan was a larger establishment with two stories, a large banquet area, and rooms furnished for entertaining. About a fifteen-minute walk southeast from the imposing Qianmen Gate, on a street in sight of the northernmost side of Temple of Heaven, the Huangheyuan was one of the area’s officially registered brothels.6 138

FICTIVE FAMILIES AN D CHILDREN IN TH E MARKETPLACE

Transactions in people took place on either side of the brothel doors. The sort of sales conducted inside the walls of the Huangheyuan and its competitors come as no surprise: Traffickers kept brothels around China supplied with young women. Kidnapping, coercion, and desperation fueled this trade. Some women’s families rationalized sacrificing the virtue of a daughter to provide for the rest of the family. Contracts articulated debt, terms of service, and sometimes plans for eventual marriage and return to honorable life. The women of the Huangheyuan helped to create an ephemeral fantasy world for their clients. No matter how ugly the reality of their experience—courtesans at even the most affluent brothels still had to negotiate the omnipresent professional hazards of physical violence and venereal disease—these women had to maintain a veneer of seduction as they performed their sexual and entertainment services.7 Even for men visiting the lowest prostitute the encounter represented a fleeting indulgence. At the brothel doorstep Constable Ma Zhaokui uncovered a more unexpected array of transactions. Negotiations involving young children on the streets of Beijing constituted another dimension at the intersection of trafficking, brokered labor, and family. This particular group, eighteen in all, had been disrupting business, panhandling from customers as they entered and exited. They gathered in the doorways along the lotus flower stream to sing, play music, and perform tumbling acrobatics. The glow of the lanterns in front of the brothel lit their stage; the shadows beyond formed its wings. The cases examined thus far have revealed the vulnerability of young women to sexual violence, exploitation, and coercion into domestic servitude. An individual woman’s experience could embody a whole spectrum of reproductive, domestic, and sexual ser vices. Women have been shown to be transferable between families, simultaneously expendable and precious. Children—both girls and boys—occupied a similar portable status, especially among poorer households. Most historical literature on poverty, famine, and natural disaster emphasizes the tragically expendable nature of children, portraying the parent-child relationship as an unavoidable casualty of crisis. But that classic narrative is too simple. These kinds of justifications are misleading, as they suggest that trafficking households— both buyers and sellers—bore little responsibility for their actions. In fact, the market in people was a place of decision making rather than inevitability. Thus, although a compelling rhetoric of last resort reverberates throughout descriptions of natural disaster and political crisis, the activities police 139

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Yanjing University New Campus Deshengmen

Andingmen Bell Tower

Xizhimen

Drum Tower

Guangming Temple*

President’s Residence

Forbidden City

Xiaoyangquan Hutong

Nanchizi Avenue

Heizhima Hutong

Pudu Temple

Changan Avenue Foreign Legations

Yangmao Hutong

Beijing-Hankou Railway Line

Yanjing University Old Campus

Qianmen Qingyun Hutong ailw ay L ine

Huangheyuan Brothel

Temple of Heaven

Temple of Agriculture

ng-Ti anji nR

TIANQIAO DISTRICT

Beiji

Caishikou

Beijing Number One Prison Yongdingmen

0 0

1 mile 2 km

Beijing, 1925. Note: The Guangming Temple was burned by foreign forces during the Boxer conflict in 1900.

patrolmen found in front of the Huangheyuan told a dif ferent story. Desperation may have driven the beggars to assemble in front of the brothel doorway that evening, but the family arrangements, agreements, and networks that brought them there reveal ingenuity in the face of crisis. Moreover, the ways in which members of troupes like this one articulated their mutual ties suggest that it is simplistic to assume the poor sold their children only to the wealthy. As we shall see, Constable Ma was in the pro140

FICTIVE FAMILIES AN D CHILDREN IN TH E MARKETPLACE

cess of uncovering a community in which the poor exchanged valuable children among themselves. Changes in the capital made this possible. Early Republican Beijing’s population was expanding from its former days as a home for officials and those providing ser vices to them; the growth of local commerce began to afford ordinary inhabitants greater leisure time, and brought more people into public spaces. Following children through Beijing’s alleys, courtyards, and parks leads us to the men and women who sold them.

On the Streets For centuries the district south of Qianmen had earned renown as an entertainment district. It had long been seen as a destination for examination candidates—the successful ones came to celebrate, while those who had failed sought distraction among courtesans and shared pipes of opium. Work-weary Qing officials, poets, literati, and even Manchu princes dallied in this part of the city. In contrast, the area nearby known as Tianqiao had for centuries served as a pastoral sanctuary from the anxieties of urban and official life. The location took its name from the bridge crossed by generations of Qing rulers, as royal entourages processed to the Temples of Heaven and Agriculture to perform seasonal rituals. Restricted access to this area once preserved a convenient bucolic retreat for elites in the capital.8 By 1916, however, the Tianqiao patrolled by Constable Ma had gained an altogether dif ferent reputation. Along with several other parks, this formerly quiet imperial land had been opened to the public after the fall of the dynasty.9 Tianqiao was fast becoming Beijing’s largest marketplace, with goods priced for less than elsewhere in the city, and growing crowds eager for the bargains. The newest migrants gravitated here. Planning decisions made by the municipal government accelerated this process. City walls were punctured, and new roads cut through the old imperial grounds. These new roads connected the city with the stations for the Tianjin-Beijing and Hankou-Beijing railroads, both located south of Tianqiao. When business slackened in other districts, or when municipal planners forbade the construction of small booths and temporary roadside stands, Beijing’s petty entrepreneurs hastened to Tianqiao.10 The eighteen beggars arrested by Constable Ma were in their own way trying to make the most of this hectic and relatively unregulated part of the city. 141

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Constable Ma and his deputies herded the seven men and eleven children from the doorway of the brothel to the headquarters of the outerright fifth ward. Once there, the performers identified themselves to the police clerk. Most of the eighteen had found their way to Beijing from districts adjacent to the city. They gave the names of villages outside the city’s outer walls in Wanping or Daxing Counties. The children, ranging in age from six to sixteen, included seven boys and four girls. Each child shared a surname with one of the older men, and they described themselves as sons, daughters, nephews, or adopted children. One pair, Ne Ying’e and his thirteen-year-old daughter Jingui, told the clerk that they were members of a Manchu banner (manqiren) who had fallen on hard times. Half of the city’s poor could make such a claim.11 Statements taken from the ragtag troupe show that the group supported itself by gathering on the streets of the entertainment district, in front of brothels and theaters. There, on the doorstep of the demimonde, they sang and begged for money as customers came and went. The performers would sing, shout, tumble, dance, and tell jokes until they had rustled up enough cash to return home, or until a harried proprietor paid them to move their “performance” along to a competitor downstream. Although the depositions recorded by the police clerk are concise, they nevertheless include just enough detail to enable us to distill some of the beggars’ essential values. In several sentences, each of these tiny “families” related a migration story. They told the recording officer what misfortune had landed them on the streets. Their various tragedies included poor harvests, the death of a mother, a child abandoned with her uncle, an unfaithful wife, and the loss of a status by members of the old banner system. These explanations attest to the beggars’ need to justify their current situation. Desperation made their presence in front of the Huangheyuan more comprehensible—and might win them sympathy. The street performers made claims not only about their pasts but also about plans for the future. Personal hardship drove them to “study theater” (xue xi) or “study opera” (xue xiju) in the city. Although their statements echo the language of nonchoices commonplace in economic crime and trafficking among the poor—“We could not do otherwise” (feizuo buke)— their actions on the street suggest creativity and collaboration with others in similar straits. One man had come into the city with his wife, but because she was unable (buke)—or, perhaps we could assume, unwilling— to work as a prostitute, he and his son were both “studying opera” so that 142

FICTIVE FAMILIES AN D CHILDREN IN TH E MARKETPLACE

the family would have enough to eat. “Singing theater” was the only option for another group of three, whose harvest had failed earlier. In lean years past, their family had relied upon a grandmother who could make some money telling fortunes (suan ming). When she died the three survivors had to come up with an alternative plan. Granny had once had good luck hustling people at the Tianqiao fair and market ground, and they too all came to Tianqiao. Although theater was sometimes a maligned profession, for these street entertainers it was better than having no profession at all. Moreover, by claiming to be studying, they consciously or unconsciously borrowed a language of legitimacy and perhaps added respectability to their endeavors. Men in the group sought to justify their activities by emphasizing their role in the care and education of the children with whom they worked the streets. These men described their lodgings in the city. Some stayed in the back room of a shop, under the canvas of a street vendor’s stall, or in back alleyways belonging to families with whom they shared a surname or an even more tenuous connection. Some told the officers the rent they owed—slightly over 1 yuan per month—on these makeshift shelters, saying that without the children’s income, they would have no way to pay for food or a place to live. When they shuffled into Constable Ma’s station, they brought their performance in from the street with them. The relationship between a man and the children in his care represented a family at its most pared down: the disintegration of a larger traditional family structure into microhouseholds. They were impoverished, no longer reliant upon land for subsistence, highly mobile, and potentially disruptive to the established urban order. Yet their durability also attests to the strength of fictive filial ties in the face of calamity. The interdependence of these tiny family units was evident in the way in which each child’s words echoed those of his or her guardian, confirming his various statements to the police. The precise repetition in the recorded dialogue also resulted from how the police clerk posed questions to the children; these young children had little opportunity to contradict their putative father figure. The extent of exploitation in these relationships can only be surmised. Certainly a child on the street, whether singing or begging, must have inspired more charity than a middle-aged man alone. While feeding, housing, and keeping one’s eye on a child seven or eight years old in one of the city’s busiest districts presented certain costs and challenges, for this company of street performers the expense must have been worth the trouble— 143

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easily offset by the additional income a small child brought in. Whether or not these children truly were related to the men with whom they performed, they relied heavily upon their older protectors and feared being separated from them. To forestall this separation, several of the children hastened to assure the police: “Indeed he has never hit me (ta bing meiyou da wo).” As we will see, however, Constable Ma had reason to believe that this statement divulged the very thing it denied.12 Police did not hesitate to remove children from abusive homes and to place them in welfare residences. This record does not reveal whether these streetwise children knew anything about reform facilities around the city or what their prospects might be if taken into state custody. After Constable Ma and his clerks scrupulously transcribed brief but clear statements from each street performer, Ma wrote a summary report for his police chief, on a newly printed form. Emblazoned across the top of the official form was the reign name Hongxian or “Grand Constitution.”13 This was the phrase President Yuan Shikai had adopted just two months earlier when he declared himself to be the new emperor of China. By that first week in March 1916 his rule was already proving ineffectual. All around the country, military leaders and provincial administrators declined to help Yuan consolidate his role as China’s first constitutional monarch. Many waffled, claiming to have contracted minor “illnesses” that kept them from serving in Yuan’s new regime.14 In Beijing, however, the police force remained stable. Yuan’s foresight and interest in modern police training and municipal administration had been crucial for getting the force up and running. He had enormous respect for Japanese law enforcement and was not timid about implementing promising foreign systems. In 1901, when Yuan Shikai had been made governor of Zhili, he commissioned Kawashima Naniwa, a specialist in modern policing, to organize and train his police force.15 It was at the police academy founded by Kawashima that Constable Ma Zhaokui and his colleagues received their training. Many local officials owed their position to Yuan, having earned promotions during his term as Zhili governor, and this network of reciprocity and loyalty enhanced stability in the area in and around the capital. As a result, although various warlord administrations competed to control Beijing and the surrounding area, the capital city’s municipal police force retained remarkably consistent control of the city. No matter who was in charge, the business of routine governance continued. Even when police pay went into arrears, patrolmen kept relative peace on the streets; 144

FICTIVE FAMILIES AN D CHILDREN IN TH E MARKETPLACE

investigations were held, criminals arrested, courts convened, and convictions issued.16 Constable Ma’s final report to the police chief not only describes the arrest of these eighteen people but also reveals why the group may have been rounded up at this point in time. Their arrest was not an isolated occurrence. Ma noted that the police were actively concerned with similar groups of performing panhandlers throughout the city and speculated that members of these groups knew each other: Some organizational contact must have been necessary to avoid conflicts over turf. Such an incident shows the streets of Beijing as increasingly contested sites—places where poverty, and the desperate innovations it inspired, played out before a modernizing police regime. Keeping order frequently meant intervening in minor public disturbances. Naturally, in addition to these curbside confrontations the police were also supposed to apprehend more significant criminals. Although the roundup from the brothel doorway on its surface at first appeared to be routine street- sweeping, Constable Ma’s summary suggested that these eighteen street performers were part of an extensive racket. Ma explained that elsewhere in the city, just a few miles to the north, at number 21, Cui Family Well Little Hutong (cuijiajing xiao hutong), a man known as Qi Baishun had made a name for himself as a singer of excerpts from Chinese opera. This reputation enabled him to lure young children with the promise of instruction. Once Qi had gathered a group of children together, he would supposedly force them to sing in brothel doorways, sending them out in small groups of two to five. If the children failed to beg enough money from the brothel visitors, Qi was said to have them whipped them cruelly. Qi was evidently more criminal than any of the eighteen arrested in front of the Huangheyuan, and he had been suspected for some time of having connections with trafficking. Ma’s summary stated that the police had just taken into custody five children who claimed to have been part of Qi Baishun’s troupe. Several of these children had scars on their bodies. None of the recorded statements given by the eighteen brought in to the precinct station that evening mentioned Qi Baishun by name. Constable Ma, however, knew about Qi, and he seems to have inferred that the eighteen street performers he questioned may also have been connected with Qi. Ma’s report speaks to a (largely false) sense of conspiracy that fed public unease with an increasingly visible urban poor in the early twentieth century. On March 5, just two days after the 145

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“Child Retainers.” These children are about to be dispatched on errands. Sidney D. Gamble Photographs, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University (41B-437).

Huangheyuan roundup, the notorious ringleader Qi was arrested and charged with tricking children into a life of begging.17 Sixty-seven-year-old Qi Baishun was not a native of the capital. He and his twenty-five-year-old son Qi Baolin originally hailed from Wen’an, over eighty miles south of the city. Like the other previously arrested street performers, Qi was making the most of his opportunities in a changing city. Unlike the others, however, he had accumulated a following with the poor and notoriety with the police. Through charisma and skill, Qi Baishun had been able to convince families to apprentice their children to him. He described his activities in Beijing in the following way: I perform Beijing Opera during the day in the big tent at Tianqiao. Qi Baolin is my son, and Dong Zhenjin accompanies us on the huqin. This young boy’s name is Sun Shanxi. He is my apprentice, as are Hai Laixi, Li Erge, Zhao Zhu’er, and De Xiaoxi. I have contracts with each of them, attesting to their commitment to study with me for six or seven years. Since the 146

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year before last, every day during the daylight hours they perform by the temple at the temple fair singing bangzi. At night Qi Baolin, Dong Zhenjin, and myself split up [around the city] and bring the children with us to brothels where they sing and beg for money. On occasions when [my students] have not managed to beg for enough money—not even 2 measly strings of cash—or if they forget how to do their per formance, my son Qi Baolin will use a rod to beat them.18

Qi Baishun’s son, Baolin, conceded, “Yes, indeed, I frequently beat the children when they performed clumsily.” Dong Zhenjin, the huqin player, also confirmed their arrangement and division of labor. Dong explained that while their days were spent at Tianqiao, in the evenings the adults would take the children in smaller groups to hustle revelers in the city’s red light district. The children taken into custody with Qi were: twelve-year- old Sun Sanxi, also known as Xiao Gou’er or “the little pup”; twelve-year-old Hai Laixi, “the little old man”; a nine-year-old orphan named Li Erge; and the youngest of the troupe, eight-year-old Zhao Zhu’er. Each of these children told police that they had a contract with Qi Baishun for six to eight years of study. The younger two had joined Qi less than a month before their arrest. Little old man, Hai Laixi, had been with the troupe for two years, while Sun, the little pup, had been with Qi the longest. He had already fulfilled five of his eight years. He recalled that before coming to Beijing he had lived with his parents in the Nanxiwa slum in the northern part of the city. The nickname Xiao Gou’er accompanied him from his family into his new life. A much elder brother, Da Gou, “Big Dog,” also lived in Nanshiwa with his son Ergou, “Second Pup.” These two pulled rickshaws for a living. The little pup’s police statement does not tell us whether he felt that his apprenticeship on the street with Qi Baishun was a better fate. It does, however, provide a glimpse into the little pup’s transition from his biological family into the kinship network of the performing beggar troupe. He brought his name but little else. When talking with the police, Sun referred to the other performers as his siblings, xiongdimen. He also called Qi Baishun his master, shifu, and Qi Baolin his shixiong, a term for a senior male apprentice that incorporates the word for elder brother. The younger boys used slightly dif ferent language, referring to Qi Baishun as master or grandmaster, and to Qi Baolin as teacher (laoshi). 147

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Statements in the police files repeat details that shed light on the preoccupations of the questioner. Repetition across dif ferent individuals’ accounts of the same sequence of events also demonstrates the persistent nature of interrogation in Beijing police stations. In order to generate this level of consistency, police employed coercion, or at least pressure to conform, throughout the interrogation process. Producing such uniform answers required several rounds of determined questioning. Statements taken from all three of the adults and each of the children included the sum “less than 2 strings of cash.” If the apprentices failed meet this threshold, then they would receive a beating. Police in the spring of 1916 took care to document and confirm who had administered the beatings and how much money the children were expected to earn, as well as to determine the contractual situation of each of the boys, their place of origin, and the group’s routine. There were others apprehended that evening as well. Eight-year-old De Xiaoxi had wandered off and become separated from the group, but also told police he spent every day studying with Qi Baishun. Forty-threeyear-old Zhang Hui’en, known throughout the brothel district as “Lewd Zhang,” used face paint to make himself more grotesque and then sang bawdy songs in front of the brothels. Chen Baozhen, a young man who gave a vegetable stand as his home address, explained that he played accompaniment for opera performers at the fairground by day, while at night he would venture forth to beg with fourteen-year- old apprentice Gao Yonglu. A final father and son pair, Chen Kuang, age forty- one, and his five-year-old son, Chen Erge, were also rounded up. During the day Chen Kuang also played the flute (dizi) in the big tent at Tianqiao. Like the eighteen beggars from outside the Huangheyuan brothel, Chen Kuang told the police he was teaching his son to perform bangzi. Police confiscated the performers’ instruments: three huqin, Chen Kuang’s dizi, and four pairs of wooden blocks for performing the rhythmic accompaniment to bangzi excerpts from Chinese opera. They recommended that all the children be sent to a vocational workhouse. This was evidently done, because the remainder of the file contains a series of petitions from mothers hoping to retrieve their children. One, from Chen Erge’s mother, read: “I am shocked and frightened, unmoored and confounded. I know nothing about any crime my good husband and son might have committed. My son is only five years old. We have been separated for ten days, and I have been crying bitterly. How can I do anything but weep 148

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and wail? At the risk of offending you, I present this guarantee. Please have mercy on me and my little son and allow us to be reunited.”19 Other parents approached the workhouse to express regret at having apprenticed their sons to Qi Baishun, and offering similar guarantees that they would take better care of their children. Gao Yonglu’s father wrote to the poor people’s refuge (pinminsuo) explaining that although his son had been arrested for panhandling at night, during the day his son performed “on a stage.” The boy’s mother was herself bedridden, and the family counted on the boy’s legitimate earnings. He asked the poorhouse to help him to locate his son. They did so, and allowed him to take his son home on the condition that the boy no longer spend time in the vicinity of the brothels. Three more children were released to their mothers in early April. Their older minders were less fortunate. Qi Baishun, Qi Baolin, and Lewd Zhang were detained in the workhouse. For beating the children, Qi Baolin was sentenced to two months of hard labor. Lewd Zhang received a one-month sentence for his disruptive behavior. After serving time, all  three were released, but only once they had made their signature marks—the telltale crosses of the illiterate—upon affidavits, promising not to repeat their crimes.20 Police records indicate five of the child apprentices from Qi Baishun’s troupe of performing beggars were in the end reunited with their parents. The surviving police record does not elaborate on the legitimacy of the various relationships and paternity claims made by the tiny families taken into custody by Constable Ma. The ultimate fate of the street performers cannot be traced, although the police placed at least one pair in vocational training in a workhouse to learn handicrafts (songjiao xiyisuo). Police clerks also noted that two of the young boys from outside the Huangheyuan had been deemed too ill to work.

The predominant narrative in most court cases involving the sale of a person begins with the accused explaining a family crisis, and the circumstances through which it became necessary to remove an individual from an overburdened family. It is worth remembering, however, that even to Beijing’s poorest, children could be valuable. For the men Constable Ma apprehended in Tianqiao, not only did these young performers mean the difference between poverty and starvation, but they also were the last remnant of even a fictive family. Some scholars have emphasized 149

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the vulnerability of beggars and their lack of kinship ties, pointing to the rootless and therefore threatening nature of people without kin in a family-based society, but cases like this one show that beggars were not completely defenseless and did try to form and maintain kinship ties.21 Even for Qi Baishun, these children were essential to the family network he established in his preforming troupe. Without their young charges, the older men became atomized, isolated individuals to be dealt with by an increasingly intolerant state. Even if the beggar children were not theirs by birth, they served as an invaluable prop, and these men clung to them. Whether begging on the street or detained at the police station, the children were their one remaining asset. For slightly better off families, this was not always the case. The way families treated their weaker members depended upon economic circumstances. In a surprising number of instances, many people who chose to sell their family members did so not as a last resort, when they had nothing else, but instead precisely because they had something to lose. They weighed various options and made a rational economic decision. Of course, under truly desperate conditions, children might be sold so that they and their parents would not starve to death—but the rationale for selling a family member could also be more moderate. Widows were sold to facilitate the advantageous division of property. Young children were sold to enhance opportunities for their older siblings. Orphaned nieces and nephews were sold in order to save family resources for sons. The (usually senior) members of a family who made these kinds of arrangements were not necessarily ill-intentioned. Rather, we can surmise that they sought to balance a complicated set of family and societal priorities. Professional traffickers eagerly intervened in what to an unsuspecting family might have initially seemed a benign adoption or milder form of indenture. Families were not necessarily cognizant of the ramifications when they apprenticed a child to another household or engaged a third party to resolve a (perceived) family imbalance. As a result, heads of household sometimes found themselves complicit in arrangements that proved harsher, and more permanent, than they could have anticipated. On some occasions, by engaging a professional trafficker to help excise an unwanted individual from their household, these family decision makers unwittingly ended up before the court themselves. Qi Baishun appears to have made most of his arrangements without intermediaries, dealing directly with the parents of the children apprenticed 150

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in his troupe. Many transactions in people, however, proved more complicated, involving multiple parties and mediators. These could include an extensive network of family members, neighbors, local merchants, distant kinsmen from one’s native place, as well as complete strangers. As we will see, transactions were rarely transparent to all concerned. Police archives and judicial records show that heads of households held private conferences with neighborhood matchmakers, who in turn talked with relatives and friends far and wide. Introductions could be made, and sometimes all concerned would know what various parties hoped for, but sometimes they did not. Discontented young girls ran away from arranged marriages only to find themselves sold to a brothel owner in a hutong alleyway less than a hundred paces away. A family short on funds might indenture a child to serve in a far-off town, uncertain of what his or her fate might be. To understand these negotiations, one must consider the ways changing public spaces, such as Tianqiao, interacted with the inner, private space of a family. In the 1910s and 1920s, Tianqiao not only grew to become the city’s biggest, cheapest marketplace and its most exuberant, accessible fairground— it also became the point of arrival and departure for many of the city’s sold people. Because of the train stations south of the market, transactions from all over the city might involve passage through Tianqiao. The area was one of a new kind of public recreation space. The establishment of these areas was inspired by Chinese urban reformers’ exposure to public parks in the West and, more recently, in Japan.22 In form and function, however, these spaces also drew on a long local tradition of temple fairs and market days. Along with the opportunity afforded by these spaces came renewed dangers. Nearby, the grounds of the Temple of Agriculture, which had been opened to the public earlier in 1916, were also a popular site for kidnappers and traffickers to snatch unsuspecting children. The perils of public spaces continued to be well documented in the popular press. Throughout the 1920s, daily newspapers like the Shijie ribao reported several kidnappings every month.23 An article dated January 12, 1929, describes an attempt to kidnap a young girl named Wang Erge. It tells us that her father was a hardworking private rickshaw driver. Each day, together with the older and younger girls from the neighboring courtyard, Erge would go to the Temple of Agriculture. They joined a crowd of children who would gather up coal to bring home to their families. One day the children noticed a man of about thirty following them around the 151

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streets. He leered at the girls, puckering up his lips and making kissing noises. When it grew dark, Erge and her friends meandered home with the crowd. When Erge looked over her shoulder and saw he was following her, she became frightened. She cried out and ran home. Although she was afraid, she didn’t mention anything to her mother. When Erge went out in the evening to buy tofu, she saw him again. This time he approached her and snatched 2 yuan from her hands. He made loud unintelligible sounds with his mouth and then said: “If you come with me I will give you the money back. If you don’t I will take the rope and drag you along with me anyway.” At this Erge screamed and dashed into a teahouse. Once inside she recognized one of her neighbors, a man surnamed Meng taking his tea. Hurriedly, Erge told this neighbor what had happened. Mr. Meng gave pursuit and managed to apprehend the man who had tried to carry off Erge.24 Newspaper stories like this one capitalized upon popular curiosity about the perils of poverty and the street. They also often illustrate the important role neighbors played in these communities. In this instance readers even witness a neighbor making a citizens’ arrest. We gain a sense of what the lives of children were like. By venturing forth to gather coal, Erge and her friends augmented their families’ livelihood. Hundreds of small shops processed the coal balls, essential fuel for cooking and heating in the city.25 Despite the young scavengers’ bitter circumstances, they held on to the camaraderie of childhood. Erge’s friends noticed the man watching them, but they weren’t immediately alarmed. It was only after he singled her out and began to follow her that Erge became frightened. These girls all had homes of their own, but they were also accustomed to the comings and goings of street life, and this was not the first time a stranger had solicited them. Even at eleven years old, Erge knew she would rather lose the two coins than follow this lecherous man. The economic uncertainty of the Republican period sent young children outside of their homes, on missions like gathering coal, gleaning scraps of wood, trash picking, or running marketplace errands. Children might be wise beyond their years, but they were still vulnerable. Separated by fifty years, Wang Erge’s misadventure echoes the earlier case of Zhang Fujie, who was raped and sold after being kidnapped while gathering coal. Camaraderie and interconnectedness spared Wang Erge from sharing Zhang Fujie’s fate. Perhaps it helped that the streets were busier in 1929 than in 1879. Erge was fortunate to be working on 152

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“Gathering Kindling.” Sidney D. Gamble Photographs, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University (41B-436).

the street with other urchins, fortunate to escape, and fortunate that her fleet-footed neighbor Meng was drinking tea nearby on that particular evening. The seven boys and four girls Constable Ma escorted into the police station near Tianqiao also understood that the streets were dangerous. Whether or not the men with whom they were arrested were indeed their fathers, survival on the streets required some kind of a family. Both Constable Ma’s Huangheyuan roundup and the ensuing arrest of Qi Baishun’s begging troupe offer a sense of the potential value of children on the streets. Encounters between criminals and police in the open-air market, and the interrogations that preceded the apprehension of the chief of a notorious begging racket provide a glimpse of not only the “performance” of family enacted by these beggars in their testimony, but the extent to which modern policing itself was “performed” to demonstrate order to a mobile and entrepreneurial populace. 153

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Behind the Walls The increasingly visible public life, however, did not mean that there were not all sorts of illicit activities going on behind many families’ courtyard walls. The interaction of traditional cloistered homes and new public spaces shaped the broader postprohibition market in people. As an example, let us explore a case that began with the arrival of an unsigned letter. Written on delicate pink and orange embossed paper, the letter implored the senior officer (lao xiansheng) in charge of the outer first precinct to determine how two young girls came to be at the home of a man named He Long. The author of this anonymous tip accused the He family outright, stating: “There is a household just outside the Qianmen Gate, at number 7 Qingyun Hutong, that buys and sells people, and prostitutes always come and go from the back of their courtyard.”26 There were two girls at this house, the writer explained, who are kept out of sight, and beaten when their master and mistress believed no one to be in earshot. The author of this letter (presumably a man) said that he regularly participated in the activities hosted by Mr. He. The letter writer conceded that he knew about the girls because he himself had won money (facai) gambling in a game arranged by He Long in the back room of a nearby teahouse. According to the letter, occasionally one or the other of these very young girls (whom police investigators would discover were only twelve and nine years old) would escort high rollers to and from the underground game. Despite his own involvement in illegal gambling, the author of this flamboyant note begged the police to investigate the intended fate of these two girls.27 This was not the first time police had cause to visit He Long’s residence. In June of the previous year officers had questioned him and several of his neighbors because they had received disgruntled reports of his gambling activities—possibly circulated by people who (unlike the author of this letter) had not had much luck in the games he sponsored.28 At the time, the police let He Long go with a light fine and a warning. Although gambling was against the law, and had been since the Qing, prosecution for gambling was intermittent. As was the case with trafficking and opium use, gambling appears most frequently in the police record as something uncovered during the investigation of another crime or when the activity was perceived to be a threat to public order. Enforcement patterns fluctuated with the political climate. By the Republican period the 154

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extent to which gambling was considered criminal depended on the stakes. In 1913 the Republican Supreme Court had ruled that whether the “incidental playing of mahjong” was gambling depended upon the stakes of the game, and the following year the court clarified that whether played for pleasure or for profit, instruments employed in gambling as well as money found on the participants should be confiscated as evidence.29 Cases held in the Beijing Municipal Archive indicate that while fines were the most common punishment for gambling, these were sometimes combined with very short prison sentences. For his first offense, the police likely fined He Long less than 15 yuan. Participants in the game might have been fined only 2 or 3 yuan.30 Census officials often stumbled upon petty crime, coercion, trafficking, and underground activity when checking neighborhood registration. Sometimes household inspection provided police with a mechanism for covert criminal investigation. Numerous cases began with officers following up on a report from neighbors with a hucha inspection—a routine form of inspection meant to confirm data already documented in the official neighborhood census.31 On other occasions, rumors of illicit activity first appeared in a local newspaper, inspiring police to take a closer look. The ensuing raid provided fodder for further reporting, feeding a cyclical and sensationalist dynamic between journalists’ curiosity and police investigation. A hot tip could set the police in motion. Although they had overlooked the goings-on at He Long’s house for nearly a year, the letter inspired the police to send an inspector for the population registers over to number 7 Qingyun Hutong.32 When he arrived at the He residence, the inspector claimed to be performing a routine survey of who was living in the house (hucha). Upon entering the house around nine in the morning, the inspector asked how the two young girls were related to He Long. Not satisfied with He’s explanation, he brought He Long, his fifty-seven-year-old wife, and the girls to the police station for questioning. Sixty-four-year- old He Long’s statement to the police was curt. About himself, he told the officers only his name, age, and birthplace, and about the two girls he said simply that they lived with him. He did not say when or how they arrived there. The interrogators had better luck with his wife, who gave a more complete explanation for how the two girls came to reside at their home. Four years earlier Mrs. He had met a woman surnamed Jin in the street who had suggested that a young girl called Wei Dajin 155

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would be a good child bride (tongyangxi) for their son. “After things with Wei Dajin were arranged, the same matchmaker also found the girl Xu Xiaosu. She is from the family of our neighbors the Xu family. And they gave her to us to rear up.” Mrs. He explained that the Xu girl lived in an adjoining residence, and was always hanging around looking for extra food. “The Xu family came from our same village in Daxing County. Because Big Xu’s daughter [Xu Xiaosu] arrived in Beijing with nowhere to live, she came to our neighbor Xu’s house to be adopted—but they don’t have enough to support her. So my household has been giving her food and clothes to wear.” To further clarify the situation, Mrs. He stated: “That girl, Dajin, was arranged by a matchmaker, but we didn’t buy this other girl. We were caring for her, but she can go back any time.”33 Scribbled in the margin between those last two sentences, the police clerk added another sentence from Mrs. He, presumably in response to further interrogation. “My son is currently seventeen years old, and has returned to the theater where he works.” The police then questioned the older of the two girls, eleven-year-old Wei Dajin. She told the officers, “Four years ago, when I was seven, my parents sold me to the household of Mrs. He née Wang. I heard them say that the price was 35 yuan. My father brought me to the He family’s residence himself, and told me I should call Mrs. He ‘mother’ (muqin). Every day I had my feet bound, and she beat me cruelly. Now, because my feet were bound so tightly, I cannot walk very far or stand for long. This little sister, Xiaosu, two years ago was bought into the household also. Her name is Xu Xiaosu. She’s been beaten several times [too]. This morning, Xiaosu woke up late, and was beaten. Afterward, an officer came and brought all of us to the station. At this point, I don’t know where my real parents have gone—but I don’t want to go back with Mrs. He.”34 The narratives given in police statements typically culminated with being brought to the station, and then concluded with the set phrase confirming “this is my truthful testimony” (suogong shishi). In addition to relating the circumstances that preceded her being brought to the police station, Dajin voiced an opinion about what should happen next. Like most statements, this one was the product of a series of questions, rather than a continuous narrative, but in this brief moment a reader glimpses the young girl’s strug gle to make sense of why she had been brought to the station. The sentences about being sold are certainly the result of direct questioning, but the comments about binding feet, walking, 156

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and her confusion about her own fate may well be her own. At the very least, by mentioning the abusive treatment she received while residing at the He residence, Dajin helped to shape the questions she was asked. Republican police embraced multiple duties, blending law enforcement with social welfare. Rescuing and rehabilitating abused children was part of their mandate. Wei Dajin’s bound feet are also suggestive. Neighbors confided that the gambler’s household already had a neighborhood reputation for selling young girls, and it was possible that Wei Dajin was being raised to sell to a brothel rather than truly taken as a child bride as her buyers claimed. Brokers debated the merits of bound feet when negotiating these sales. Depositions mention potential buyers viewing a woman’s feet, and poorly bound, particularly painful, or awkward binding could detract from a woman’s value as an able body, rather than enhance it. One woman, hoping to at best indenture herself as a wet nurse or, at worst, sell herself as a servant found her “poorly bound” feet subject to the scrutiny of not only the trafficker into whose hands she placed her future, but also his nine-year-old son. The son ended up testifying at court about the encounter and inadvertently exposing his father’s illicit profession. Turning to the younger girl, the police posed a similar series of questions. Xu Xiaosu, age seven, told the officers she was from Laishui County, outside of the city, but lived now in Qingyun Hutong with the He family: “My father, Big Xu, first brought me to He Long’s house [when we needed a place to stay] when I was five. My father brought me to Beijing, where I lived with Mrs. He. I don’t know why, but my father sold me. I was to become their daughter.35 There was a written contract, left in the hands of my nainai, Mrs. He, stating that I had been sold, though I don’t know what the price (shenjia) was. I don’t know why [I was sold]. Today I got out of bed late, and my nainai beat me with a bamboo rod. Then the inspectors came. Where my father has gone, I don’t know.”36 Like Dajin, Xiaosu also seems to have been instructed to use familial language to refer to her buyer. Nainai is the colloquial word for paternal grandmother, although the girls probably said it without affection. Once again, between the sentences of this young girl’s testimony, we can imagine the officer’s leading questions: “When did you come to He Long’s house?” “Who brought you?” “Did your father sell you? Why?” “What was the arrangement? Was there a contract? How much did they pay?” And, finally, we hear the child’s simple explanation for the events leading up to her arrival at the police 157

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station. Both girls connected the police investigation to the abuse and beatings they received at the He household, but did not seem to connect it to either the transactions that had placed them there or the gambling or other illegal activities at number 7 Qingyun Hutong. The officers managed to obtain statements not only from He Long, his wife, and the two girls, but also from the matchmaker Jin and those relatives of the girls they could locate. In his notes for how to proceed with the investigation, the chief investigating officer raised suspicions about whether eleven-year-old Wei Dajin had indeed been purchased as a child bride. He suggested He Long and his wife be asked to produce the contract. Testimony from the matchmaker differed only slightly from that of Mrs. He-Wang. The matchmaker stated, “In the first year of the Republic, someone surnamed Wei brought his daughter Dajin to be a wife in the He household. I was willing to serve as the intermediary. Because Dajin was very young, we drafted a marriage document (hunshu) promising that Dajin would return to the He household as a child bride (tongyangxi). This is why I’ve been brought to the station for questioning. I only know that the man surnamed Wei also returned 10 yuan to the He family. That is all I know about the sale of the Dajin girl.”37 Dajin’s father’s version of events matched Matchmaker Jin’s deposition. He explained to the police that he had returned the 10 yuan to the He family because his daughter had become ill—which he claimed proved that the situation was not one of buying and selling people. Although he had received 35 yuan to give Wei Dajin to Mrs. He-Wang as a child bride, he considered this to be a family arrangement rather than a sale, and returning 10 yuan proved his ongoing concern for his daughter’s well-being. The police officers were more skeptical. In their view, Wei’s 10 yuan looked suspiciously like a refund on sickly merchandise. Xu Xiaosu’s father was more candid. He contradicted Mrs. He-Wang’s claim that Xiaosu was simply visiting and admitted selling his daughter to the He family. In questions posed later that same day to the older girl, Wei Dajin, police officers asked for more detail. In her second statement, Dajin confirmed that neighbor Jin had indeed served as matchmaker, and that they had written up a contract. The young girl called this contract an “eight character card” (bazitie). Typically such a document would have provided the crucial data for a child’s horoscope, and set the stage for an engagement. From a legal standpoint the bazitie was just one component in the necessary proof of a marriage. Alone, it did not constitute a contractual 158

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marriage obligation; however, Dajin used “words” (zi), “eight character card” (bazitie), and “contract” (qi) interchangeably. She understood the arrangement was that she was a child bride for the He family’s seventeenyear-old son, currently working at a theater selling tickets. Dajin also elaborated upon her perception of how Xu Xiaosu happened to join the He family. As the older of the two girls, she was in a better position to provide specific details. The Xu neighbors peddled small wares in the area, and “Xiaosu loved to be close together with me every night, and she looked for me whenever I went to sleep.” Dajin also added that Xiaosu often ate food while she was visiting the He family, and all her habits (xiguan) predated Xiaosu’s purchase. At least the transaction had kept the two friends together. Wei Dajin’s version of the sale of Xu Xiaosu—a description offered by a precocious eleven-year-old—shows just how pervasive the practice of selling people was in Beijing’s courtyard communities. The business of trafficking could be sought out, but it was also so omnipresent that opportunities to buy or sell someone could materialize on a doorstep. The station chief decided that it would be wise to try to locate He Long’s son, to whom Wei Dajin was supposedly affianced. From the repetition and care in the police file, one gets an impression of a brave and stoic little girl. By asking questions of neighbors, who were not brought to the station to give formal testimony, police investigators determined that He Long’s son, He Guizhen, was known for buying and selling young girls to a nearby brothel. The police were unable to persuade these neighbors to personally come forward to confirm whether He Long and his wife supplied He Guizhen with these girls. A report that one inspector submitted just three days after the investigation began, however, mentions learning from a twenty-six-year- old prostitute named He Yuqing that He Guizhen may have eventually intended to sell the two girls to the brothel where He Yuqing had worked for the past two years. He Yuqing’s husband was a cousin of the family named He Zhikuan. The couple came from the same suburb as He Long and his wife. Yuqing told the police that she and her husband had settled in Beijing three years earlier. Shortly after their arrival the husband He Zhikuan leased (zu)38 Yuqing to the boss of the gambling den, He Long, as a prostitute. He, in turn, put her to work in a brothel. Yuqing did not mention how her husband happened to end up in such dire financial straits that he needed to lease his wife, but we might speculate that He Zhikuan ran up gambling debts to He Long. The term of her lease was set at three years, and after drawing up a contract, her husband was paid 159

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200 yuan—more than twice what her husband could earn in that time as a laborer in the city. He Yuqing refused to further incriminate the man who had leased her. He Zhikuan was, after all, still her husband. At the end of her statement to the police, she stated flatly: “Whether or not the two girls, Wei Dajin and Xu Xiaosu, were purchased, I cannot clearly say.”39 Inspectors questioned the girls a third time a week later, but learned nothing new. They had exhausted what they could learn from these youngsters. In this third and final version of the girls’ testimony, both girls mentioned that on the morning the inspectors first visited the He household, Xu Xiaosu had been beaten because she had wet the bed (niaokang). The late inclusion of this final detail suggests how thoroughly the investigating officers pressed the girls for details about that morning. In the end the police investigators had a difficult case to argue. The circumstantial evidence against He Long seemed damning. His son was known to work at an entertainment facility and was known to supply brothels with young girls. Many in the neighborhood knew that He Long and his wife hosted a regular gambling game, either in their own courtyard or in a neighborhood teahouse. He Long had also purportedly arranged to lease the twenty-six-year-old wife of his kinsman, Yuqing, as a prostitute for another nearby brothel. According to provisions in the law, however, the case against He Long was not watertight at all. Not unwittingly, his wife had provided an excellent defense. Although Mrs. He mentioned paying money for the older of the two girls, she emphasized Wei Dajin was purchased as a bride. Wei Dajin’s father explicitly testified that he sold her because he and his wife faced poverty. Moreover, it was not He Long, but rather He’s wife, who took responsibility for the two girls. By describing the “adoption” of the second girl as an act of charity, but one to which she was other wise indifferent— saying “she can go back”—Mrs. He further protected her husband. From their conversations with the neighbors in Qingyun alleyway, police were aware that Mrs. He had also played an active role in organizing He Long’s gambling sessions. This case demonstrates how a household could cooperate to spread responsibility for illicit activities among themselves, thus deflecting any consistent charge against a single individual. For the He family and others, crime was a family affair. Mrs.  He’s strategic combination of the language of charity and family meshed well with exceptions to laws prohibiting the sale of people. As recently as February the Republic’s Supreme Court had ruled on whether pur160

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“Buying Girls to Be Concubines.” Qianshuo riri xinwen huabao [Elementary Daily News Pictorial], issue 1654, August 21, 1913.

chasers should be considered culpable if they had been motivated by a desire to intervene and help the destitute. The Supreme Court ruling was written in response to an inquiry from the Zhinan district court in Shandong as to how to interpret Article 9 of the statutes in force. This article prescribed a punishment for the opportunistic seller of someone in need, but gave no stipulation for how to treat the purchaser. The Supreme Court replied that middlemen who profit from the trade in people should be punished, but when “for the purposes of charity (shanyang) and support (shouyang) wives, concubines, boys, girls, servants and slaves are being received to be cared for,” the purchaser was not culpable and should not be punished.40 Mrs. He would not have followed Supreme Court decisions, yet by referring to charity and adoption she successfully defused the charges against her husband. Although He Long, his wife, and his son eluded serious personal repercussions, they were not permitted to keep the girls. The police had failed to bring these local suppliers to justice in a higher court, but it was within their power and jurisdiction to confiscate human wares. Two months after the two girls were first brought in for questioning, police dispatched 161

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official forms stating that Wei Dajin and Xu Xiaosu would be brought up (jiaoyang) in one of Beijing’s relief and rehabilitation homes (jiliangsuo). These red-lettered referrals were enclosed with the rest of the case file. Xu Xiaosu spent seven years in a home. For a portion of that time she suffered greatly with an illness the medical staff at the relief home described as gonorrhea (linchuang). According to relief home records, “sores in her mouth kept the young girl from being able to eat. Her muscles grew weak, and little by little her body lost its strength.” In a striking testament to the thoroughness, and perhaps also the compassion, of the local police, an officer who had been involved in the case years before came to check on Xiaosu. He learned that Xiaosu had died in the relief home at the age of fifteen. He updated her file. He submitted a dignified request for the preparation of a coffin, asking the relief home to arrange to shroud and bury Xu Xiaosu’s body and prepare a suitable report. Surviving documents do not tell us whether Wei Dajin, the child bride with bound feet who had told the police she “didn’t want to go back” to the He household, had a happier fate than her younger playmate. As with the children in the Huangheyuan beggars’ case, placement in the welfare system is the last time we see Dajin.

Brokers, buyers, and sellers often falsified relationships to mask the illicit sale of children. He Long’s household alone contained several examples of this. Mrs. He maintained that one of the girls was her daughter-in-law and that the other girl had been adopted shortly thereafter. He Long also “leased” the wife of another kinsman and then had her serve as a prostitute. According to their neighbors, He Guizhen, the son of the gambler and his wife, had a reputation for procuring young women to supply a local brothel. From available depositions it is not possible to say whether He Guizhen and his parents had used the promise of marriage to acquire other girls in the past. Whatever their criminal history, it seems likely that they had no intention of treating the young child bride as anything better than a courtesan to escort patrons to and from the gaming table. Certainly that is what the police who removed the girl from their household believed. In this case, as in many others, ambiguous family roles intersected with the world of prostitution and entertainment. Although the police investigations described thus far directly involved the entertainment district, it is important to remember that a great deal of 162

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human trafficking went on elsewhere in the city, and did not involve urban entertainment or public consumption. Many of these transactions were intensely private. To examine these, we need to try to determine how family decision makers understood the practice of selling people and integrated it into their home life. We also need to investigate the deceptive claims made by traffickers who manipulated family relationships as part of their livelihood. Most cases involving kidnapping, coercion, or the sale of people entered the courts as criminal cases. Because matchmakers and professional traffickers alike used the rhetoric of family to explain their actions, many family relationships remained subject to regulation by relevant sections of the old Qing code. Accordingly, even in criminal cases judges had to refer to both the new criminal code and relevant portions of the Qing code to make their decisions. The incidents above were handled locally, entirely by the Beijing municipal police. Next I describe a case that found its way to the Supreme Court via the appeal process. As we have seen, judges in the first decade of the Republic inherited a combination of legal codes that left considerable room for interpretation. Nowhere was this more true than in cases involving family, marriage, and property. When adjudicating civil cases, Republican judges called upon relevant statutes from the old Qing code and applied them at their discretion. Judges not only sentenced the guilty, they also assessed the validity of family relationships and alleged kinship. For at least two of the pared-down “father-child” family units among the street performers, abandonment by a parent or wife proved a catalyst for sudden downward mobility. For the very poor, fictive kinship proved binding—inspiring surprising loyalty between children and their guardians. When the economic stakes were higher, however, sometimes even true blood relationships could not withstand avarice.

The Professionals The following case, which came before the Supreme Court in 1919, features a dif ferent set of commercial and family values. Unlike in the case just discussed, where a gambling den operator’s neighbors, and even his patrons, openly complained about his activities to the police, neighbors play a very dif ferent role in the case below. The case reveals the fragility of some family bonds, and the relative strength of community networks. It also shows the Supreme Court sentencing family members, traffickers, and 163

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neighborhood intermediaries for the crime of “abduction” (lüeyou) for the sale of a young child.

In April 1919, just outside Beijing’s northeastern Anding Gate, two cousins met to discuss a mutual problem: They were troubled by a young girl they called Heizi, or “little black one.”41 Earlier that year Heizi’s mother had left the city to look for work in the countryside (urban to rural migration was also common in this period). She entrusted her thirteen-year- old daughter to her sister, Mrs. Tian-Su. She hoped her sister, who had married better than she had, would provide for the little girl. Families residing outside the city walls did not share quarters as close as those in the city center, but they still often lived only a short distance from each other. So it was natural for an older cousin, like Xiao Yonglan, to frequently visit his cousin, Mrs. Tian-Su. During hard times families pooled what little resources they could scrape together. Despite an established pattern of mutual aid between this generation of siblings and cousins, the same difficult conditions that had prompted the girl’s mother to leave the city made it just as hard for her aunt to provide for an extra mouth. Xiao Yonglan suggested that his cousin, Mrs. Tian-Su, did not need this additional burden.42 The cousins eventually consulted with various neighbors. The neighbors offered to introduce them to a local intermediary to work on their behalf to find someone to purchase Heizi. The intermediary, Wang Delu, promised to negotiate an appropriate price for the girl. Two known traffickers, Chu Deshan and Pan Chunfu, regularly traveled between Tianjin and Beijing to buy and sell people (gou renkou). After a series of conversations among many of the elder neighbors, a meeting was arranged so that Chu Deshan would have a chance to look over the “ little black one” and to haggle over her price. Eventually they agreed that the girl should be sold for 125 yuan, a sum sufficient to feed a small, rather humble, urban household for almost a year.43 How this payment was to be divided between the cousins, and whether the neighbors who helped provide introductions would have received a courtesy share, was not mentioned in court. The cousins explained that they were instructed to hand deliver the girl to the traffickers in Tianjin. Chu then gave the cousins a collateral deposit of 3 yuan, and everyone returned to their homes. On April 18, Xiao Yonglan and several 164

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of his neighbors brought Heizi from their home outside Anding Gate in Beijing to Chu Deshan’s house in Tianjin. There Chu handed over the rest of their payment. The court record does not explain what mode of transportation they took to or from Tianjin. On their way out of the capital they may have boarded the Beijing-Tianjin railway, although the fare for three passengers would have cut into their profits, and unless they had an eager buyer in Tianjin, there might not have been any reason to make haste. Coming home the traffickers did not travel by train, as records show that the gendarmerie detained them in the Daxing County Yamen just outside the north gate at Andingmen.44 Their arrest outside the city walls reminds us that judges were not the only officers of the law forced to balance new systems with old ones. Whereas the courts had to strike a delicate balance in the realm of ideas, from a practical standpoint the administration of Republican Beijing required that county yamens and police stations coordinate their law enforcement efforts. At the city’s perimeter, police often found themselves at loggerheads with local magistrates.45 Crime just outside the city gates was common.46 The primary role of both the old magistrate yamen system and the new police force was to settle disputes and, when circumstances required, to collect fines and administer punishments. Cooperation between the two institutions was conceivable but practical only when responsibility for different aspects of a single case could be allocated effectively. This might mean that a magistrate in the yamen for Wanping or Daxing County could hold a suspect for a time, and mediate with his or her family, before then allowing the urban police force to escort the suspect to court or prison. Such collaboration was feasible but infrequent. Tension and occasional competition developed between the old gendarmarie and the new police system during the late Qing and early Republican periods.47 In this particular arrest, however, responsibility for the investigation seems to have been shared smoothly. Because they were arrested outside the gate, Chu, Xiao, and Tian were first held in the custody of the rural yamen, before being transferred to the municipal police. The court proceedings that followed named nearly a dozen friends and neighbors who had been involved in the transaction in one way or another. In the meantime, Heizi had been resold for a tidy profit of 50 yuan. Together Pan and Chu had drafted a contract selling Heizi to a man named Wang Hongling for 175 yuan. 165

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No aspect of Cousin Xiao Yonglan’s initial statement to the court contradicted this new piece of information from the professionals. However, in a peculiar twist, during Xiao Yonglan’s appeal to the Supreme Court, the girl’s paternal grandmother, Mrs. Gong, stepped forward, claiming that she had originally arranged for Heizi to be apprenticed to a man surnamed Wang to study theater. Asked whether the girl had been “sold,” the grandmother asserted that “the situation was nothing of the kind.” She provided the last clue as to whereabouts of the thirteen-year-old “little black one.” Shortly thereafter, the cousins Xiao and Tian retracted their earlier testimony, changing their stories to accord with Heizi’s grandmother. Realizing the futility of prevaricating at this late point in the trial, the professional trafficker, Chu, never altered his story. In September, six months after the cousins had sold Heizi, a Supreme Court judge reviewed a copy of the local court file. He found Grandmother Gong’s testimony strange (yishi), and was surprised to discover that police had interviewed her early in their investigation but had disregarded her explanation of events. In his decision (shenpanshu) the judge stated that the stories were too contradictory for him to say definitively what had transpired, but circumstances alone were enough to convince him of Xiao, Tian, Chu, and Wang Delu’s guilt.48 These four were all handed seven-year sentences for the crime of abducting a child for profit (yingli lüeyou). Despite his appeal, the Supreme Court upheld Xiao Yonglan’s conviction. All four were sent to the Beijing Prison. For selling her sister’s child, Mrs. Tian would be held, along with 136 other women prisoners, in the city’s only ward for female criminals. (While the number of men incarcerated would increase exponentially over the decade, the female prison population remained relatively stable.)49 No charge was ever brought against Grandmother Gong. Neither the municipal police nor rural yamen runners ever located the theater instructor who supposedly purchased Heizi. Pan Chunfu, who had evaded capture in the autumn of 1919, was eventually arrested for a similar crime in 1922.50 Unlike the police investigations described earlier, in which the local municipal government placed the children in various welfare institutions but permitted their buyers to go free, this Supreme Court appeal concluded with the court securing several traffickers behind bars—but leaving young Heizi still very much missing. The harsh sentence handed down in this trial indicates that Supreme Court judge treated Xiao Yonglan and his ac166

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complices as profiteers, rather than as a family forced to indenture a young child in order to survive. Although many of them were severely prosecuted, the various parties involved in selling Heizi each performed a slightly dif ferent role. As described to the court, it was only after the cousins decided to sell Heizi that a chain of neighborhood introductions put her caretakers in touch with the Tianjin traffickers. Only one of those neighbors, the intermediary Wang Delu, ended up alongside the cousins in court. But others in their courtyard neighborhood knew what was in store for the young girl. Most cases that became part of a police investigation or landed in court involved both kinds of intermediaries—a more traditionally palatable, usually local matchmaker; and a professional trafficker, opportunistic and savvy about modern conditions. To understand the social mechanisms that enabled families like Heizi’s to arrange and complete such a transaction, it is crucial to distinguish professional traffickers from more traditional matchmakers. According to the modifications to the criminal code—including the regulations on the prohibition of the buying and selling of people—marital matchmakers were not supposed to receive payment for their ser vices. In practice, however, police and local courts tolerated the exchange of small customary fees, perhaps in acknowledgment that there needed to be some incentive for social intermediaries to continue this ser vice. Whether or not intermediaries had another profession, or whether being a matchmaker was their sole way of making a living, clearly marked an important distinction. Volume, the number of people a trafficker sold, also determined the severity of a crime. From the perspective of prosecuting legal officials, recidivism must have been another important factor; however, experienced criminals learned quickly to change their names, and repeat offenders were hard to track. The use of force, the extent of coercion, and the degree of violence also helped prosecutors distinguish between matchmaker and professional. And significantly, it mattered whether the person conducting the sale had any relationship to the person being sold. Professional traffickers usually operated through resale, paying small fees and favors to the local intermediaries who supplied them. When the Tianjin traffickers Chu and Pan resold Heizi (to the man surnamed Wang, who Grandmother Gong claimed was a “theater instructor”), their margin 167

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of profit was 50 yuan. Depending on how often opportunities like this arose, there was real money to be made in the business of buying and selling people. When documents from the courts or prisons list an occupation for professional criminals like Chu and Pan, their profession (zhiye) is often given as “buying and selling people for a living” (maimai renkou weisheng). Convicted traffickers repeatedly stated that buying and selling people was a job. In the case of the girl Heizi, it was unfortunate for Chu that he got caught returning to Beijing with his clients. Matchmakers and traffickers often worked in tandem. To make a business of dealing in people, highly mobile traffickers needed matchmakers to be their eyes and ears in Beijing’s neighborhoods. The busybodies responsible for the desirable social ser vice of providing introductions and making matches in a small community knew things like who was needed, who was not, who was happy, and who was not. As familiar community characters, matchmakers assuaged the consciences of the desperate, providing the social lubrication that greased the wheels of the profiteering traffickers’ enterprise.

The market in people could be an alluring place. Promising sums were exchanged—and with just enough frequency that, for many traffickers, the business was difficult to quit. Moreover, because the system’s mechanisms bore a striking similarity to traditional family arrangements, participation in the buying and selling of people brought traffickers and clients alike into a growing, morally ambiguous arena. Although illegal, trafficking was often tolerated in Beijing’s neighborhoods. Families like Xiao Heizi’s had little difficulty contacting potential buyers. Almost anyone in the neighborhood could put them in touch. Laws prohibiting the sale of people and their enforcement enable us to see this activity, but they are not what defined it. The crime served an invaluable purpose. It supplied middle-wealth families with the means to replicate traditional extended family structures even as modern life strained those structures. At the same time, it offered impoverished families a way to lighten their burden. Families invested in this crime to preserve their traditions, while traffickers and intermediaries pointed to tradition to explain their actions. Even official documents, which warp the words of criminals and trafficked children alike, reveal how articulations of fictive kinship could defend the illicit sale and purchase of a child. Households who engaged in 168

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trafficking described their activities to police interrogators and in the courtroom by marshaling the strongest logics at their disposal. Family loyalty, survival, and charity felt like unimpeachable justifications for stretching the boundaries of the law. Sometimes these excuses worked, but increasingly they did not. Trafficking persisted not simply because these reasons were compelling, but also because the vast majority of family transactions went unnoticed. Frequently it was only when another, more serious crime or a special directive compelled police attention that routine illicit practices came to light. Police caught up with criminals like those who trafficked Heizi while they were on the road. Moving human merchandise from one location to another was never easy. New expanding transportation systems had an enormous impact upon all aspects of life in a modernizing China, not the least of which was upon the ways in which crimes could be carried out.

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Moving beyond the Reach of the Law

Kidnapping victims frequently told police that their captors had dragged them to a sanbuguan difang—smuggling them beyond the protection of the law. These “thrice-neglected places” fell between magistrate’s districts and along inaccessible provincial borders. The Qing empire historically strug gled to guarantee resources, aid, and basic governance in such noman’s-lands. Neglected by the state, sanbuguan territory offered shelter to bandits and fugitives.1 To hide things, or people, there was no better place than a thrice-neglected borderland. By the Republican period, the most notorious urban sanbuguan lay just outside the south gate of Tianjin’s walled Chinese city. Tucked between districts controlled by the French, Japanese, and Chinese municipal administrations, the city’s police force avoided the area. As with Beijing’s Tianqiao, the workers of Tianjin claimed sanbuguan land as their recreation ground.2 By day, musical entertainers, street corner quacks, fortunetellers, and peddlers of household goods, talismans, and trinkets flogged their wares and ser vices to the city’s growing working class. In the twilight, as the crowds thinned, the Tianjin Sanbuguan became more dangerous. Just as with the Tianqiao market and fairgrounds, performers and vendors who did not turn a profit during the daylight hours grew anxious to rustle up trade through the night. The two districts served similar populations, but the urban administrations of Beijing and Tianjin treated the areas differently. Police and municipal planners in Beijing took an early and active interest in developing Tianqiao as a commercial center.3 In con170

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trast, Tianjin’s various governments did not prioritize regulating behavior in the Sanbuguan. Hunhunr gangsters, swaggering hoodlums dressed in distinctive dark clothes and colorful shoes, battled over turf and patrolled the neighborhood more regularly than the municipal police, who left the area’s swindlers largely to take care of themselves.4 In 1906 a young couple eloping by train from Beijing took refuge in the Tianjin Sanbuguan. Neither of the two found their prospects in Tianjin to be what they expected. Their story will introduce the crucial roles that ungovernable spaces and transportation played in the evolution of trafficking. Despite legal prohibitions, in later decades transportation would unleash increasingly predatory manifestations of trafficking. Republican China’s expanding national transportation infrastructure afforded greater opportunities for travel around the country. Entrepreneurial brokers moved quickly to capitalize on new networks. By the early 1920s China’s railways and steamships had transformed both the business of human trafficking and national strategies for curtailing the problem.

Creating Distance First, however, it is worth considering what movement, distance, and isolation accomplished for professional traffickers. Local brokers cut deals within tightly knit communities, but the most durable arrangements required either the maintenance of ongoing social pressure or carefully constructed social isolation. To accomplish this, local brokers engaged longer- distance traffickers. Even as indentured men from China became unavailable on the international labor market with the end of the coolie trade, the development of steamship lines and railways expanded the scope and scale of China’s domestic trade in people. Isolation from family, friends, and community—but also from law enforcement—played a crucial role in the strategies of experienced traffickers. Indignant or exhausted, those brave or lucky enough to escape told the courts they knew their traffickers had intentionally brought them through or into a lawless thrice-neglected place (wufa sanbuguan difang). As railway cars themselves became increasingly policed spaces, their tracks crossed and connected a shifting landscape of sanbuguan zones. Many narratives included a moment of frightened epiphany, when the kidnapped person realized he or she was no longer bound for some previously promised destination.5 Testimony from sold people indicates that deception was a common strategy among traffickers. The longer a trafficker 171

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could forestall panic with soothing lies, the easier it was to transport human cargo. Frequently, it was upon arrival at a train station or upon being asked to board an unfamiliar ferry that a trafficked person comprehended his or her altered prospects. With young or inexperienced cargo, traffickers could postpone this realization indefinitely, substituting only later resignation to a future of drudgery, servitude, or sexual exploitation. By employing isolation and deception in tandem, successful traffickers tactically reduced the chances of losing their human wares en route. People being transported were not passive—they could observe the terrain around them and watch for opportunities to escape. But they had to have the presence of mind, experience, independence, or ingenuity to realize flight was either necessary or possible. It mattered not only how far from home one actually was, but also how isolated one felt. Traffickers and their victims struggled not merely over the kidnapping itself, but also over who could most effectively control the perceptual implications of both physical and emotional geography. Traffickers manipulated the people they sold by transporting them over significant distances. When long-distance travel was not part of the plan, they created conditions to make even short distances seem insurmountable. A violent and defiling event, like a rape or a betrayal, established a psychological wall between life before and life after. Victims needed to be convinced sales were irreversible. Traffickers accomplished this with geography, or through carefully cultivating the idea that the person being sold had been abandoned by those close to her. The more members of a family or community concurred that selling a child was the right thing to do, the less distance intermediaries needed to put between the original family and the eventual purchasers. Violence perpetrated by traffickers was not only physical, but also profoundly psychological. Isolation from the natal household provided the strongest guarantee that a sale would remain permanent. In this respect, the mechanisms of trafficking in China bore some resemblance to forms of slavery and exploitation around the world. Violent alienation from family and community ensured that sold people stayed sold. In China, Confucian obligations, social hierarchy, shame, and the debts of natal families further served to cement sales. Similar, though ideally less violent, forces bound women to their husbands as well: A bride-price-dominated marriage system fed the overall social ecology of trafficking.6 Even in its most idealized form, Chinese marriage required 172

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a wife to join her husband’s family and adopt all of the ritual obligations to his patriline. Elite women who brought a dowry into the family still left a great deal behind. (Some scholars have proposed that because girls expected neither to remain in their parents’ home nor to revere their own natal ancestors, their marriages cannot rightly be considered alienation.7 I disagree. The logical extension of this argument is dangerous, analogous to claims that someone born without freedom cannot imagine it. Indeed, generations of Chinese women wrote laments mourning the loss of a place in their own natal families, some even while celebrating their new life in marriage.)8 Throughout the Qing dynasty, most women typically married close to home, within clusters of neighboring villages. During times of famine, Qing-period brokers arranged to transport women across provinces for sale to brothels,9 but more everyday transactions occurred between neighbors and involved shorter distances. Isolation could be accomplished locally. In the Republican period, the combination of urbanization, commercial opportunities, and modern transportation expanded family and therefore marriage networks. James Watson argues that Chinese women belonged to rather than belonged in the family.10 Proprietary belonging sounds permanent, but possession introduced the possibility of sale. Not all regions or communities aspired to the Confucian marriage pattern. In southern silk-producing regions, many women continued to work in their parents’ homes for years after their marriage.11 Southern delayedtransfer marriages, although both practical and popular, became the target of state orthodoxy campaigns. In North China, most women left home upon marriage. It was not unusual, however, for women to maintain ties with their parents and siblings and to turn to them for help. Ongoing relationships played an impor tant role on the North China plain, where the niangjia, or girlhood home, provided young couples with an impor tant fiscal and social safety net.12 (Lower gentry families who had gone to the trouble of educating daughters and providing a dowry might expect more, and their daughters could spend as much as a month visiting their natal home.)13 Some husbands welcomed their wives’ connection to their parents, others resented these relationships. No matter how close a woman was to her parents, her mourning and ancestor worship responsibilities, as well as her legal identity and domestic labor, belonged to her husband’s family. Households that prevented daughters-in-law from visiting natal families enjoyed greater latitude to exploit or abuse them. A Chinese wife 173

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was not her husband’s slave, but many young women experienced a period of exploitation as (at best) an unavoidable phase of life during marriage. It should not surprise us that—with mechanisms of alienation critically embedded in dominant ideals of marriage—women remained China’s most conspicuously traded human commodity. The routine uncertainties of the marriage market could easily deteriorate into the radical uncertainty of trafficking. Social security in China has long depended upon family relationships, and yet historically the people most empowered to sell each other have been family members. In the commonly deployed “survival defense,” families who had sold their own wives or children claimed they had “no other choice” or they “could do nothing but sell” (meiyou biede banfa or fei mai buke)—asserting that their only alternative was starvation and eventual death. Setting aside variations in the veracity of such claims, the widespread social acceptance of the rhetoric of survival and the sales it justified constituted an unofficial, informal welfare system. The late Qing government’s reluctance to completely eliminate the practice of allowing the poor to sell themselves and their children attests to the state’s reliance on criminal mechanisms to solve legitimate social problems. Thus, in North China as elsewhere, many experienced sale as a substitute for death.14 Within a spectrum of domestic bondage a sold child “owed his or her life” to the buyer, who had plucked the child from disaster. Such rhetoric provided compelling justification for dubious practices. Moreover, the logic behind it allowed eventual buyers to justify their purchases in terms of charity. “Our household has a little slave girl who would otherwise have died in this or that famine . . . whose mother was prepared to abandon her for a few measly coins.” The stories households told themselves about the people they purchased soothed their consciences. “Her people did not want her . . . except for us she would have died.” In exchange for their beneficence, buyers expected sold people to gratefully accept their role, whether slave girl, servant, child-bride-in-waiting, or concubine. Masters tolerated their domestics’ ties to their previous lives only when they found it convenient to do so. Isolation and alienation worked hand in hand with family complicity (tightened by the rhetoric of survival and death) to guarantee that kidnapping, trafficking, and any resulting transactions remained psychologically compelling and therefore durable. Travel helped make this possible. Thousands of cases came before the courts under the guise of trafficking. Some 174

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had more to do with family intrigue than with servitude, but most involved a combination of familiar factors, including poverty, isolation, coercion, and—in the incident that follows—seduction.

Enticed from a Beijing Hutong to the Tianjin Sanbuguan Fifteen-year-old Cheng Xiu’er lived with her father, Cheng Bao, in Black Sesame Hutong (heizhima hutong), a few paces from Beijing’s drum tower. Her mother died when Xiu’er was a young child. Rather than try to eke a living from their small plot of land, Cheng Bao had moved with both his mother and his daughter to the capital. Throughout much of the girl’s childhood, Xiu’er seems not to have given her father reason to worry.15 This changed in the winter of 1906. At her grandmother’s insistence, Xiu’er began peddling secondhand housewares. While out on the street, Xiu’er became acquainted with a young man named Chen Jishan. Chen was six years her senior and worked as an indentured laborer for their Japanese neighbor. To Xiu’er, this made Chen seem cosmopolitan and mysterious. While she sat on the streets with her pots and pans, Chen gossiped and joked about the curious habits of his Japanese boss (laoban). Both Chen and Xiu’er later testified that their shared laughter drew them together.16 He entertained the fifteen-year-old with songs from the theater, begging her to sing along. Eventually Chen Jishan convinced Xiu’er to run away with him. They hired a rickshaw to take them south from Black Sesame Hutong to Xidan. There they stayed with some people Chen claimed were his “good friends.” When the couple ran out of money, however, their welcome wore as thin as their pocketbook. Xiu’er believed this is when her paramour decided to take her to the Sanbuguan. Chen Jishan bought two train tickets for Tianjin, and told Xiu’er that because this was the last of their money, she would now have to prostitute herself to support them both. Only after embarking upon this new life did Xiu’er learn that her young man was splitting the profits from her ser vices in the Sanbuguan with a Mr. Xiao. When she confronted Chen about this, he beat her. In the Sanbuguan Xiu’er found herself in the company of other women, young and old, who had each through her own twist of fate become a prostitute. There were also retired prostitutes who had picked up songs and dances from Chinese opera and performed on the streets, singing well into the evening under rented lamps.17 For the most part, the men and women who visited the Sanbuguan neighborhood were not so dif ferent from Xiu’er and Chen 175

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Jishan—workers and peddlers, taking advantage of a few hours of leisure to play fairground games, listen to some music, and spend a few coins before returning to the toil that characterized their lives. Eventually Xiu’er managed to make the acquaintance of a man named Li, who offered to smuggle a letter to her father, Cheng Bao, back in Beijing. In the letter Xiu’er confessed: “Because I had sex with Chen Jishan, I had warm feelings for him. And that is why I followed him. I didn’t plan to become a prostitute, and did so only because he beat me so fiercely.”18 Upon receiving his daughter’s letter, Cheng Bao petitioned the Beijing magistrate, who forwarded the case to the Board of Punishments. (Elsewhere in China a case like this one would not have merited action from the central government, but Beijing criminal investigations received special attention from the Board.) Cheng Bao testified: “When I received the letter Mr. Li brought from Tianjin, telling me that this young man, Chen Jishan, had deceived my daughter, Xiu’er, and brought her to the Sanbuguan, where he forced her to prostitute herself, I immediately implored the city constables to investigate and seek Chen’s arrest. Why on earth my daughter followed Chen to Tianjin and why she became a prostitute I don’t yet understand. But I beg the court to investigate this further, and to prosecute the young man.”19 Officers of the Beijing gendarmerie tracked the couple down in Tianjin. The young man who had expended so much song and laughter charming Cheng Bao’s daughter confessed to beating Xiu’er and to forcing the girl to prostitute herself. In his own defense Chen Jishan explained that they “were truly desperate” and selling sexual favors had in fact been the suggestion of Xiu’er’s own grandmother. Xiu’er, however, denied her grandmother’s involvement. She only wanted to return home, saying, “None of them knew anything about this.”20 Xiu’er had several advantages not shared by many young women of her day and background. Through good luck or ingenuity, she managed to make contact with someone who was heading back to her city and she was able to convince him to carry that letter. She had a father who cared what became of his daughter, and who was willing to bring the case against Chen, despite the ways in which such an investigation might, and probably did, tarnish his reputation. Cheng Bao also risked estranging his own mother, who may or may not have advised Xiu’er’s lover to act as her pimp. Was Xiu’er’s defense of her grandmother genuine? The results of family pressure appear readily in the archive, but the form of its application and 176

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the more subtle repercussions of this pressure do not emerge quite so easily. It is impossible to know what proportion of irritation, affection, and frustration Xiu’er felt for a grandmother who had first encouraged her to “sell odds and ends on the street” and who may have later convinced Chen Jishan that the young couple “try to support themselves by selling sex.”21 By her own account, Xiu’er accompanied Chen Jishan willingly to the Sanbuguan. When did her second thoughts begin? While recreating Xiu’er’s emotions is impossible, her actions reveal that the fifteen-year- old possessed not only a level head, but also an adequate sense of geography. Xiu’er may have feared the Sanbuguan, but she knew that if only she could get back to a properly governed area, there was some chance of justice. In the end the Board of Punishments declared that it did not know who to blame. Nine months after the young couple had first hailed a rickshaw and slipped away from Black Sesame Hutong, Cheng Bao’s case against the young lothario Chen Jishan “in the end fell apart because it was so strange.”22 If the grandmother had indeed encouraged Chen Jishan, then the Board determined it was unreasonable to sentence the young man as a hardened criminal. The Board was also troubled by Xiu’er’s initial complicity. Such face-saving decisions were not uncommon in cases involving onetime kidnapping or trafficking. When crimes involved intimate relationships and families, responsibility for an arrangement often spread over several family members and guilt became difficult to assign. The young man who swept Xiu’er off her feet was neither a professional kidnapper nor an especially successful pimp. However, both amateur and professional criminals faced similar challenges. When Chen Jishan purchased train tickets and set out for the “thrice-neglected area,” he implicitly acknowledged it would be easier to prostitute Xiu’er farther from home. For more successful traffickers, transportation played a critical role in putting distance between the natal home and the destination of coerced, kidnapped, and trafficked people.

Changing Transportation Systems The accelerated development of passenger and cargo transportation in the late nineteenth century transformed the way ordinary people viewed the land around them. Collapsing distances changed the kinds of opportunities people could envision for their families. To a family starving in one desolate part of the countryside, the prospect of long-distance travel made it possible to imagine a prosperous—or at least tolerable—life somewhere else. Both 177

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railways and steamships improved the central government’s ability to move grain around the country in times of emergency, and from the point of view of famine relief, improvements in long-distance transportation by the early twentieth century have been largely seen as positive. For traffickers, too, these infrastructure developments offered greater mobility and the prospect of more business. Yet the railroads created additional problems for some rural communities. The tracks carved through China’s provinces and the trains speeding along them altered the economic landscape for farmers, creating an incentive to abandon a subsistence crop in favor of a potentially lucrative cash crop. As a result, in North China trains offered both unprecedented opportunities but also new vulnerabilities. When railroad tracks supplanted roads, they turned the small roadside villages that had once relied upon foot and cart travel into abandoned ghost towns. In this precarious environment, traffickers who had the means to buy a ticket and take a child away to a better place seemed worldly and even helpful. Disruptions in North China’s farming communities were felt provinces away, as traffickers there purchased children from desperate parents and shipped them off to buyers in the south. On November 28, 1915, a Western correspondent for the North China Herald watched a brisk trade in boys from the shores of Poyang Lake at the Anhui-Jiangxi provincial border. He remarked that the boys’ “cheery and animated spirits kept me from inquiring their destination” and concluded, “What they were leaving was bitter and hopefully what they were looking forward to was sweet.” The children “played and frolicked with each other as their boats passed up the river . . . a sense of unbounded freedom pervaded their manner and behavior.”23 It was a strange illusion, although he was not the only observer to see hope in the exodus from adversity in the north. At daybreak on the Raozhou docks, “no one seemed to notice, and no one seemed concerned. A boatload of pigs leaving for some other place would have caused no small agitation on the shore. Their wild screams for freedom would have made the passer-by pause and listen. Not so these little boys.”24 These amiable boatloads piqued the correspondent’s curiosity, and he struck up a conversation with an elderly farmer. The farmer had moved from Henan to Jiangxi a decade earlier, but he kept in touch with family back home. The news was not good. The farmer reported that in Henan “young boys were very cheap just now . . . cheaper than last year.” These riverboats would carry boys purchased in the Henan countryside 680 miles 178

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through Anhui and on to the lakes and waterways of northern Jiangxi. Departing from Raozhou, the boys approached the final leg of a long journey away from hardship—and likely into more. Back in Henan the bandit chief known as the White Wolf had consolidated his power, recruiting thousands of former soldiers and terrorizing farming villages.25 His hungry followers demanded provisions from precious food stores, and families turned to traffickers for relief. Farmers who had managed to till their fields despite repeated raids soon faced natural disaster. That autumn, clouds of locusts swept in and devastated what remained of their crops, attacking “everything green and succulent, and in a short time every leaf and blade had been destroyed.”26 The crucial cotton and tobacco crops that supported the local economy were almost entirely wiped out. Parents in devastated Henan confronted a stark reality. For a province already suffering from a tendency to produce cash crops (tobacco, cotton, opium) at the expense of subsistence grains and foodstuffs, the opening of the Beijing-Hankou Railway in 1906 had exacerbated a local problem. The trains further encouraged farmers to gamble by growing a single potentially lucrative crop to sell at new railway junctions. The railway line bisecting the province brought both advantages and disadvantages; it tended to benefit those at either end of the line considerably more than those who lived along the tracks. Concentration on one crop left farmers vulnerable not only to blight, locusts, and other destructive environmental factors but also to fluctuations in the world economy. In light of such conditions, the North China Herald writer observed about the plight of Henan’s farming families, “It has been said, ‘necessity knows no law.’ . . . Sons had to be parted with and forever.” Despite the reporter’s professed compassion, he remained convinced these sales were all for the best. He romanticized the resilient character of the Henan boy: a “well-limbed little fellow” for whom “being sold away from home in no way damped his young spirit.”27 As implausible as this optimism sounds, similar descriptions of inevitability and material improvement have been used to justify selling people time and again around the world. These claims remain a way of washing one’s hands of responsibility for what one has seen. The Chinese state was often likewise compelled to look the other way, to view trafficking as the best of bad options. Many of these boys, after being sold for $20 to $60, were sent on to the city of Jingdezhen. The money might feed the family they left behind for a while, but without a good harvest it would be gone before the year was out.28 From Raozhou, the boys embarked on a relatively 179

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short journey up the Yangzi River. Jingdezhen had prospered for centuries, earning renown for its porcelain kilns, and the busy manufacturing city offered ample work for the “strong and hardy” Henan boys. The reporter’s sanguinity seems misplaced. These boys would have little say in what kind of work that might be or whether they might buy their freedom in Jingdezhen. While the city earned renown for craftsmanship and luxury porcelain, its kilns produced hundreds of thousands of ceramic tiles and bricks as well. Workers in Jingdezhen dug and hefted clay, ground glass and pigments for glazes, stoked furnaces, and moved white-hot ceramic wares. The boys’ fate at Jingdezhen was hardly guaranteed to be sweeter than life on a farm in Henan.29 Even in articles attempting to put a positive spin on their journey, small clues reveal the forces of isolation at work. In describing the lakefront brokers, the reporter explained: “The demand for boys enabled them to do their work quickly and quietly. The whole transaction takes place without anyone knowing much about it.”30 Swiftness, secrecy, and distance ensured a secure exchange. The development of modern transportation systems made these three conditions easier to establish. Despite the long tradition among the poor of selling self or children, the new transportation technologies that enabled Chinese and foreign merchants to more efficiently penetrate China’s provinces also facilitated the traffic in people. In a time of national upheaval, savvy human traffickers learned to take advantage of changing local and national infrastructures. The presence of human traffickers operating in the 1910s alongside bandit activities like those of the White Wolf in Henan should come as no surprise. Shifting alliances among the militarist (dujun) regimes created a destabilizing effect that enabled criminals to operate in the interstices. Studies on warlords, bandits, and the poor, as well as the intricate politics of the Republican era, have shown that these populations often overlapped.31 Militarists and bandit leaders drew upon the same pool of restless, impoverished young men to fill their ranks.32 Banded together, these troops ventured farther from home than they otherwise would have as young farmers. Through military ser vice many experienced the Chinese landscape in a new way. The expansion of newspapers into China had contributed to literate people’s knowledge of events in distant parts of the country. For the less-educated, unprecedented opportunities for movement made once far-off places real. Modern transportation changed spatial and temporal relationships for people who remained rooted in their countryside villages as well. These 180

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changes began in the middle of the nineteenth century, when the first steam-powered warship to come to China—aptly christened the Nemesis— blasted through South China’s shallow deltas. The resulting 1842 Treaty of Nanjing established treaty port rights for Britain, and shortly thereafter for the other Western powers as well. Although the steamship had dealt their country a blow, many Chinese quickly seized upon its commercial advantages. Britain retained naval dominance but continued to rely upon Chinese compradors to negotiate the Chinese interior. The Yangzi officially opened for inland foreign trade in 1860. The establishment of the river treaty ports of Hankou, Jiuzhang, and Zhenzhang brought steamships upriver. Long- distance trade had of course depended upon rivers for centuries, but steamships dramatically accelerated the pace of trade and passenger travel.33 The arrival of steamships also changed patterns in the traffic in people. The 1842 and 1860 treaties not only accelerated the speed of river transport, they focused trafficking on key geographic locations. Laws concerning the administration of steamship lines contributed to this phenomenon. The Qing permitted steamships to stop only at cities designated treaty ports. (Inland waters would not open completely to foreign ships of all sizes until 1902.) This stipulation applied to both Western ships and Chineseowned steamships. One might expect that the arrival of such a powerful form of transport would undermine indigenous small-boat traffic (as the railway would later do for carts in Henan), but the limitations imposed by the Qing government instead inspired a local flourishing of non-treatyport courier traffic, linking smaller towns to the treaty-port supply lines. Traffickers, like those selling boys on Poyang Lake, made use of these local boatmen. Restrictions on steamship management forced traffickers to interact across diverse modes of transportation. These changes refined the trade, obliging traffickers from villages to collaborate with local boatmen and in turn to conspire on ways to smuggle victims aboard larger ships. The structure of local and regional transportation provided a hierarchical model for the development of criminal networks. Multilayered regional systems of criminal trafficking proliferated. River travel had never been especially safe, but the increased river traffic inspired by faster long-distance shipping opportunities made it more hazardous still. Newspapers like Shenbao alarmed readers with tales of kidnapping and robbery.34 Titillating guidebooks of “black plots” warned against traveling alone, and popular pictorials illustrated the consequences.35 181

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Both steamships and the railroad gave criminals the opportunity to quickly slip away from one place and appear in another. The structure of steamship travel provided anonymity and helped make these clandestine movements possible. As late as 1920, Western officers still captained all steamships operating on the Yangzi River—even those owned by Chinese merchants.36 The European and American monopoly on the position of captain was a dubious privilege. Westerners controlled the ships, but rarely could they control all of their cargo. The task of booking passengers was usually contracted out to locals. As a result, the presiding crew did not have ultimate control over the identity or quantity of their passengers. Furthermore, the Chinese contractors responsible for selling space aboard these ships faced significant financial incentives to load as many passengers as possible onto each ship. In 1894 several of the passenger steamship companies publicly acknowledged that kidnapping had become a problem on board their ships. They formed an inspection team whose officers would board ships at random in each port and search for suspicious travelers and known traffickers.37 The inspectors faced a huge challenge; steamships were divided by class. With the exception of affluent Westerners traveling in the foreign first class, travelers did not book space in a specific berth. Instead they flooded onto the ships en masse, second-class steerage passengers jostling one another and claiming space with luggage and aggressive shouting. Traffickers throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries took advantage of this chaos. On board the Hongtian, a Yangzi River passenger ship, inspectors found a ten-year-old girl hiding beneath the ship’s stairs. According to the 1884 report in Shenbao (one of hundreds of similar articles), the girl had been playing by herself near the harbor docks. A man had called out to her from the gangplank steps, offering her fresh fruit and sweets. Once she climbed up, the man refused to let her leave. When she cried, he silenced her with a beating. One of the men apprehended on the Hongtian claimed that for each child he kidnapped, he could find a buyer willing to pay as much as 11 taels. Another pair of travelers raised the inspection officers’ suspicions because the supposed father spoke with a Chaozhou accent, while the boy he claimed was his own spoke with a Suzhou accent. The report noted it was important to distinguish between traffickers who were rootless males of a criminal inclination (using the term “bare sticks,” guangun), and others who were transporting sons from their own families (jiazi), in order to determine the nature of the crime; parents 182

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or other family members might indeed be guilty (zui) of selling their children, but they were not gangsters (bu fei). The author expressed concern that well-meaning adoptive families might become caught up in sweeps targeting kidnappers. Families who took in little boys known as “mulberry grubs” (minglingzi)38 deserved some leniency. This colorful phrase circulated widely in popular literature and in newspaper discussions of the intersection of adoption and abduction.39 Some traffickers even confessed to manipulating adoption customs as they traveled with their cargo. Minglingzi referred to the observed phenomenon of wasps seeming to transform silkworm grubs into their own offspring. (In cruel reality, the wasp lays its own eggs with the grub, and later the young wasps devour the grub.) The term had ancient roots, dating to the Book of Poetry line: “The silkworm has a grub, and the wasp rears it.”40 Local customs around adopting minglingzi made adjudication difficult. Courts even went so far as to dismiss charges against poor families who commissioned matchmakers to sell their children on board steamships.41 Decades of ambivalence over whether to punish traffickers foreshadowed the accommodations that late Qing jurists imbedded in their 1910 regulations on the prohibition. China’s Maritime Customs, administered on behalf of the Qing by officers of the British Empire, concerned itself much more with taxing commercial cargo as it passed from treaty port to treaty port than with the comings and goings of the Chinese populace. Passengers disembarked in these semicolonial ports onto docks crowded with goods waiting to be loaded aboard, throngs of stevedores, busy porters, towering piles of baggage, and solicitous cries from rickshaw pullers eager for a fare. Amid this hubbub, it was simple enough to slip someone on or off a busy ship. Early train travel was by comparison much more orderly. Tickets designated a specific seat, and thus individual travelers were more easily tracked. (Open seating in hard-class carriages was a later innovation.) Railway officials monitored the number of passengers aboard a train more precisely than their steamship counterparts, and the administration of railway lines was generally not subcontracted out to independent agents, so there was little reason to oversell a train or overfill its cars. The technical considerations of arrivals and departures at stations and along shared tracks required trains adhere to their scheduled timetables. This too contributed to an overall sense of orderliness. 183

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“Suspicious Activity Boarding a Ship.” Tianjin Huabao [Tianjin Pictorial], May 20, 1925.

Trains also had a dif ferent impact on their surroundings and their clientele.42 While steamships encouraged the development of a second tier of commercial transportation, trains, like those in Henan, tended to eliminate local commercial activity along their tracks. Towns that once provided traveling merchants with essential way stations were now passed over by trains that did not stop for food or lodging or to trade in surplus goods.43 Trains transformed the provinces they traversed into a patchwork of resource-rich, well-administered regions and treacherous sanbuguan. The construction of railway lines throughout the final decades of the Qing connected China’s commercial cities to each other, as well as to natural resources in the interior. Merchants and traders gained access to markets previously too hard to reach. This shaped and altered their business strategies. Brokers in people were no exception. For a sold person, the end of the line was a place where identity would be lost in unfamiliar surroundings. Cities, with their bustling streets, markets, and bewildering medley of dialects, could be dizzying and isolating to someone from the countryside. In this startling environment the most familiar person might 184

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be the trafficker with whom they arrived. Just as the lawless sanbuguan locales inspired fear in those accustomed to living within the jurisdiction of a magistrate, an unknown city offered little consolation or recourse to kidnapped strangers from far away. There were of course exceptions. Some runaways thrived in the urban environment. Some realized that a place like Beijing offered different legal recourses. Still others were fortunate enough to have made valuable alliances while in transit. This was the case for four laborers purchased by the Qing military attaché Liu Kecheng while serving Baxian, Sichuan. A native of Baxian, Liu planned to retire in comfort with his retinue in the capital. He brought four purchased servants with him to Beijing in 1917. The two male servants and two wet nurses also came from Sichuan. All four were between the ages of twenty-two and thirty, and spoke the same dialect. Shortly after their arrival in Beijing, they conspired to slip away, stealing several items of clothing as they left. The police were able to trace them as far as the port in Tianjin but did not pursue further.44 Other urban spaces fell beyond the reaches of Chinese governance. These were not “thrice neglected” places but instead territories where the confluence of multiple administrations itself allowed traffickers space to maneuver. The foreign concessions in Shanghai, although policed by a diverse multinational force, offered criminals a legal labyrinth of extraterritorial jurisdiction in which to hide. Wanted men and women evaded arrest simply by crossing the Avenue of Edward VII, which ran east-to-west between the French Concession and the International Settlement, or by choosing a busy moment in which to stroll past the guard boxes on one of Suzhou Creek’s many bridges between the International Settlement and the Chinese Zhabei District. From a criminal perspective, these concession regions served the same convenient purpose as any sanbuguan. Similarly, British-administered Hong Kong provided a site for illicit activity and refreshed anonymity. Criminals could use a trip to Hong Kong to obtain fresh paperwork and an unsullied name. By the 1920s anonymity was becoming particularly valuable to traffickers; Chinese criminologists had begun to focus the lens of Western social science on the problem of recidivism. When Republican China finally promulgated a truly new criminal code in 1935, that code prescribed substantial increases in punishment for repeat offenders. The ability to vanish, or to reinvent oneself under a new name, was a critical skill in the successful criminal’s portfolio. 185

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For human traffickers, it was just as important to be able to make others disappear—and stay hidden. Human traffickers’ choice of coercive strategy depended upon their relationship to the person they aspired to sell. One young woman might reluctantly allow herself to be sold to spare her child a worse fate; another might require threats or beating, or even need to be subdued with drugs. Docile children might be quiescently transferred into the home of a relative or neighbor; others might pitch a conspicuous tantrum and draw the attention of police. Misleading promises of employment commonly served to lure struggling women, and even young children, out into the traffickers’ market. Often traffickers shamed their targets into submission because the victim had previously consented to sexual relations. Seduction was a powerful technique through which a trafficker could establish a connection with a potential victim while simultaneously severing a young woman’s ties with her home. Unlike brave Xiu’er, who wrote to her father from the Sanbuguan, many women felt they could not return to households where their virtue had once been sacrosanct. Shame helped traffickers put distance between victims and their natal homes. For intermediaries who made a living by selling people there was no such thing as a routine sale. No matter how peculiar the details of any transaction might be, however, every trafficker confronted the universal logistical challenge of moving human wares from place to place.

Between Town and Country Modern transportation lines linked major cities and ports. Trains and steamships moved people from point to point: enabling a broker in Beijing to do a deal with a brothel in Shanghai; a widow in Tianjin to sell children in Hong Kong; families in village suburbs of a railway junction to envision life for their children in more distant cities. Efficient, high-speed modern transportation therefore first and foremost supported a logistically interurban trade. Trains traversed vast expanses of undeniably rural countryside, however, and wherever they stopped they drew the surrounding territory into a readymade network for traffickers. Both developed and undeveloped areas proved crucial to how traffickers operated during the early twentieth century. Mobile city dwellers came to see the countryside as a source for marketable children. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, law enforcement in cities like Beijing and Tianjin leapt ahead of rural areas. Police pre186

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sumed that newly arrived migrants from the countryside were either naive or dangerous. Popular literature reinforced this perception. Both the rural bandit and the country bumpkin—and later the disease-ridden refugee— were seen as a burden on more cosmopolitan, responsible city dwellers. While urban police training became increasingly sophisticated, many rural magistrates were merely issued a new uniform. Their staff remained the same even after a yamen was renamed a police station or county court house. As a result, application of new laws in the countryside lagged behind the cities.45 In the suburbs of Beijing in particular, disputes over jurisdiction between former officers of the old Wanping and Daxing district yamens and the new municipality occurred regularly. Investigations that involved criminals and their victims moving from one area to another brought these conflicts to the fore. Kidnappers and traffickers strategically relied upon ungovernable spaces. A rural hometown might be a place to procure, store, or sell a victim, or it could simply serve as a safe refuge to lie low between plots. In this new, increasingly mobile China, many city dwellers retained roots in the countryside—even though the majority of farmers in the countryside never set foot in the city, few people in the city lacked family connections to rural China. Pure urbanites were rare. A 1918 investigation from Beijing’s outer fifth ward offers insight into the ways trafficking fit into the lives of those who moved between city and countryside.46 This case shows quite ordinary people engaging in trafficking, and reveals their attitude toward these sorts of transactions to be startlingly matter- of-fact. Just as people traversed the boundary between urban and rural, they also frequently crossed the boundary between legality and criminality. At two o’clock on a spring afternoon in 1918 an officer performing a routine household inspection (hucha) stopped by courtyard number 12 in Qian’er Hutong. This was one of the city’s increasingly subdivided courtyards (zayuan’er)—jerry-rigged accommodations in which rough mortar, screens, old doors, and other makeshift barricades created jointly inhabited spaces that could be rented out by their former single-household proprietors. In the partitioned area that Mrs. Liu née Liu used for her kitchen, the officer encountered two girls, ages twelve and thirteen, seated awkwardly at a table. As the population register had not prepared him to find children at the house, he asked the girls how they came to be there. His questions met stony silence as the girls lowered their eyes and shifted about. Their 187

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reticence, noted in his record, raised his suspicions. So he turned to Mrs. Liu-Liu. She grudgingly informed him the girls were called Xi’er and Chunhua. Interrogation of Mrs.  Liu-Liu revealed that the girls had come to stay with her several days before. A friend of the family, a former soldier, known as Xing Deming, first approached her brother-in-law to ask for help. Xing was calling in an old favor; the men had once served in the same infantry barracks, and Mrs. Liu-Liu’s elder sister—unable to accommodate her husband’s military buddy—had begged Mrs. Liu-Liu to help Xing Deming keep the girls. The girls were meant to reside with her only temporarily, while Xing searched for someone to buy them.47 She offered this matter-of-factly. There is no record that the inspection officer pressed her for this detail. Mrs. Liu-Liu knew the girls had come from Henan but could not answer the police investigator’s questions about Xing’s plans, although she must have had suspicions. To get to Beijing they traveled nearly 500 miles on foot, by cart, and by train. Apparently Xing Deming and the girls had not attracted the attention of railroad inspectors en route. Mrs. Liu-Liu reported that Xing Deming had not returned to her house since dropping the girls off, and, when questioned further, asserted she had no way of knowing whether he had found a buyer. She did not object when the police took Xi’er and Chunhua into custody. The investigating officers had realized they could not question the two girls effectively while standing in Mrs. Liu-Liu’s crude kitchen. Xi’er’s statement to the police reveals that her full name was Yang Xi’er.48 She came originally from Dongming County in Henan Province, and had grown up in Maozi Village. She was thirteen years old. Although Xi’er understood little about what had happened, she was able to tell police that her parents had fled Maozi “to escape difficulty.” They had stayed together for a short time, but when her parents could not earn enough money for food, they left her with an “unfamiliar man.” This man, Xing Deming, brought Xi’er to a hostel in Huaxian, where after two months they were joined by the second girl, Chunhua. Eventually Xing Deming loaded the two girls onto a train and then brought them to the home of Mrs. Liu-Liu, where, Xi’er confirmed, they had only been for a couple of days. Chunhua’s full name was Zhang Chunhua, and she too came from Henan.49 She was a year younger than Xi’er and could not remember the name of her hometown. Both her parents died when she was small, and 188

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since their deaths an old woman in her village had raised her. But recently, “because she had now grown up,” this old woman had given her to Xing Deming to bring to Beijing. This was all Chunhua knew. During investigations like this one, police routinely asked children whether they knew if a contract had been drafted, how much they cost, or what other stipulations that contract might have included.50 Neither of the two girls mentioned being sold or the drafting of contracts. When the police located and questioned Xing Deming a few days later, they learned that he indeed held sales contracts for the girls. Like the two girls, Xing Deming was a native of Henan. He was thirty-three years old and was staying at a hostel near the train station. He told police that he was “currently on leave and didn’t have anything to do.” As a soldier in the Yijun Army he had been barracked at Rehe, approximately one hundred miles northeast of Beijing. His wife and their three-year- old son stayed behind at the Rehe military base whenever he came to Beijing. Xing explained why and how he had acquired the two girls from his home province: His father had died of an unexpected illness in August of the previous year. As a filial son, Xing requested permission from his commanding officer to take a long mourning leave in order to help his family transport his father’s body to their home village in Henan. Xing Deming then traveled toward Beijing, where his father had been living together with his mother and grandfather. His grandfather, Xing Yu, who had once worked for the railroad, was currently serving as the chief administrator for the tax revenue office at Gubeikou, northeast of the city. Xing Deming discussed the trip home with his family. Grandfather Xing Yu suggested that, because his grandson was making the long journey to Henan anyway, he could buy a couple of girls to bring back with him. Carrying the body back to their home village would take considerable time and expense, and Xing Yu thought that in this way they could recover their losses. Xing Deming told police investigators that his grandfather provided the money and instructed him to find some young girls to bring back to Beijing.51 Xing Deming did not undertake this task on his own. His explanation to the police investigators revealed little about the two men who traveled with him to Henan. Xing Deming informed police that both men lived in Gubeikou, and that he had paid them a total of 60 yuan for their help. The men had been willing to travel to Henan as they both had personal business of their own to attend to. To support his story, Xing Deming presented 189

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the police with two bills of sale. Copies of the girls’ sales contracts transcribed in the police record indicate that both men acted as witnesses. Like the Xing clan, these witnesses also originally hailed from Henan. They were involved as part of a larger network that ensured that agreements made back home were upheld in the capital. By using witnesses who would be part of the girls’ new community in Gubeikou, perhaps Xing enlisted help guaranteeing that the bills of sale would be honored. The Beijing local court judge advised police to determine the veracity of these contracts, if possible by finding the girls’ relatives. Absent any further information, there was insufficient evidence that Xing Deming had concrete plans to sell the girls. Moreover, no observable coercion had been used, and so the new statutes on abduction were not directly applicable either. The judge suggested trying to locate Xing’s tax administrator grandfather in Gubeikou. If the police eventually managed to carry out the judge’s instructions and to question Xing Yu at a later date, that record does not survive. The two girls were taken from Xing Deming and placed in one of the city’s vocational workhouses (xiyisuo). They joined a group of more than 120 women and fifty children at the Women’s Industrial Home. There, together with sixty-five former prostitutes from a neighboring reformatory (jiliangsuo), they took turns with other inmates learning to sew on twenty Singer sewing machines. These institutions did not permit a woman to leave until her “relatives are willing to assume her support” or until the institution contracted a suitable marriage—for which the reformatory required a financial contribution from her future husband.52 Even charitable public institutions exchanged women for money. The prostitute reformatory displayed pictures of all their female inmates in a photograph room, and featured especially eye-catching women on a board outside the gate.53 No one ever had the chance to marry Zhang Chunhua. An addendum dated January 19, 1919, indicated that she died shortly after arriving at the workhouse. The report from the Industrial Home emphasized that Chunhua suffered no injury, she had simply fallen ill.54 The police investigation of Henan trafficker Xing Deming exhibits key elements of the larger North China trade in people: the use of contracts, the potential market in the capital and its suburbs, instructions from a senior relative, the role of military friendships, the logistics of housing and transportation, and the role of family need in justifying trafficking practices. Xing had, after all, included acquiring two girls in his family errands 190

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in Henan. A father’s death is not routine in any individual life, but across society the experience is universal. There is nothing about this death to suggest that Xing Deming suspended his normative morality. It simply did not occur to Xing that there was anything wrong with traveling to his hometown, buying young girls, and bringing them back to Beijing. This was not the work of a hardened criminal. The purchases were not carried out clandestinely; Xing Deming brought friends along to help, and he imposed on the wife of a former fellow soldier to look after the girls once they arrived in Beijing. If Xing Deming had previously sworn Mrs. Liu-Liu to secrecy, she attempted little artifice for the police. Xing and his collaborators saw nothing objectionable in a rational and practical investment in two girls from Henan. Nor was this an act born out of desperation. Xing Deming’s family was not affluent, but neither were they poor. Grandfather Xing Yu had served as tax administrator; literate and (other wise) law-abiding, he respected tradition, acknowledging the ritual importance of sending his son’s body home for burial. Did he feel that his family was above the law? Did he simply not comprehend that “fetching young girls” from Henan could be illegal? Perhaps Xing Yu did not care if his grandson got in trouble. Or maybe he assumed—rightly, it turns out—that it would be difficult to prove that the family intended to sell the girls illegally. As the police never interrogated Grandfather Xing Yu, this is all speculation. Nonetheless, the case shows how a family with military and administrative connections, as well as access to modern transportation, could tap the countryside for people to buy and sell.

Famine, Again If the most opportunistic and successful traffickers were those who capitalized on the misfortune of those around them, then the North China famine of 1920–1921 came as a huge boon to business. Historically, the sale of children has long featured prominently in descriptions of calamity in China, and this famine was no exception.55 When members of the Peking United Relief Commission reflected back on the famine a year afterward, they estimated that families in Henan’s Shunde Prefecture alone sold as many as 25,000 children.56 Lillian Li calculates that a similar number of children in the region starved to death.57 If children had not been sold, would not the death toll have been twice as high? Throughout famine years, traffickers, parents, and observers all relied upon this argument.58 191

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Domestic and international relief officers reported that women and children were sold for as little as 3 yuan to as much as 150 yuan.59 Desperate farmers described bidding wars, offering “Fresh young girls under ten for no more than 10 yuan,” and sellers articulated regional standards “For young women between fifteen and twenty, 1 yuan per year, 35 yuan for those under fifteen. Children under five had no buyers, and infants became unbearable and were flung into the river.”60 By the end of September 1920 it became clear to the Beiyang government that a food crisis had developed in the North China countryside. To alleviate the crisis, the Beijing-Hankou railroad added several railroad cars to each of their trains, and announced that refugees escaping from the famine zone could travel without tickets.61 Thousands of people availed themselves of the free journey south. Offering this ser vice involved the cooperation of several different railroad departments, including the department in charge of the line’s rolling stock, the physical works department, and accounting. Stationmasters along the railway line received orders from Beijing to maintain this costly ser vice even in the face of mounting debt. China’s Ministry of Communications and the Bureau of Transportation continued the policy of offering free train travel, both to refugees traveling away from the famine and to aid workers headed toward it, through the end of the year.62 By the conclusion of the crisis, the Beiyang government had spent approximately 90,000 yuan on transportation alone. With so many passengers traveling gratis, it became considerably harder for railway personnel to regulate who boarded their trains. The normal obstacles to train travel were suspended. The combination of famine and free modern transportation presented traffickers with an unprecedented opportunity. Cities along the railroad line served as auction centers, with brokers operating in Shijiazhuang, Xinyang, Zhengzhou, and all the way to the southern terminal in Hankou. One middle-aged woman trafficker reported that she was initially apprehensive boarding the train with her human cargo in 1921. At first the trafficker kept her eyes lowered and her head covered with a scarf. She whispered harshly to the young woman she was transporting to “keep [her] trap shut tight.” But then she raised her eyes and looked around the compartment. In that moment the inexperienced trafficker realized the train was full of people just like her. “Everyone on board was traveling to buy and sell people.” She no longer felt any shame, and went on to a long career in the business.63 192

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Traffickers who wished to take advantage of the conflux of circumstances around the 1920–1921 famine had time to make plans. Famine is a disaster that does not strike. It does not sweep in unannounced. Hunger does not generally take human beings by surprise. Famine creeps. Farmers watch for rain clouds and feel the pinch of anxiety long before it’s felt in the villages, towns, and cities that their crops should feed. China’s southern river systems contain 75  percent of the country’s water. The rivers of North China, which must irrigate just as vast a landscape, contain only 5 percent.64 This is land where fluctuations in rainfall are keenly felt. Through the winter of 1919–1920, not enough snow fell upriver to quench the thirst downstream. Come spring, not enough rain fell to give the earth moisture to hold spring seeds in the ground. That these shortages preceded a particularly dry summer sealed the fate for millions of people in the countryside. Predictions for the winter of 1920–1921 were grim. As early as November the Times of London anticipated the expanding devastation: A missionary tells of a man who sold his eighteen-year- old daughter for eighteen dollars, and was immediately robbed of the money, whereupon he hanged himself. His wife then drowned her two remaining children, and threw herself down a well. Large numbers of wells in the famine area are putrid from the numbers of dead bodies of children who have been thrown in or suicides. . . . Wherever there is water in the wells or rivers the farmers irrigate plots of land, but most of the crops thus produced have been eaten by locusts, and some have been carried off by brigands. The winter in North China is always severe, the temperature for two or three months dropping as low as zero, Fahrenheit. As the poorer people are even now selling their bedding, it may be imagined how they will fare in the middle of winter.65

As the famine progressed, aid workers determined that at least twenty million people throughout North China were “truly destitute” and at risk of starvation.66 Rough estimates based on the populations of the five stricken provinces (Zhili, Henan, Shandong, Shaanxi, and Shanxi) placed the total number of people affected by the 1920–1921 famine at between forty and fifty million. Railroads offered tantalizing hope to afflicted rural areas, but they also contributed to fear of the countryside in the city. In August 1920, when 193

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hunger was anticipated but widespread famine and death had yet to become a foregone conclusion, cholera broke out in northern Henan. Rumors in the popular press suggested the epidemic was creeping northward into Zhili along the tracks of the Beijing-Hankou railway. The clouds of chattering locusts that swept over Beijing on the evening of August 24 reminded residents of their dependence upon peasant farmers for whatever meager harvest could be managed.67 Meanwhile, many of those same farmers were abandoning their farms. They were tired of struggling to cultivate cracked earth only to have their feeble sprouts trampled by passing warlord armies. One reporter observed, “Huge numbers of people, with their livestock, are trekking into provinces better situated. Those unable to move are living on roots and bark and other indigestible debris, and selling their children for a few coppers.”68 Chinese philanthropists and Western missionary workers alike used vivid images of families selling their unfortunate little ones (or worse) to invoke sympathy and to raise funds for disaster relief.69 Their articulations of the crisis in the Chinese countryside also shaped aid policy. For many organizations, both foreign and Chinese, the famine became an issue around which to galvanize interest in other causes. Missionaries, local famine activists, and Chinese officials alike used starvation statistics to lobby for the expansion of the road system, for contributions to Chinese benevolence halls and to Christian missions, and to push for funds for medical teams to investigate typhus and other diseases that typically accompany famine conditions. The famine provided renewed impetus to efforts to modernize China’s infrastructure. Railroad projects brought the promise of employment into the starving hinterland. Among the possible solutions proposed by the Chinese government was an additional program for the improvement of roads. The proposal suggested that two urgent needs could be addressed with one solution. A food-for-work program could provide for the hungry while improving access to the famine zone. Westerners who supported the proposal also noted that new roads would “constitute a splendid feeder system for the existing railways and would generally serve to promote economic development.”70 The proposed “food for work” program built upon long-established Chinese practices of offering work as aid (yigong dai zhen). While overseeing more than two decades of flood crisis and river management projects, late Qing abolitionist Zhou Fu had often recommended such measures. He summoned multiple forms of evidence to support his suggestions, pointing 194

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to historical examples of successful imperial aid programs, as well as modern ideas about famine and labor.71 Even corvée labor could be understood as a form of aid. Zhou Fu and others like him believed that it was better to provide the poor with the means and incentive to improve their lot than to offer unconditional charity. Many foreign aid workers shared this perspective. By the 1920s the hope was that such programs could lighten the economically overextended Republican state’s burden to supply direct relief, and transform the starving populace into a productive workforce. Such efforts proved more productive in the years following the famine, under the mentorship of the newly formed China International Famine Relief Committee, than they did at the height of the crisis. (Under the leadership of John Baker, the CIFRC made impressive use of labor relief. In 1921 alone, 20,000 laborers carved 128 kilometers of road through Shanxi’s mountains and across a dozen rivers.)72 From a theoretical standpoint, famine and poverty rendered entire populations vulnerable to labor appropriation. The substitution of hard physical labor for starvation made rational sense to both Chinese and Western policy makers. The appealing reasoning behind this proposal should help to humanize the more criminal transactions that also constituted part of the survival logic that predominated in times of scarcity. The concepts of “work as aid” and “food for work” promised help to the destitute, but these ideas also contributed to an environment that rationalized both trafficking and coerced labor at the more extreme end of a spectrum of limited choices and exploitation. During the Qing, work relief took the form of voluntary participation in extensive infrastructure projects. Laborers were often paid in much-needed grain.73 By the Republican period, China’s urban administrations developed more punitive programs, detaining the poor while they labored in workhouses.74 The proposed rural strategy was not disciplinary in nature, but it had absorbed some of the era’s castigating rhetoric toward the needy. Supporters of this latest food-for-work proposal called upon foreigners within China to implement surtaxes to pay for the construction of new motorways. It is difficult to imagine that masses of starving people could build new roads with empty stomachs and no harvest forthcoming, but the proposal motivated donations. Letters to newspapers in China, America, and Britain included addresses to which charitable subscriptions could be sent. The American Red Cross contributed more than $500,000 in aid to 195

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China, and President Woodrow Wilson endorsed the Christian Herald’s China Famine Fund.75 With numerous interests competing to present solutions, however, coordination between Chinese and foreign aid groups was inconsistent and frustrating. Competing warlord factions, local banditry, and instability in the central government undermined China’s ability to help famine-stricken areas.76 Nonetheless, local grassroots organizations and highly motivated philanthropic individuals managed to provide aid sufficient to significantly offset the predicted devastation of the 1920–1921 famine.77 Of the tens of millions who faced starvation, only 500,000 died.78 Pierre Fuller points to a discrepancy between the often cited $37 million raised by internationally coordinated relief efforts and an estimated $200 million in food required to provision the destitute of North China. Through newspapers, gazetteers, and publications from local charitable societies, Fuller traces the previously unattributed and unappreciated aid that made up this difference to Chinese donors. While the praiseworthy efforts of local charitable actors may indeed account for this famine’s vastly better survival rate than previous famines of a similar scale, the traditional criminal welfare mechanism of trafficking also functioned more efficiency and with greater mobility than ever before. Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley has shown that descriptive, visual, and anecdotal evidence suggests that even during this famine’s more deadly predecessor, the “Incredible Famine” of 1876–1879, women may have been more likely than men to survive—in part as a consequence of the opportunities for escape provided by traffickers.79 By 1920 many saw the railways as “the main factor for limiting the loss of life,”80 but it would have been impolitic to suggest that crime on the railways also saved lives. Yet the modern transportation infrastructure in place by 1920 helped traffickers extract thousands of individuals from the starving countryside.

Beijing-Hankou Railway Police The year of famine left North China badly shaken. In September 1921 the Internal Affairs Ministry requested that the Ministry of Communications and Transportation conscientiously assemble a record of the instances of human trafficking on the country’s various transportation lines. A series of circular telegrams around the country reiterated the ministry’s request to each of China’s provinces and to individual transportation administrations. A thick dossier now held in the Second Historical Archive in Nanjing contains their replies and administrative reports. 196

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Beijing

Tianjin

Baoding

BO HAI S E A

Dingxian Shijiazhuang

R iv e

r

Yel

Yageying

lo w

Xingtai

Cixian

YE LLOW SEA

Anyang

Y

Xinxiang

e

i l l ow R v e r

Xinxiang

Mengxian

Kaifeng

Zhengxian (Zhengzhou)

Xuchang Yancheng Suiping Suiping Queshan Queshan

Nanjing

Shanghai

Xinyang

i ve

r

Guangshui Guangshui

ive

zi R

Huayuan Huangpi

Yan g

Ya ng z i R

Changjiangbu

Hankou

r Poyang Lake Raozhou 0 0

Beijing-Hankou Railway Line

197

100 miles 200 km

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Most provincial officials simply wrote back dutifully acknowledging receipt of the request, but did not provide more substantive documentation of their efforts. They, after all, had their hands full dealing with not only refugees from North China but also people displaced by the factional military conflicts that typified the day. Even these relatively pro forma responses, however, speak to a felt obligation to engage with the central Beiyang government about a shared national problem. General Zhang Zuolin’s office telegraphed from Mukden conceding that indeed the famine in North China had contributed to the growing tragedy of “parents desperate and willing to sell their vulnerable children.”81 Zhang Zuolin’s terse response to his Beiyang rivals, however, did not indicate unwillingness to grapple with the crises generated by famine. Heilongjiang, Fengtian, and Jilin—the provinces occupied by Zhang Zoulin’s Fengtian clique—had sent significant amounts of grain to the relief effort, and Zhang Zoulin’s administration established a quota system to distribute the burden of helping famine refugees throughout his territory.82 By far the most thorough responses contained in the Communication Ministry’s file came from the Beijing-Hankou Railway Administration. The Beijing-Hankou railroad, founded in 1906, was China’s first commercial line. In the first year of the republic, the government in Beijing allocated an annual sum of 80,000 yuan for policing the Beijing-Hankou tracks.83 The Beiyang government exercised considerable foresight in structuring its transportation security policy. Provincial governments were entitled—and expected—to contribute to the physical upkeep of the tracks, but the Ministry of Communication and Transportation retained control of the railroad’s police force. Even with these measures, however, keeping the railway safe proved a challenge. The line traversed notorious bandit country and crossed the Yellow River—known for shifting course and for its quicksand-like bed.84 Throughout the warlord era, various stations along the line fell under the control of rival militarists, making travel perilous. In the midst of all this chaos, however, the railroad administration managed to maintain a surprisingly observant patrol force. Railway officials confirmed that many refugee families had sold children and young women, and that traffickers continued to transport large numbers of people by train. The railway police reports themselves portrayed the actions of individual traffickers and trafficked people on a much more intimate scale, however. Railroad police officers submitted reports from the fall of 1922 through 1926. In each report, trafficking appears less as a 198

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symptom of a collective grand calamity and more as one incremental development in an unfolding personal tragedy: A railroad construction worker just south of the Zhengzhou station noticed a young girl, crying as she went along the tracks. He reported this to the railroad officials, who then questioned the girl. She stated that her name was Yang Qiaoyun. She was fourteen, and from Guide prefecture. Her father had sold her near the train station for 10 yuan to a man who looked familiar, but whose surname she did not know. The man was about forty. He brought her with him to his house, where she was to wait. There were two other people at the house, another man of forty or so, and a woman in her thirties. They told her to wait for them at the house. She told the police, “I began to miss my own home, and so I ran off.” Investigators are trying to identify the other concerned parties.85

Each summary provided only a few sentences describing the circumstances and the police response. Together, however, these reports offer a portrait of the diverse operations of traffickers on board the railway line. They also record the fears and frustrations of both trafficked and trafficker. One determined little boy told an officer that the old woman who was “definitely not his grandmother” was “definitely definitely going to sell him.” When thirty-three year-old Qi Shan was arrested at Zhaixi station, he told the railway police: “Because my wife would not act like a wife, I had to sell her.” Qi Shan had caught the attention of the police as he struggled to physically carry a weeping young woman onto the train. It turned out that the young woman with whom Qi Shan had been wrestling on the platform was not his wife, but his sister-in-law. Eighteen-year-old Wei Yujin told the police the rest of their story. Qi Shan had not only sold her older sister, but had pushed their mother into a well before forcing her to accompany him. The police arranged to have both Qi Shan and Wei Yujin sent back to their hometown of Quyang and placed in the custody of the court.86 The cover letters that the railway administration submitted along with each string-bound packet of police envelopes suggest that railroad officials intended to file reports at regular monthly intervals. Reports indicate activities related to kidnapping or trafficking on the trains occurring as frequently as every few days, or as rarely as once or twice a month. Once in 199

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police custody, traffickers confessed to a much higher rate of activity than what the railway police were able to spot. Incidents were always reported in narrative form; each entry ran to only a few lines. The railway police do not seem to have attempted to quantify their arrests, and the Ministry of Communication and Transportation did not tally statistics for kidnappings. Table  5.1 lists arrests and confrontations with possible traffickers on the railway. In the archive file, individual reports are not in chronological sequence and many appear to have been lost. Still, even the surviving record shows significant commitment to pursuing traffickers on the railway line.87 From this incomplete data set, it is possible to draw some conclusions. The evidence from the Beijing-Hankou Railway shows that professional traffickers often worked railway lines. Like the pair of professionals who purchased the young girl Heizi and brought her to Tianjin to sell, many traffickers moved back and forth across established geographic territory. They relied on local connections at both ends of their accustomed beat. Although some criminals turned to kidnapping incidentally—only when a particularly plum opportunity arose—the most successful traffickers were regular dealers, with reputations to maintain. Some families chose not to engage professionals, although, as we will continue to see, most employed an intermediary of some kind. Even private exchanges often required drafting a contract, and informal matchmakers as well as witnesses typically received some small remuneration. In their summaries for the Ministry of Communications and Transportation, railroad police included both overtly criminal activities and dubious familial arrangements. When Train 5 arrived at Guangshui station, the patrolman on duty observed a man and a woman disembarking from the train with a small child. Something about the way they slung the child over their shoulders struck the patrolman as suspicious and so he approached the couple. He learned that the man, Tang Yulun of Xinyang, and the woman, a Mrs. Li, were running away together. Mrs. Li told the patrolman her husband had three children with other women, and she had slipped away with Tang hoping to live in peace in Guangshui. The railway police took all three into custody for further investigation.88 Records like these show the Beijing-Hankou railway police exercising judgment about how best to handle dif ferent crimes, suggesting that the railway police viewed their investigative mandate broadly. Police also 200

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TA B L E 5 . 1

Reports from the Beijing-Hankou railway police

1922

1923

1924

1925

1926

January 19 February 3 February 2 March 23 March 26 March 26 April 1 April 3 April 8 April 9 April 13 April 15 April 19 April 19 April 25 May 10 May 19 May 15 May 15 May 26 May 28 June 29 September 19 September 28

August 1 August 2 August 6 August 8 August 9 August 25 August 28 August 29 August 30 September 17 September 19 October 19 December 18 December 24

January 22

July 12 August 14 August 28 October 9

April 26 June 4

Note: The distribution of these dates indicates more about initial enthusiasm for enforcement and record keeping than about whether crimes occurred at other times. Moreover, as the records were not organized chronologically, it seems safe to assume that the files are incomplete.

used their authority to recommend individuals to local courts, police stations, and welfare institutions. The railway police were an embedded and yet functionally independent institution that traversed the entire 12,000-kilometer track. When the Ministry of Communications and Transportation recommended the establishment of railway police, each line was to be in charge of its own policing and hygiene administration. The resulting independent police forces were structured to empower officers to coordinate across provincial lines. The Beijing-Hankou line was divided into three administrative units, each of which crossed provincial borders. The Baoding track stretched from Beijing’s Qianmen Gate to Shunde; the Zhengzhou track from Shunde to Yancheng; and then the final length of track ran from Zhengzhou to 201

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Hankou’s Dazhimen Gate. Each stretch had its own station headquarters and chief officer as well as three deputy officers. Beneath them 396 patrol officers supervised the tracks and the stations. In addition, ninety-eight security officers were assigned to specific trains. Some of these men traveled in special cars devoted to providing extra security for both passengers and cargo. Railroad factories in Zengzhou, Chang Xindian, and Jiang’an produced iron, rolling stock, and engine components. These facilities also required guards, and the Beijing-Hankou railroad administration supplied sixty-nine police for this purpose. The Beijing-Hankou railway police force served as a model for the establishment of similar forces as new lines were built across the country.89 Railway police on the BeijingFengtian line also frequently arrested traffickers and smugglers.90 As of August 19, 1912, the Republic forbade local government from meddling in the work of the Ministry of Communications and Transportation. The Ministry’s responsibilities included the railway lines, the postal service, the telecommunication administration (telegraph, and eventually telephone services), and the shipping administration. Four years later the railroad administration clarified that working bureaus throughout the country were responsible for surveying, construction, maintaining station facilities, and providing material support for the railways.91 The business of guarding trains and arresting criminals, however, remained under the auspices of the central administration. Throughout the warlord period, leadership changed hands repeatedly. As both internal and external challenges to the Beiyang government increased in the 1920s, maintaining an effective and visible police presence on the railways remained one influential way of demonstrating the regime’s reach and power. Safeguarding the Beijing-Hankou line also helped to shore up a critical revenue stream for the regional militarist Wu Peifu’s administration. Dependence upon railroad revenue partially explains the brutality of the crackdown Wu ordered on striking railway workers in 1923. The BeijingHankou railroad traversed the backbone of Central China, its north–south tracks crossing disputed territory, bandit zones, and famine and flood lands. The lowly railway police patrolman was an agent of a constantly shifting central state, and yet his mission to provide security on board the trains was explicit and remained consistent no matter which militarist clique controlled Beijing. As an elite, centrally administered police force, the railways could afford to be more discriminating in their hiring than many municipal police 202

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forces.92 The educational requirements for officials in the Beijing-Hankou railway police were rigorous. To be eligible for appointment, potential officers had to attend two or three years of police school and accumulate years of on-the-ground experience. The administration expected officers to have attained an outstanding writing ability, comparable to the level of a clerk in a court of law. In addition to written fluency, they were also required to have clear penmanship, knowledge of police studies, or other evidence of achievement in their work. Station chiefs had to graduate from the railroad’s own training institute. Patrolmen constituted the majority of the police force, and they were the front line for ensuring safe travel. The Ministry of Communications and Transportation stipulated that all patrol officers must be between twenty and forty years of age and have respectable parentage and a robust physique. These men needed basic reading knowledge and at least a rudimentary ability to write characters. Perhaps more important than literacy, however, was their ability to listen and to communicate orally. The railway administration further insisted patrol officers be able to speak the official language of Beijing and also to comprehend several local languages (fangyan).93 Wangjia station patrol officer Cheng Chongcha overheard a sixteenyear- old girl arguing with a man on the platform. Listening closely, Cheng was able to identify her accent as coming from Anhua County in Hunan—far from the Henan station where she now found herself. His notes remark that the girl’s words came out as garbled and confused. After taking the girl into custody and feeding her a bowl of noodles, the railway police learned she was an orphan. Her elder brother had sold her for 150 strings of cash. She told the police she had tried to return home to plead with her brother, but he had sent her away again. The officers at Wangjia station arranged for the girl to be sent to Xinyang and placed in custody there.94 The inspectors who patrolled the railway lines observed behavior at each station with special care. Police training instructed patrol officers to watch for drunks, the insane, the unwell, children under twelve, women traveling alone or who appeared especially anxious, people transporting controlled substances, and those who attempted to board the train without proper tickets.95 Often, however, something much more subtle caught an officer’s attention. A young girl “standing by the platform’s edge” and “behaving in a confused and befuddled manner” was enough to prompt one Zhengzhou 203

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patrolman to intervene.96 Each entry in the railway’s report log reveals a tiny clue as to what aroused the patrolman’s suspicion. Police reports repeatedly noted when certain passengers’ “manner and movements seemed suspect” (xingji keyi). They focused on combinations of people that struck them as odd or incongruous, listening to accents and patterns of speech, and wondering why people from dif ferent parts of the country were traveling together. They noticed details like the tears in a woman’s eyes. They noticed when passengers boarded a train and then disembarked at the same station without continuing on. They observed who was meeting whom, and how long they lingered. Too many children of the same age grouped together with one couple suggested nefarious activity.97 Not infrequently the ringleaders of such groups carried bills of sale upon their person, and presented these to the police. Officers also kept an eye out for people who looked shifty while buying their tickets. One trafficker offered some advice for avoiding unwanted police attention: “When you take a person someplace, if you go to the train station, buy only one ticket. Even if you are several people, buy your tickets one at a time. This way if you are caught, you aren’t out as much money.” She also suggested purchasing legs of the journey separately. “Buy a ticket for the nearest station first, and then look around to see if you are being followed.”98 This obscured the true destination from the victim, any pursuing family members, as well as law enforcement. Despite officers’ considerable effort patrolling station platforms, railway cars themselves were far from safe. Women traveling alone were especially vulnerable. One patrolling officer requested life sentences for Zhang Baoyuan and Li Lude. These two young men had panicked when they heard the train cars in front of theirs being searched. Together Zhang and Li bound the woman whom they had presumably kidnapped with rough cord and threw her out of their southbound train as it crossed the bridge over the Hutuo River in Hebei Province.99 The interior of train cars could be a promising place for traffickers to troll for potential victims. This was the strategy employed by Wang Yuzhen, who ingratiated himself with an eighteen-year-old runaway actress Li Lianbi, singing with her and promising to help her find work. The railway police who interrogated the pair at the small station town of Shaji could not dissuade the young actress from continuing on her way with Wang.100 Another young woman who had run away from her in-laws’ 204

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household because she felt she had been “cruelly treated” got to know a man on the train who turned out to be a kidnapper.101 She told officers she was following this man north to Tianjin when police caught up with them on the train. Outside of a Beiyang encampment, two criminals sneaked into a freight car, plundering its cargo. They were caught when they moved on to a passenger car and attempted to kidnap a young woman.102 On board the trains, people without tickets or who were traveling illegally in cargo cars were also interrogated as suspected traffickers or possible trafficking victims. Incidents on the Beijing-Hankou railroad offer a microcosm of the overall patterns and techniques criminals used to deceive and sell people. Out of forty-five records, only twelve involved people who were previously completely unknown to one another. Most entailed some kind of family deception or unfulfilled promises. Adultery or rape created three occasions in which a woman allowed herself to be sold. Four reports involved men who claimed to have been discharged from one or another of the country’s competing armies, and in one instance two kidnappers traveled together in disguise, dressed up in soldiers’ uniforms.103 Secondhand uniforms could be easily procured as dif ferent factions lost and gained control of various regions around the country. Deserters wishing to shed their military garb found ready buyers among the secondhand clothing peddlers of both the Tianqiao fairgrounds and Tianjin’s Sanbuguan. At least some of these uniforms found their way onto the backs of clever criminals. Once apprehended, accused traffickers frequently claimed to be acting on behalf of someone else. Some traffickers professed to have purchased a child out of charity; others insisted that their unwilling traveling companions were close relatives when they were not. When asked how several small children ended up traveling with him, a middle-aged man explained that he had been commissioned by someone else to pay for the children and pick them up from the station. Railroad officers were also uniquely positioned to observe marital disputes. For the dishonorable, illicit wife sale put a lucrative twist on divorce. Trains provided a public window on private lives, and patrolmen noticed arguments, shouting, and whether a woman was crying when she left the station. Conscientious station patrolmen all along the Beijing-Hankou line also included the number of the train, and sometimes even the number of a relevant 205

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“Caught Imitating a Soldier.” Tianjin Huabao [Tianjin Pictorial], May 23, 1925.

carriage, in their submissions. Their brief reports typically also included information about how the officers intended to proceed or follow up on the incident. The presence of the railroad itself inspired some enterprising families to consider trafficking. In 1922, when Zhang Song and Mrs. Zhang neé Ma’s small shop in the town of Xinyang failed to turn a profit, proximity to the Beijing-Hankou railway line suggested a new avenue to the couple. The village shopkeeper and his wife approached their neighbors, who also ran a small struggling business, and together the two couples pooled their resources to purchase three kidnapped boys (ages six, six, and eight) and train fare to the industrial city of Hankou. The couples intended to sell the children, but they never got the chance. Railroad police apprehended them when their train pulled into Guangshui station, ninety miles north of the railway terminus. The patrol officer closed his report noting that fellow officers were now busy trying to arrange to return the three boys to their original families.104 206

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Inspectors aboard steamships were also on the lookout for suspicious characters. The Internal Affairs Ministry had admonished river and maritime police to remain alert as well. Throughout the 1920s the Ministry of Communications and Transportation periodically asked customs officials to expand the budget allocated for police barges and other floating inspectors. For both passengers and shipping magnates, this was a welcome investment.105 For smugglers, the increased oversight proved only a mild deterrent. In March 1922, groups of kidnappers from Jiangxi were apprehended on the Xiamen-to- Shanghai ocean liner. One roundup included a middle-aged couple traveling with three young boys, ages two, three, and four (Da Mao, Xiao Mao, and an unnamed child), a man hiding in the boiler room of the ship with a twelve-year- old girl, another man traveling with a nine-year- old girl whom he called Golden Cloud (Jinyun), and a suspicious old woman with a four-year- old girl named Ah Hua. The inspector who identified these kidnappers arranged to have the children sent to a Shanghai relief home (jiujisuo) and ordered the kidnappers separated and interrogated, before presenting them to the courts.106 Trafficking drew combinations of individuals together in complex ways, just as surely as it pried families apart. These were dynamic transactions, animated by strong social networks and enabled by a rapidly modernizing transportation infrastructure. Law enforcement often found kidnappers and traffickers to be elusive characters. Throughout the 1910s police and officers of the new court system had attempted to clarify their crimes by pinning guilt to the moment of illegal sale. As late Qing jurists had earlier bemoaned, however, all too often this allowed the men and women responsible for transporting human merchandise to slip away. Like the terminal stations of a railway line, the law seemed best equipped to catch up with criminals when and where they stopped. But it was the vigorous flow of people along developing conduits that perpetuated the trade. This flow passed not merely over the modernizing transportation infrastructure, but also through cultural channels as well. Families, networks of friends, and military colleagues allowed traffickers access to an expanding personal geography or professional territory. Points of sale could be fixed, but the process and relationships were fluid and negotiable. The availability of new modes of passenger transportation fundamentally transformed the scope, scale, and ambition of all traffickers—whether committed unrepentant professionals or opportunistic amateurs. By the 207

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1920s, when railroad administrators ordered patrols at train stations and on board the trains and along their tracks, the strategies of Republican China’s kidnappers and traffickers had also evolved. Criminals (and the ordinary people who took to crime), rather than the constabulary, were at the forefront, taking advantage of accelerating change in China.

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At the headquarters for the municipal police in Tianjin, Chief Inspector Yang Yide also received the Internal Affairs Ministry’s September 1921 telegram. Inspector Yang’s secretary carefully transcribed the telegram’s sequences of four- digit numbers into their corresponding characters, and then read the resulting message out loud to his busy commander: “In recent years, our northern provinces have suffered extensive drought, forcing famine victims to such desperation that they sell their children. The compounded misery defies description.” The Internal Affairs Ministry instructed provincial governments and large municipalities to “investigate the extent of the problem and to prepare reports documenting their efforts to apprehend traffickers.”1 Unlike General Zhang Zuolin, the leader of the Fengtian military clique based in Manchuria, Chief Inspector Yang was in no position to disregard the ministry’s request. To keep his job he needed continuing support from Beijing. By the early 1920s Yang Yide had established himself as one of the most powerful men in Tianjin. A succession of presidents and premiers had pinned medals and insignia to his ceremonial dress uniform: Yuan Shikai, Feng Guozhang, Li Yuanhong, and Duan Qirui each in turn recognized Chief Inspector Yang’s ability to keep the criminal element of Tianjin in check. The directive from the central government arrived at a pivotal juncture both for Yang’s career and in the development of new ideas about the relationship between the Chinese state and individual citizens. Moreover, the newly founded League of Nations, of which China was a member, had 209

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just added investigating the trafficking of women and children to its international mandate.2 The chief inspector was already accustomed to navigating changeable political terrain. Yang Yide’s rise to power in Tianjin began in the last years of the Qing dynasty. After the revolution, Yang ingratiated himself with the new nation’s leaders as an efficient administrator and mediator. The newly minted police chief kept violence at bay in the northern treaty port, but his hands were far from clean. Yang found support among military officials who, when faced with China’s rising debt, borrowed large amounts of money from the Japanese. For many of these men, dependence upon the Japanese turned out to be a political miscalculation. This proved especially true after the conclusion of the First World War. The Paris Peace Treaty, signed at Versailles, granted Japan control over several former German concession areas and expanded Japan’s rights within Chinese territory. This pattern of debt and compromise produced a backlash of popular frustration that resulted in demonstrations around China. In the ensuing May Fourth Movement of 1919, students and intellectuals denounced the Versailles treaty and the Chinese leaders who had been complicit in accommodating Japan. May Fourth activists also strove to transform Chinese society. They spoke out against patriarchy, condemning arranged marriages, the sale of wives and concubines, and the exploitation of slave girls. Echoing late Qing legal reformers, they argued that such practices held China back and remained a continuing source of international shame. Despite anger over the Versailles treaty, May Fourth critics demanded a voice for their country in the League of Nations.3 China immediately circulated the text of the League of Nation’s 1921 convention against the trafficking of women and children, and even helped to distribute surveys for League researchers.4 Chinese police procedures for identifying traffickers in transit at ports and train stations complied with international recommendations. The Republican government’s delegate did not present a report at this or later meetings, however, and China did not sign the accord until early 1926.5 Chinese representatives would later struggle to cooperate with the League’s investigation of international and domestic trafficking.6

In 1919, even as protests erupted around the country and Yang Yide’s political patrons seemed to be losing control, the chief inspector remained politically agile. This was not the first time he had needed to shift alle210

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Yang Yide in 1925, as acting civil governor of Zhili Province. O. D. Rasmussen, Tientsin: An Illustrated History (The Tientsin Press, 1925).

giances. Two years earlier, when the militarist Zhang Xun attempted to return the Manchu emperor to the throne, Chief Inspector Yang had encouraged the people of Tianjin to hang yellow banners welcoming the restoration. When the restoration failed, he responded quickly, personally ensuring that the imperial banners were torn down to protect citizens from reprisals. Similarly, throughout the May Fourth demonstrations, Yang also positioned himself strategically. Recognizing that the demonstrators hoped to expand their movement to include Tianjin’s merchant community, he telephoned the chairman of Tianjin’s Chamber of Commerce to ask whether the city’s shopkeepers and merchants planned to join the students with a shopkeepers’ strike.7 When advised that the city’s merchants intended to support the demonstrations, Chief Inspector Yang warned the chairman that he intended to withdraw his officers from the streets. His constables would not suppress the demonstrators nor would they protect the striking merchants and their property. The two arrived at a compromise. They would allow the demonstrators and strikers to keep the peace with their own volunteer forces. This shrewd response to the situation 211

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revealed the strategic limits of Yang Yide’s loyalty to his patrons, who had buried China deep in debt, acquiesced to Japanese encroachment, and incurred the wrath of hundreds of thousands of demonstrators. Yang’s indulgence of the demonstrating students and merchants was short-lived. In October, when a group of students from Nankai University organized a patriotic parade, Yang ordered his officers to block their progress from the university athletic fields. His policemen proceeded roughly, and four women students, four young men, and a Chinese boy scout sustained injuries in the confrontation.8 He also banned the establishment of a Tianjin student union and arrested several patriotic students. By January  1920 Yang had jailed several student members of the May Fourth leadership without trial. Student activists both in Tianjin and around the country called for his dismissal.9 Later nationalist histories celebrating the May Fourth activists denounced Yang Yide as conservative and authoritarian. At the time, newspapers alternately speculated that Yang was in the pocket of the Germans, the Japanese, or the Anfu militarist clique led by Duan Qirui.10 Many blamed Yang for siding with the militarists over the patriotic students. In the years immediately following the student strikes, however, Yang’s use of force left little tarnish on his reputation as an effective urban policeman and provincial lieutenant governor. (When Yang attempted to resign in 1925, his announcement met with dismay from the Tianjin merchant community.)11 He did what needed to be done to keep order in the city. Yang Yide’s career as Tianjin police chief proves that throughout periods of political uncertainty competent officials could hang on to administrative positions by staying flexible and consistently effective.12 Yang Yide had an impressive record, but with dif ferent cliques vying for control over the capital, his position was uncertain. When the telegram of September 15, 1921, arrived, he knew that he needed to comply with the instructions from the Internal Affairs Ministry by cracking down on the recent surge in trafficking. Fortunately Yang’s team of inspectors already had a promising investigation under way in Tianjin’s current British and former Austro-Hungarian concession areas. … … … … … … … … …

Chief Inspector Yang and his deputies drew upon a dark repertoire of interrogation and surveillance techniques. Their files reveal how trafficking 212

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networks developed as part of the fluid relationship between warlord culture, policing, and the criminal realm. Like the railway administration, Yang’s Tianjin police were eager to display their vigilance and responsiveness to the Internal Affairs Ministry. His investigators turned their attention to suspicious activities at the Tianjin docks and port. Police investigators working for Yang Yide not only learned that traffickers continued to take advantage of the increasing disorder along the railway lines, but also discovered that many young passengers on board the ocean steamers along China’s eastern coast were goods intended for sale. In early twentieth- century Tianjin the warlord, criminal, and police worlds overlapped. This blending of spheres of influence happened despite the establishment of vigorous policing systems fashioned after those recently developed in Meiji Japan. An efficient force maintained a convincing veneer of good order. In moments when this order was challenged, as it had been during the aftermath of the 1911 revolution, during the beginning of the May Fourth Movement, and throughout a series of runs on local banks in the 1910s and 1920s,13 Chief Inspector Yang Yide and his officers kept the city under control. Foreign concessions in Tianjin did not promote vice to the same degree as those in Shanghai. Nor did Tianjin struggle with the legacy of mixed courts and competing police forces. Each of the national foreign communities maintained a modest military presence.14 Chinese Tianjin’s successful administrative structure came from regimented institutions founded by Yuan Shikai as part of the Qing dynasty’s New Policies. The military policing system Yuan implemented in Tianjin became the template for Baoding district, and eventually Beijing. The city’s strong foreign presence, however, did allow political figures to retreat into the protection of foreign governments when bids for power backfired. Zhang Xun, the warlord who had maneuvered to restore the Qing, took shelter with the Dutch in Tianjin in 1917. In 1924 former emperor Puyi also found protection at Tianjin’s Japanese consulate. Although the city offered sanctuary to men of means and influence, Tianjin did not provide ordinary petty criminals the hideaways available in Shanghai. Tianjin welcomed (often corrupt) former militarists who wished to retire, or at least temporarily withdraw, from public life. Accordingly, when the Anfu armies dissolved in 1920, many of the Anfu commanders—including former premier Duan Qirui—took up comfortable residence in the Tianjin concessions. Sheltering former warlords and notoriously corrupt politicians while rigorously 213

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policing its streets, the city balanced permissiveness and control. Even in orderly Tianjin the police constantly negotiated with the criminal underworld. In a time when China’s most power ful men commanded substantial independent armies, Yang Yide was “just” a policeman. As chief of police for a treaty port, Yang prospered, becoming affluent and enjoying higher status than his Western counterparts in the supposedly model concession area of the International Settlement in Shanghai, where the office of Chief of Police was a rotating door of dissolute and less than effective British officers.15 In the Chinese bureaucracy, Chief of Police for Tianjin was a high-profile but essentially local job. It had far-reaching implications, however. Keeping the peace in Tianjin was critical to the security and stability of North China. During the Qing, officials who took up the position of governor general of Zhili Province based themselves in Tianjin. Proximity to the capital and access to Tianjin’s greater international community made this a key diplomatic post, and the city remained significant in the Republican period. The Boxer Protocol of 1901 prohibited military forces in Tianjin; thus, as chief of police, Yang Yide commanded the only armed Chinese body in the area. The founder of the force, General (and later President) Yuan Shikai had made certain that it was a well- equipped, highly trained force. Tianjin’s location near both the capital and the sea had for centuries made the city a critical stop on the Grand Canal. By the twentieth century, Tianjin had also become a modern transportation junction, where railway and steamship lines converged. Geographically, the city provided a lifeline for Beijing; when North China was hungry, it was via Tianjin that supplies would arrive. But transportation did not only bring sustenance—from Tianjin, trafficked children could be shipped far away. Situated on both the railroad and the steamship lines, the port of Tianjin occupied a place of strategic importance for the militarists jostling for control of the capital. Even while Beijing remained the capital of Republican China, authority over dif ferent regions had devolved to the military governors and their armies as the country weathered unprecedented fragmentation. With dif ferent regimes printing their own currency, drafting their own codes of conduct, and extracting taxes that never made it to the capital, Beijing seemed to lose its administrative significance. In 1928, when the Guomindang took power, Chiang Kaishek moved the capital south to Nanjing. 214

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Lucien Pye observed that the politics of Republican China can best be understood by treating the “warlord system” as an international system rather than a national one.16 Symbolically, however, until 1928 control over Beijing represented control over China. Between 1916 and 1928, the foreign powers were diplomatically on edge, gambling as to which militarist might gain dominance. In this context it is remarkable how vigorously institutions like the Tianjin Municipal Police Department and the BeijingHankou Railway Administration responded to requests originating in the capital. Their responsiveness attests to the strength of the institutions and to the extent to which both the Beijing-Hankou Railway and the Tianjin police considered the traffic in people to be a problem worth addressing. Both institutions took pains to document their efforts to apprehend traffickers. … … … … … … … … …

Yang Yide reveled in his position. Although as chief of police he was too well known to do so often, when he could he enjoyed working under cover. His job seemed to provide him with endless opportunities to hobnob with all walks of Tianjin life—from meetings with the richest members of the city’s chambers of commerce to the grubbiest street peddlers, from soirees with diplomats and ambassadors and their wives at the consulates to mahjong games with prostitutes at Tianjin’s brothels. Despite Yang’s professed illiteracy, he became sufficiently proficient at transcribing English letters to be able to sign photographs that he bestowed as keepsakes upon prestigious foreign friends in the diplomatic community. Clues to Yang Yide’s success as a police investigator can be found in his biography. Shortly after he was appointed circuit intendant for Tianjin in 1912 (a position he held simultaneously with his position in the police force), the popular Qianshuo Pictorial published its own version of Yang Yide’s malleable personal history.17 The illustration is a triptych that portrays three alleged phases in Yang’s earlier life. First, he is shown on his knees as a messenger bellowing good news to a successful examination candidate.18 For his second phase, he is drawn hunched over as an attendant in a brothel parlor helping two clients select their evening’s companionship. The third phase shows Yang as a ticket taker. He stands with his hands at his sides, in a stationmaster’s uniform and cap, while a man in a tailored Western suit admonishes him with a raised finger. With these three images the artist 215

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“The Extraordinary History of Yang Yide.” Qianshuo riri xinwen huabao [Elementary Daily News Pictorial], issue 1123, 1912.

parodies Yang Yide’s rise to prominence from the bottom of society—from kneeling, to bowing, to standing; from queue to close-cropped hair; from Qing garb to a Western uniform—and ingratiating himself all the while. The artist chose not to illustrate the fourth phase mentioned in the text, in which Yang Yide obtained his position as chief of police. (A few weeks later, another drawing in the same publication depicted Yang personally leading a raid on a theater.)19 There was more than a kernel of truth to this series of cartoons. As a young man in the 1890s, Yang had indeed started out penniless. In those days he was known not as Yang Yide but instead as Yang Yijian (Yang “By means of Thrift”). Yang later regaled friends in Tianjin with the details of his improbable life story. He was fond of sharing that his family had considered him to be a naughty child, and confessing (with a mixture of wistfulness and pride) that he had squandered his limited opportunities for study. Yang never learned to read, and for a time he despaired of his prospects. Eventually he found work as a night watchman. 216

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A few years later an influential friend provided him with an introduction to work for the railways. His job as a ticket taker entailed keeping a close watch on the comings and goings both at the station and on the trains, and gave him the chance to observe pickpockets, smugglers, traffickers, and confidence tricksters up close. While punching tickets at Tianjin’s Longtou train station in 1900, Yang Yijian caught the attention of North Tianjin’s police section chief, Cao Jinxiang. Assessing the then twenty- seven-year- old as alert and eager to please, Cao appointed Yang to the detective squad. Investigation work suited Yang Yijian perfectly, and the timing of this promotion was fortuitous. Within a few months, Boxers rebelling against the presence of foreigners and foreign technologies in China set fire to the Longtou train station. The suppression of the Boxer Uprising ushered in a period of criminality. As the eight legation powers sought to establish control, the city was said by its Chinese residents to swarm with petty crime.20 During this crime wave Yang developed techniques that would become hallmarks of his force, shaping his later crackdown on traffickers. Yang’s successful investigations resulted in the arrest of some of the region’s most elusive criminals. The most notorious of these was a cat burglar named Zhang Lisan. By establishing contacts in the pawnbroker community, Yang was able to entrap Zhang Lisan. His greater accomplishment, however, was to not only extract a confession from the hardened burglar but offer him a pardon in exchange for Zhang’s loyal ser vice to the police force.21 Yang would make conversions of this type central to his investigative strategy. When Yuan Shikai learned of this success, he approached Yang Yijian to express his admiration and offer him a possible promotion. There was one obstacle, however, to Yang Yijian’s promotion from detective. Yuan Shikai asked him frankly: “What examination rank do you hold? How can you expect to hold office with that name and without any scholarly rank?” Yang Yijian confessed that he had no academic credentials, but he did have a cousin who had purchased a degree and was now employed as a subprefect. That cousin’s name was Yang Yide. At Yuan Shikai’s encouragement, Yang Yijian swapped identities with his cousin, becoming Yang Yide (Yang “By means of Virtue”).22 In one stroke he had acquired for himself a new name, a new academic pedigree, and a promotion. These would accompany him throughout his career. Coming from a poor and unlettered background, however, Yang “By Means of Virtue” knew well what it was like to have nothing and little hope of more. 217

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One thing Yang Yide assuredly possessed by the 1920s was the admiration of Tianjin’s foreign community. As one glowing testimonial explained, “General Yang’s swift action and unrelenting attitude toward criminal classes has made Tientsin as unpopular as a hornet’s nest. It is frequently said by persons who know the situation that if General Yang and his men were to police Shanghai for a month its daily armed robberies would become a matter of history.” Yang’s men, too, impressed Western visitors: “His police force is among the most efficient in the East, and as in more progressive countries, they are courteous and willing to assist the general public in such ways that only a good policeman can help.”23 Under Yang, Tianjin became a city in which one could well imagine hailing a policeman to report a crime. The Sanbuguan was still thriving, but much of the city had changed since the days when Chen Jishan convinced Xiu’er to work as a prostitute on his behalf. As we will see, however, plenty of opportunities remained for enterprising traffickers. Contemporaries remarked of Yang: “He thoroughly understood what we would call ‘politics.’ ” He also recognized the power of propaganda. Although Yang himself could not read, he established a newspaper, the Da Zhonghua Shangbao, to serve as his mouthpiece. By offering leadership of the paper to Xiao Runbo, a May Fourth activist and China’s delegate to the League of Nations, Yang neutralized a potential critic and sought to channel public opinion. Yang Yide actively cultivated his reputation among foreigners. In autumn of 1917, just a few months after the failed restoration debacle, the area around Tianjin saw extensive flooding. Almost 50,000 acres of farmland and 19,000 villages, in 105 counties, lay submerged in water.24 Approximately 100,000 flood refugees poured into the city. On some days, more than 1,500 people clamored for aid around the city’s gates. The threat to public order was profound. Yang could have attempted to downplay or cover up the situation as a source of shame. Instead Yang embraced the opportunity presented by the floods to show off the effectiveness of his police force. He matched Western newspaper correspondents with police guides who escorted them to “get a visual warrant of the stress wrought on the deluge stricken proletariat.”25 Yang’s police tours made a deep impression, not only of the misery of the refugees who besieged the city, but of the noble efforts of his municipal police force to provide food, clothing, and medicine. 218

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Yang Yide pursued his career in the police force with relentless zeal and creativity. His skill at cultivating networks of patronage was matched by an ability to enrich police coffers through the confiscation of stolen goods and the manipulation of both legal and illegal sources of revenue. Militarists who attempted to transport contraband through the port city found their goods subject to scrutiny, surtaxes, and seizure.26 The foreign community held Yang in high regard, while locals viewed the police chief with wary respect and apprehension. The success of Yang Yide’s investigation into the trade in people in the early 1920s relied upon this emotionally charged combination of fear and deference. … … … … … … … … …

On May 6, 1923, Chief Inspector Yang Yide’s office reported to the Internal Affairs Ministry about progress in his investigations. The letter he dictated to his clerk announced that the Tianjin police now held numerous traffickers in custody and had leads for how to locate and arrest even more.27 These recent arrests had been made possible by two years of patient investigation, and by careful attention to gossip circulating among families living in Tianjin’s concession areas. Lately people had become especially preoccupied not only with refugees, but with suspicious activities in abandoned buildings and locations notorious for squatting. Yang had a formidable undercover force at his disposal to investigate such reports. These experienced men, some of whom (like Zhang Lisan) were former criminals themselves, followed news from the city’s rumor mill closely. Xia Qingxi, a former chairman of Tianjin’s Chamber of Commerce, asked and answered his own question: “Why was it that the color drained from the faces of Tianjin’s merchants and businessmen at the mere mention of Yang Yide’s special detection branch? They feared blackmail and extortion.”28 Chief Inspector Yang Yide maintained a robust roster of 500 skilled detectives. Of these, only approximately 30 were on the city’s payroll. These 30 men, on active duty, Yang considered his “red” detectives. The remaining nearly 470 detectives Yang called “black” detectives. They were unpaid. The names of all 500 red and black detectives (primarily men) were each written on small pieces of bamboo. Yang Yide kept these bamboo name plaques hanging on hooks on a blackboard in his central 219

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office, where he and his deputies could readily keep track of who was working on what investigation. Though Chief Inspector Yang claimed that he could neither read nor write, he managed the intricate workflow of what was essentially a parallel system of underground police operatives. Because the “blacks” received no salary, they had to be more creative in seeking a livelihood. “How were these detectives to provide food for their families and enrich their households? They had to seek their own way.”29 Again, it came as no surprise to Xia Qingxi, the former Chamber of Commerce chairman, that Yang’s black detectives stretched the boundaries of the law. “Seeking a way” could include conspiring with, or against, local merchants, using intelligence for extortion, and demanding protection money from Tianjin’s gamblers, opium dens, and brothel owners. They would not have been above helping a trafficker evade the law. Even so, identifying opportunities for profit as a black detective was not easy. These men relied upon a number of measures to generate business. They coaxed introductions from relatives. Many had to spend money in order to cultivate connections. They entertained promising guests, and presented gifts of hard-to- come-by commodities—foreign trinkets or delicacies from southern provinces—in order to establish and sustain ties with influential individuals throughout the city. Black detectives also did menial work to make ends meet. They served as messengers, carried evidence to and fro, and intimidated witnesses as commissioned muscle of the detective branch. While their situation as underground and unsalaried members of the force was not enviable, Yang’s black detectives inspired greater fear in the broader Tianjin community than their salaried “red” counter parts. The blacks openly carried guns. They brought instruments of torture—ropes, pincers, truncheons, and brass knuckles— with them to meetings. Perhaps most essentially, black detectives aggressively scrounged for new cases to bring to the attention of the police. Their unofficial role freed them to be more litigious. Ready to go to court themselves, Yang’s blacks did not hesitate to threaten local businessmen with lawsuits. As one businessman wrote of Yang Yide’s Tianjin detective squad as a whole: “These five hundred men were just like five hundred wicked tigers. It was with the aid of these five hundred wicked tigers that Yang Yide made himself rich.”30 220

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Yang Yide’s system engendered corruption, but it also worked. The bamboo plaques hanging in his office represented an alert body of independent men hungry for recognition and compensation. … … … … … … … … …

It was these men who stormed a warehouse located at Number 26 Yunfangli in the British Concession neighborhood. Yang featured the raid in his May  6, 1923, report to the Internal Affairs Ministry. Neighbors had reported that the abandoned warehouse housed a motley group of men, women, and children whose stealthy comings and goings suggested illicit activity. An informant (yanxian) inside the traffickers’ den provided the information necessary to coordinate a sting. Respectful of the international politics involved, Yang’s reply to the Internal Affairs ministry explained that his officers had obtained permission from British consular officials before entering the building. Yang Yide swore that his detectives had made the investigation a priority, “searching with sincerity and dedication” throughout the city.31 Once inside the concession warehouse, the police found seven adults and nine small children. Yang’s police officers took the adults into custody, and an official from the British Concession Public Affairs Office took the children to a relief home. These initial arrests, however, revealed only the most recent activities of a larger, ongoing trafficking business. The nine children were merely the latest to pass through the Yunfang warehouse. Interrogations followed the raid. Yang Yide appended voluminous statements from the traffickers to his correspondence with the Internal Affairs Ministry in Beijing. Cumulatively, the interrogations present a picture of how a network of traffickers had developed and operated. The surviving record is also tantalizingly suggestive of developing police strategies. The police based their interrogation strategy upon information supplied by a forty-one-year- old Tianjin native named Liu Si. He was no innocent bystander. Liu Si proved an invaluable informant because he had played a crucial role in the development, operation, and execution of the network. He had helped to recruit traffickers, procure children to sell, and coordinate their transportation to and beyond Tianjin. Yang Yide’s black detectives had no reservations about using information provided by a criminal informant. The report does not mention offering Liu Si a plea bargain, but we know from Yang’s arrangements with other criminals (like Zhang Lisan) 221

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that the police chief strategically used pardons and the promise of redemption to enhance the effectiveness of his investigations. According to Tianjin Maritime Customs Superintendent Tang Shaoyi, under Yang’s influence “many notorious criminals proved willing to give up vice and return to virtue. Some of these men took up official position under Yang Yide’s guidance and mentorship.” While it is unlikely that Liu Si gained official appointment in the Tianjin police force, his information may well have earned a pardon. Despite Liu Si’s central role in the trafficking network, his name was not included on the chief’s 1923 list of criminals then in custody.32 Liu Si described the origins of the Yunfang warehouse trafficking ring and how he became involved. His statements implicated the widow of a former warlord and revealed a complex web of connections between crime and the militarism that dominated daily life for many in Republican China. A former soldier, five years before the raid on the Yunfang warehouse, Liu Si had been stationed with the Zhenwu Army. He had drilled with Zhenwu troops at the army barracks at Xiaozhan, some ninety miles south of Tianjin. During the 1910s the Zhenwu Army operated under the personal control of Duan Qirui. Accordingly, when Duan ascended to the premiership, his army enjoyed considerable prestige. Premier Duan’s grasp on power weakened, however, following the Versailles Peace Settlement. During the First World War, Duan Qirui had been responsible for arranging the loans with Japan that cost China major concessions in Shandong. In 1919, May Fourth student activists ransacked his house and burned his residence. Duan and his Anfu coalition no longer had firm control of the capital, and the uncertain political climate infected the morale of his troops. Republican China’s warlords manipulated a delicate balance of military and political power. An ability to assess rivals and strategically shift allegiances was essential. By 1920 three main militarist factions contended for control of the capital: the Zhili Clique, the Fengtian Clique, and Duan Qirui’s Anhui Clique. That spring General Zhang Zuolin, commander of the Fengtian armies, allied with the Zhili armies to move against Duan Qirui. The Zhili-Anhui War ensued, and a brief but decisive battle in mid-July forced Duan Qirui from power. Anfu forces “literally dissolved before the advancing troops.”33 Their flight was not surprising. Army life was about survival rather than ideology, and as Duan’s political influence waned there was little to bind ordinary Anfu soldiers to their commander. As Diana Lary has written, it was an “ines222

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capable fact that China’s warlord soldiers were mercenaries.”34 Those men who could afford to do so, deserted. The victorious armies included soldiers commanded by Zhang Zuolin, Cao Kun, and Wu Peifu—each of these three allies had his eye on the capital, and soon they too would be rivals. When Duan’s power disintegrated, the Zhenwu Army rapidly disbanded. Some men managed to join their former enemies’ armies, but the vacuum left Liu Si, and hundreds of former soldiers like him, to fend for themselves. While stationed at Xiaozhan, Liu Si had become friends with a fellow soldier surnamed Ma from the nearby railroad junction city of Cangzhou. When their army dispersed, the two decided to head for Tianjin. Liu Si had family in the city. His mother, wife, and son lived in a crumbling brick house situated outside the city’s west gate, slightly to the north, near an elementary school. Eager for work, Liu Si’s friend Ma suggested that they track down their old commanding officer from the Zhenwu Army, Na Shunhong, to see if he could offer them a job. Army life had been difficult—the numbing routine of daily drilling, discipline, beatings, and forced marches broken by the risk of death in battle—but it was also what Liu Si and Ma knew best. While the fate of the Anfu clique and Duan Qirui’s political struggles failed to compel their loyalty, their Zhenwu unit had for a time defined their world. At loose ends with no source of income in the city, they turned to their old army network for help. After arriving in Tianjin, the two former soldiers inquired throughout the city, stopping at inns and teahouses and talking to other deactivated soldiers in an attempt to locate Commander Na. Eventually they found him, retired, in ill health, and living with his wife in a rundown mansion in the former Austro-Hungarian Concession on the east side of the floodprone river that wound its way through the heart of the city. The commander’s wife later explained her family’s situation to police investigators. After the army disbanded, in order to make provisions for their future, she and her husband had decided to invest in a local business. They used their savings to purchase twenty rubber-tired rickshaw carts. Liu Si and his friend Ma presented themselves just in time to land jobs. Liu Si took up management of the Na rickshaw garage. Ma and Liu Si were fortunate to find work. By the time they arrived in Tianjin, the North China famine of 1920 was on their heels. By November the famine that had already so devastated the countryside had begun to affect the cities in earnest. Tianjin’s administration was accustomed to 223

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dealing with cyclical refugee crises from seasonal flooding. As we saw, Yang Yide’s administration had handled the 1917 floods with strong local aid institutions and diligent police work. In the fall of 1920, however, supplies ran low and food prices tripled. Even the affluent could not afford to buy all they needed. Newspapers both in China and abroad had predicted that the death toll from the famine would only rise with the colder months, and in its democratic way, death came for the already ill Commander Na.35 According to Liu Si, it was around the time of the commander’s death that Na Xingzhai, the commander’s younger cousin, arrived at the Na mansion.36 … … … … … … … … …

Men came to join the warlord armies through a variety of channels. Recruiters set up stations in village centers and on city street corners with placards declaring their intent: “Seeking soldiers” (zhao bing).37 Although Liu Si himself had a wife, most soldiers were young, undereducated, and unmarried: the choices before them a rugged life of farming, menial labor in the city, or the life of a soldier. Some enrolled in military academies. The diverse varieties of interpersonal and political ties that warlord scholar Ch’i Hsi-sheng diagrammed for the Republican military elite also shaped relationships between lower-ranking soldiers. Enlistment patterns and loyalties can be traced to educational background, native place, and family ties.38 The Na cousins were born into the military life. For men like Commander Na Shunhong and Na Xingzhai, family connections offered an otherwise unavailable accelerated course of upward mobility through the ranks of an inconsistent command structure. The Na cousins were Hui Muslims from Yunnan Province. Na Shunhong and Na Xingzhai had served together in neighboring Guangxi before coming north. In 1919 they marched to Jianshan, near Cangzhou, where, as Na Xingzhai described, “there were already many impoverished people, willing to sell their own children. And many soldiers to buy them.”39 This situation would only worsen as the famine deepened. When interrogated by Yang Yide’s officers, Na Xingzhai testified that when their defeated army disbanded, he followed his elder cousin (and senior commander) to Tianjin. After Commander Na Shunhong died, Xingzhai moved into the Na residence. He told police that his cousin’s widow and her children had needed his help. 224

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There were still more hangers-on from the Zhenwu Army days lurking at the periphery of the Na household. In January 1920 a man who had served as a lieutenant in the Zhenwu Army, Wang Rongde, also came to the Na household. Like the cousin Na Xingzhai, Wang Rongde used the rhetoric of loyalty to explain his involvement with the Na household. He claimed that when he learned his former commander’s family might be struggling, he hastened to offer his assistance. Na Xingzhai told the police about Wang’s efforts to help: “Wang told me that he had a little girl he could give in marriage to my cousin’s son. He then approached Widow Na to ask her for 200 yuan. He first went to Cangzhou to buy three children. Next, he brought them back, and then bought up two more children here in Tianjin. Finally, Wang Rongde set out for Hong Kong. He told us that he intended to sell off all five children.”40 Widow Na herself did not mention Wang Rongde’s alleged promise to find a wife for her son. This was a common rationale to provide cover for procuring and selling women. The Beijing gambling entrepreneur He Long and his wife used their own son to make similar claims about the young girls working in their den. Although it is usually difficult to ascertain individual personalities from police files, Widow Na’s decisive, unambiguous statements to the police suggest a practical woman. Originally from Guangxi, she was Commander Na Shunhong’s second wife. In the widow’s own words, “I was matched with Commander Na so that he could carry on his household and family name.”41 All the sons from his previous marriage had died young. She had followed the commander for many years, and they had at least one son and daughter together. She never stated the ages or whereabouts of her children. Perhaps this experienced military wife had a pragmatic or even indifferent attitude about her own offspring. Other than Wang Rongde’s offer to find a child bride for one son, there is no discussion of them. Similarly, the record is silent on the fate of Commander Na Shunhong’s first wife. She may have died in childbirth, or he may have left her behind in the south. Mrs. Na told police that she had stayed stationed with Commander Na at the Xiaozhan barracks while he drilled troops, and the pair did not come to Tianjin until after the Zhenwu Army dispersed. In her testimony Mrs. Na took credit for the decisions to invest in a rickshaw garage—and to hire Liu Si to manage it. When questioned, she explained matter-of-factly the events leading up to her investment in buying children: “While he was 225

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at our house, Wang Rongde approached me for a large sum of money— 200 yuan—saying that he planned to buy up and sell children from his hometown of Cangzhou. He already had obtained five children from that township whom he wanted to store at my place. Wang then would take them from here [Tianjin] to Hong Kong to sell. He promised we would split the profits.”42 … … … … … … … … …

By fronting this first sum, Mrs. Na set a larger crime in motion. Her investment in Wang’s scheme to acquire children for eventual sale capitalized on the special circumstances in Tianjin, from the perspectives of both geography and police control. New rapid modes of travel had opened up the possibility of faster long-distance travel. Easily accessible overland by train and by sea aboard steamships, Hong Kong no longer seemed far away. The city was not only a strategic treaty port, but additionally had served as a critical testing ground for military policing. As a result, Tianjin sustained a peculiar balance between adherence to the law and the arbitrariness of military rule. Warlord families like the Nas treated Tianjin as a shelter from military life. Those who could afford to do so invested in Tianjin real estate and set themselves up with a comfortable retreat. Judicial and police documents, as we have seen, reveal the emotions of plaintiffs and defendants only selectively. They appear only when two things happened: the person chose to express an emotion verbally or takes some noteworthy action, and a judicial clerk chose to write this down. We can, however, speculate about how traffickers weighed the risks involved in their activities. The often- coercive nature of police interrogation obscures how any of these people felt about their participation in these activities. Retired commander Na Shunhong had been a person of note in Tianjin. When reporting his death, the government gazette, Zhengfu Gongbao, extended its sympathy and urged readers to express their condolences.43 Riding on the commander’s reputation, his wife may have believed she was above the law. Or she may have calculated that in this chaotic time she and other former military personnel connected with her enterprise stood a decent chance of getting away with their infractions. When speaking with police, the men and women who helped Widow Na emphasized their loyalty rather than desperation or poverty. 226

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Wang Rongde’s plan to market children in Hong Kong seemed plausible. Commander Na’s widow did not deliberate long before becoming more deeply involved in trafficking. Mrs. Na chose to alter the purpose of her team of rickshaws. She shifted her pullers from focusing on the legitimate business of local transportation to actively seeking opportunities for trafficking. The widow gave her reason for doing so in simple terms: the initial investment in the garage was not paying off, and Wang Rongde and Na Xingzhai had suggested a more profitable opportunity. She continued her explanation to police: “I then also encouraged Liu Si, together with eight others who had been barracked together under my husband’s command—including another commanding officer, Liang Yinting—to help gather up children, whether by buying them or even kidnapping them, and then to secretly bring them to Hong Kong to sell.” In the confession statement submitted by Police Chief Yang Yide, the widow named all of her coconspirators. The way they are listed, echoing arrests already made by the Tianjin police, and indeed presented in the very order in which they appear elsewhere, suggests that this polished version of Widow Na’s statement was the final product of extensive questioning. Chief Inspector Yang Yide’s police detectives structured further investigation and ensuing interrogations around the information provided by both Liu Si and Widow Na. They took statements from each of the men and women Widow Na had encouraged to procure children. Their interrogation records explain dif ferent encounters and provide detail about individual transactions (Table 6.1). The sums of money involved would not have stretched far, but they must have seemed enough to make it worthwhile to sacrifice the children. Working families in Tianjin earned 14 to 20 yuan per month.44 Beijing’s guilds set monthly wages for individual laborers at 4 to 7 yuan on average, and worker’s compensation sometimes included meals, board, working clothes, and periodic haircuts.45 Household servants, who also received room and board, made 3 to 6 yuan.46 Renters could expect to pay a minimum of 25 coppers (or the cost of a visit to the cheapest bathhouse), and most families paid 1 or 2 yuan for a room, squeezing into one or two rooms.47 Coal to heat the room cost at least 6 yuan each winter, and a single set of padded clothes for an adult cost almost 3 yuan.48 Western sociologists and Beijing police administrators calculated that a family of five could survive for a year on 100 yuan, with enough money for food, clothing, and shelter, and to eat meat on occasional festival days.49 This amounted 227

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TA B L E 6 . 1

Some of the children acquired by traffickers working for Widow Na

Name

Details

Xiaosan ෑή, boy, 2 Jingui 㚷㊥, boy, 5

Purchased by Wang Rongde Purchased in Cangzhou by Wang Rongde

Xiaofu ෑ⏠, boy Xiaohu ෑ⶛, boy, 4 surnamed Kang ࿀, girl Wang Qingji ᾄ᭘߿, boy surnamed Wang ᾄ surnamed Chu 㨨 surnamed Qiao ᡹, boy, 6–7. Lu Xiaosan 㨹ෑή (infant) Zhang Xiao’er ရෑЃ, boy Fang Chunhe ᔤᕵ߾, girl Wang Ensi ᾄᄄਣ, boy Li Xiaomei ᙅෑᜱ, likely girl Lu Quanxin 㨹‫ح‬ԇ, boy Zhao Erge ㍜Ѓ᛻, girl Xiaowu ෑЊ, boy Gao Xiaolao 㵪ෑ⢤ boy, 4–5 Zhang Zhangqing ရ㥳᭘, boy Zhang Sanhe ရή߾, boy

Purchased by Liu Si Purchased by Liu Si

Purchase price

20 yuan 20 yuan 37 yuan 33 yuan

Purchased by Xue Wenchang Purchased by Liu Si, child of a nun

36 yuan 60 yuan

Purchased by Liu Si

40 yuan 40 yuan 40 yuan 25 yuan 40 yuan

Kidnapped by Qin Yunchang Children of Zhang Wenxiang and Mrs. Zhang-Ren

Xiaosi / Lu San ෑਣ䐹㨹ή, boy Zhang Xiao’er ရෑЃ Mei Xiaowu ᜱෑЊ

In police custody, not purchased 40 yuan

to 35 to 40 coppers a day, working with no respite, and would have provided bare subsistence. Such families lived close to the poverty line by any definition50—recall that children performing on the street reported enduring beatings when they rustled less than a string of 20 coppers each evening.51 The prices listed in Table 6.1 would have kept a family afloat for but a few fleeting months. While poor Tianjin families struggled, the widow’s business thrived. Mrs. Na described a trip she herself had recently made to Hong Kong to deliver children. She told police that the previous September she had traveled by steamship to Hong Kong, bringing with her three children (Xiaosan, Xiaofu, and Jingui) she had acquired through her rickshaw network. The decision to travel by steamship was a strategic one. Wrestling with two toddlers and a five-year-old on a ship for several days while remaining inconspicuous presented no small challenge. By traveling by sea 228

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rather than overland, however, Mrs. Na could at least avoid the scrutiny of railway police at every station along the Beijing-Hankou and HankouGuangzhou lines. Steamship inspections were more intermittent. The physical space of the ship—with stairways, cargo bays, canvas covers, closets, and galleys—offered more nooks and crannies in which to hide than a railway car. Moreover, the widow did not need to obtain assigned seats for each of the three children—they could blend into the crowds on the lower levels of the steamship. Although she successfully transported her cargo to Hong Kong, the widow did not consider the trip to be an unmitigated success. She shared her frustration and obstacles with Yang Yide’s police: She had a nephew living in Hong Kong. When she arrived, he approached her to borrow money. The two argued, and the widow lost her temper. Indignant, the nephew turned to blackmail. He reported their activities to the Hong Kong police. Mrs.  Na was fined 175 yuan. But even though Mrs.  Na frankly shared the amount of the fine, she did not name the charge. It may have been an administrative fine rather than a criminal one, as she was not detained. Nor did Hong Kong police take Xiaosan, Xiaofu, and Jingui into custody. Still the fine alone would have put a dent in the widow’s profits. Those profits in Hong Kong could have been considerable. The children had cost her relatively little, and she probably avoided buying individual steamship tickets for such young passengers. Both the city and the New Territories area contained an extensive market for young female domestics (mui tsai), brothel attendants (and prostitute-trainees), male laborers, and adopted heirs. Prices for children in Hong Kong ranged from $70 to $500, many times the widow’s initial outlay in Tianjin.52 While parents in the north had sold their children for comparatively small sums, the children’s final sale prices amounted to enough to easily run a modest Hong Kong household for over a year. Around the time of the widow’s argument with her nephew, a letter from Tianjin arrived at her Hong Kong boardinghouse. One of her husband’s former colleagues, barracks officer Liang Yinting, and a Mrs. Zhang née Ren wrote to inform Mrs. Na that they had found two more children for her, one of whom was a promising boy named Xiaohu, or “Little Tiger.” Before heading home Mrs. Na posted a response, telling Liang Yinting and Mrs. Zhang-Ren about her fine and cautioning them to decline any offers of help from her extortionist nephew. Soon thereafter, Liang Yingting 229

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and Mrs. Zhang-Ren boarded a Hong Kong–bound steamship bringing two more children in tow. Frustrated and inconvenienced by the quarrel with her nephew, Mrs. Na arranged to have all five of the children left with a Hong Kong grocery shopkeeper (zahuopu). Unencumbered by small children, she hurried back north by train.

The widow deputized her husband’s cousin to help manage the network. Na Xingzhai told the police that it was he who first approached Liu Si about finding more children to sell. As manager of a rickshaw garage Liu Si encountered a broad swath of the Tianjin population. He knew numerous families who were barely eking out a living in a city surrounded by famine and intermittent civil wars. Liu Si’s army buddy Ma also possessed connections in the Cangzhou area that had seemed so promising to Na Xingzhai when he left the army. To what extent were men like Liu Si willing to participate in an illegal enterprise as a result of their army background? The warlord army environment could certainly have a corrosive effect upon one’s moral compass. As Diana Lary writes, “In the barracks, pressure from mothers, wives, and neighbors to behave is replaced by the diametrically opposed pressure to conform to the norm of the tough, swaggering, vice-loving fighter.”53 It may be, in fact, that Liu Si did return to Tianjin to live with his wife and mother. If so, their moderating domestic influence did not keep him out of trouble. He welcomed the opportunity to make more than the 50 coppers a day he earned managing the Na household’s rickshaw garage. … … … … … … … … …

After Yang Yide’s officers persuaded the former soldier turned rickshaw garage manager turned trafficker to turn informant, Liu Si detailed his involvement in the trafficking ring, explaining to the Tianjin police: “As you have discovered, I have had pass through my very own hands children whom I have purchased. Perhaps they are themselves sufficient evidence to make clear what has happened. Last October Zhang Guixing (a coworker at the rickshaw garage) and I traveled to Dahongqiao in Hebei, where we spent forty-five dollars to purchase the six-year-old boy named ‘Little Tiger.’ Zhang Guixing and I, together with two other colleagues (Liu Guolin and Zhang Ruiting) also bought a boy named Qingji from 230

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someone surnamed Chu. Those are the two little boys that Liang Yinting and Mrs. Zhang-Ren took to Hong Kong last winter.”54 Once he had safely handed the two boys over to their couriers, Liu Si met up with a self- described “professional intermediary” named Xue Wencheng. Xue had more experience facilitating these kinds of transactions. The two visited Liu Si’s neighborhood outside the west gate of the city. There, in Xing Family Hutong, Xue Wencheng oversaw the purchase of another boy of six or seven, whose surname was Qiao.55 In December Liu teamed up again with his coworker from the garage, and for 60 yuan they bought an infant, to whom they gave the name Lu Xiaosan. Liu Si had heard rumors that the infant was the unwanted child of a Buddhist nun. Liu Si then returned to Dahongqiao, where he bought one Fang Futang’s daughter, Fang Chunhe, for 40 yuan. Perhaps the earlier rumors inspired Liu Si to stake out religious locations, because after Dahongqiao he tried the Thousand Buddha Monastery. There he bought a child named Xiao’er from two brothers (Zhang Chunfang and Zhang Shizhuang). Liu Si also bought a child named Ensi. By coordinating with other professional brokers, Liu Si learned to identify and acquire children for the widow’s trafficking business. Liu Si emphasized to the police that all of the capital for these purchases was put forward by the three head traffickers: Commander Na’s widow, his cousin Na Xingzhai, and fellow Zhenwu veteran Wang Rongde. As Liu Si explained: “They pay out money to buy these children. Then they store them at Number 26 Yunfangli, in the British Concession, until one of them can take a group of children to Hong Kong to sell.” Before his recruitment as a police informant, Liu Si regularly procured at least two or three children a month, and he was just one out of more than a dozen men and women working for the Na family. By arranging to have the children shipped off as far as Hong Kong, to a city administered by a colonial government rather than the Republic of China, traffickers working with Widow Na took advantage of a situation in which potential buyers could rest assured that the children whom they had purchased would be unable to run away and would remain irretrievable to their families. The majority of the men who became involved in buying or kidnapping children for Mrs. Na and Na Xingzhai were former Zhenwu soldiers. They typically testified that they had learned from fellow Zhenwu veterans that Commander Na was ill, that Mrs. Na had fallen on hard times, and that this was why they came to the Na residence. Public announcements of the 231

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commander’s death helped the widow assemble her network of former soldiers. Despite protestations to the contrary, for most, seeking out the grieving widow was less a kindly impulse than an opportunistic one. Ex-infantry soldier twenty-four year-old Qin Yunchang told police that when he learned that his former army colleagues had started selling children, and that the commander’s wife was putting up the money for this enterprise, he and a friend, Hu Dianying, managed to snatch a six-year-old boy on the street. His friend also managed to kidnap a twelve-year-old, and together they brought the two children to the warehouse at Number 26 Yunfangli.56 In exchange for procuring children the men and women in Widow Na’s trafficking network received either set fees or a small share in her eventual profits. In times of displacement and upheaval, the benefits for these former soldiers and their families were not purely monetary. Through their association with their former commander’s widow they received patronage, lodging in Tianjin’s concession area, and the chance to reconnect with old colleagues. As Liu Si and Ma discovered when they arrived in Tianjin, in North China’s cities, guilds, local references, and guarantors acted as gatekeepers into many industries. The men who joined the widow’s rickshaw brigade gained employment in a market already saturated with refugees and deactivated military men. Just because the widow herself had decided that the rickshaw garage was not a sufficiently lucrative going concern did not mean that individual rickshaw pullers could not continue to pull legitimate fares. The word was out not only among former Zhenwu soldiers, but also among Tianjin’s struggling poor. Another witness testified that he had heard rumors that “up at the Na mansion they will buy a boy for 40 yuan.” He eagerly put his poorer neighbors in contact with Liu Si.57 One couple, Zhang Wenxiang and his wife Mrs. Zhang-Ren, learned about the trafficking business at the Na mansion because they habitually crossed over to the former Austro-Hungarian concession neighborhood to beg for leftover food from the Western- style mansions along the riverbank. At first Zhang Wenxiang was offered only 5 yuan to help transport one of the children around the city, but before long both he and his wife became embroiled in the widow’s schemes. Eventually they became so inextricably involved that Mrs. Zhang-Ren became a trusted courier taking children to Hong Kong, and the couple was asked to move into the warehouse at Number 26 Yunfangli to guard groups of children. Their own two young 232

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boys were among the children taken into custody during the police sweep of the building.58 In their efforts to unravel Widow Na’s trafficking network, Tianjin police questioned everyone they could find. The nineteen-year-old bride of former barracks captain Liang Yinting told police that the children had been living at Number 26 for eight or nine days, but whether they were kidnapped or her husband had bought them to sell, she was “unable to say” (buke kending). Mrs. Liang also told officers that her family had affianced her to Liang at the age of fifteen—not that much older than the oldest of these children. Her family lived near the military barracks at Xiaozhan.59 Twenty-six-year-old Liu Shaoqing, who lived with his father in the Yanguhui district, worked driving a horse-drawn cart. He suspected his father had been involved in selling children, but he did not know much about it, nor could he say where his father was. He told Chief Inspector Yang’s investigators that he had run away when he heard of his father’s criminal entanglements.60 Several elderly women testified that they had been asked to go over to their neighbors’ houses to witness one of these sales and to mark a document confirming that poverty was the reason for the sale. Their statements are a poignant demonstration of how differently these transactions might have been perceived by the initial seller, especially when the person conducting the sale was a parent or relative. To a family member, such a document, publicly verified by neighbors, confirmed desperate circumstances and cleared consciences. Traditional contracts often articulated a kind of conditional sale, preserving the possibility that families who sold land or a child because of poverty might buy back their own, should their fortune be reversed. By creating these documents Liu Si and other traffickers established trust with the family members from whom they were buying children. The actual sale contracts from Widow Na’s network have long since vanished. The only evidence of their existence is the descriptions that the neighbors who signed them gave to detectives working for Yang Yide. Such sale contracts typically contained various provisions for the wellbeing of the person sold, by which the purchaser promised to provide food and shelter, and to arrange a marriage at the appropriate time. Needless to say, Mrs. Na and her accomplices had no intention of making good on these promises. Few who sold children to Liu Si and his coworkers 233

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understood that the children would soon be boarding steamships bound for Hong Kong. Purchasing people in Republican China required an initial outlay of cash, in this case provided by Commander Na’s widow, and an abundance of deception, contrived here by Liu Si and other former soldiers from the old commander’s unit. Tianjin police chief Yang Yide submitted his report to the Board of Transportation and the Internal Affairs Ministry on May 8, 1923—twenty months after the Ministry had issued its inquiry. The investigation was ongoing. At the time Yang Yide had in police custody a total of twentyfour people who had sold, purchased, or kidnapped children for the two principal architects of the trafficking scheme: Mrs. Na and Na Xingzhai, Commander Na’s younger cousin. Information from Liu Si and less cooperative traffickers named a total of fifteen primary dealers and eight collaborators. Police detectives identified twelve families who had sold children to men working for the Na rickshaw garage. The police chief reported that he planned to prosecute all involved parties, but identified Na Xingzhai as the true ringleader (zhengfan). Mrs. Na and Na Xingzhai had managed to transport and sell dozens of children during the year between Commander Na Shunhong’s death and their arrest. Liu Si alone handled transactions involving at least eight children.

Chief Inspector Yang Yide and the Tianjin municipal police seem to have been more concerned with putting a stop to the whole trafficking ring by prosecuting Na Xingzhai than with punishing men like Liu Si. Yang Yide concluded his report by stating that the twenty-four criminals currently in his custody would be transferred to Beiyang field headquarters for trial and prosecution. Wang Rongde, the soldier who helped to set the business in motion, had so far evaded arrest. He may have remained in Hong Kong, but Yang promised that his police would “continue to exert every effort to search for him.” Yang’s report also set forth plans for the children currently in the custody of British concession officials in Tianjin. Those who did not have homes to return to would be sent to a charitable benevolence hall. Openings in these overextended facilities were limited.61 The police chief must have been relieved to hand responsibility for the children to the British Public Affairs Ministry. The children already taken to Hong Kong had vanished. Tianjin’s police chief had no authority to extend his investigation in the colony. Inter234

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rogation records do not describe how Mrs. Na and her colleagues planned to sell the children upon arrival in the colonial port. It is likely that the shopkeeper with whom she left the three small children (Jinggui, Xiaosan, and Xiaofu) acted as her broker in the city. Despite ongoing discussion in Shenbao and other newspapers about the custom of adopting “mulberry grubs”—one vernacular diminutive for charitable adoption—these children probably ended up sold as laborers or domestics rather than as adopted children. Although the market for heirs in the Pearl Delta tended to draw from local southern families, the demand even for northern boys remained high. Male children could be four to five times as expensive as females.62 Mrs. Na and her intermediaries focused their trafficking on boys in part because they could fetch a higher price as adopted heirs. The young girls would probably have been sold as mui-tsai, brothel attendants, or if they were slightly older, as prostitutes.63

Chief Inspector Yang Yide’s report and accompanying files marked the entry of Widow Na and those arrested with her into the legal system—but it was a parallel legal system, for after interrogation with Yang Yide’s detectives, their case was handled by the Beiyang Army. Unfortunately, army tribunal records describing the outcome have not survived. Had the traffickers stood trial in the Tianjin Municipal Court, they would have faced a possible sentence of up to seven years.64 Na Xingzhai and his cousin’s widow, accused of a greater crime than their accomplices, would likely have received the full term. Perhaps some of the men and women who sold children to Widow Na’s agents preserved a copy of a contract declaring that they had sold their child because of poverty after all. Republican law made no official space to honor such documents, but unofficially these papers occasionally had the power to move a local judge to a compassionate decision favoring the defendant. Perhaps a military tribunal would have taken a similar view. … … … … … … … … …

Just two days before Yang and his staff finished assembling the report on trafficking and kidnapping for the Internal Affairs Ministry, another issue arose to command the chief inspector’s attention. Bandits at Lincheng, in Shandong, had derailed the southbound “Blue Express” on the TianjinPukou railroad, and in the early morning hours of May  6, 1923, they 235

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marched 300 passengers up into the nearby hills. From there the hijackers issued a series of demands: ransom money, provisions, pardons, and enlistment into a local army. Although Shandong was beyond his jurisdiction as police chief, Yang Yide bore some responsibility for the railway line originating at Tianjin, and he served as a respected mediator between the Chinese and foreign communities. By mid-May, Yang was hastening between Tianjin, Lincheng, and Beijing to assist in negotiations. Ceaseless in his determination to ingratiate himself with influential foreigners, Yang Yide even floated the idea of offering himself to the Lincheng bandits in exchange for their foreign and well-heeled Chinese hostages.65 Bandits called their Western captives “foreign tickets” (yangpiao)— indicating the high value these captives carried for ransom or negotiation.66 In the Lincheng negotiations, the bandits were eventually able to leverage their “tickets” to obtain positions in the army. Philip Billingsley tells us that such reciprocal ties between bandits and the military were commonplace: “Soldier banditry began in North China and, as the remorseless militarization process went ahead, set the trend for the rest of the country. One by one, the old bandit areas became primary targets of militarists in search of new recruits, and bandits were drawn willy-nilly into the new era.”67 Widow Na’s Tianjin-based trafficking enterprise drew upon her husband’s former soldiers, and shows that the process Billingsley describes could work in reverse, and in an urban context. Chinese officials like Chief Inspector Yang Yide concerned themselves with the problems of trafficking and kidnapping on a variety of levels and across radically dif ferent contexts. The success of the Lincheng bandits inspired further attacks on foreigners, and provided both foreign and Chinese critics an excuse to bemoan the failures of the Beiyang regime. Kidnapping and detention, whether of the most privileged and influential members of Republican Chinese society or its weakest children, represented an inversion of order and power. Physical control over physical bodies empowered the hostage taker, if only momentarily. Kidnapping operated at dif ferent valences at dif ferent levels of society, but its impact reverberated from top to bottom. Na Xingzhai and the Widow Na exerted their influence over the soldiers and rickshaw employees at their disposal, as well as over the children whom they purchased and kidnapped. After the Lincheng hijacking, foreign pressure again shaped Chinese policy. Diplomats demanded that the Chinese military take responsibility for railway security. The Republican government increased patrols 236

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like those ongoing on the Beijing-Hankou line, and placed armed guards on board trains.68 The commander’s widow might have found it more difficult to transport children between Tianjin and the south after Lincheng, but that inconvenience alone would not have deterred her. She already knew, as we have seen, that oceangoing steamships were less rigorously patrolled than the railways. These precautions against banditry challenged—but did not prevent—traffickers from moving people around the country. The multifaceted case against Commander Na Shunhong’s widow and his cousin Na Xingzhai illuminates developing innovations in the way traffickers operated in Republican China. Mrs. Na and Na Xingzhai tapped into the deceased commander’s military network to garner support for their entrepreneurial activities. Social connections formed between Zhenwu soldiers while on the march, or while training together at Xiaozhan, remained even after their army disbanded. Widow Na relied upon word of mouth to recruit brokers and to locate potential children to buy. The 1920–1921 famine left enough desperate families and burdensome children in North China to supply traffickers like those in the widow’s network. Famine, military friendships, and local knowledge had all played a role during the Qing period as well, but the opportunity to take advantage of these factors grew exponentially in the Republican period. Although China’s fragmentation into various military regimes stood in the way of efficient central administration, the disorder provided criminals with increasing opportunities for movement and ready-made social networks. Officials and journalists around China remarked that when armies disbanded in a given area, that area experienced a surge in criminal activity.69 Their chosen language implied that demilitarized soldiers were atomized, alienated individuals—unpredictable potential criminals. The evidence uncovered by this Tianjin police investigation suggests an alternative interpretation: social connections made while serving in the warlord armies provided the web of relationships required for a successful trafficking business. The army constituted “the finest school of training in crime.”70 Although many former infantrymen were poor, undereducated, and not especially cosmopolitan, their military experience familiarized them with the demands of travel and with long- distance transportation networks, making them precociously aware of their country’s terrain, its scale, and the possibilities it opened up for trafficking. As soldiers they had access to uniforms and to weapons, invaluable props for deception and, when deception 237

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failed, violent coercion. Moreover, working collaboratively through their former military connections, former soldiers could accomplish what would have been difficult for unaffiliated individuals. The case of Commander Na Shunhong’s widow demonstrates that former military men—and their wives—were particularly well positioned to take advantage of changing circumstances. Buying and selling people had always been part of how Chinese families transferred women, children, and domestics between households. In important ways, however, such traditional transactions were historically constrained by social propriety, as the necessary introductions between families most frequently occurred within tightly knit communities and were brokered by local matchmakers. The mobility, urbanization, militarization, and commercialization of the 1910s and 1920s expanded opportunities for brokers to prey upon the vulnerable over long distances. By criminalizing transactions in people, the state unintentionally ensured that traditional needs would be filled by new, more predatory and clandestine, trafficking enterprises.

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“Believe me, I certainly didn’t tell her to run off!” Mrs. Song repeated a third time. The former servant was becoming increasingly exasperated with the Beijing police officer’s questions. She had more pressing concerns than the whereabouts of a wayward teenager. Just a couple days earlier, Mrs. Song had given notice to her employer in Yangmao Hutong in order to nurse her ailing husband. She and her husband had been in ser vice with dif ferent Beijing households some distance from each other—Mrs. Song as a maid and Mr. Song as a private driver of a horsedrawn cart. Recently his position had kept him waiting long hours out in the winter cold, and both he and the horse were the worse for it. Now none of them could work.1 For his part, the investigating officer was getting nowhere. The family at Yangmao Hutong had filled out a standard missing-person form issued by the local police station (xunrenbiao). Following up on such reports was just one of his many tasks. The form described fifteen-year-old Jinyu as a shinü, or serving maid, purchased from Sichuan: “A tall girl, she stands almost four chi high. She has a long face, and her cheeks are marred with black blotches. She wears her hair in braids, tied with a red ribbon. On the day she disappeared she was wearing a woven overcoat with red stripes on a green background. This coat had a wool inner lining, and a green belt made from cotton cloth. When she left Yangmao Hutong, she was also wearing cotton pants and green cotton shoes and socks.”2 The girl had last been seen leaving the alleyway at around ten in the morning on 239

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February 12, 1922. The form did not mention a reward, although similar forms sometimes did. It was not unusual for enterprising police to question the other servants in a household when searching for a runaway. Often police correctly suspected other members of the household staff of being involved in a disappearance. There was a kind of odd democracy as to who could act as a broker in the Chinese market for people. This was not a marketplace exclusively defined by the exploitation of the powerless by the powerful. Gradations of influence, intimate knowledge, and conspiracy shaped the transfer of people between domestic spaces. Older servants sometimes “helped” younger ones by introducing them to traffickers. For their pains, these intermediaries could receive as little as a few token yuan or as much as a share of the profits from a final sale. If the suspicious officer’s unremitting questions made Mrs. Song defensive, it is easy to understand why. By questioning servants, police obtained insight into the structure of a household. For example, Jinyu’s Beijing master had written “serving maid” (shinü) on the missing-person form but Mrs. Song orally described the girl as their “concubine’s slave girl” (shoufang de binü). This description, combined with Jinyu’s age, her provincial origins, and her disappearance, suggest that the fifteen-year-old had been purchased to wait upon one of the household’s concubines. The attention to detail, especially with regard to clothing, also reveals something about her owners: They were sufficiently well off to provide their domestics with adequate clothing—a lined overcoat, matching shoes and socks—but not so affluent as to overlook the expense. The police and families who kept domestics knew their value. Although the family from Yangmao Hutong had likely obtained Jinyu through an illegal transaction, municipal police honored transactions and claims made by masters’ households enough to help track down missing domestics. In their search for Jinyu, police hit a dead end. … … … … … … … … …

To understand North China’s market in domestic labor we need to consider the layers of power and influence held by members of the Chinese household. Trafficking was a process that invoked constantly shifting statuses, and the brokering of people into domestic roles draws attention to the permeability of Chinese families. Throughout the Republican period, domestic servants became caught in the middle of changing definitions of 240

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family. Police investigations around the arrival and departure of domestic staff reveal the changing expectations families had of their staff. Brokers’ fees and contracts introduced domestic servants, nannies, wet nurses, private drivers, apprentices, and child brides to households that could afford to pay. New arrivals could be disruptive; fellow servants and junior concubines could be judgmental and vindictive. Authority in the household was exercised through a complex hierarchy including not only blood relations but also other domestics. Within this hierarchy some servants retained privileges while others could not, some labored as slaves and others as servants, and some trusted servants even acted as agents for their masters when dealing with police. In this capricious system, brokers negotiated with domestics, household heads, and police over the establishment, maintenance, or severance of domestic relationships. Household disputes throughout the 1910s and 1920s indicate a growing tension between traditional Confucian-influenced attitudes and the increased prominence of contracts under Republican law. The incorporation of dif ferent kinds of family members and domestic laborers through sale and indenture attests to the ability of Chinese families to be simultaneously porous and regimented. As we have already seen, even elite women did not necessarily live their lives cloistered in an inner chamber. Engagement with the trade in people—whether for brides, domestics, concubines, or servants—brought women across their threshold and into their communities. Management of a household, a task typically left to women, required crossing boundaries, negotiating with intermediaries, and incorporating outsiders. With this in mind, it is important to understand how three dif ferent structural entities competed to define the boundaries of a family unit. The state, the legal system, and Chinese families themselves each grappled with problems of inclusion and exclusion. The traditional permeability of Chinese families challenged both late Qing and Republican government efforts to employ modern empirical methods to count and evaluate China’s population. Tong Lam’s study of early twentieth-century social survey techniques in China describes a tension between the traditional cadastral surveys of the imperial period, which took the household for granted as a unit of measurement, and the early twentieth- century emphasis on counting individuals.3 The old Qing baojia household registration system relied upon delegated community leaders, baojia heads, to report the number of households and inhabitants in their districts to the empire. By 241

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the end of the nineteenth century the state’s conception of a household and its boundaries was shifting. As Lam writes, “many households identified by the old registration were simply amalgamations of economic families residing in the same physical location.”4 As part of its efforts to pin people down in time and space, the census campaigns of 1909 and 1911 required inhabitants to display household doorplates (menpai) showing the precise address and an assigned number.5 Fixed residency was essential to the state’s capacity to count—whether individuals or household units. Residency was not, however, merely a means of measuring the population. It also demarcated family space and belonging. Early twentieth- century census initiatives made families and shared household space legible to the state in new ways. Despite various ongoing attempts at creating a technical definition for “family,” determining the boundaries of a family group was a subjective exercise. Many police investigations began with reports from suspicious neighbors: complaining about inappropriate comings and goings, too many temperamental children next door, or the sound of beatings. Families who felt amicable toward each other were as likely to help placate a recently acquired child bride as to report her arrival, or even to act as intermediaries themselves, providing introductions to potential servants. When neighbors did not get along, it was a dif ferent story. Calculating the proportion of cases that began as much with a neighborhood grudge as a genuine police suspicion would be difficult. It is clear that some situations—the exchange of a very young child bride, or an unofficial adoption, for example—could be palatable in courtyard communities where neighbors were on good terms, whereas when other outstanding grievances existed, hostile neighbors were naturally more likely to report one another. Use of coresidency as a definition for family (jia) had practical roots in an urban environment and in the Qing dynasty’s approach to population management. This was not the corporate-lineage definition of family that prevailed in many parts of China and that has been used by anthropologists to explain patterns of succession and family division. Instead, here the jia was a family unit conceived as subject to urban administrative regulation, a unit that facilitated necessary administrative calculations. Under the Qing, monitoring and counting the population fell under the purview of the Board of Revenue (hubu). Building upon the Board of Revenue’s old mechanisms, the frequent household inspections (by both the municipal 242

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police and the Bureau of Social Affairs) that accompanied the adoption of social scientific principles for measuring urban conditions also relied upon coresidency. From the point of view of various members of the family, what mattered was the ability to make claims, as members of a household, on the resources of that household. Qing guidelines admonished elite mistresses against abusing servants and to treat them as adopted family.6 As we will see, concubines, wet nurses, and other domestic servants came to rely upon an inclusive definition of the jia and its obligations. Blending legal and moral obligation, sold and indentured people invoked the family alongside the language of contract to extract support from their masters. A cohesive family in the early twentieth century shared both a “life in common and a common budget” (tongju gongcai).7 Legislators did not enshrine this durable concept in the law until the promulgation of the Guomindang civil code, which would eventually define a household as “all relatives and non-relatives who live together in one household with the object of sharing a life in common permanently.”8 However, from the early years of the Republican period the principle of tongju gongcai had begun to shape legal interpretations of what constituted a family. The category of those “sharing a life and a common budget” delimited not only a family unit subject to the authority of the household head, or jiazhang, but also a group of people to whom the household as a whole had some obligation of maintenance and support (fuyang zhi yiwu.)9 Supreme Court decisions issued between 1914 and 1919 upheld claims for support made by junior family members, alienated wives, siblings, concubines, and adopted children.10 Throughout the first two decades of the Republican period, the law held concubines to be members of the family but simultaneously interpreted concubinage as a contractual relationship with the patriarch. Qing patriarchs had been legally permitted to dismiss or sell off a concubine at will.11 In alimony decisions favorable to concubines, early Republican judges employed the logic of mutual contract (but notably not of marriage) to assert a man’s obligation to support his concubine.12 Although a renewed social and judicial emphasis on contractual logic—for a time—favored the concubines of the early Republican period, this same contractual logic diluted a household’s paternalist obligations to both purchased and hereditary domestic workers. The popular vision of what constituted a household was in the process of shrinking from a broadly conceived economic unit to an increasingly intimate conjugal one. The traditional family parameters (qinshu fanwei) of the Qing reached 243

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far past the residential unit, extending obligations of mourning to a wide range of relations. By the Republican period these parameters had constricted. Susan Glosser has demonstrated that after the opening of the May Fourth Movement, Chinese nationalist elites promoted the small family, or xiao jiating, both to express modern nationalism and as a target for reform.13 For extended families and their servants, however, changes both to family structure and to how families were administered were not abstract matters of national salvation. Instead, the state’s encouragement of smaller family structures constituted an immediate threat to traditional patterns of family authority and modes of livelihood. These changes caused many domestic servants considerable anxiety. At the same time, however, the evolution of the legal system and law enforcement offered domestics unprecedented access to mechanisms for redressing ongoing wrongs. The police archive reveals domestic servants’ growing sense of entitlement and the legal and illegal ways in which purchased individuals expressed their frustrations and made their demands known.

Fear and Accusations For sixteen-year-old Yao Jinxing, the opportunity to denounce her owners came on August 2, 1917, at the end of a long day. Her body ached from beatings and she was hungry. As the light faded into shadows that sultry evening, her two mistresses dozed, sated by their evening meal. Yao Jinxing quietly slipped out of the Wu family compound in the shadows of the Xinghua temple. With the next day’s shopping money tucked in her pocket, she hastened past the guards at Beijing’s Desheng Gate. Yao arrived at the Shipeng Hutong relief home at nine in the evening. Once safely inside the door, the young serving maid declared that she had run away because she had overheard Mrs. Wu and a younger concubine plotting to sell her. She knew her mistresses’ scheme was against the law, and she had set forth to seek help and protection.14 The previous day, Yao Jinxing had knocked over a kerosene lamp, shattering the glass and spilling oil on the stone floor. Yao told the administrators at the relief home that Wu’s concubine had thrashed her and threatened to sell her as a concubine to a buyer in Shanghai. Physical abuse of a servant alone might not have warranted police scrutiny, but the accusation that Yao was to be sold against her will caught their attention. The prohibition against trafficking was less than a decade old. The national government was already in disarray by 1917, but Beijing’s municipal 244

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“Woman Seeking Help from the Relief Home.” Tianjin Huabao [Tianjin Pictorial], 1925.

government showed surprising resilience. Like their counterparts working under Chief Inspector Yang Yide in nearby Tianjin, Beijing police who were eager to demonstrate compliance with the new Republican criminal code pursued such cases zealously. For Yao Jinxing, the concubine’s threat resurrected frightening memories. As a young child she had lived with her parents in a small village in central Sichuan. When Yao Jinxing was about seven years old her parents sold her to a man surnamed Wang. That sale took place two years before the Qing court promulgated its prohibition against buying and selling people, and three years before the revolution, though neither of these events would have a direct bearing on Yao Jinxing’s fate. Mr. Wang brought her to Hubei as his menial. She received no wages and was effectively Wang’s property to dispose of as he wished. For five years he put her to work waiting on friends and acquaintances, then he arranged to sell her a second time, to her current master, Wu Sanrong. In her deposition Yao Jinxing recalled that Wu Sanrong paid Wang 20 yuan.15 This amount suggests several things. First, the price allows us to speculate about Yao Jinxing’s parents. Wang had likely paid Yao Jinxing’s parents less when he initially purchased her in Sichuan; the Yaos must have 245

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been extremely poor, whether they sold her purely for the amount she could fetch or to spare the expense of feeding her. Yao Jinxing’s memories as related to the police do not provide more information. Her deposition makes no mention of siblings, although at seven she would have been old enough to remember any. Her parents may have weighed the decision to sell their daughter more carefully than might first appear: Perhaps they chose to sell Yao Jinxing to Mr. Wang knowing he intended to use her as a maid rather than sell her to a brothel. They could even have extracted a contract to this effect. Mr. Wang may have been a relative stranger, or he might have been a trusted family friend; Yao Jinxing’s childhood memories did not extend to details about the man who purchased her and his connection with her parents. The modest price of the second sale also suggests that while Mr. Wang probably made a small profit over what he paid in 1908, he was not a professional trafficker. Whatever money Wang made—perhaps 5 or 10 yuan— would hardly have covered the expense of feeding and clothing a growing girl for more than a few months, let alone the five years she was in his service. Wang chose to sell Yao Jinxing in his home province of Hubei, even though he could probably have made more money off of her in a coastal city. Like her parents, Wang made arrangements to sell Yao Jinxing into continued domestic ser vice rather than into the sex industry.

Wu Sanrong brought Yao Jinxing from Hubei to Beijing in 1913. Her new master did reasonably well for himself under the new government. By the time Yao ran away, he had established a modest military career. Originally from Anhui Province, Wu Sanrong had served as a naval officer of the third rank and had received a commission to protect President Yuan Shikai. When Li Yuanhong took office after Yuan’s death in 1916, Wu Sanrong negotiated to maintain a position as a presidential guard. Several members of Wu’s household staff confirmed to police investigators that Wu was frequently away, detained by his duties at the presidential palace. Running the household in the Xinghuasi neighborhood was therefore left to his wife and his short-tempered concubine. When Yao Jinxing did not return from her errands, the household’s cook and family retainer, a man named Li Yongchun, contacted Wu at work in the headquarters for palace guards. Wu instructed him to notify the local police.16 246

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Wu Sanrong understood that young women were valuable commodities in the city. According to Li Yongchun, when Yao Jinxing disappeared, his master had immediately concluded someone had lured the serving maid into running away. Like the municipal police, Wu Sanrong’s first instinct was to suspect members of his own household staff. He insinuated particular doubts about his former private rickshaw puller, a young man named Wei, who had resigned the morning after the serving maid went missing. This is how it happened that the local police found themselves tracing allegations of kidnapping or trafficking conspiracies originating both from the serving maid and from her master’s family retainer and cook. Wu Sanrong did not deliver his accusations personally. As a man who had fought hard to improve his lot, Wu Sanrong did not wish to jeopardize his reputation. Instead he dispatched his cook to the inner fourth precinct station, instructing Li Yongchun to “immediately counter these false accusations that my concubine had cruelly beaten the girl, and that they planned to sell her as a concubine to someone in Shanghai.” It was not unusual for a master to send a trusted family retainer as his representative to deal with household matters. These men—and I have encountered only men acting in this capacity—appear in the police and court records as so- and- so’s plaint-maker, or daisuren. By deputizing someone else to act on his behalf, a master like Wu Sanrong demonstrated his affluence and social position. He also saved himself the inconvenience of dealing with petty household disputes and the stigma of direct involvement with the police or with the courts. A master who did not appear at the police station in person prevented his accuser from personally denouncing him. In some such cases the opponent of an aggrieved servant remained faceless, off stage, while the theatrics of a police hearing or trial played out between two staff members of the same household. Yao Jinxing’s accusations did not reach the courtroom, and Wu Sanrong was able to remain aloof from the dispute. The ensuing conversation between the police and Wu Sanrong’s cook, Li Yongchun, allows us to get a sense of how much the cook understood about the process of police investigation and the accusations his master’s family potentially faced. He did a masterful job of nudging police curiosity away from the Wu household and onto their former rickshaw puller. Police inspectors visited Xinghuasi four days after Yao checked herself into the relief home. They began by questioning neighbors living in the adjoining courtyards, but learned nothing. Then they knocked on the gate 247

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of the Wu residence. As would have been true on most days, the police did not find Wu Sanrong at home. Instead, Li Yongchun answered the door. Li Yongchun’s response to their questions indicated the cook felt some apprehension about Yao Jinxing’s allegations. Li chose his words carefully. (Perhaps police interrogators encouraged him to do so.) The master’s concubine had beaten the serving maid “lightly” and “only once”—as opposed to Yao Jinxing’s statement that she had been thrashed “fiercely” and “in succession.” Li Yongchun assured the police, “Our household does not have any slave girls (binü) or hereditary maids (nüpu), we have only the serving maid who is currently detained in your custody.” The cook certainly did not want to be the one to incriminate his master for buying a girl, or for planning to sell her. He volunteered no information about how or when the serving maid had been added to the household staff. Li’s cautious police deposition revealed nothing of Yao Jinxing’s acquisition history. The archive provided only Yao Jinxing’s own memory of the sales that brought her from Sichuan, through Hubei, to Beijing. Li Yongchun described his roles at the Wu residence as those of cook and gatekeeper. Li also identified a newly hired private rickshaw puller, and he explained that the previous one (Wei) had left only recently. Moreover, Li had a fairly good idea where the police might be able to find Wei. Wu Sanrong had likely encouraged his cook to be obliging on this matter. Li Yongchun suggested the police look for the rickshaw puller in nearby Xiaoyangquan Hutong. (Here, life and literary history curiously intersect. Lao She, author of the rickshaw driver’s tale, Luotuo Xiangzi, was born in this hutong in 1899.) Li Yongchun further asserted that he, of course, had played no role in arranging Yao Jinxing’s flight to the relief home. Perhaps Li knew that the rickshaw puller Wei was innocent and had not enticed the young girl into running away. All the same, by informing the police frankly of his master’s suspicions and by pointing them toward Xiaoyongquan Hutong, Cook Li deflected their investigation away from the Wu household and from himself. In this, too, Li Yongchun exhibited shrewd awareness of the risks of being entangled with the law, and with any situation involving trafficking accusations. The police investigators had arrived at Xinhuasi prepared to investigate Wu Sanrong and his wives on charges of premeditated trafficking. Thrown off course, they left the Wu courtyard residence in search of a rickshaw puller named Wei. The police inspectors hastened the few blocks to Xiaoyangquan Hutong. An elderly man assured the inspectors that Wei had been there just a 248

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few hours earlier but had gone to eat at a noodle stand at the intersection with Dingfu Avenue. (The old man was full of gossip about the rickshaw puller: Wei came to Xiaoyangquan Hutong for a conjugal night with his wife. She worked as a hired servant in another part of the city.) Police next questioned the noodle peddler, who told them Wei had bragged about landing on his feet. The police were rewarded for their determined pursuit. They caught up with the rickshaw puller relaxing in his new employer’s courtyard. Wei confirmed the details of Yao Jinxing’s original tale of woe. He had noticed the girl was frequently beaten and that Wu Sanrong’s concubine often flew into a rage. The rickshaw puller described who slept where in the Wu residence: Wu Sanrong’s wife stayed with Wu’s mother in the northern part of the courtyard. Wu spent his time primarily with his new concubine in separate rooms. Wu’s son stayed in another wing of the courtyard with Yao Jinxing on hand nearby. Wei told the police he often heard Yao crying from within the concubine’s quarters, and he knew it was the concubine, and not his master, who had been beating the girl. “Whenever she made the slightest mistake, the concubine went to whip her,” Wei explained. He told the police investigators it had been his practice to rest in the doorway when waiting to see if Wu Sanrong would require his services. He was sitting on the stoop the evening of August 2 when he learned that Yao Jinxing had not come home, but the plan to sell Yao Jinxing did not strike the rickshaw puller as anything new. Wei recalled overhearing his mistress discussing the clumsy serving maid more than a year earlier. She told the young concubine that Wu Sanrong had begun to make plans to sell Yao Jinxing as a concubine to someone in Shanghai. Wei continued, “He was going to pay 200 yuan.” The rickshaw puller reflected on this price in his own pragmatic terms. “Now, whether you are buying or selling, 200 yuan is 200 yuan. That would buy a lot of shoes.” In Wei’s opinion, “Even amid national chaos, the family certainly ought to send her off to Shanghai.”17 After speaking at length with the private rickshaw puller, the police investigator concluded his summary, convinced that “Jinxing was not enticed away by anyone. She simply fled to the relief home because she had been treated cruelly.” The station chief took note, and added that the overall situation required further investigation. The chief felt an obligation to return the serving maid to work for Wu until arrangements could be made for her marriage. 249

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Wu Sanrong’s household marshaled a strategic defense against the charges that they intended to sell Yao Jinxing as a concubine. They put the police in touch with two men from Shanghai who had hurried to Beijing upon hearing of Wu’s predicament. The first, a sixty-six-year-old native of Baoshan County in Jiangsu named Hong Zhong, testified that Wu Sanrong had engaged him as a matchmaker to find a suitable husband to support (zhaoyang) Yao Jinxing. The second man was Li Tao (also known as Li Bingxun), a young man of twenty-four who was seeking a bride. Li Tao owned thirty mu (just under five acres) of fertile land on the east side of the Huangpu River, which he leased out to farmers. He also managed a small agricultural supply shop. Matchmaker Hong told police investigators that Li Tao had already paid a 160-yuan deposit to guarantee his match with the serving maid. Both of these men described the arrangement as a marriage, calling the young woman a “wife” rather than a “concubine.” They expressed frustration and impatience that the match had not yet been made. Both matchmaker Hong and the intended husband Li Tao emphasized Li Tao’s suitability to the police: He was a man of property and business. His parents were not so old as to require care, but old enough to eagerly anticipate he would marry soon. Li Tao told the police he intended to retrieve his “wife” from the relief home and to bring her back to Shanghai as soon as possible. This shifting language forced the police inspectors to yet again modify their approach to Yao Jinxing. If the skittish serving maid was no longer an abused escapee from an alleged criminal plot, but was merely a reluctant bride, surely she did not require shelter in one of the city’s relief facilities. Still, the overseeing officer expressed concern that Yao Jinxing and Li Tao be truly married before the police relinquished custody of the young woman. He wanted to guarantee that a valid marriage took place, rather than the transfer of a concubine. Yao had run away at the beginning of August. Arrangements for a proper wedding ceremony were not finalized until November 10. Li Tao had been compelled to rent a small house in Beijing for these months and resented the costly delay. An officer from the police precinct officiated. He ensured that a carriage fetched the young woman and brought her to the house. The police officer himself wrote out their marriage document, stating that Yao Jinxing was Li Tao’s wife. He also arranged to have photographs taken, although his report expressed disappointment that the wind prevented them from having the pictures taken in the open air of the attractive courtyard. Instead the bride and 250

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groom visited a photographer’s studio. Once again Wu Sanrong avoided personal involvement in these proceedings. His business at the palace kept him from attending the ceremony, and a friend came in his place. Conscientiously, the officer noted: “The household hung lanterns in their courtyard, the bride and groom bowed three times, and did all that was necessary for a civilized wedding ceremony.” The police officer also observed that although it required “gentle persuasion,” Yao Jinxing seemed willing to follow Li Tao back to his home in Shanghai. The station chief amended the record in a separate hand, asking that the police clerks retain one of the small wedding photographs in their files. Officers of the inner fourth police precinct felt pressure both to protect Yao Jinxing and to acquiesce to Wu’s demands for the serving maid’s return. They negotiated the situation by securing a ritually proper wedding for the sixteen-year-old serving maid, complete with travel by cart to the husband’s “residence” (in this case a short-term Beijing rental), lanterns, ritual bowing, and, in a nod to modernity and modern record keeping, photographs. From the police perspective, this dispute could be solved through a delicate balance of understanding modern legal constraints and the performance of traditional rites. At a distance of a century, we are left to wonder whether this resolution appeased Yao Jinxing’s own fears and anxieties. She had avoided the fate of being sold as a concubine, but remained bound for yet another unfamiliar city with a new husband. By running away from Wu Sanrong’s household, did Yao Jinxing protect herself from being sold as a concubine? Or did her disappearance on August 2, 1917, merely hasten arrangements for a marriage that were already under way?

Yao Jinxing and Jinyu were two among thousands of hired servants, maids, and purchased people who ran away from their masters during the early Republican period. The Beijing municipal police handled hundreds of requests to find and return missing people. Throughout China, both masters and families also turned increasingly to the popular press and the broader public to try to locate runaways, kidnapping victims, and truant students and apprentices. The Shanghai-based Shenbao daily newspaper ran 167 missing-person classified advertisements in 1917 (the year Yao Jinxing ran away) alone. In 1922 the paper ran 200, and by 1930 the number of missing-person classifieds in the paper had risen to nearly 251

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300.18 Announcements typically included a brief description of the missing person, the missing person’s last known whereabouts, contact information (an address, or sometimes even a telephone number) for the reporting family, and often the offer of a modest reward. The first two decades of the Republican period exhibited striking inconsistencies in the ways in which police and local judges handled family conflicts involving purchased and indentured domestics. During these years, although the sale of people had been prohibited, households could still count on the local constabulary to track down and return their runaways. The language in the police and judicial records reveals discrepancies in how different parties understood the agency of sold and indentured people. Police spoke of slave girls and apprentices as “missing persons” belonging to the family (jia de ren) who had “wandered off.” Meanwhile, when these “wanderers” themselves were given a chance to make a statement to the police or to testify in court, they asserted their independence using terms like “escape,” “run away,” and “sneak out.” Early Republican police procedures stumbled over whether to handle missing slave girls as property or people, as we can see from modifications to a set of “lost object” forms printed in 1913. The column in which police clerks were to fill out the “time an object was lost” (diuwu shike) and “where its owner last had the object” (diuwu chusuo) have been written over with phrases calling for the time and place the slave girl went missing (zoushi shike / zoushi chusuo). The column indicating whether any money had been lost remained unchanged on the forms; often runaways also stole cash on their way out the door. This space was used to report money or anything else that disappeared along with the missing person. Such reports often described the runaway in some detail. Another report dated May 16, 1920, described a missing girl as follows: “A slave girl (binü) from Jiangxi called Tianxi, speaks with a Beijing accent, 20 sui. She has a round face and was wearing clothes made of green wool with white trimmed hood, with a green lining in the sleeves and lined trousers. She has unbound feet and black shoes.”19 The care police took in pursuing runaways demonstrates both their value and police desire to please propertied households who employed domestic staff. Even in noncriminal missing-person investigations, police relied upon the observations of a local community of fellow servants. The officer who followed up on Tianxi’s disappearance interviewed servants working at several neighboring households. These servants’ observations could be surprisingly precise. A hereditary servant who lived next 252

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door to the Chen household for whom Tianxi was working reported that as of the fifteenth day of the month the slave girl (binü) had not returned home. The neighbor’s hereditary servant even handed a photograph of the girl over to the police. According to yet another servant in a dif ferent courtyard, the girl Tianxi had been with the Chen household since she was small. This servant knew Tianxi’s master had been out of town on business in Tianjin for one month and four days, and that during his extended absence she had gone missing once already. “On the eighth of May, the Chen family’s cook, surnamed Jia, had seen the girl wandering around outside Qianmen visiting a tavern. The girl had come back seven days later, and then she disappeared again. When she left this second time she took some clothing and other items with her. She hadn’t been seen since.”20 The report went on to say that although officers had searched the Chens’ street thoroughly and patrol officers in the Number One Left district had already been alerted, in order to find the young woman it would still be necessary to expand the search to other districts. Tianxi’s whereabouts remained a mystery. The family of a sixteen-year- old serving maid (shinü) surnamed Bai waited six months before reporting her missing. Again police relied on a servant from an adjoining courtyard to provide the relevant details. This servant, named Wang, said Bai had complained of ill-treatment and had confided to him that she feared for her life. The long interval since her disappearance did not prevent police from questioning her four elder brothers, another older female servant, and an elderly woman living in a neighboring courtyard. Investigators then went to even greater lengths, writing to the yamen in the young woman’s hometown in Shandong province, but still failed to determine Bai’s whereabouts.21 Many of these female domestic workers had joined their households at a young age, as purchased labor. It was not until they grew older that they envisioned a dif ferent life and fled. Reports like these confirm police dedication to locating and retrieving runaways.22 Their efforts met with limited success.

Child-Brides-in-Waiting Some servants arrived in a household prepared to work, but other kinds of sales brought in dif ferent types of coerced domestic labor. Families also bought and sold young girls as tongyangxi. These child-brides-in-waiting were vulnerable to all manner of exploitation. The tongyangxi arrangement appealed to households with male children who lacked the funds to 253

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pay for an elaborate wedding or bride price. For relatively little expense, such a family could acquire a young girl to work for them as a “little daughter-in-law” until her eventual marriage. The arrangement was on the whole a more optimistic one than selling a child as a slave girl, as it operated on a kind of mutual trust between the selling and purchasing households. Still, such optimism was often misplaced. Some generous families raised tongyangxi as siblings or playmates for their intended husbands, but others exploited the girls’ labor, putting them to work as a servants and nannies to rear their infant fiancés. The plight of child daughters-in-law-to-be fascinated writers and readers of the period. To urban consumers of May Fourth Movement literature, these young girls were emblematic of the anachronisms that persisted in Chinese family life. Shen Congwen’s 1929 short story “Xiaoxiao” portrays the predicament of a young tongyangxi who comes of age while caring for her infant husband. After a brief but potent sexual encounter with a local rascal, Xiaoxiao becomes pregnant. Xiaoxiao manages to avoid being sold off by her husband’s family when the illegitimate child turns out to be a boy, who will therefore one day be able to make himself useful around her in-laws’ house. Years later Xiaoxiao and her husband (now grown) acquire a young bride for this illegitimate first son, and raise their own children to call him “uncle.” The story ends with Xiaoxiao holding her first legitimate child. She rocks and talks to the infant as they await the arrival of the sedan chair bearing yet another child bride, about the same age as Xiaoxiao at the story’s beginning.23 In the world Shen Congwen created for Xiaoxiao, the cycle of vulnerability and exploitation continues across generations. The reality of Shen Congwen’s day was rather dif ferent from his fiction. Ruptures, discontinuities, and innovations in society and in the legal system made the cycle much less predictable and introduced dif ferent perils for the child-bride-in-waiting. A tongyangxi occupied an interesting position in the domestic workforce of a Chinese household. In theory her life cycle included a significant scheduled improvement in status from menial domestic to conjugal family member. The timeline for this promotion, however, could prove unpredictable. The political transformations of the early Republican period, as well as rapidly evolving notions about the importance of free marriage, outpaced this timeline for many young women, stranding them in a life of servitude. Arthur Wolf found, when investigating what he called “minor marriages” (his phrase for tongyangxi 254

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arrangements) in Taiwan during the 1960s, that some young people expressed shame and frustration. His informants explained: “Young people disliked minor marriage because marrying a ‘ brother’ or ‘sister’ was ‘embarrassing’ or ‘uninteresting.’ ”24 Wolf also tells us that by the 1930s “a few young people were demanding the right to veto parental plans and even to choose their own mate.”25 We can be reasonably sure the “few young people” making such demands were privileged young men, rather than purchased tongyangxi. Young girls in the early Republican period would not have had the opportunity to indulge in such complaints. As we will see, for tongyangxi purchased during the final years of the Qing dynasty and for their families, the 1910 prohibition against selling people added an extra complication. Changes to the law meant anyone who came forward to complain had first to admit being party to a sale now considered illegal. In September 1922 a mother who lived in a small village west of Beijing, in Wanping district, approached the Beijing municipal police to tell them about the sale of a three-year- old girl.26 The sale she reported, however, had taken place twelve years earlier. The girl was now almost fifteen. Mrs. Li née Du had sold Li Eryatou herself. It was not the transaction she was complaining about, but rather the conditions Eryatou now faced in her future husband’s home. Mrs. Li-Du hoped to extricate her daughter from a marriage contract she had initiated before such sales had been prohibited. As Mrs. Li-Du explained to officers from Beijing’s left inner third district, a matchmaker from their small town had introduced Mrs. Li-Du to a woman named Mrs.  Wang née Guan. Through the matchmaker, Mrs. Li-Du arranged to sell her daughter to Mrs. Wang- Guan’s eldest son, Wang Tonglin. The police record does not tell us when Mrs.  Li-Du’s daughter acquired the name “Eryatou”—the number two (“er”) followed by “yatou,” a diminutive for girl often used to refer to both children and domestics—but the name suited the daughter’s new status as a child-bridein-waiting. As it happened, Wang Tonglin was older than Eryatou. This relieved Eryatou of the burden of spending her own tender childhood caring for an infant husband, but their age difference created other pressures. Mrs. Wang- Guan and her family had moved into the city from the same small village where Mrs. Li-Du lived. The Wang family settled down in the center of the city near the old bell tower. On an autumn afternoon in 1922, Mrs. Li-Du traveled into Beijing to visit her daughter. What she 255

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found when she arrived distressed her greatly. In tears, the fourteenyear-old showed her mother bruises all over her body—her mother-in-law had beaten her. At seven o’clock the same evening Mrs. Li-Du approached the local police to bring charges of cruelty against Mrs. Wang- Guan. Police questioned Eryatou and learned that these beatings were a frequent occurrence. According to Eryatou, Mrs. Wang- Guan struck her and berated her without any clear cause. When confronted, Mrs. Wang- Guan admitted to having disciplined the girl. Her statement to police included further details of Eryatou’s plight. She told the police that “ because my son’s senior wife, Mrs. Wang née Wu, would not explain to Eryatou how to behave, I became anxious and had to do it myself.”27 She thus inadvertently revealed that Eryatou was not destined to be a legitimate wife—that position had already been filled by Mrs. Wang-Wu. Instead, Eryatou was taken as a concubine. Mrs. Wang- Guan elaborated that while she was trying to explain to Eryatou how to act toward her son, specifically with regard to sex, Eryatou became “upset and uncomfortable.” Accusing the girl of being inattentive and refusing to fulfill her marital duties, Mrs. Wang- Guan admitted to beating her with a rattan cane. The local police court confirmed, “the girl has bruises and the accusation of cruelty seems just.” Enclosing depositions from the three women, the local police constable then requested permission from the Beijing Municipal Court to administer the punishment without a trial, presumably because there was to be only a minimal administrative punishment, like a fine or compensation. The Beijing Municipal Court affirmed the police decision, and declined to address whether the Wang family had violated any private contract implied by a sale predating the prohibition against selling people. Like slave girls and other servants, some tongyangxi entered their masters’ households after being sold and trafficked from distant provinces. Many of these provincial girls would not see their natal families again. In Beijing in the early twentieth century, however, it was equally common for a young girl to be sold to a family living in a neighboring courtyard. Local arrangements meant that parents could potentially learn how their daughters fared in their young husband’s household. Families who lived nearby or who, like Mrs. Li-Du, maintained contact with their daughters could sometimes shield them from abuse. To prevent parental interference, typical tongyangxi contracts stipulated that filial loyalties transfer fully to the husband’s family when money changed hands. 256

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“Servants and Children.” In this portrait, the young servants are children themselves. They can be distinguished only by looking carefully at their shoes and clothes. Sidney D. Gamble Photographs, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University (541-3136A).

These child-brides-in-waiting occupy an interesting place on a spectrum of servitude. Their status offered more tantalizing promise of eventual liberty than the status of a purchased slave girl or indentured serving maid, and yet children sold as tongyangxi were equally, if not more, vulnerable to exploitation. The explicit formal severance of natal ties in tongyangxi sale contracts was just one articulation of this vulnerability. In the politically and socially vibrant atmosphere of the May Fourth period, many elite young men decided not to marry the often rural and undereducated girls who had raised them. This left tongyangxi—who had often spent the most energetic years of their youth working as servants and nannies for their intended’s family—trapped in a permanently servile position. Countless tongyangxi aged into the position of housekeeper and drudge, bearing the malleable appellation for servile girls and women, yatou. Whether they entered their masters’ homes as tongyangxi, slave girls, or servants, young girls were especially vulnerable to sexual violence. Cases of predatory neighbors and even of lecherous fathers-in-law abound in 257

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police and judicial archives. Advances of this nature threatened not only a young girl’s present virtue but also her future prospects. Sullied by such an encounter, a child bride might be sold on to a brothel, while her inlaws’ household could escape local social censure. Local communities were quick to attribute moral failing to the girl. As Vivian Ng has shown for the Qing period, the law’s reluctance to censure families who resorted to buying and selling tongyangxi meant that the girls were unprotected from abuse.28 The sale of young girls as tongyangxi was so much part of the social landscape of the 1930s that even critics of the new civil code on the Central Political Council acknowledged that the practice of relying upon tongyangxi for marriages between poorer families, though illegal, was too entrenched to prosecute assiduously. A high degree of flexibility characterized the sale of young women. Families and matchmakers collaborated to improvise diverse ways to structure the sale of people within their own local communities. In February 1925 patrol officer Pu Yantang passed through Mutton-Meat Hutong on a routine household inspection. When he called at number 73, he found nine people at home who should not have been there. Among them was an eleven-year-old Manchu girl named Erzhuzi. Careful questioning of the nine, as well as neighbors of courtyard number 73, revealed that Erzhuzi’s mother had pawned Erzhuzi for rent money.29 Only a few days had elapsed, but arrangements were already under way in the neighborhood to sell the girl on as a tongyangxi. The rational way in which the involved parties outlined this arrangement make it clear that the plan, while perhaps distasteful, was not unprecedented or even unreasonable. Indeed, it may have been seen as a vastly preferable option to pawning the girl as a prostitute— an equally likely and perhaps more lucrative option. Sex and reproduction occasionally provided female slaves and servants with leverage within their masters’ households. Matthew Sommer describes the position of slave girls during the Qing, asserting that a slave girl who caught her master’s fancy and bore him a child became a kind of lower concubine.30 This potentially represented a considerable promotion in status. Family-level interpretations of Republican-period law promised a servant pregnant by her master no such shelter. Still, literature of the early republic provides us with a wistful view of the kind of hopes naive maids nurtured in order to survive their daily toil. Similar to stories of prostitutes rescued from brothel life by a kind and noble client, one rags-to258

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riches May Fourth– era trope revolved around the charming serving maid who caught the fancy of a young and idealistically class-blind gentleman. Novelist Ba Jin’s slave girl heroine, Mingfeng, pleads bravely with her young master Gao Juehui to act on his love and save her from a miserable marriage to an ill-tempered older man. Young master Gao is less bold, however, and feels none of Mingfeng’s urgency. Unable to persuade him, Mingfeng drowns herself.31 Even fictional slave girls’ dreams rarely ended well. As child-brides-in-waiting, tongyangxi were prevented by the perils of their very status from entertaining a slave girl’s daydreams of romantic rescue.

Wet Nurses and Family Ties Police investigations exposed rivalries between domestic staff. The idea of classes (jieji) had begun to gain currency in the Republican period, but the servant class was not an undifferentiated group. Retainers, drivers, cooks, illicitly obtained slave girls, and nursemaids competed for their masters’ trust. With shared confidences came greater power and influence in the home. Some servants or family retainers came from families who had served a household for generations, and the length of service was one measure of loyalty. An affluent family might possess one devoted retainer to manage household affairs, or several trusted servants of this sort, as well as an assortment of short-term domestic staff. Others formed deep attachments over relatively compressed periods of time. Sold, brokered, and hired labor found its way into most intimate areas of Chinese family life. Many families relied upon the ser vices of wet nurses during the first years of their children’s lives. These women joined households in a variety of ways and with varying degrees of autonomy. Some found work through matchmakers or local brokers, still others had been indentured by their husbands—few worked independently. Later, domestic employment agencies began to specialize in referring wet nurses. Most wet nurses were not sold people, but the kinds of crises they encountered in the family illuminate critical changes in the structure of North Chinese households. Even those women who sought employment as free agents were driven by painful imperatives; they had lost a child or left one behind, and they bore that grief while nursing more fortunate children. Wet nurses provided an invaluable ser vice, especially to busy mothers with complex households to manage or who wished to quickly become 259

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pregnant again. They worked grueling schedules, attending to the needs of infants around the clock, and often developing close bonds with their mistresses’ children. A fortunate wet nurse might be well fed and clothed to better protect her milk supply, but not all households understood the need to do this. Her indispensability could also breed resentment among fellow servants or anxiety in her mistress. Typically when a family invited an outsider to join their household, they followed the recommendation of neighbors who specialized in providing introductions. For those in the business of making referrals, finding and helping a family to keep a suitable wet nurse often proved contentious. Throughout the Republican period, the same matchmakers (mei) who facilitated marriages also provided servants and wet nurses. Well-positioned intermediaries understood the changing needs of their neighbors’ households. Petty disputes from the police archive reveal the importance of a broker in securing the relationship between wet nurse and household. Changes to the legal environment from the 1910s to the 1930s made the broker’s job even more challenging. Previously, many families felt a paternalist obligation to provide intimate caregivers with food and shelter. Renewed emphasis on contract as the mode of engagement in the early twentieth century substantively altered the status of wet nurses. For some women, contracts became a device through which to confront their employers, while for others the loss of traditional family obligation proved devastating. During the first three decades of the twentieth century, households in North China underwent significant structural changes. Changing laws, new opportunities for women to work outside the home, and increased mobility throughout the Chinese countryside fundamentally altered the size of the family. In some households, wet nurses made it possible for women to work or to pursue public philanthropy, for others the wet nurse embodied everything backward about the bloated hierarchies of the traditional Chinese family. In the May Fourth era, the presence of a bevy of maids and household servants in a well-to-do home smacked of the restrictive feudalism of imperial China that educated urban Chinese were eager to leave in the past. But while the commercial and political impetus for eliminating wet nursing matched modern aspirations, the convenience and ready availability of wet nurses remained undeniable. And yet, Republican China no longer fully supported traditional mechanisms for incorporating domestic laborers as lesser members of the household. This 260

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change eroded the ties of mutual obligation between wet nurses and the families they served. … … … … … … … … …

One cold January evening in 1915 a woman’s wailing reverberated along the walls east of Nanchizi Avenue. Beijing’s thick hutong walls sheltered those within, and barricaded those without. The patrolling officer had already latched the gates to the alleyways, and on an ordinary night he would have had these narrow passages to himself. He had already registered the noise in his nightly log when a servant from one of the substantial courtyards in front of the Pudu Buddhist Temple called for his help.32 The servant presented his master’s visiting card. Wu Kuang had once served the emperor, and though now retired, he lived in some comfort in his courtyard mansion. The courtyards and alleyways around the temple remained home to the descendants of former banner generals and palace officials. Wu Kuang’s family consisted of a growing number of children and an expensive retinue of servants to wait upon them. In the shifting political environment, it was difficult for old families to keep up their accustomed standards. Earlier that evening, Wu had instructed his family retainer Cui Sheng to inform the woman, Mrs. Chuan née Meng, that her services as a wet nurse in the Wu household would no longer be needed. Now thrown out of the courtyard, Mrs. Chuan-Meng demanded better treatment and compensation. Appalled by the scene on his doorstep, Wu Kuang had dispatched his retainer Cui Sheng to catch up with the passing patrolman and file a complaint. Cui Sheng told the officer that his master had let Mrs. Chuang-Meng go because she was no longer producing enough milk. He proudly explained that he himself had come from Pinggu County as a young boy to work in the Wu household. He had served the Wu family for several decades, and he had assisted the family when Wu Kuang was in active service to the Qing imperial household. The wet nurse was a new arrival. She had joined the Wu household around the sixth month of the year, and Cui was precise on the details: “Her monthly salary was to be 4 yuan, and her contract set for two years. Because her breasts were no longer full, today our master laid her off, without giving her a salary. Her matchmaker, a woman surnamed Yan, already handed Chuan-Meng 3 yuan to settle things (xi shi).” 261

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When the officer confronted the wet nurse on the street, she confirmed Cui Sheng’s story, saying her master “actually failed to honor our contract. . . . I went and demanded that my matchmaker arrange a settlement, and she paid me 3 yuan. But I need more than that. I need a blanket.” Asked why she continued to make a ruckus, she explained, “Because the weather was so cold and I hadn’t covers I would have to lay down directly on the street, so I asked that my master at least give me a blanket. But he did not—and instead he sent Cui Sheng to make this complaint.”33 Chuan-Meng had little choice but to beg from her former employer. We sense her urgency with the repeated reference to the blanket. The Qing gendarmerie had long prevented certain establishments from setting up shop in the Inner City. As early as 1838 this included closing down several shops that ran a small, exploitative business renting bedding and linens to the transient poor. The owners of these rental shops were forced to relocate outside the Inner City wall.34 With the coldest hours of the night closing in, there was nowhere else for her to go. Cui Sheng later insisted that he did give her a blanket, and in his petty struggle we see evidence of servants exerting power over one another. Cui Sheng also slighted the wet nurse in his choice of words. While he described himself as a loyal hired servant (gugongren) and a retainer (puren), he called Chuan-Meng a ruchang—a colloquial compound of the word for breast and the word for prostitute that appears only in police reports when quoting the words of angry servants or employers. More common, nurturing terms for wet nurse included “milk mother” (naima) or “breast mother” (rumu). Unlike naima, the term ruchang does not have maternal connotations; it emphasizes the wet nurse’s servile and moneygrubbing position rather than her connection to the family. Cui deliberately cast aspersion on Chuan-Meng’s morality. Where he was a longtime servant who had joined the household as a boy, Chuan-Meng was a newcomer to whom the Wu family owed nothing. Cui probably could not read the increasingly popular postnatal care literature of the early Republican period, but his implied critique of the wet nurse played upon folk wisdom that had found new life in the pseudoscience of the day. These texts reminded new parents to employ only the most upright of nurses, as the morality of a woman would be imparted to a child through her milk.35 In 1931 a maternal advice column in Linglong magazine warned women that if a wet nurse had a volatile (baozao) temperament, her milk would be unpleasant for the child and affect its personality.36 262

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The Wu family evidently did not consider Chuan-Meng to be worth keeping around simply as a nanny, and they would have to find some other way to feed the baby. Wu Kuang’s instructions to Cui Sheng to personally fire the family wet nurse indicated a measure of trust. Cui Sheng was authorized to speak on behalf of the family. He helped to protect his master from the more unpleasant aspects of employing—and firing—women from the countryside like Mrs.  Chuan-Meng. Although families like Wu Kuang’s lived in close proximity to the grand spaces of the Forbidden City, many of the compounds in the warren of hutong alleyways in front of the Pudu Temple shared adjacent walls. Sound echoed easily up and down the length of these alleys—not just the regular sound of passing watchmen at night, the daytime drumbeat of passing carpenters, or the rattle of garbage collectors—but also the sounds of any streetside domestic quarrel. Servants bought meat and vegetables in the same marketplaces. The same network had provided introductions for these servants, and news of a scandal could spread quickly. As a minor literati living near the palace, Wu Kuang would have been sensitive to the opinions of his neighbors, many of whom were former imperial civil servants and shared his anxieties. Like Wu, heads of these households had once been officials but now had to either jostle for position in a new regime or retire. Old social guarantees were beginning to shift. Police constantly mediated between the traditional paternalist inclination and the state’s natural temptation to favor the power ful. A Confucian-influenced traditional hierarchy dictated a reciprocal relationship between a master and his dependents—including his servants. Previously the household was at least socially obligated to support all of its members. This responsibility included, to the extent it could be reasonably managed, even slaves and servants. Most men of Wu Kuang’s stature had received traditional educations, but a Confucian education did not guarantee that they would engage in reciprocal relationships in the new China. Chuan-Meng’s very body presented a biological manifestation of this reciprocity; when not well nourished, wet nurses’ milk dwindled. A woman whose family had employed wet nurses for her younger brothers during the 1940s recalled to me that her mother used to set aside precious extra meat to feed their wet nurse.37 The Wu household had betrayed Chuan-Meng in two ways, violating both contractual and paternalist obligations: Because Chuan-Meng had a two-year contract, she believed Wu Kuang should pay her and, 263

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because she was a former member of the household and had nurtured their child, she believed they owed her shelter. When the family retainer pushed her out into the street, Chuan-Meng showed up on matchmaker Yan’s doorstep begging her to convince Wu Kuang to take her back. Left to choose between her neighbors or a desperate woman from the countryside, the matchmaker chose to protect her own reputation. The activities of matchmakers like Yan included helping to forge advantageous marriages, or assisting a family to get rid of an otherwise unmarriageable young man or woman, but also brokering concubines, scullery maids, servants, and wet nurses. Their activities often flirted with the edges of the law, and when no one complained, China’s new urban police averted their eyes. Matchmaker Yan felt enough responsibility to Chuan-Meng and for the fact that the arrangement had fallen through to offer the wet nurse a conciliatory compensation amounting to a bit less than a month’s salary. This sum may have taken the immediate edge off of the impending winter hunger Chuan-Meng would soon face, but those few coins offered only temporary consolation. Wet nurse Chuan-Meng had after all come from outside the city to Nanchizi looking forward to a roof over her head, food to eat, and a small but steady income—now she faced the immediate problem of making it through the cold January night. Although the dispute amounted to a mere disturbance of the peace in his patrol log, the constable recorded two long statements in his efforts to reconcile what had happened between the family retainer and the wet nurse. There was little more he could do. The constable’s notes leave Chuan-Meng subdued by police intervention, a blanket finally in hand, but still shivering on the street. … … … … … … … … …

The new laws that criminalized the sale of people also formalized professional rather than paternalistic relationships between servants and their employers. For many domestic laborers, the likelihood of being put out onto the street by dissatisfied masters increased in the Republican period. Police records highlight a significant shift in the attitude toward household menials. Although legal changes offered greater independence, they reduced the social security the old Confucian hierarchies once tried to provide for child brides, slave girls (binü), male and female servants (gugongren / shiren / yiren / puren), and wet nurses (naima). Throughout the 264

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archive, wet nurses appear not only as litigants but also as character witnesses, observers of family disagreements, and occasionally even matchmakers for women from their home communities. Wet nurses like Chuan-Meng who appeared to lack any discernible family network were rare. In this way wet nurses differed from more isolated domestic laborers. Lactation constituted a constant reminder of relationships outside the master’s courtyard walls. Young slave girls could enter a household with limited family ties, but more often than not these had been severed by distance, the brutality of a kidnapping, the betrayal of a sale, or because a girl had been removed from her impoverished natal family at a tender age. Wives and concubines were expected to offer deference to their husband’s clan, although relationships with birth families influenced treatment in their marital homes.38 Contact with parents and siblings provided support and protection. For wet nurses, the incentive to maintain family ties could be even greater. Wet nurses missed the children they had lost or left behind.39 Often their husbands lingered nearby, sometimes pocketing their meager salaries.40 Outside relationships proved disquieting to masters. Some advice booklets on family management listed characteristics desirable or undesirable in a wet nurse, still others admonished mothers who used wet nurses. These were, after all, unpredictable women who had chosen to leave their families behind. By the 1930s, editorials blamed wet nurses and the women who chose to hire them for infant mortality.41 But this accusation was not new; as early as the Song dynasty Zhu Xi had condemned “feeding one child at the expense of another.”42 Starting at the beginning of the twentieth century, women’s magazines offered advice on how to hire nannies (baomu) and wet nurses.43 Writers for the journals, typically men, adopted the tone of a wise and worldly mother.44 Throughout 1904 the magazine Nüzi Shijie [Women’s World] ran a regular column for new mothers. The ideal wet nurse appeared robust and fertile, but was morally upright. Excessive passions, including anger or sexual activity, polluted a wet nurse’s precious milk supply. This in turn could cause the infant to become colicky, fall ill, or perhaps worse, develop an irrational temperament. Sexual intercourse and the accompanying excitement were thought to jeopardize the quality of a young woman’s milk: Conjugal visits with husbands were sternly discouraged. Poor women who chose to be wet nurses often did so willingly, though it was a willingness born of hardship or tragedy. Some were determined to make the best of the loss of an infant, while others who hoped to send 265

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money home weaned their own children as early as they could and then ventured out to work for more affluent, often urban households. By the 1920s a wet nurse’s typical monthly stipend of 4 or 5 yuan would barely cover a woman’s expenses in the city. To save any money at all, wet nurses relied upon the room, board, and clothing supplied by the households they served. The income was sufficient to tempt a poor woman from the countryside, but little enough that it kept her tethered to her employer. Under exceptional circumstances a household might offer more. In 1925 the Yang family promised Mrs. Li 8 yuan, double the going rate, to travel with the family to Xinjiang. The wet nurse followed them as far as the train station before changing her mind. The Yangs had paid Mrs. Li an advance to purchase supplies for their journey, and she had spent it. When the family brought a suit against the wet nurse, the police magistrate ordered her to repay half of the funds.45 Frequently it was a woman’s husband who persuaded her to work as a wet nurse. Some couples made these decisions together—weighing the difficulties of weaning their own child, separation, and money. Other women entered these arrangements less voluntarily, with husbands engaging brokers to collect their earnings. The collective claim on a wet nurse’s salary could be great. Even from as little as 4 yuan, a number of people might feel that they were owed a share: her husband, his parents, the sister who was left caring for her prematurely weaned infant, her broker. … … … … … … … … …

In January 1919 a Beijing bank clerk named Gu Xianji engaged Mrs. Meng née Lü to relieve his young wife of the task of nursing their newborn son.46 The new wet nurse came from a farming village in Shunyi district and had been recommended by a local matchmaker. Mrs. Zhu née Yang later described herself as “a fifty-seven-year-old woman who makes a living by providing introductions (zuo mei wei sheng).” The young banker’s wife was delighted to have extra help, and when wet nurse Meng-Lü approached her for an advance on her salary, she obliged. Shortly thereafter, the wet nurse’s husband came by the Gu residence and took the money. Once again empty-handed, Mrs. Meng-Lü returned to her young mistress for a further advance. The wet nurse addressed her mistress as Gu Shao Nainai, a diminutive name suitable for a junior woman in the household. Little Mistress Gu paid the wet nurse a second time. As 266

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she later explained to a police constable, the new mother “feared that without money of her own, the wet nurse would have no choice but to return to her husband” and she “did not want Mrs. Meng-Lü to leave.”47 For an inexperienced mother, the wet nurse not only spared her the physical labor of breast-feeding, but eased the other burdens of child rearing. As someone who herself had recently given birth, a wet nurse might provide companionship and postpartum advice. As a young daughter-in-law, Gu Shao Nainai likely had other chores and obligations around the home. Her status depended on her ability to please senior members of the household—not just her husband, but also her mother-in-law and potentially brothers-in-law and their wives. Over time, her position would depend upon producing children. The sooner she ceased breast-feeding, the sooner she might bear another child for Gu Xianji. The banker was not pleased to learn of his wife’s generosity, or that the wet nurse’s husband seemed to be lingering nearby to pressure her for money. Gu Xianji dispatched a kitchen servant (chuyi) named Jin Shan to confront the matchmaker who had introduced the family to the wet nurse. Matchmaker Zhu-Yang assured Jin Shan that Mrs. Meng-Lü was unlikely to demand more money, and persuaded Jin Shan to leave 8 yuan (two month’s salary) with her. She told him it would be safer for all concerned if she took charge of doling out the wet nurse’s salary. Mistress Gu then demanded that the wet nurse and her matchmaker sign a guarantee (pubao) stating the wet nurse and her husband would demand no further payments. Rather than provide a guarantee, wet nurse Meng-Lü ran away. Gu Xianji then sent the kitchen servant Jin Shan to file charges with the police against the matchmaker. Here again is evidence that servants frequently acted as intermediaries between their masters and the rest of the domestic staff. When circumstances demanded interacting with less-savory segments of society, elite families sent trusted servants as representatives. In addition to representing their households with the constabulary, otherwise law-abiding servants could be required to procure opium for an addicted master or to retrieve a wayward son from a brothel. When police questioned Jin Shan, he described Mrs. Meng-Lü’s demands for money, as well as the matchmaker’s eagerness to control the cash.48 Matchmaker Zhu-Yang later retaliated by accusing Jin Shan of stealing 12 yuan the wet nurse Meng-Lü had left with her for safekeeping.49 Mrs. Meng-Lü’s disappearance leaves it unclear whether the wet nurse and her husband conspired to swindle the Gu family. The couple was long 267

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gone by the time the investigation began. Depositions from the household servant and the matchmaker—who were otherwise at loggerheads over the missing money—agree that the Gu family adopted a surprisingly sympathetic attitude toward their wet nurse. Mistress Gu had provided a payment to help the wet nurse get settled, and when her husband took that money, Mistress Gu paid a second advance. The young mother told police that she hoped her wet nurse would return. Through Jin Shan, the banker’s household brought charges, not against the wet nurse, but against the matchmaker who had deceived them. Moreover, in Mistress Gu’s opinion, the husband was the real threat: Not only had he forced wet nurse Meng-Lü to hand over her money, he had bullied her to return home. As a young mother in a new household, Mistress Gu explained she “understood the pressures her wet nurse faced from both her husband and her matchmaker.”50 … … … … … … … … …

Not

all households were this sympathetic. Writing in 1909 the chief censor for Shanxi Province, Wu Weibing, had acknowledged that families who relied upon domestic laborers often preferred to buy people because they feared hired servants would be more susceptible to the demands of relatives. Despite their objections, Wu reasoned that freely engaged laborers provided better ser vice than slaves, and he had supported the prohibition of trafficking and a transition to contractual arrangements.51 In the case of wet nurses, the system he had advocated prevailed, though it sometimes caused elite households considerable anxiety. While having to notify police about a runaway slave girl was frustrating, the premature loss of a wet nurse fundamentally disrupted family life. A breast-feeding infant demands feeding every few hours. Families who chose to engage a wet nurse quickly became dependent upon her ser vices, especially once the child’s mother herself stopped lactating. Popular magazines targeted women with advertisements for Dryco and Momilk powders,52 but despite their claims, the reconstituted milk of the early twentieth century was a poor substitute for breast milk. The disappearance of a wet nurse, even for an afternoon, could cause panic. Wet nurses sometimes requested leave to attend to ailing parents or children back in their villages. Under such circumstances, matchmakers 268

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“Servant Brushing a Coat.” Sidney D. Gamble Photographs, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University (459-2645).

advised heads of household to demand a cash guarantee (danbao) or to require that relatives escort the wet nurse on her journey.53 Wet nurses were too valuable to be permitted to leave freely. Rather than provide a guarantee, the wet nurse Mrs.  Liu née Fan ran away from both her breast-feeding and marital duties, first to visit her sick mother and later to take a job in another household. The role of the matchmaker extended beyond providing an introduction. As brokers they were frequently summoned to renegotiate terms and to vouch for a wet nurse’s credibility. Their reputations depended upon their ability to please two constituencies. Many who worked as matchmakers had moved to the city from the countryside themselves and provided introductions for others from their home village. They provided emotional support and friendship to women far from home. Mrs. Liu-Fan had confided to her matchmaker that she feared her milk might be drying up.54 But a wet nurse who trusted her matchmaker took a risk; in the end, brokers knew who 269

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paid their bills. Police records show that matchmakers frequently sided with household heads and hesitated to provide assurances for wet nurses who might prove unreliable. … … … … … … … … …

Wet nurses occupied an exceptional position within the realm of brokered domestic labor in Republican China. More than others, they resembled employees. Some wet nurses negotiated with their masters directly; others relied upon the ser vices of matchmakers and could rely upon that relationship for support. Some matchmakers coordinated—or conspired—with husbands and household heads to set up strict terms of indenture. Even wet nurses who had been sold outright were likely to be promised a modest allowance. One police investigation from 1917 described the movement of two wet nurses from Sichuan to Tianjin where they were to be sold. Relying upon native-place ties, the two wet nurses colluded with other servants from Sichuan to escape.55 In 1920 another wet nurse was transferred between families because the boy she had been breast-feeding weaned. She was sold cheaply because, her mistress reported, “her milk has diminished over the years.” Such transactions confirm that not only was there a market for wet nurses of hearty stock, but that the market had tiers and aging wet nurses had diminishing value. How, when, and indeed whether a wet nurse received payment shaped her relationship with the household. An advance stipend conveyed a binding obligation with a dif ferent valence than a monthly wage. Household heads felt that, rather than paying for services rendered, they had purchased a stake in the entire body and time of the woman. Handing money to a husband or broker reinforced their views. Many saw advance payment as a kind of allowance, much like what a child might receive. Others justified withholding pay for consecutive months, claiming that a wet nurse could not be trusted to save money or hoping that the outstanding payments would prevent her from running away. One mistress even denied her wet nurse presentable clothing. These plans did not always work. Even if a wet nurse was penniless and in rags, the promise of deferred pay might not be enough to keep her in the home.56 As with other kinds of servants, household heads adopted a paternalistic attitude toward the disappearance of a wet nurse. When wet nurses re270

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sorted to stealing, their households framed clandestine departures as running away rather than as theft, reinforcing the notion that runaways should be scolded as disobedient dependents rather than prosecuted as criminals. Household heads reminded the police and matchmaker of the terms of a missing wet nurse’s contract, and complained when she timed her departure to leave with money in her pocket. The objects wet nurses stole present intimate and poignant traces of their complicated lives: an embroidered infant’s cap, toddler bracelets with silver bells, a medicinal amber bracelet to help a sick child, clean swaddling linens.57 For wet nurses more than for other groups of domestic laborers, extended family played an ongoing and disruptive role. Relationships beyond their master’s household provided security, but they could also intrude upon professional life in unwelcome ways. Young children, demanding husbands, and aging parents at home inspired constant anxiety. As many heads of household feared, the maternal instinct that enabled a wet nurse to love and care for her adopted charge might also beckon her home to children of her own. Wet nurses resisted exploitation in ways both explicit and subtle. A clever wet nurse could remind the family of her value by absenting herself from the household for only a short period of time. Or she might seek a better situation. For a woman with a strong milk supply, there was no shortage of work in the growing city, but she had to find new work quickly or she risked the discomfort of overfull breasts and the possibility of a mastitis infection, or, perhaps worst of all, that her breasts would stop making milk and endanger her livelihood. Whether a wet nurse disclosed her physical condition to a matchmaker depended upon their shared personal history. Almost all movement between households required two things: the exchange of money and the facilitation of an intermediary. On the whole, wet nurses maintained greater contact with the matchmakers who had arranged their placement than did brokered people in other categories. And sometimes matchmakers advocated vigorously for their workers. When matchmaker He née Ning learned that Mrs. Wang had been accused of taking children’s clothing, she spoke out on the wet nurse’s behalf, telling police that Mrs. Wang was 100 percent reliable (shifen kekao).58 Mrs. Wang may indeed have been innocent. In at least one other case, a fellow servant attempted to frame a wet nurse by planting stolen jewelry in her bed. Or perhaps matchmaker 271

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He-Ning didn’t want it said that she had introduced a thief. Disputes involving female matchmakers and wet nurses portray women choosing between solidarity with each other and their business arrangements. North China’s more affluent households dispatched police to track down and return runaways. Although Republican China had upheld the 1910 prohibition against selling people and newly promulgated legal codes framed citizens as equals, elite families retained many traditional privileges. This included influence with local constabulary. Still, as the New Culture and May Fourth movements issued a blistering critique of tradition, the position of the patriarchal head of household wavered. This critique combined with new laws to irreversibly alter the landscape of obligation between masters and their extended household. Republican police archives record domestic laborers rephrasing their position in professionalized terms: masters became employers, and duties became ser vices. By sustaining membership in their own households as well as their masters’ compounds, wet nurses maneuvered within a web of domestic relationships that constrained menial servants who lacked family ties. In a world that relied upon the formation and displacement of kinship relationships, the dual status of wet nurses destabilized a system of domestic labor extraction, and in doing so it reveals how that system functioned. Domestic disputes illuminate shifting roles within the North Chinese family. Power in the home was wielded not only by the patriarch, as one might expect; it was also leveraged throughout a family hierarchy by hereditary servants, maids, drivers, cooks, concubines, and mistresses.

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8

Talking with Traffickers

“No one ever got rich kidnapping people,” Zeng Shunde confided as he kicked restlessly at the hard, packed ground under his bench in the visiting area of the Beijing Number One Prison. “The idea of relying upon selling people to get rich—that is utterly a dream.”1 It was 1929 and Zeng Shunde had served only a few months of his fouryear sentence. The young woman who sat across from him had begun coming to see him shortly after his arrival at the prison. Zeng was just shy of thirty years old. His visitor came so regularly that she might have been his wife, or a younger sister. Listening to their voices, however, it would have been clear to any prison guards who cared to eavesdrop that the two came from dif ferent worlds. The woman was Zhou Shuzhao, a twenty- one-year- old graduate student in the new sociology department at Yanjing University. In the years preceding Zhou Shuzhao’s birth, her great-grandfather, Zhou Fu, had been busy drafting the antitrafficking laws that would eventually put Zeng Shunde behind bars. Zhou Fu himself did not live to see his great-granddaughter attend university and embark on her own investigation of the problem of trafficking. He died in Tianjin in 1921, while Zhou Shuzhao was attending high school in Shanghai. Although Zhou Fu had been an old-style conservative bureaucrat, he supported progressive social changes. Not only had he proposed the abolition of trafficking and slavery, he had also agitated against foot binding and advocated for improved—but still suitable and ladylike—educational opportunities for women. Zhou Fu 273

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would have approved of Shuzhao’s interests and determination, although perhaps not of her research methods. Once a week Zhou Shuzhao rode her bicycle to the southern edge of the city, bumping along roads that changed with the seasons, on cartpacked grooved dirt and dry yellow dust that stung her eyes, or thick with spattering mud, or slippery with snow and ice. On her way to the prison, Zhou Shuzhao jostled past the former dynasty’s execution grounds and the wet market at Caishikou. She carried her notebooks and a head full of questions. Her questions owed their shape and structure in no small part to the case study method born at the Chicago School of sociology. This new academic discipline had found its way to China first through Yan Fu’s 1903 translation of Herbert Spencer’s The Study of Sociology and later under the pedagogical guidance of Western sociological researchers like Sidney Gamble and John S. Burgess.2 Together Gamble and Burgess popularized their social survey method, and the sociology department at Yanjing University obtained permission from Director Wang Yuanzeng for students to conduct research in the Beijing Number One Prison. Republican administrators eagerly absorbed the organizational models and quantitative techniques offered by the developing field. The discipline’s structural tendencies implied the promise of concrete solutions for universally challenging social problems at a moment when Chinese elites were especially amenable to such recommendations.3 Members of the Chicago School had built their reputation, in part, on the idea that empirical observation of the structural forces at work in the city of Chicago could not only help heal the troubles in their home city but also provide a model to address social problems elsewhere. For Zhou Shuzhao and her classmates, Beijing in the 1920s and 1930s became a parallel social laboratory. At Yanjing University they had their choice of over thirty dif ferent courses, three times as many sociology courses as at the next largest department, at Shantung University in Jinan.4 Inspired by her Yanjing University teachers and by the city around her, Zhou Shuzhao embarked on her master’s thesis determined to blend quantitative analysis of newspaper and court coverage of abductions with whatever she was able to ascertain from interviewing convicted traffickers firsthand. As part of this, Zhou Shuzhao made a project of slowly earning the prisoner Zeng Shunde’s trust. Zhou Shuzhao conducted most of her research between 1929 and 1932. During these years she learned a great deal about how traffickers like Zeng described themselves when it was too late to hide their crimes or to try to 274

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justify their actions in court. She transcribed interviews rich in criminal argot. These tales differ strikingly from those recorded by police or heard in the courtroom. Traffickers shared their fears: that their own children or sisters were in danger; that their aging parents would hear about their crimes; that their rivals would also be arrested and then torment them in jail. Few expressed fear of revenge from their victims or the families of victims. Surprisingly, traffickers rarely complained about the role victim testimony played in securing their conviction. Instead they reserved their belligerence for the state, for interfering in their business, and for fellow traffickers who drew police attention and made their trade more difficult. Shedding new light on the problem of recidivism, convicted traffickers confessed their anxieties about the future and the temptation to return to their previous illicit business. Their descriptions made it clear to Zhou Shuzhao that “the dredging profession”—as the trade came to be known by kidnappers and traffickers throughout North China—was exhausting work.5 Maintaining a client base demanded a broker’s constant attention. The business was competitive, with people poaching merchandise from each other. The field was, as one man told Zhou Shuzhao, rife with dilettantes—“Everyone thought they could try their hand”—and novice mistakes made it harder for the professionals to get quality references. Zhou Shuzhao began to write up her findings in 1932. Her timing was fortunate. University of Chicago sociologist Robert E. Park had just arrived at Yanjing University as a visiting lecturer. Park was on leave from his regular position at Chicago, and although he spent little more than a semester at Yanjing University, his presence on campus profoundly influenced Zhou Shuzhao and many of her classmates. Regular meetings with the founding thinker of the Chicago school stimulated Zhou Shuzhao to throw herself into her research and the interview process with even greater enthusiasm. She showed Park her notes, and he made suggestions about how to structure her interviews with prison inmates; he advised her on ethical issues and strategies to induce the traffickers to talk about difficult issues. Zhou Shuzhao made a weekly habit of visiting Park’s office to consult with him about her research progress and her developing analysis. She shared her “most nascent and preliminary observations as well as her innermost thoughts” about her challenging subject.6 Back at the University of Chicago, Park had a reputation for becoming deeply and personally invested in the students whose research topics and personalities captured 275

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his interest,7 and in China, Zhou Shuzhao and her project proved no exception. Park’s own techniques combined his years of experience as a socially conscious journalist with the rigors of a developing academic discipline and methodology. Sociology in the 1920s wore its social agenda like a badge of honor. Robert Park’s American-born pragmatic goal of exposing the social problems he witnessed in Chicago and elsewhere to rigorous scrutiny fit well with the apprehensions and ambitions of Republican China’s educated elite. It appealed deeply to idealistic nationalist intellectuals like Zhou Shuzhao and her cohort. When Zhou Shuzhao began her research, the sociology department at Yanjing University was less than a decade old. And yet the discipline had already profoundly influenced how administrators and academics alike thought about their country’s problems. From the outset, as well as in its current incarnation in the People’s Republic of China today, the research discipline of sociology has been intimately connected with the practice of social work. Sociological research offered the diagnosis, while social work promised the medicine. Many sociologists of the time believed the specific causes of various social ills could be identified, and once they were correctly identified, they could be diagnosed and eliminated. Zhou Shuzhao, too, aspired to identify the root causes of her country’s social ills. She shared with her great-grandfather, Zhou Fu, an ambition to improve China and to eliminate the entrenched problem of buying and selling people. But Zhou Shuzhao was also skeptical of the single etiology proposed by many of her fellow sociologists. She agreed with her Yanjing University teachers that poverty was Beijing’s “most important and glaring problem,” but she also struggled to isolate a set of factors by which to predict who among the poor might conspire to sell their relatives or resort to kidnapping.8 Poverty, while certainly a compelling motive, was an experience shared by too many of the city’s inhabitants to be the only motivating factor. This observation dogged her research, for although as many as 85 percent of the city’s crimes were economically motivated, the criminals she encountered rarely fit a universal profile of the desperate poor.9 Each told his or her own story and supplied a more personal explanation for how their activities as traffickers became entwined with other aspects of their lives. She wrote: “There is no such thing as an ordinary or typical kidnapping. I spent four years devising categories to analyze these incidents, only to conclude that in the end every event is unique.” Although successful strategies might be repeated and shared among fellow 276

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traffickers, the execution of these strategies varied as much as the participants involved. … … … … … … … … …

Zeng

Shunde came to enjoy Zhou Shuzhao’s visits to the prison. He looked forward to the moment when a prison officer would tell him that he could set down his work at the prison’s printing press, or take a break from sewing the bindings of publications from the Ministry of Justice, and come out to meet with the young female graduate student. She had a plain, serious, straightforward face, but this made her easier to talk to.10 On most days the prison operated in relative silence. Regulations forbade idle and unnecessary chatter, and both convicts and guards moved deliberately and quietly about their tasks.11 Zeng’s prison file indicates that he was literate enough to be able to read “simple short stories and [Sun Yatsen’s] Three Principles of the People.” Teams of convicts in Beijing Number One Prison labored in a variety of workshops, weaving, doing leatherwork, masonry on the prison grounds, carpentry, tailoring prison uniforms, and working with bamboo, but it is likely Zeng would have been among the fifty or so inmates assigned tasks that required basic literacy. All the same, even these were monotonous chores, and a visit from a curious young woman was most welcome. Zeng stayed on good behavior so that his visitor privileges would not be revoked.12 With relish, and perhaps some relief at having someone to listen to him, Zeng explained to Zhou Shuzhao how he first became involved in buying and selling people. He had tried his hand at various professions over the years. He had survived ser vice as a foot soldier during the Zhili-Fengtian wars, trained horses, worked as a manual laborer and as a barber, and scaled bamboo scaffolding to repair the city’s new electrical lights. Zeng had even made a small regular income as a criminal informant for the municipal police. Although his prison intake form listed “police informant” as his “most recent employment,” the information he provided evidently did not prove sufficiently valuable; the police did not allow Zeng to remain at large, nor did the court grant him a plea bargain. In one of their early meetings, Zeng told Zhou Shuzhao he found life in prison disheartening. “I almost don’t recognize myself. . . . I’ve received quite a beating. I have lost a lot of face, and I have suffered a lot since coming to prison. My earlier spirit is gone. This time, when I get out, I 277

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definitely won’t do it again.” And yet little in the way he described his past behavior suggested he would be able to stay out of trouble. As he explained to Zhou Shuzhao, whenever he ran short on funds and an opportunity presented itself, he would find himself going back to trafficking again and again. Zeng freely admitted to the young woman sitting across from him that—for him—trafficking in women had proved a difficult job and was not a reliable source of income. Still, even from prison, something about the illicit business retained its appeal. Like a recovering gambler, Zeng spoke wistfully of lucrative deals that had just barely slipped through his hands.13 Coaxing criminals to share their stories required considerable care, and Zhou Shuzhao knew not to take everything she heard at face value. As she remarked to the trafficking widow Cheng Huang: “When it comes to lying, your ability is unmatched. I can hardly believe it!” Explaining her own methodology, Zhou Shuzhao wrote that her notes from the prison were more precious and revealing than any record from the courts or from the press. Over time she convinced prisoners to “spit out” (tuchu) various details of their lives during “natural” (ziran) conversation. It was necessary, she wrote, to befriend them and to cultivate “sympathy” (ganqing) with them. Her simple guidelines were these: “First, never ask questions too forcefully. Second, don’t take an antagonistic attitude. Third, do not betray discomfort with their answers. And, finally, express compassion for their situation.”14 Zhou Shuzhao’s analysis itself hints that she sometimes identified with her trafficker research subjects at the expense of understanding their victims. At one point, when reflecting upon why certain women were more vulnerable than others, she remarked: “In 82 dif ferent cases that I have seen involving the kidnapping of an impoverished widow, each woman was stupider than her mother—Other wise, she wouldn’t have gotten herself kidnapped.” Despite a genuine desire to trace the problem of trafficking to its source and to help her country resolve a rampant problem, Zhou Shuzhao could not always resist the temptation to blame trafficking victims. Her own relative privilege colored her observation of their compromised circumstances and vulnerability: “Poverty makes it impossible for a woman to stay at home, and once she leaves the home it is all too easy for her to be deceived. Unchaste women become unmoored, and are easily overswayed by emotion (qing). Women who have lost their relationship with their families, when they encounter difficulty (tongku) have no 278

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“Prisoner at the Gate.” Sidney D. Gamble Photographs, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University (240-1348).

consolation—and they are susceptible to being moved by sweet talk. When they encounter loss, they become overwhelmed. Discontent with their circumstances, they obsess over how to change them—how to leave their family and find a new escape route. Looking for employment is a common strategy, but they go in to it blindly. When they are sent somewhere to work, they often lose their jobs. They behave stupidly and make rash 279

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decisions.” As Zhou Shuzhao saw it, poverty inspired recklessness and desperation. Poor women, in her view, lacked the intellectual capacity and willpower to adequately protect themselves.15 Zhou Shuzhao’s case studies reveal surprising empathy with convicted kidnappers and traffickers. Their accounts leave no doubt that Zhou was aware that many of these criminals had treated their victims cruelly, often abusing them sexually and taking advantage of their hunger, naiveté, shame, or fear. Despite this, Zhou distributed blame for the problem of trafficking across society, from the impoverished victim to the struggling trafficker to the welfare and educational institutions that had failed them both. Zhou Shuzhao grew close to several of these men and women, and these relationships enabled her to see the world within and beyond the prison walls through their eyes. Convicts reacted to their time in prison in dif ferent ways. Some expressed remorse; others vowed to return to their old trade—for what other option did they have? As one trafficker tried to explain: “When I get out of here, I will still do this. If I don’t do this, what would I do?” In a later conversation, however, she offered contradictory assurances: “You put your mind at rest. True, these recent charges were brought against me. That last time, the case was too flagrant not to be brought. When I get out, I’ll try to do something else.” Life as an ex-convict in Republican China was not easy, and such fickle resolve could not last. When asked how she came to take up the trade of buying and selling people, widow Cheng Huang turned the question back to Zhou: “How is it you can read books? This trafficking business, I also learned by studying.”16 Cheng Huang could neither read nor write, but she understood what it meant to observe, practice, and apply what she had learned. Successful trafficking was an acquired skill. Zhou’s conversations put to rest any idea that most people who became involved in human trafficking did so only incidentally. For many of the men and women Zhou met, this was a business. … … … … … … … … …

Not only was this a business, it was a criminal business with its own language. In the argot of traffickers, the business commonly known as trafficking (maimai renkou) and referred to by the courts and police by an assortment of other terms (kidnapping, abduction, enticement, coercion, forcible enticement, enticement for profit, and so on) had more colorful 280

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names. Profitable traffickers were said to be “wearing pearls and flowers.” To embark in the trafficking business was “walk out onto the gangplank.” Traffickers made their living by “eating people” or by “dredging” in their communities. They survived by “eating rancid meat.”17 Members of the “dredging profession” could recognize each other, and drew a distinction between their strategies and those of outright kidnappers, whom they called “blossom beaters” (paihuazi).18 There were also terms for the specific challenges kidnappers and traffickers faced, and for the variety of arrangements they had to make. With pride, one woman described how she had managed to sell off an entire household full of women. She told Zhou Shuzhao, “I deceived three refined young ladies. I even managed to bring along their mother. Mother and daughters together—I got all four of them. We call this ‘cleaning out the whole nest’ (yike duan). Back at home, the only person remaining was an old man, left alone to starve to death.”19 Many of the phrases convicted traffickers used to describe their activities betrayed just how conscious they were of the nefarious nature of their business. They spoke of stockpiling goods in hidden storerooms (tunkeng). People awaiting sale were already “entwined” (zhongqian), and when a deal went wrong or traffickers accidentally allowed their merchandise to escape, they were said to have “slipped off the tether” (chulüzi). When rape or seduction played a part in securing or subduing a woman, the trafficker explained they “went by horse” (mazhezou).20 Traffickers discussed selling women through “front doors” as legitimate wives or concubines, and through “side doors” to brothels as prostitutes.21 They considered sales permitting contact between the sold person and his or her biological family a “live door” (huomen); a sale that rendered future contact impossible was a “dead door.” Farmers employed similar terms to describe revocable and irrevocable land sales, highlighting the extent to which both women and land were valued as transferable living investments. The popular 1930s Beijing storyteller Lian Kuoru also described the strategies of the “old dredging profession,” punctuating his tales with many of the same phrases Zhou Shuzhao encountered in prison.22 Two categories of words did not appear in traffickers’ vocabulary. The first of these, predictably, was the official words used by either the police or the courts to describe the crime. While court testimony and confessions often put these words into the mouths of traffickers, we do not find them in the narratives documented by Zhou Shuzhao. The second kind of 281

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words, more interestingly, is the vocabulary that came so readily to the criminals’ lips in their own explanations to the police or the court. The language of family and family relationships, which criminals regularly deployed as part of their legal defense, does not seem to have been part of how prisoners expressed themselves and described their former activities when speaking from inside the prison. While families who became involved in trafficking needed to believe in the greater good served by their sales, the activity’s most notorious perpetrators required no such rationalization in their language. Many of these terms illustrate the challenges of trafficking. They included words for uncooperative victims, and for families who had initially agreed to collaborate but then had second thoughts. Under such circumstances, the trafficker would be forced to “grab half their face” in order to bring them along. Other phrases illustrate the tenuous economic aspects of this kind of criminal venture. Traffickers valued a secure profit and were pleased if they managed to cut a victim off without family resources. When a previously well- conceived plan fell apart, it amounted to “torn cloth and ripped seams.” If a situation was no longer conducive to trafficking, then “the ground had gone bad” or the “floor had rotted away.” Although buying and selling people in China depended on elaborate kinship and neighborhood networks, the prevalence of terms for “dead roads” and placing people “in total complete blackness” in the language of criminals reminds us that the mechanisms of successful sale and bondage did not entirely differ from those employed in other cultural contexts. To sell a person securely required severing social and natal ties. Their techniques recur in systems of bondage, trafficking, and slavery around the world. This vivid language survives thanks to Zhou Shuzhao’s careful interview records. Her glossary and marginal notes about trafficker slang defined criminal vernacular otherwise incomprehensible to the law-abiding reader. Although she repackaged each trafficker’s experience into a seamless narrative—often omitting her own guiding questions—these monologues recreated the rhythms of each individual speaker. In Zhou’s records we read the prisoner’s repetition, along with Zhou’s asides about their physical gestures, expressions of disgust, and laughter. The widow Cheng Huang, for example, laughed often and loudly. But more ominously, the widow also had a habit of drawing her thumb swiftly across her neck as she spoke of slitting someone else’s throat in anger, or her own in frustra282

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tion. A portrait emerged of each individual criminal’s disposition, his or her preoccupations, fears, and aspirations. One subtle testament to Zhou Shuzhao’s interview process, and to the depth of the “friendships” she cultivated in the Beijing Number One Prison, is that the convicts she got to know over the longest period of time employed the most colorful language. These loquacious friends became the sociologist’s best informants. Although Zhou typically reconstructed transcripts from hasty shorthand and from her memory—no doubt a highly subjective process—the candor of their conversations leaves a deep impression. When Zhou tells us that she became close with some of her informants, I am inclined to believe her. These conversations proceeded in a surprisingly uninhibited manner, considering they took place within prison confines. Over the accumulating months and years of a criminal sentence, convicts watched as numerous guests visited the prison. Observing these comings and goings, prisoners gained a sense of the relative power of various visitors. Officials, prison inspectors, and a variety of missionaries visited the prison. Other sociologists came too, including John Burgess and Sidney Gamble, accompanied by representatives from the local YMCA. In such a conspicuous parade, the most an unassuming young female graduate student could offer was company and solace, and perhaps help drafting an occasional letter home. (Zhou Shuzhao allowed herself to do this only once.) Some prisoners even found themselves considering the possibility of a higher authority beyond the prison walls. Several of the convicts Zhou interviewed told her that before their arrest they followed no religion but during their time in prison they had converted to Christianity. Prison administrators allocated time slots throughout the week for representatives of dif ferent denominations to minister to their converts.23 Portraits of Laozi, Confucius, Muhammad, Jesus, and the eighteenth-century prison reformer John Howard presided over the prison lecture hall.24 The prison posted rules on the walls for the literate to read. About 80 percent of those incarcerated would have had to ask a fellow prisoner to explain what the notices said.25 Even illiterate prisoners, however, gained an understanding of the mechanisms for early parole. A forty-eight-year-old bricklayer named Wei Detao, for example, could neither read nor write, and yet he was able to weigh the risk of appealing his sentence against the more likely prospect of a sentence reduction for good behavior and early parole.26 283

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Such convicts understood well how the prison worked. They surely realized that nothing they expressed to this student researcher was going to alter the length of their stay in jail.27 Indeed, Zhou Shuzhao’s apparent lack of any influence at all made inmates more likely to talk openly about their crimes. … … … … … … … … …

Zeng Shunde loved sharing his exploits with Zhou Shuzhao. In their conversations Zeng revealed not only the details of the incident that had landed him in jail, but also a series of previous attempts—some successful, some not—to sell people. Reflecting on his past behavior, Zeng explained: “If I try to think about the reason for my crimes, on one hand, it was because I was bad—I loved women too much. On the other hand, I made poor judgments with my friends.” Frustration with friends and collaborators appears as a common theme throughout Zhou Shuzhao’s interviews. To justify why he had resorted (unsuccessfully) to trafficking, the bricklayer Wei Detao explained that his legitimate business during the past couple years had been slow, and he had two daughters to support; moreover, he had allowed himself to be influenced by “evil friends” (eyou). Friendships made both inside and outside prison could prove useful, though. Traffickers often relied upon these relationships to get back on their feet. Zeng Shunde later elaborated: “Learning how to do this is really not difficult. At the beginning several friends led me into it, later I saw for myself how to make money at this and I thought of my own ways of doing things.”28 The tone of Zeng Shunde’s narrative swings dramatically from overwrought shame because his parents and little sister had learned about his crimes to a playful enthusiasm for regaling Zhou Shuzhao with his exploits. He was a showman. Zeng took obvious pride in his ability to seduce women outside the prison, and the young sociologist’s regular visits presented an albeit-constrained opportunity to exercise those skills. Though still young herself, Zhou Shuzhao was not gullible, and she pressed the trafficker for greater accountability and detail, sorting through layers of bluster and exaggeration in her pursuit of how traffickers executed their sales. She was also not above egging them on. “When a criminal cursed heaven and bemoaned his fate, I lamented with him. When he gnashed his teeth in resentment, I did so as well.” She understood that to extract 284

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even an approximation of the truth demanded perseverance and setting aside her own qualms. “Even when their answers cause me to feel uncomfortable, it is a researcher’s responsibility not to get angry and to sustain the confidence of the interviewee.”29

Zeng Shunde’s family background does not immediately suggest a person who would have naturally turned to trafficking. His family, a former banner household, lived on property they owned in Pingxi Liulang, a small village close to the old imperial Summer Palace. They were more fortunate than many banner families, and never relied exclusively upon the state stipends that by the early Republican period had entirely dried up. It was good farmland, and easily irrigated from a nearby lake. Over generations their family property had been divided. Though Zeng’s parents were not well off, they were also not destitute. Zeng described growing up with two older sisters and one younger sister. His parents doted on their only son, they “loved him deeply, and allowed him to go attend school for nearly seven years” despite needing help at home in their fields. After seven years in his village school, Zeng Shunde traveled to Beijing with the idea of studying medicine. When he failed at his studies, he apprenticed himself as a barber. While Zeng did not prove himself as a student, he remained flexible and entrepreneurial. His approach to trafficking women suggests, on the one hand, someone tempted by the promise of a quick buck, but on the other hand, someone who also understood that to survive it was necessary to work hard and be willing to work at lots of dif ferent kinds of things. When farming in Pingxi Liulang was no longer profitable, Zeng’s father moved Zeng’s mother and sisters to Beijing, where he took a job managing textile workers. Zeng Shunde joined the army when he was eighteen, and from that point on his life experience began to intersect with traffickers. He made friends gradually and learned about the underworld. He visited a brothel for the first time, and then went back, and back again. He watched experienced men with admiration, studied how to flirt, and became confident with women. After a little over a year in the army, Zeng landed a job as a hired laborer taking care of the horses for an affluent Beijing family surnamed Liu. At 10 yuan per month, the pay was quite good, but Zeng admitted to Zhou Shuzhao, “I had a bad temper, and so I was always fighting with Master Liu. In 1922, when I was twenty years old, the Liu family gave 285

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away all of their horses to an army officer and relative of General Wu Peifu. He was from Kaifeng in Henan Province. And so, I went along with all the horses to Henan.”30 Although Zeng Shunde had not been “sold,” this arrangement confirmed his intuitive sense that labor is embodied in the body of the individual, and that even a person receiving decent wages could still be swapped wholesale from one household to another, from one master to the next. Zeng’s new master gave him a raise to 12 yuan, but more significantly, as military staff, Zeng also received train vouchers so that he could travel back to Beijing to see his family at his convenience. These vouchers would enable Zeng to get his foothold as a trafficker. Shortly after arriving in Henan, Zeng Shunde’s master was transferred to the office of the provincial military governor. As a result, Zeng too was promoted and given the (rather inflated) title of aide-de-camp and a military uniform. It was after this promotion that Zeng Shunde’s first opportunity as a trafficker developed. Zeng explained the complex sequence of events to an attentive Zhou Shuzhao. For several days a young woman had been loitering around the barracks, confronting officers, asking if they knew her cousin, who was supposedly a soldier somewhere in Henan. No one had any information to help her. Zeng Shunde’s army comrade, a married lieutenant named Shi Lao’er, thought the woman was pretty and invited her to come to stay with him. Shi Lao’er learned that the woman was fleeing from her husband, a poor man who worked as a barber in the street in Beijing. She told the men she had wushu training and had worked as a street performer. This was how she had been able to escape from her husband when he tried to lock her up. That evening Zeng Shunde visited Shi Lao’er’s quarters, and as the two soldiers were joking around, Shi suggested that Zeng might enjoy the woman’s sexual company. “Boss, do you want to see what she is like? If you really like her, go out to the street and buy some steamed buns for her to eat.” Zeng went out and bought the buns. Then, he claimed, the woman willingly had sex with him. He described their arrangement as having been “peaceful” for a few months—Zeng even moved in with Shi Lao’er, Shi’s wife, and the runaway. But it did not last. One evening while Zeng was out late accompanying his senior officers, Shi Lao’er became fed up with his wife’s snoring. He told her, “Fine. If you can’t stop snoring, I am going to trade with Boss Zeng.” When Shi Lao’er approached the young runaway’s bed, his wife followed him. Grabbing a 286

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large carving knife, Shi’s wife threatened the woman, forcing her out into the courtyard in the center of their army compound. The iron gates to the barracks were already locked, but the acrobatic young woman scaled them in a flash, with Shi Lao’er following less gracefully after. All the commotion caught the attention of the night patrol. When the patrolling officer asked what was going on, Shi answered honestly: “This girl ran away from her husband’s family in Beijing. Now she is living in my quarters. Because I took pity on her, I let her stay with me.”31 The army police apprehended the runaway and began to make preparations to send her back to Beijing. In the week she spent in custody, the woman earned quite a reputation. There were a number of old soldiers who had been locked up for bad behavior, and she told bawdy jokes with them. She showed off, entertaining them with her wushu skills. When a little boy selling fried scallion pancakes came by the jail, he offered, “If you touch my hand, I will give you a pancake.” She obliged, grabbed his hand, and promptly flipped him over. Zeng seemed to have reconciled himself to losing what had been an inexpensive arrangement for sexual companionship; on the whole he cultivated an easy-come, easy-go attitude with women. But, Zeng said, “Because she had this special skill with wushu, she didn’t just go home, and then escape again, but when she escaped again, she came all the way back to look for me.” Zeng was reluctant to abandon his job in Henan, but when the runaway showed up looking for him, she cajoled and needled him until he agreed to accompany her back to Beijing. Once they arrived in Beijing, Zeng and his acrobatic lover rented a room in a courtyard tenement with a man named Yang Daqing. This man was himself an experienced professional kidnapper. Zeng explained, “He saw that I had no idea what to do, and he gave me the idea of taking the woman to Changchun to sell her. I listened to him and gave it some thought.” Zeng seems to have been rather overwhelmed by the woman’s persistent attachment. Shortly thereafter, Zeng agreed to the kidnapper’s suggestion. He traveled with Yang Daqing, Yang’s wife, and two other traffickers. Between them they “brought a whole lot of people (kou’er) to sell.” With Yang’s assistance Zeng Shunde sold the woman to a brothel in Changchun. After paying Yang a cut, Zeng pocketed 750 yuan. This hefty sum would have supported a less profligate man in comfort for quite some time, but Zeng did not handle his newfound wealth well. “When I returned to Beijing, I spent a lot of this money visiting brothels, and I got sick. I was 287

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sick for at least five months. When I finally got well again, I had spent all the money. Not one cent was left.”32

Zeng’s colorful prologue to his eventual decision to sell his runaway lover, as well as the epilogue in which he berates himself for squandering his first trafficking profits, bury the violence of the transaction in Changchun beneath his own financial tribulations and battle with sexually transmitted disease. What deception did Zeng use to bring her on the train along with the others he and Yang sold there? Altogether there were five traffickers moving what Zeng described as “a whole lot” of people. Among them was a woman who had been so determined to rejoin Zeng she had traveled from Beijing more than 400 miles back to the army barracks in Henan to be reunited with him. Her fear, her anger, her disappointment at Zeng’s betrayal, these emotions are all lost. We cannot know from a trafficker’s account what life the woman envisioned, but even Zeng’s tale preserves her considerable pluck and courage. As was the case with all the trafficked people in his stories, Zeng never told Zhou Shuzhao the woman’s name. Zeng described a succession of confidence tricks. His most reliable technique seemed to be, with some variation, to convince young, desperate women to sleep with him, to fall for him, and then to convince them to sell themselves on his behalf. Yet Zeng was an opportunist. Although most of his victims were young women, and the sociologist Zhou Shuzhao herself had categorized Zeng as a sex trafficker—he did not confine himself to one kind of sale. He supplied brothels with prostitutes, to be sure, but he also sold wives and concubines, as well as male and female laborers and servants. As he related to Zhou Shuzhao: “When we talk about selling people, we don’t talk much about selling adult men. One time was especially funny. It goes all the way back to when I was in the army as an aide-de-camp. When we were dispatched to Nankou (in Henan), the army was sent into the villages to pressgang men into ser vice.” This turned out to be a good chance to make a lot of money quickly. He and three other army friends set themselves up in a small hotel in a poor village and tricked a succession of men by first convincing the men to help carry illegal morphine, and then one by one apprehending them and blackmailing the gullible men into army ser vice. Zeng received 1,000 yuan for each of these unfortunate “soldiers.”33 This was not the only time Zeng used drugs as part of an abduction scheme. 288

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One thing that emerged, not only from Zeng’s tales, but also from other convict interviews and from my investigation of the judicial and police archive, is that the lines between the criminal and noncriminal worlds were extremely hazy. Families were willing to participate in dubious activities, criminals were perfectly willing to take advantage of the legal system, and military and police networks could double as criminal syndicates. One crime could be used to mask another. In a society of surplus uniforms, deactivated or deserting soldiers, smuggled goods, undercover cops, and underground brothels, things and people were not always what they seemed. Drugs, both real and fake, appeared as essential props in several traffickers’ entrapment strategies. The threat of discovery by the police, of arrest and eventual prosecution, hung over buyer and seller, and sometimes even the merchandise themselves. Women already engaged in illicit prostitution, as opposed to working in a registered brothel, could be entrapped by the stability and protection a trafficker like Zeng pretended to offer. By the mid-1920s, as Zeng Shunde hit his stride as a trafficker, opportunities for men and women to mingle in public became increasingly acceptable. Zeng described one encounter that began at the meeting of a youth film society, and the transaction that ensued. The girl herself was very forward. “We made eyes at each other throughout the whole meeting. . . . In the end, she made a date with me to come to her house. It turned out that she was a private [unregistered] prostitute.” Zeng recalled she was only about sixteen or seventeen, reasonably good-looking, and took clients in her mother’s courtyard. He quickly determined she was saleable, and talked the girl into traveling with him to Changchun. By now he had made several successful deals and had established a reliable network extending from Beijing north to Changchun. He continued: “I tricked her again by saying that my profession was illegally selling opium. Once we got to Changchun, I bought a large bag of soybean paste and pretended that it was opium. It looked to be enough tar to sell for over 1,000 yuan. I asked some friends who were also in this business to disguise themselves as policemen. Then I instructed my fake policemen to come to our place to confiscate the ‘opium’ and to physically threaten me if I did not pay them off.” He asked them to rough him up to make the arrest and blackmail look convincing. “She offered to sell herself in exchange. She thought that she was sacrificing herself to help me, and no one knew that I had tricked her. That time I made 640 yuan.” 289

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Zeng tried selling servants, too, but he wasn’t nearly as good at it, especially if they were chaste and businesslike. Describing one transaction, he told Zhou that “this woman was like a martyr out of the ‘Biographies of Exemplary Women’ [Lienüzhuan], she stayed with my friend for an entire month and not once did they go to bed together! I just can’t deal with that. . . . There is little profit to be made with one like that.” Despite this frustration, Zeng expressed grudging respect for the servant’s chastity. He and his friend may not have had as much fun along the way, but they sold her and profited all the same. Traffickers understood that they often needed the people they hoped to sell to cooperate. Zeng Shunde had executed only the seduction stage of his plan to sell a sixteen-year- old waitress when her father brought him to the police court for kidnapping his “ladylike daughter” (guinü). Wryly, Zeng recalled that the club where the waitress worked was “really more of a brothel,” and that he was “just one among many suitors that she entertained each day.” Her father would surely miss the income she brought home. Zeng had prepared for the possibility of a legal challenge and had forged engagement paperwork from a local matchmaker on hand. He did not think the father had much of a case. But what impressed Zeng Shunde most was the young waitress’s presence of mind in the courtroom. The judge asked her, “Did your father know that you intend to marry Zeng Shunde?” And the girl answered, “How would it be possible for him to not know? Our household is so poor that we don’t even have proper blankets of our own. Everything we have is what he (pointing to Zeng) bought for us.” Zeng Shunde told Zhou Shuzhao that it was due to the young waitress’s persuasive skills that the police let them both go. Shortly thereafter he managed to take her out of town and pawn her to a brothel.34 … … … … … … … … …

For her part, the trafficking widow Cheng Huang also noticed that some people were more willing to be sold than others. She was particularly stuck by the number of women willing to gamble on any chance to leave Longwangtang Village. “We took them out the front door, or out the side door, depending on their willingness,” she explained, making a distinction between women sold as wives and those sold as prostitutes, as well as a distinction about the degree of force or coercion necessary to make the sale. The widow told Zhou Shuzhao that she knew village women 290

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who would laugh foolishly and say they “just wanted to see what things outside are like,” unaware of what might happen next, but others were less naive and even seemed to offend the widow’s own modesty. Traveling by train with a male trafficker named Jin Shunqing, the widow observed that some young women were always climbing onto his lap and deliberately teasing him. When a railway inspector came by and inquired about their behavior, one woman replied, “Oh, he is my big brother. We are on our way to our hometown.” A few stops later, a railway detective approached them, and she teased the detective, saying, “When we get there, if I go to visit the prostitutes, will you come out to play with me?” The detective blushed and did not ask anything further, leaving them alone. She seemed to know what she was getting into. Although selling people was against the law, from the point of view of an overextended police force, trafficking became a crime only when something went wrong. With the exception of the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ 1921 crackdown on traffickers traveling on China’s transportation lines, police were free to exercise considerable discretion about when to push for prosecution, when to mediate, and when to call upon other welfare institutions. The experienced trafficker Liao Yuting, for example, had friends on the Beijing police force and regularly talked his way out of arrest. Two circumstances typically necessitated police intervention: violence or information. It was the latter that finally landed Zeng Shunde in trouble. Zeng Shunde’s crimes caught up with him when, having settled down in Beijing, he unwittingly interfered with an experienced matchmaker’s territory. (Zeng loved female company in general: he told Zhou Shuzhao he had moved back to Beijing in part to be close to his three sisters.) Following his playbook, Zeng had cultivated a flirtation with a sixteen-year-old living in a courtyard tenement in the neighborhood outside Qihuamen (known today as Chaoyangmen). In his efforts to convey to Zhou Shuzhao just how poor the girl’s family was, Zeng emphasized, “in her whole life this girl had never worn a set of clean clothes.” The girl’s mother had died, and her father often berated her. An old woman known as Zhao Lao Taitai lived in the same tenement. Zhao Lao Taitai worked as a matchmaker and brothel supplier to support her excessive drinking. She too had set her sights on the girl and had developed a friendship with her. Whenever the girl needed to hide from her father’s anger, she took refuge with the old matchmaker. Another friend of Zeng Shunde, Zhang Fuhua, also lived in the same subdivided courtyard. In these tight quarters, everyone knew the 291

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others’ business. Zhang Fuhua had opened a small underground brothel, and he also eyed the developing situation. Zeng Shunde needed to move quickly or he would lose his prize, but the girl was more than ready to go, telling him: “Let’s go far far away, the farther away the better, somewhere my family will never be able to chase me back.” Unfortunately she also chose to confide in the drunken matchmaker she mistook for a friend, sweetly telling her, “Oh, Taitai, we will soon be separated! I am going to run away with [big brother] Zeng Gege.” Zeng then brought the girl north to the railway station town of Anda, in Heilongjiang. It was September, but already the ground was covered with snow. They rented a room in a desolate little hotel near the station, and Zeng despaired of finding a way to sell the girl. He had asked for help from a Heilongjiang native named Song San, but that man betrayed him. Zeng kept his wits about him. When two soldiers barged into their room and held him up at gunpoint to demand money and the girl, Zeng calmly replied, “Don’t mistake me for a strong or brave person. I am someone who is engaged in this business, but I will cry out right away. I will cry straight out to the police and the courts and then we all will be disgraced. All of us are guilty here.” His bluff worked. But things in Anda did not operate the same way they had in Changchun. Even the brothel managers wanted evidence that Zeng and the girl were married! Zeng had to promise the treacherous Song San money in order to have someone local vouch for him. Eventually Zeng Shunde made an arrangement with the manager of the Garden Balsam brothel: the girl would work as a prostitute while Zeng did odd jobs. According to Zeng, “her temperament turned out to be very bad,” though he did not blame her; “after all, from childhood to adulthood she had never worn a decent pair of shoes.” (Tattered clothing was a trope to which Zeng repeatedly returned, eager to make clear to Zhou Shuzhao just how poor the girl had been. Zhou Shuzhao, in her own analysis, expressed skepticism of traffickers’ protests with regard to the poverty of their targets, telling her readers that many used this to excuse their activities.) In any case, Zeng claimed he tried to buy gifts to lift the girl’s spirits and to make his life a little easier, but it was no good. He was not cut out to be a onewoman pimp. Once again, Zeng found himself itching to flee. As soon as he had saved up enough money, he bought a ticket back to Beijing from a small-time fence, abandoning the girl at the Garden Balsam brothel in Anda. 292

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When he returned to Beijing penniless, both Zhao Lao Taitai and Zeng’s friend Zhang Fuhua were furious. They had at the very least expected a share of a sale. When Zeng Shunde could not pay them, Zhao Lao Taitai turned him in to the police. Zeng told Zhou Shuzhao he had heard that soon thereafter the police retrieved the girl from Heilongjiang and returned her to her father. “I don’t imagine things are very peaceful now,” he mused.35 Zeng Shunde made several mistakes. First, he took the girl to a place he had never been. He possessed no established network on the ground in Anda, and he did not have a clear plan for how to sell her. Second, he relied upon a new partner who seized on Zeng’s inexperience in Anda as an opportunity for blackmail. Third, he neglected to pay a small, but critical, cut to resentful competitors back in Beijing who knew exactly what he had done. Zeng Shunde provides an interesting point of comparison with other traffickers, brokers, and matchmakers we have encountered. When his schemes worked, Zeng cleared significant sums from trafficking, on average more than twice as much as the widow Cheng Huang usually received from her transactions. The contrast in how these two convicted traffickers handled their finances is striking. Before her arrest the widow had managed to save her money, pay off debts, and provide for her family, but Zeng Shunde spent his profits quickly. While he no doubt enjoyed himself, this was not simple profligacy. To operate as a trafficker, Zeng had to reinvest his cash in a lifestyle that brought him into contact with the kinds of buyers who might spend upward of 600 yuan for a young woman. He also put his body on the line, deploying his sexual charms to first captivate and then capture his merchandise. Zeng Shunde’s discussions with the sociology student Zhou Shuzhao in the Beijing Number One Prison revealed the excitement, frustration, and, at times, exhaustion of life as an entrepreneurial predator. … … … … … … … … …

Structurally, the widow Cheng Huang’s approach to trafficking was quite different. While Zeng Shunde’s narrative described proactively seeking out people to sell, Cheng Huang’s human merchandise often made their own way into her hands. According to the widow, a steady stream of clients was one reason she found it so hard to extricate herself from the business. 293

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(Cheng Huang’s own chosen metaphor for trafficking was that of a spider’s web, and we might see her as an omnivorous spider simultaneously caught in and feeding upon her own weblike network.) Cheng Huang’s career better encapsulates the diversity of the market in people. Over the course of her decade of actively selling people, Cheng Huang sold wives, little girls as child brides or slaves or even adopted daughters, children to theater troops, and young women as concubines and prostitutes. The widow was most proud of having helped abduct and sell a concubine who belonged to the arrogant bodyguard of a local warlord. She also helped women from her village find employment in Beijing as servants; some she placed in legitimate work, others she deceived. Dozens of people passed through her hands. (At one point she told Zhou Shuzhao: “Everyone came to me.”) Making these arrangements came naturally to her. “That is why my own family is now doing so well. I have never seen someone without thinking of how I might deceive them.” But this hadn’t always been the case. She had once been a naive housewife, albeit one fascinated by trouble when it came to her village in the form of the alluring but despicable Liao Yuting. When Cheng Huang’s husband died, he had left her with five children, who were then eighteen, thirteen, ten, six, and four. Cheng Huang told Zhou Shuzhao, “At that time I really saw no way forward. I cried here and I begged there. I wept and wailed. I truly did not know which way to turn. I was a grown woman and yet I had no idea what to do. My mind raced and my heart beat unsteadily.” Her family owned twenty to thirty mu of farmland, but her husband had left them with substantial debts. Some of the property had already been mortgaged, and Cheng Huang was forced to mortgage the rest. But with five children who needed a roof over their heads, Cheng Huang did not sell their house. Instead she looked for opportunities among the people around her. She was too old for “sex games” and didn’t think that she would make enough money as a prostitute. Remarriage held no interest for her; a man was just another mouth to feed. Before her husband’s death, the widow told Zhou Shuzhao, she had experienced little contact with broader society. She had not traveled and did not know much about the world, but she had once been “what you would consider a person with morals.” Zhou Shuzhao concluded that Cheng Huang “had morals, but no moral foundation.” She was a proud woman who valued her reputation. The widow did every thing for her family, and that guiding principle provided her “ethical center.” It was a curious twist or misapplication 294

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of traditional Confucian family loyalty, but one that appeared frequently among those who engaged in trafficking or with traffickers. Previous scruples aside, Cheng Huang now found herself drawn to bad people, and to any opportunity to make money. A female cousin who was also a widow, and a mother of four, suggested that the two might kidnap a young bride who had recently arrived in Longwangtang. Together the widow and her cousin delivered the woman to the notorious trafficker Liao Yuting.36 From the beginning, Cheng Huang was frustrated over having to divide profits with other accomplices. This was a feature of many women traffickers’ place in the trade. While women could be ringleaders—and many were—few operated on their own. Even a male lone wolf like Zeng Shunde sometimes required assistance and needed to pay the petty bribes and fees necessary to maintain a clandestine operation. Female brokers in people relied heavily upon their personal and family networks. By the very nature of their business model, more people became involved (meaning more fixers to pay). Gossip about one woman’s unhappiness or a troublesome child could quickly become trade news. A successful woman trafficker was not necessarily a shady character no one talked to; she could just as easily be someone in whom everyone confided. Women traffickers imbricated themselves in their communities by developing knowledge of their neighbors’ family pressures and demands. It comes as no surprise that women traffickers befriended servants—through back doors and sculleries, domestic workers offered direct access to household problems. Above all, successful traffickers presented themselves as problem solvers. Law enforcement always hovered in the background. Sometimes the police or the courts acted as the unwitting agents of a trafficker’s revenge. The state inadvertently provided a structure of discipline and negative incentives that promoted collaboration among matchmakers, brokers, and traffickers. As we have seen, traffickers strategically deployed the threat of calling in the police or initiating a lawsuit. This threat became all the more necessary when greater numbers of people became involved in a transaction. One of the striking changes in the prosecution of traffickers from the Qing into the Republican period is a demographic shift from cases that exposed one or two human traffickers working together to investigations leading to the prosecution of handfuls of people. Several factors caused this expansion. First, the Republic’s new laws had broadened the definition of the crime of buying and selling people. This increased criminalization 295

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naturally threw a wider net, catching more “traffickers.” Where Qing law overlooked matchmakers, intermediaries, and paid witnesses, Republican police and courts convicted more of the tangentially involved parties. Second, the geographic scope of the trade had expanded. To take Beijing as an example, over 50  percent of the women kidnapped within the city had been sold not merely beyond Beijing’s immediate metropolitan area but outside the borders of Hebei Province itself.37 Of course, Beijing served simultaneously as a source, a consumer, and an intermediate point of transfer for the trade. For the widow Cheng Huang, the city provided a place to meet with other traffickers and hand over her merchandise. Greater geographic mobility by necessity involved more brokers. Third, with urbanization, industrialization, and the growth of commerce, increasing numbers of people had reason to consider the possibility of trafficking. At the same time as the state seemed poised to bestow greater individual rights, individual people also became increasingly commodified and commodifiable. This expanded opportunities for trafficking, but it also heightened the risk of prosecution. Unfortunately, the shifting source base and legal system make it impossible to quantify an increase in the crime of trafficking from the Qing to the Republican period. What quantitative evidence we have can only be gathered from the police and the courts, and the increase documented by these institutions tells us as much about enforcement priorities as it does about social practice. That being so, the rapidly changing structure of Republican society invited enterprising individuals to capitalize on the period’s combination of social hardships and social opportunity to rip a person from one context and broker him or her into another. To do so, traffickers needed to work together.

Like Zeng Shunde, the widow Cheng Huang was first arrested when one of her “bad friends” betrayed her to the police. Liao Yuting gave the court enough information to convict Cheng Huang on trafficking charges, and in the spring of 1923 the Beijing District Court sent the forty-two-year-old widow and mother of five to prison. She spent only a few days in the main Beijing Number One Prison before prison administrators transferred her to a lower-security protection prison facility (baofu jianyu). Prosecution of traffickers overall was on the increase at this time, and this meant more convictions for women like Cheng Huang. Even accounting for periodic amnesties, between 1920 and 1926, the years that immediately preceded 296

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and followed Cheng Huang’s first prison sentence, the number of women in Beijing’s prisons doubled.38 In detention widow Cheng Huang received three meals a day: a rice gruel (xiaomizhou) in the morning, steamed cornbread (wowotou) for lunch, and for dinner, rice with a vegetable broth. Women’s tasks at the extension prison were relatively light. On some days she made matchboxes, on others she gardened or did light sewing and textile handicrafts, and she did laundry for the prison guards, for whom as a group she had developed a fondness. These men, Cheng Huang said, treated the women prisoners well. “When we asked them for some additional radishes, they gave us radishes. And the way that they watched us was relatively relaxed . . . they allowed us to talk among ourselves.” The guards themselves were not very well off, and the women prisoners sometimes pilfered cloth and thread from state-issued supplies to mend guards’ clothes or to give them to bring home to their wives. The environment at the extension prison was a stark contrast to the strict regulations at Beijing’s Number One Prison, where Zhou Shuzhao eventually found Cheng Huang serving a second sentence in 1930. Most of the women in prison with Cheng Huang had also been charged with abduction, kidnapping, or enticement.39 In Beijing’s prisons, the majority of women convicts were serving sentences for abduction. (Across China more generally, kidnapping and abduction together were the second most common crimes for which women were jailed, after crimes related to opium. Opium crimes encompassed every thing from drug addiction to smuggling to drug-related theft.)40 Within her first year, widow Cheng Huang told Zhou Shuzhao that she had made quite a few friends and learned a lot. Just as Republican China’s numerous warlord armies were training grounds for men to learn crime, prison provided women with a similar education. Cheng Huang admitted that her first stint in prison was not especially bitter. Perhaps, she speculated, this was why she returned to making trouble after her early release. She passed the time in relative physical comfort. Psychologically, though, the time was hard. While in prison Cheng Huang worried incessantly about her children. “I was always gazing out the window thinking about them. At night, when I dreamed, I dreamed about my children being kidnapped.” This was her worst nightmare, for “when you kidnap other families’ children, why should your own children not be kidnapped?” Even Zhou Shuzhao had asked whether the widow ever considered selling her own children. It was a question Cheng Huang found 297

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insupportable and offensive. She explained that her children’s well-being had always been at the front of her mind: “Every day I thought about how I would take better care of my children when I got out. [Back then] they were all still small. And I had only been sentenced for two years—what if I had been sentenced to eight? Then it would have been all over.”41

The widow’s first stint in prison ended in 1924 when General Duan Qirui retook control of the capital and released thousands of prisoners as part of a broad amnesty. The regular amnesties of the Republican period served to reinvigorate the criminal community. Changing city administrations were more terrified of not having enough room in the prisons to incarcerate their opponents than they were of the criminals currently on the inside. The social disruption caused by human traffickers like Cheng Huang was nothing compared with the threat of treasonous dissent. Although Cheng Huang was fortunate in her timing to find her two-year sentence reduced by half, amnesties came so frequently that criminals who had received longer prison sentences stood a fair chance of early release. Cheng Huang remembered the morning of her amnesty perfectly. She recalled joking with the young guard who stood in front of her cell with a dossier in his hand. Smiling as he held the file out to her, he said, “Mrs. Cheng Huang, your menfolk, your husband, or your man has written for you!” The widow told Zhou Shuzhao that she took the whole thing for a jest, and responded in kind, laughing: “Of the three you just mentioned, I’ll sell off two. Who do you think I ought to sell?” It wasn’t until the guard unlocked the cell doors that Cheng Huang understood she was being set free. Everyone was thrilled to be released. The women all hastily began making plans for what they would do next, exchanging contact information and arranging meeting places in the city. “You help me find work, I’ll help you find a master / husband (zhu),” they said. Cheng Huang explained that all the women had schemes for who they would deceive and how. They were all plotting to trick each other. This was, after all, the world they each now knew best.

The widow returned home to her nightmare. It was shortly before the New Year. Although all five children assembled to greet her, their dwelling was 298

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dilapidated and covered in filth. No one had much to say at first. Her littlest daughter was dressed in stained and tattered clothing, and her stockings were crusty with blood. She was just eight years old, and tiny. When Cheng Huang fed her, she shrieked with piercing stomach pain. As her mother massaged the hard places in her daughter’s belly, the little girl cried. For months she had gone hungry, she told her mother, living only on scraps. Cheng Huang believed that if General Duan Qirui’s amnesty had come just one day later, then her youngest daughter would have died. She confronted her oldest son, twenty-two-year- old Cheng Tao, asking, “How could you let the family fall into such a state?” But Cheng Tao had only just come home on leave from the army, and simply protested that he was no good at earning money. The older children soon scattered, leaving the mother wondering where everyone had to go in such a hurry. As the widow later explained to Zhou Shuzhao, “Fortunately, my littlest girl loved to parrot the things she heard.” From the little one, the widow learned that two women from her mother-in-law’s family, the Shi clan, had taken her two older daughters, ages fourteen and ten, into their households as child brides. The littlest girl called the two women Auntie Shi and Grandmother Shi. Fresh from prison, the widow could not view their meddling as charity. Not only had they taken her children away, they had engaged—and paid—a rival matchmaker the widow despised. Cheng Huang vowed to retrieve her older daughters and get revenge.42 Prison had failed to instill Cheng Huang with fear of the police or the courts. As before, the savvy trafficker was willing to put the system to work on her behalf. She sold a small plot of the family’s farmland (through a conditional dian mortgage), fetched her eldest daughter home, and prepared to confront her deceased husband’s sister in court. Sure enough, once Grandmother Shi realized that the fourteen-year- old would not be returning home from her mother’s house, she initiated a lawsuit. She claimed that Cheng Huang had tricked her daughter into coming home and that the widow intended to sell her. The daughter was ner vous, but Cheng Huang walked her through what to say: “Don’t be afraid, when you go up in court, just say your mother-in-law assaulted you. Say that she got you all dressed up in a fancy skirt and intended to sell you.” She explained to Zhou Shuzhao: “Because that’s how they bite me, that’s how I will bite them back.” When the police magistrate questioned the girl, she did exactly what her mother had said. The police magistrate, who knew Cheng Huang’s criminal record, then confronted the widow. She had a perfect 299

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answer planned: “Judge, think about it. Could I as a kidnapper fail to recognize another kidnapper? This is my precious daughter. I brought her home to be with me and she is my own. What would I sell her for?” The judge seemed confounded by her response. He had them bound over for a day, before releasing everyone. Later, when Auntie Shi heard about the hassle Grandmother Shi had faced, she let Cheng Huang’s ten-year-old daughter follow her elder sister home.

Cheng Huang told Zhou Shuzhao that after all these struggles she was delighted to have her family together again. Still, making ends meet remained difficult. Despite having resolved to give up trafficking, the widow quickly fell back into her old ways. For several months she tried working as a maidservant and domestic laborer. She even found honest jobs that paid well and were not especially onerous, but these made her especially anxious. She picked fights with her employers. She was restless and needed active work to do, and so whenever she got bored she roamed around the markets of Tianqiao or Qianmen to scout for new opportunities. Seeking work also meant consulting with local employment brokers (laomadian), older women who had set up legitimate storefront establishments to provide referrals, and who knew what kinds of jobs could be found throughout the city. Locally they were considered part of a continuum that included traffickers, matchmakers, and neighborhood gossips.43 These brokers offered a legal ser vice parallel to the criminal deals arranged by trafficking women like Cheng Huang. Over the course of three years of conversations inside the prison with Zhou Shuzhao, Cheng Huang outlined her entire career as a trafficker. She described in detail the execution of over a dozen distinct sales, and alluded to many more. Her profits ranged from 32 to 200 yuan per sale. Even the smallest transactions brought her more than twice what she could make in a month of domestic service. She traveled by railroad, by cart, and on foot. Sometimes she sought out business, but often it came to her. When overextended families did not have the stomach to execute a sale themselves, brokers like Cheng Huang worked on their behalf. When the widow made a delivery in a distant city, whether Changchun, Luanzhou, or Fengtian, local traffickers recognized her, and she could often help them courier their human merchandise back to Beijing, thereby profiting from her return journey as well. 300

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From early on, Cheng Huang had looked at people with an eye to how to sell them. Sometimes this predilection overshadowed her common sense. When searching for a bride for her oldest son, Cheng Huang had insisted upon an attractive and potentially marketable young woman. If the marriage did not work out or if the family encountered difficulty, then she figured they would be able to recoup their investment. Even though it was years ago—back when the widow’s own husband and parents were still alive and long before she began trafficking people herself—Cheng Huang remembered the events as if they happened yesterday. Cheng Huang was on her way to visit her mother, carrying two large bags of radishes and sweet potatoes. She stopped at her neighbor’s house on the way, and although the mother of the household was out at the time, a young girl was at home. Cheng Huang still remembered that the girl was “unbearably lovable from head to toe. That year she was just eleven years old. She had a symmetrical face and pure white skin. She had raven hair that she wore in a thick black braid. I liked her the minute I saw her.” After just one glimpse of her neighbor’s daughter, Cheng Huang coveted her. She left some sweet potatoes and radishes for the family, and hurried home to tell her own mother how much she wanted the beautiful little girl. Cheng Huang’s oldest son, Cheng Tao, was only ten or eleven years old at the time, and so her mother suggested: their family is so poor, why don’t you take the girl on as a child bride? Cheng Huang’s husband was more cautious, and so they waited several years. Later, at some expense, they brought the girl into the family through a proper marriage. Cheng Huang soon regretted her choice: “I became more and more frustrated. She did not understand rules, and did not know how to do anything. But I did not scold her, I knew that she was just something pretty to look at, and thought she might be stolen.” Cheng Tao, who was not more than a boy himself, loved having a pretty wife, but he also often lost his temper with her. Cheng Huang admonished her son not to fight with his wife, but to no avail. As Cheng Huang feared, within half a year the alluring girl had run off. The widow was proud and stubborn; she did not easily admit mistakes. She took the loss hard, saying that the pretty young bride running away, her husband’s death, and his enormous medical bills and funeral expenses had been the three great tragedies of that year. As Cheng Huang spoke, she conflated people with money: “Along came another piece of cash.” The chattel principle was alive and well in North China in the 1920s, and the widow regularly “put people in her pocket.”44 Cheng Huang had an 301

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ambivalent relationship with her reputation. She was pleased people turned to her for “help,” but she resented being stared at on the street.

Shortly after Cheng Huang settled back in with her children, she received word from Liao Yuting that he wanted to meet. The widow hoped Liao intended to repay his old accomplice and make amends, and so agreed to go see him. She brought her eldest daughter along. But compensating the widow was not Liao Yuting’s plan. When Liao Yuting saw how fair skinned and beautifully proportioned Cheng Huang’s eldest daughter—now fourteen—had grown up to be, he proposed that Cheng Huang and all three of her young daughters accompany him to Fengtian. He claimed he could find Cheng Huang a nice innkeeper to marry who would help her raise her family. Looking around at how prosperous Liao Yuting himself seemed, her daughter thought the offer sounded tempting. Infuriated, Cheng Huang told her, “Yes, there is plenty to eat and drink here, but, you wretched girl, the minute you turn your back, he will sell you. Didn’t you know?” Cheng Huang’s experiences made her wary for her daughters. She did not merely oppose unsuitable matches, but suspected any father who suggested a marriage between his son and her daughter of being a trafficker. Cheng Huang was susceptible to dark stirrings of vengeance. She told Zhou Shuzhao, “If you strike me, I will strike back harder,” saying she had warned a competitor, “You are bad, but I am worse.” She schemed mightily against anyone who appeared to threaten her family, often setting her sights on her rivals’ children. Liao Yuting’s daughters were all safely grown up, but another man, named Chen Zhiming, had also once made the unfortunate mistake of offering his son as a prospective husband. Occasionally the widow involved her children in her plans. In 1924 Cheng Huang waited while her sixteen-year- old son Cheng Fu used a jumping cricket to lure Chen Zhiming’s eight-year- old daughter farther and farther down the dusty street and away from her home. Within a few hours they sold the girl for 80 or 90 yuan to an opera troupe that performed in a teahouse across town.45 When Chen Zhiming begged Cheng Huang to return his daughter, she demanded he pay her first. Cheng Huang boasted that Chen had to arrange a conditional (dian) sale of a portion of his farmland in order to be able to pay her an additional 10 yuan. Then Cheng Huang went to the teahouse and made a ruckus among the customers 302

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gathered in the doorway, audaciously demanding more money as payment for the girl. To get her to go away and stop disturbing their clientele, the proprietor gave Chen’s daughter back. The girl returned to her father, and the widow had made almost 100 yuan. She later blamed herself for her bad influence on her boys. “Because of all this, both my older and younger son became corrupted.”46 She was more protective of her daughters, proud of the fact that she had been able to shield them from the predatory world she knew so intimately. She told Zhou Shuzhao, “All my children are tough (lihai). . . . My children also have a wide network of playmates. They all have sworn brothers everywhere. This helps them to stay out of trouble.” In 1929 Cheng Huang’s older son, Cheng Tao, served as bait in another kidnapping. One of Cheng Tao’s sworn brothers had managed to kidnap the fourteen-year-old daughter of a bank manager and presented the girl to Cheng Huang to sell. Whether it was the young girl’s real nickname or not, the widow called her Yinzi (little silver one, or silver piece). Yinzi was ner vous, and the widow reassured her with a handsome photograph of Cheng Tao, promising she could marry him. She told Yinzi that Cheng Tao had gone to Fengtian for business, but that she and a friend would bring Yinzi north by train to meet her new husband. Yinzi was a welldressed, modern-looking girl with bobbed hair, and Cheng Huang worried that as an older woman from the countryside, she did not look like a plausible companion. Although Yinzi came willingly, she still feared they might be questioned on board the train. But Cheng Huang had a lot of experience on these trains, and knew to stay alert to opportunities as they developed. Once inside the train car, Cheng Huang noticed an older affluent-looking gentleman in an overcoat traveling alone, and she positioned herself and Yinzi alongside him, so that they appeared to be traveling as one party. She hoped they might appear to be his servants. Her strategy worked, and the railway inspectors passed them right by. Cheng Tao was of course not waiting in Fengtian, and the widow sold Yinzi to a long-standing client, a brothel keeper, instead. … … … … … … … … …

The manipulation of expectations and bait-and-switch were features of the trade. Widow Cheng Huang, like most traffickers, understood implicitly that part of what makes people such a lucrative commodity (then and 303

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now) is that they can be sold multiple times. Every sold person potentially embodied multiple sales. Republican newspapers, as well as handbooks devoted to describing the “black plots” of the city, warned would-be buyers of wives to beware of tricksters who went “falconing with a woman”47 (fang ying) and told men not to fall into a “tiger snare” (hutao).48 This effective swindle required two people. One person posed as the impoverished brother or even husband of a desperate woman. He negotiated a sale / marriage, expressed his relief, pocketed the money, and said his tearful goodbyes. Then he would wait until his female partner slipped away to rejoin him. Together the pair could then disappear and ply the same trick again on another gullible mark elsewhere in the city.49 The scam required mobility and anonymity, and was aided by an urban context where comings and goings were frequent, with room to disappear into a crowd and reinvent oneself elsewhere. These prerequisites made deceptions of this sort increasingly feasible and inspired renewed anxiety in the Republican era. A few months after her trip to Fengtian with the banker’s daughter, Cheng Huang settled down in the countryside outside of Beijing. She bought a pig and some chickens, and took work as a hired laborer. She told Zhou Shuzhao she had missed country life, and at first she considered giving up her criminal activities, but before long she was plotting to “rescue” an eleven-year- old girl from an abusive stepfather. That crime proved too audacious, her accomplices turned out to be unreliable, and she was caught. Cheng Huang had hoped she might be able talk her way out of prosecution, but all of the widow’s years of experience and strategies in court amounted to nothing when the rural police magistrate questioned Cheng Huang’s own youngest daughter. She was now twelve years old, and a recent playmate of the widow’s latest target. Cheng Huang herself characterized her littlest daughter as too honest and credulous for her own good, and as quick to repeat whatever was said in her hearing. So when the judge asked the little girl about her mother’s activities, she talked not only about their most recent guest but also about her mother’s other trips away from home. Once Cheng Huang’s own daughter had spilled so much family history on the stand, the police magistrate had little choice but to recommend that the District Court seek a maximum sentence for Cheng Huang. Zhou Shuzhao first met Cheng Huang at the beginning of her eightyear sentence. The widow had a strange sense of humor, and the aspiring sociologist had a difficult time comprehending Cheng Huang’s volatile 304

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emotions. The widow laughed, she expressed anger, she even threatened suicide, but during the three years Zhou Shuzhao visited, the widow never shed a single tear. Probing for some trace of sadness, Zhou Shuzhao asked about the time when Cheng Huang’s youngest daughter—the same one whose life she had saved six years earlier, and who had inadvertently testified against her—came to visit the prison: “Did your daughter cry?” “Yes, she cried,” the widow confirmed. Zhou Shuzhao pressed her: “Did you cry?” “What would I cry for? If my daughter was already crying, what’s the point of me crying?” And then, Zhou Shuzhao tells us, the widow laughed.50 … … … … … … … … …

Police and court records offer a view of society that disproportionately selects for crime and violence. Seen from the perspective of the traffickers, the cases in these archives represented failure. Something had gone wrong in a planned transaction, drawing the unwanted attention of the state. Whether this attention came in the form of a police investigation, a court case, or the intervention of a welfare institution, state intervention meant the broker’s deal had fallen through. Zhou Shuzhao’s interviews in the prison, however, documented not only traffickers’ incriminating failures but also their previous moments of triumph. Just as an individual person might be sold more than once, a single trafficker in jail represented not one sale, but many. These interviews qualitatively capture the scale and social penetration of a market that cannot be tabulated merely by counting police files, court cases, or newspaper reports. The careers recorded by Zhou Shuzhao suggest a broad and diverse market. These men and women brokered people for dif ferent purposes and with various motives. By reflecting upon transactions spanning across individual careers, the view from within the prison incorporated a wider perspective than the crime blotter snapshots in contemporary newspapers. Republican China’s newspapers primarily reported two kinds of titillating abductions: political kidnapping and the kidnapping of women for the brothel trade. Journalistic preoccupations with the underworld obfuscate the deeply embedded marketability of people in Chinese society. The Republican period witnessed an expansion of the venues for the consumption and absorption of human bodies, especially, but not only, women’s bodies, within 305

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changing family structures, inside an increasing number of brothels, on the factory floor, and in the period’s contending local armies. Trafficking was just one supply mechanism. Though trafficking represented the criminal end of a spectrum, the strategies, promises, and rationales employed by intermediaries of all kinds, ranging from local matchmakers to the roaming labor brokers who approached young women in the countryside to recruit them for factory work, constituted a familiar set of patterns and often capitalized on similar desperations. Kidnapping and abduction were often women’s crimes, not only because women were their primary targets, but because many sales could not have been arranged without the active engagement of female traffickers. Women traffickers set the lure or assuaged the anxious victim. They made hollow promises sound convincing. Women criminals represented nearly half of the abductions reported in North China’s newspapers. (This proportion, however, only selectively reflects a broader trade in people. Women were rarely involved in whole categories of deception that carried on largely underneath both judicial and journalistic radar. Coerced military ser vice was one such activity. The predacious activities of profiteering press gangs proceeded largely without scrutiny.) Demographically, trafficking was a mature woman’s crime, but at times it demanded stamina and physical fitness—General Na Shunhong’s ambitious widow, we saw, wrangled groups of three to five children under the age of five on her own as she traveled from Tianjin to Hong Kong. Most women criminals were between the ages of thirty and fifty. Approximately half of those women were widows; the majority of the remainder had already married. Marital experience both gave a woman credibility and potentially doubled the breadth of her network. As was evident from Cheng Huang’s experience, widows could be either perpetrators or victims. Traffickers targeted those whom they could isolate, and this included single women and children, as well as young widows and women living temporarily on their own. As Republican China became increasingly fractured by militarism, and yet increasingly integrated by trade and transportation, families lived apart in greater numbers than in previous times. This was the situation for a rural woman surnamed Zeng whom Cheng Huang’s oldest son, Cheng Tao, abducted in 1929. Mrs. Zeng’s husband and older sons had all joined the army, leaving the young wife at home alone with a five-year-old son and a newborn daughter. Her husband’s parents had died, and it had been six months since her husband had sent any money home. 306

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Cheng Tao and one of his sworn brothers enticed Mrs. Zeng with the promise of food and clothing for her child, and they delivered her to Cheng Huang to sell. The widow then sold the mother and child to a childless family living in Luanzhou. Cheng Tao and his sworn brother could not have sold Mrs. Zeng and her infant daughter without help. Cheng Tao relied upon his mother to turn women he abducted into profit. Cheng Huang even scolded her son for failing to appreciate all her years of experience, and for thinking that everything she had accomplished came easily.51 Women were deeply embedded in the logistics of the human marketplace. Still, at both the state and the societal level, the dominant discourse on trafficking perpetuated fear of unattached men. Most traffickers were not charismatic sexual predators like Zeng Shunde. For some it could be a slippery slope from paid matchmaker or labor broker to trafficker. The community service of each of these roles was essential. The lives of ordinary families—like the Luanzhou household who purchased the mother and daughter pair—intersected with an increasingly criminal category of intermediary. … … … … … … … … …

In 1932 Zeng Shunde was released from prison early. He too benefited from one of the former capital’s recurring amnesties. Zhou Shuzhao received several letters from Zeng after his release. He told her he had moved to Tianjin—his parents had been so ashamed of him that they had left Beijing to start over in Tianjin, and he went to find them. Now, as his parents grew older, Zeng felt a filial obligation to stay close to home, especially as his sisters were busy with families of their own. He informed Zhou Shuzhao that he was making a humble living as a barber, and that out of respect for his parents he was no longer involved in trafficking. Zhou Shuzhao remarked in her notes: “From his letters it is difficult to confirm if he had truly reformed himself.” As an idealistic sociologist, Zhou Shuzhao wanted to believe in the redemptive potential within traffickers, but despite Zeng Shunde’s assurances, she remained skeptical. On the whole, Zhou Shuzhao expressed satisfaction with the information she had gathered from convicts in the Beijing Number One Prison. There was one area, however, in which she felt her sources were especially lacking. While her classmates and mentors focused on poverty, Zhou Shuzhao wondered whether something specific in the childhoods of these 307

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convicts might explain their later callousness and willingness to sell people. Reading the trafficker Zeng Shunde’s description of his devotion to his family, as he reiterated his sorrow over bringing shame upon his parents, it is hard to see how, in his case, family life could offer any explanation. Similarly, widow Cheng Huang also grew up in a household with parents who cared for her. She told Zhou that as a child she became known among all the other farming children as a loud girl who spoke her mind; she had always been headstrong and determined, and ready to look out for herself. But none of these characteristics provided a satisfactory solution to Zhou Shuzhao’s quest for the psychological or socioeconomic childhood origins of a future trafficker. Zhou Shuzhao’s interest in childhood and children would later lead her in a dif ferent direction. After the Second World War, Zhou Shuzhao and her husband, Yan Jingshan, moved to Taiwan.52 She and her husband struggled to have children of their own, and eventually Zhou Shuzhao adopted a daughter from her younger sister, Zhou Shuxian. This is an important reminder that trafficking was just one way in which Chinese families recalibrated household demographics; the demand for such adjustment extended across society. When family transfers went smoothly, whether or not money had been involved, the state rarely took note. Recall that before the Taiping Rebellion, great-grandfather Zhou Fu’s parents too had given Zhou Fu’s younger brother away to be raised by his uncle. Especially for children living through difficult times, intrafamilial transfers were not unusual, though they could be frightening. At first, Zhou Shuzhao made up stories to help her restless adopted daughter / niece to sleep at night. Later, Shuzhao combined her experience as a parent and her academic interest in childhood with her appreciation for literature. She began to write children’s books. These stories emphasized life’s beauty and challenges. They also drew upon hardships Zhou Shuzhao had witnessed while pursuing her sociological research. In one parable she wrote for children, a brave little girl’s father dies and she must travel into the countryside to raise money to care for her mother. Zhou Shuzhao wanted her stories to help children to “grasp the principles of filiality and love” but did not want to shield them completely from tragedy. She hoped that complex stories like “The Musician’s Music Box” would help young readers “comprehend times when life was not perfect.”53 Although Zhou Shuzhao failed to pinpoint a childhood indicator for trafficking, her search for such a marker broadened the scope of her con308

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versations in the Beijing prison. She called upon her informants to tell her everything they could about their lives, and the resulting portraits are more complete due to her tenacious interest in traffickers’ personalities and personal histories. Zhou Shuzhao’s commitment to the traffickers as whole people meant that their conversations ranged widely, touching upon aspects of their home life, their relationships with partners and rivals in crime, and the passions that drove them forward. It is evident from her notes that the men and women with whom she so assiduously cultivated friendships cherished the opportunity to share their stories. In a prison facility with strong restrictions on when and where convicts were permitted to speak, meetings with the inquisitive female researcher opened up a special venue for expression. Zhou Shuzhao had little way to cross-check the veracity of their stories, but even if Zeng Shunde exaggerated his exploits to impress her, or if the widow Cheng Huang misrepresented her relationship with her children, the traffickers’ narratives still portrayed a world of dynamic transactions in people and the culture of a criminal profession. Zhou Shuzhao spent three years befriending people known for their ability to deceive, but their desire for revenge or for stability, their fears, their self-effacement, their anger, frustration, and insecurity—all this was real. The incredible detail of their recollections, as well as the intricacy of the networks they described, outline the logistics and challenges of trafficking from within. Too often crime and vice can be seen only through the eyes of prosecutors and abolitionists. The voices recorded by Zhou Shuzhao contribute an important dimension to our view of trafficking. From inside the prison, alongside Zhou, we readily grasp the emotional and personal ties, as well as the deception, that made traffickers effective suppliers of domestic, sexual, and reproductive labor.

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Modern slavery is old in China. Today this expression has become the latest international umbrella term to cover both human trafficking and ongoing violations of the human rights of the trafficked. Laden with an explicit comparison with the past, the concept of “modern slavery” is as contentious as its panic-inducing early twentieth-century predecessor, “white slavery.” Both terms carry heartrending connotations and have been criticized for sensationalism, for failing to appreciate past atrocities, and for masking the agency of purported victims. Although recent decades have witnessed renewed attention to the sale of people within and across borders, the practices and patterns of trafficking are lamentably long-standing. Old, too, are the problems with a concept that conflated many dif ferent statuses under an uneasy title and undermined the state’s ability to differentiate levels of exploitation and the diverse mechanisms that enabled traffickers. The United Nations defines human trafficking as the recruitment, transport, harboring, or acquisition of persons by means or threat of force, coercion, abduction, deception, or manipulation of a position of vulnerability, for the purpose of exploitation.1 This definition, from the 2000 Trafficking Protocol, refined and expanded upon a succession of accords drafted by international voluntary associations advocating for protections for women in 1904 and 1910, by the League of Nations in 1921, 1933, and 1937, and by the United Nations in the wake of the Second World War. Like earlier documents, the 2000 protocol was initiated at a time of heightened con310

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cern about the crossing of international borders, the intersection of trafficking, smuggling, and illegal migration, as well as growing anxieties and reports of sexual exploitation. The deep roots of trafficking in China predate international attempts to draft inclusive prohibitions and prosecutory frameworks. The “exploitation” of sold people throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was more nuanced and multidirectional than recent definitions allow. To understand the persistence of trafficking in China requires looking domestically, not merely within the country but deep into the realm of the household. The traffickers in this book capitalized on the misfortune of their neighbors, lovers, friends, and family. They also reached out beyond their personal networks to finalize their transactions and secure profits. Their success relied not solely upon the use or threat of force and their deceptive skills but also upon broad acceptance of the idea that to sell a person remained a socially legitimate course of action well after the government criminalized trafficking. Most Western nations claim to abolish slavery only once. Prohibiting trafficking, on the other hand, has universally required regular legislative maintenance. China’s historical grappling with slavery has followed the pattern of modern slavery and trafficking in its need for repeated abolitions. Emperors’ gestures to eliminate slavery more closely resembled amnesties than permanent social transformation. The inextricable tie between trafficking, the transactional family, and its wide spectrum of statuses made eliminating the sale of people a recurring dilemma for Qing jurists. On its surface the 1910 prohibition appeared definitive. A thoroughgoing reform initiative, followed by a revolution, meant that the Republican government no longer preserved laws out of ancestral loyalty to previous rulers. The contradictory substatutes that had so troubled late Qing jurists Xue Yunsheng and his student Shen Jiaben had been supplanted by an entirely new legal code.2 Regulations accompanying the prohibition, however, created loopholes to allow the transactional Chinese family to continue to function. This persistent permissiveness coincided with dramatic structural changes resulting in the expansion of trafficking in Chinese society. Environmental disasters, rebellions, and the sex ratio imbalance of the late Qing had already strained family life for many throughout North China. In the opening decades of the Republican period, families further encountered 311

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urbanization, diversifying commercial opportunities, developing transportation infrastructure, social delocalization, and recurring military conflicts. With the Republican government arrived ideas of citizenship, equality, and independence. Some families facing these forces strove to maintain Confucian households, yet still others—with varying degrees of reluctance or enthusiasm—abandoned the pretense of traditional morality. Previously some of the harms inherent in China’s long-standing transactional family had been constrained by paternalist obligations as well as oversight from tightly knit communities. The upheaval of the Republican period tore these protective layers away. This instability created a perfect environment for entrepreneurial brokers to build upon existing transactional behavior. In the midst of modernizing social change, Chinese households continued to demand reproductive, sexual, and domestic labor, and competing intermediaries maneuvered to sell people to fill those needs. Families who during the Qing might have turned to protective local guarantors came to rely upon more predatory agents. Potential destinations for sold people also proliferated during the Republican period, and the growth of diverse forms of genuine employment for women opened up previously unavailable avenues for deception. The rupturing forces of modernity enabled an expansion of trafficking practices. Outlawing modest fees for matchmaking eliminated the incentive for benign intermediaries to provide occasional introductions, and raised the stakes and potential profit for predatory ones. It became increasingly possible to earn a living as a broker (zuo mei wei sheng). While the trade in people had helped constitute families throughout China’s history, the Republican period witnessed a shift from transacting to trafficking. Criminalizing previously tolerated practices redefined categories of criminals, and simultaneously created a dynamic, newly illicit marketplace. The sale of people, well after prohibition, drew legitimacy from the role that monetary transactions played in forming essential family relationships, like marriages and adoptions, and in forging bonds of domestic and reproductive servitude. Cash transactions, in turn, became reinforced by traditional social hierarchies that made the outcomes of trafficking appear to “make sense” in the home or even in the brothel, where a virtuous cycle of filial self-sacrifice could bind a daughter to brothel ser vice as tightly as a debt. Even after the sale of people had been illegal for some time, the presence of purchased slave girls or concubines in wealthy households 312

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raised few eyebrows. For decades to come, newspapers, magazines, and court circulars continued to exhort such households to “liberate their slave girls.”3 Judicial records indicate that buyers were least likely to be censured for their participation in the market, and their appetite for people kept the trade in motion. Chinese households included various kinds of people. There were, of course, those who entered a family naturally at birth, those who joined a family through marriage, and those who were incorporated through adoption. But households were bigger than families; they were also populated with household members who had been purchased, indentured, exchanged, or hired. North China’s transactional families included slave girls who waited on their mistresses and often bore the brunt of bad tempers and family rivalries; child brides who toiled in anticipation or dread of the day when they might possibly marry; concubines who braced themselves for the possibility they might be sold, or who dreamed they might displace the wife; and even young children who performed with troupes of beggars on the city streets. Prohibitions aside, throughout the Republican period the practice of moving people from one household to another, for cash, was socially tolerated and, depending on the circumstances, could be considered anything from a necessary evil to a status-appropriate solution for a family in need. For many, transactions in people established household hierarchies and ensured the family continuity necessary to maintain Confucian norms. Seemingly orthodox Chinese Confucian families relied upon the hidden mechanisms of the transactional family. Whether directly or indirectly, most families living in North China during this period had contact with the trade in people. Despite a legal system that by the end of the dynasty had prohibited the outright sale of people, brokers could be found at work in every neighborhood—sometimes even competing within a household. This book has explored the techniques and justifications used by the men and women who carried out these transactions. It has also revealed the conflicted perspectives of Beijing’s police and judicial officers who found themselves forced to mediate between the local needs of families and the shifting agenda of the state. Prosecuting “buying and selling people” (maimai renkou) and other new crimes related to trafficking required police to intervene in arenas previously reserved for family decision makers. The remarkably detailed records kept by the police provide fleeting moments of insight into the lives of sold people. The picture we 313

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gain of the brokering of people between Beijing households is a complicated one. In a revolutionary time when the Republic’s national elite had begun to think in terms of individual rights and equality, freedom for many sold people continued to be bartered away in exchange for equally compelling necessities: food, shelter, and social protection. In times of privation, personal autonomy meant less than having a place. Once brought into a new household, moreover, sold people were not entirely without recourse. Buyers laid claim to their purchases, but new masters often discovered that these transactions meant they, too, had some obligation to the people whom they had bought or whose ser vices they had contracted.

The wet nurses who struck back against their masters were not alone in challenging their lot. Although shirking, theft, and flight were the most common forms of resistance, slaves and servants also devised more subversive ways to undermine their masters’ authority. They insinuated ongoing trafficking to the local constable, or slipped off together, or encouraged another servant to abscond. In some households, particularly brazen servants served as intermediaries themselves, brokering more gullible servants to traffickers or convincing them to go along with a marriage arrangement behind their masters’ backs. Sometimes these in-house brokers managed a profit, pocketing the fee customarily paid to a professional matchmaker. One final example from the police archive dating from the early years of the Republican period shows the democratic depth of the trade and implicates the city’s police force and welfare institutions in the transfer of domestic labor between households. By 1913 Zhang Biying had been a slave girl (binü) in the Peng family for ten years. She had lived with them since she was eight years old. Her place in the family predated the Qing prohibition of slavery and trafficking, but her file tells us nothing about how the Peng family acquired her. One day Zhang Biying overheard the senior Pengs discussing whether they should lease the girl out to work for a different family. Fearful of this change, Zhang Biying complained to another older female servant in the household, a Mrs. Song née Du. The older woman egged her on and eventually persuaded Zhang Biying that rather than risk being sold off, she ought to run away with a friend of Mrs. Song’s who promised to find her work on better terms. Upon discovering the girl missing, the Pengs promptly filed a report with the police. Not long thereafter, police apprehended Zhang Biying 314

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and sent her to a rehabilitation home (jiuliangsuo). According to Zhang Biying’s police file, administrators at the rehabilitation home assured the Beijing municipal police they would make arrangements to indenture the girl (who was by now a young woman of eighteen) elsewhere.4 In the end the young woman had to face the very same fear that had impelled her to run away from the Pengs in the first place—laboring for her board in an unfamiliar household. Zhang Biying’s story compressed a series of transactions into one short police dossier. She had been sold as a child, that family planned to lease her out, a fellow servant introduced her to another intermediary, and eventually the police stepped in to facilitate a final arrangement. When the government itself acts as a broker, distinctions between successive transactions become hazy. The fact that household domestics also frequently involved themselves in facilitating transactions alters our perspective and impedes our ability to see “resistance” in a straightforward way. It no longer sits where we expect it to on what might be thought of as an exploitation continuum. As an institution of domination, Chinese household slavery included the exertion of power by people throughout lower levels within the family hierarchy. Across society the numbers of slave girls diminished with prohibition and a correlating increase in hired servants. Still, for tens of thousands of individual young women (whether called nübi, mui tsai, shinü, or yatou) their experience of bondage remained total. A delicate balance of propriety, hierarchy, and obligation made relationships of servitude possible and sustainable. When this balance was not enough, household heads had the power to maintain them by force. For people who joined Beijing households through sale, the suspended possibility of such violence was as potent as the harshest, most inevitable punishment. The Chinese experience leads me to argue for a shift in analytical perspective, one that considers bondage as a process rather than a status.5 This approach allows us to appreciate exploitation when and where we find it in the historical record, rather than compelling us to try to quantify the extent of slavery, bondage, or coercion, and rather than forcing us to extrapolate entire histories and futures of violence from a single recorded moment. Moreover, the omnivorous spectrum of statuses involved in trafficking in China make questions of scale impossible to answer. Approaching trafficking as a process, similar to and sometimes attendant upon enslavement, allows the individuals involved to occupy more than 315

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“Looking at Pictures of Available Women Inmates at the Jiuliangsuo.” Sidney D. Gamble Photographs, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University (274-1565).

one position at once, without obscuring our view of the hierarchies at play in these arrangements. The nature of bonded domestic labor as it evolved in Republican Beijing was such that a servant could be tied to the household while simultaneously facilitating—and potentially profiting by—the removal of another 316

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servant, slave girl, or young daughter from that same household. During the Qing, a plot like this could have been prosecuted as outright theft. With the category of slave stricken from the legal code, jurists and police had to assess whether transactions were criminal and therefore ought to be condemned and punished in accordance with the new Republican criminal code, or whether disputes instead fell into the recently introduced abstract category of “civil” law. And yet China did not promulgate a civil code until 1928. This presented a conundrum. If the disputes were civil in nature, then which portions of the old dynasty’s code remained applicable? Judges and police magistrates were forced to rely upon their own discretion, and they often came to contradictory conclusions. Municipal police officers suggested compromises as they mediated between traffickers and Beijing households. Since removing a servant, hired laborer, child bride, or slave girl was no longer considered “theft,” the question remained, was it criminal to broker an introduction? The ten regulations on the prohibition against buying and selling people that Zhou Fu drafted in 1910 forbade the use of intermediaries for anything other than the transfer of a wife or concubine. After the revolution, the role of Qing law in the Republican period became ambiguous.6 The regulations had hardly indicated a universal judicial desire to eliminate the practice of using middlemen. Given the other challenges the Republican government faced, line-by-line enforcement proved impossible. Throughout the Republican period, legal restrictions on the sale of people were matched by traffickers’ innovative strategies for continuing their trade. Brokers, matchmakers, and other local intermediaries remained essential suppliers of people to provide domestic, reproductive, and sexual services. Moreover, merely mediating a transaction was rarely enough to warrant criminal charges, and many local courts advocated leniency. Although transactions in people relied heavily upon personal and kinship relationships as well as shared community knowledge, lateral ties between servants themselves could be weak. Competition for influence within a family meant that servants were not necessarily each other’s natural allies. Household heads deputized their family retainers and servants to manage their affairs. This sometimes necessitated dealing with the local constabulary and could entail shielding their masters or reporting on one another. For many long-term servants, it was natural to privilege their relationship with their master above relationships with fellow domestics. After all, the limited social influence and status any bonded servant held 317

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derived from his or her position as a member of a particular household. This is the painful paradox of the North Chinese pattern of domestic exploitation: social norms dictated that it was better to be abused within a household, any household, than flung out into the dangerous world as an atomized individual. Heads of household trusted their servants to take care of tasks with which they did not want to sully themselves. These sorts of tasks included dealing with the police, disciplining other servants, and sometimes managing the sale or transfer of someone out of the holding-household. By requiring that servants discipline each other, as well as delegating responsibility to a servant for the sale of someone from the household, Republican-period household heads accomplished several things. First, they spared themselves the discomfort of administering a beating or liaising with ne’er-dowells like matchmakers or traffickers. Second, they gave senior servants responsibility for tasks that during the Qing had often been left in the hands of senior women in the household. This included managing other servants. Third, they removed themselves from situations in which they might be held criminally accountable—if the violence of discipline went too far or if a transaction soured. Sometimes servants boldly told police they had acted on their master’s instructions. On other occasions they took the blame themselves, either honestly or out of loyalty. Malicious intent and goodwill are difficult to weigh. As case records typically show, the deposition of a matchmaker began with the claim that it was the family of a woman or child who approached the matchmaker in desperation, rather than the other way around. (Fictional literature, however, tended to portray the opposite: a predatory matchmaker who swoops upon a poor family in a vulnerable moment.) Similarly, when one servant helped another escape, the brokering servant’s testimony tended to emphasize that the idea originated with the runaway. Neighbors who helped unhappy wives elope made the same claims.7 By asserting that he or she meant only to facilitate an already desired departure, an intermediary redirected responsibility back onto the runaway. This tendency also explains why so many intermediaries testified to police that the person they were brokering had been maltreated by their last mistress or head of household. In their depositions, fellow servants who served as matchmakers on a onetime basis took no responsibility for the conditions at the destination household, whether or not they had initially made promises about the desirability of 318

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a given situation. No matter how much an intermediary had coaxed a family, a husband, or a runaway to accede to their scheme, it was in their legal interest to establish that the initiative came from the person being transferred. Arrangements made between servants introduce questions about the role of free will in a less than free context. Cooperative human merchandise was not just easier to transport; it could be a better investment. The very omnipresence of the market for domestic and reproductive labor, and the fact that other servants could compete as brokers in this market, gave household domestics opportunity for leverage. At the same time, the threat / opportunity of sale and resale was everywhere. That threat was backed both by potential violence in the household and by the state’s own approach to rehabilitating sold people, which ranged from carceral facilities to arranged marriage or work placement. By stipulating that suitors and employers contribute to welfare institutions in exchange for wives and domestics, the state perpetuated some of the same practices it targeted for prohibition.8 Laws explicitly forbidding the sale of people required police to cast intermediaries in the role of villain in order to obtain a conviction. But what about the times when individuals allowed themselves to be sold? Police who sought to rescue and return runaways to their masters attributed a false consciousness to the runaway. Rather than examine the conditions in the household a runaway had fled, police operated on the premise that servants who ran off had been misled into thinking their situation would be better elsewhere. This police perspective was not unfounded: Traffickers did often seize upon the moment in which their target’s judgment was most clouded, after a beating or other unhappy circumstance, to make their deceptive proposals. At the same time, other sold people initiated contact with their brokers. Instability and inversions of influence (if not power) in these transactions were features of the Chinese chattel principle at work. Cases involving children forced police to adjudicate family boundaries as they assessed possible crimes. Police ambivalence about how to handle the persistent use of slave girls in postabolition Republican China continued well into the 1930s. A set of eight police guidelines from 1937 admonished Beijing officers to be diligent in their efforts to eliminate the practice of raising slaves and slave girls (yang nu he nübi), and advised police to investigate the living conditions in which such people were held.9 319

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Surviving cases indicate that adherence to the guidelines varied considerably. Moreover, the late date of the guidelines itself suggests significant tolerance for the practice of keeping “slaves” even when the means of acquiring them had been forbidden decades earlier. Newspaper announcements throughout the 1930s reminded families in Hebei, Shanxi, Sichuan, and Zhejiang (and elsewhere) that “keeping domestic slave girls” was illegal even when for allegedly charitable purposes.10 Suspected traffickers and purchasers testified that young children had been adopted rather than purchased, and putative families had various ways to back up this claim. Republican law enforcement and judicial officials constantly struggled to determine what constituted genuine family relationships and mutual obligations of support. On July 23, 1930, the Guomindang’s Central Political Council met to discuss the most recent draft of laws pertaining to the family. These laws prohibited concubinage and the buying of slave girls. Yet council members worried about contradictions within what they referred to as the “family system” (jiating zhidu). They advocated a conservative approach: “There is still room to research whether individualism (geren zhuyi) or familialism (jiashu zhuyi) is nowadays gaining or losing. For several thousand years, our social organization has been based upon the family system. If we, in one day, should overturn it radically, there is reason to believe that we should meet with difficulties that would make implementation difficult and overwhelm society.”11 Where family was concerned, GMD lawmakers found themselves in a position not dissimilar to that of Shen Jiaben and the other officials charged with revising the Qing legal codes two decades earlier: It was easier to criminalize actions than accepted family roles. The 1930s saw a surge in editorial attention to the condition of young girls working as domestics; newspapers and magazines printed almost five times more articles on the plight of slave girls during this decade than in any other. But these articles were imprecise. They rarely identified families or girls by name or described specific investigations, and instead took the form of opinion pieces, songs, poems, anonymous letters, unsigned confessionals from the embarrassed children of affluent families, short stories, and vague sensationalist exposés. Media attention spoke more to anxieties about stratification in a modernizing society and the abstract fate of young women than to concrete social conditions. More explicit reminders 320

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of the law continued in official government bulletins, including periodic warnings announcing that families who refused to “liberate all slave girls within two weeks” should pay a fine of “up to 300 yuan.”12 The League of Nations published the results of its investigation of trafficking throughout the Far East in 1932, emphasizing the large proportion of Chinese women traded both internationally and within China. The League’s analysis echoed the concerns raised by GMD lawmakers, as they, too, pointed to “the family system” and the demand for male descendants as obstacles to eliminating trafficking practices.13 For the most part, however, the League of Nations investigation focused primarily on the sex trade in treaty port cities. In response, Chinese officials wrote to the League to confirm their ongoing efforts to eliminate prostitution and the sale of children. One Shanghai official, however, conceded to the League that “as long as the girls are comfortable and the act was committed before the [most recent 1927] law came into force, the Government is not in a position to do anything further.”14 If we compare the coverage of trafficking in the Chinese press and in the international arena with the manifestations of trafficking most evident in the judicial and police archive, one thing becomes clear: China’s courts saw abduction, deception, and purported trafficking play as evident a role in family life as they did in supplying the brothel trade. Women and children remained vulnerable targets for traffickers, but legal terms for trafficking could be deployed in other ways. Men used accusations of forcible abduction (lüeyou) to try to retrieve their wives, even when those wives had left willingly. Runaway wives responded with charges that delinquent husbands had failed to adequately support them.15 Meanwhile, entrepreneurial brokers continued to manipulate the interstices of the transactional family. These practices persisted under Japanese occupation after 1937, but they also evolved. Zhao Ma has shown that urban women in particular found resilience and strength in community networks during the war. Women worked to change their social, financial, and family circumstances through romantic affairs, the underground economy, and remarriage, and by engaging brokers in their neighborhoods.16 Fighting in the countryside drove people to seek refuge in cities controlled by Japan’s puppet regimes. The chaos of wartime and deracination in an economically precarious society deconstructed the traditional rationale that had once supported the Chinese transactional family. Still, trafficking remained a powerful survival 321

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tool for other wise powerless individuals. To fully eliminate the intricate and intimate hierarchies established within the transactional family would require an overhaul of the country’s entire social system. China would not attempt this until the rise of communism under Mao demanded that traditional filial values be overturned.

The establishment of the People’s Republic of China reversed many of the trends that had made trafficking increasingly easy during the Republican period. Building upon a program initiated by the GMD, the communist state enforced a strict household registration regime (hukou / huji), thereby ending the mobility that had characterized the first half of the century. Travel now required permission from the work unit. Cooperatives and collectives allocated resources based upon the number of people in a family. Thus, with collectivization, families had less incentive to dispose of formerly “excess” children, whether boys or girls. As a result, for two decades or so, sex ratios around the country improved.17 Also, with the 1950 Marriage Law the Communists proclaimed the “freedom of marriage” (hunyin ziyou), abolishing all “arbitrary and compulsory” forms of marriage and the exchange of bride price.18 The law also simplified divorce procedures. With a legitimate avenue for escaping marriage, unhappy wives were less vulnerable to potentially predatory brokers. As the Party intervened in private lives, it assumed the role of patriarch and matchmaker, arranging childcare, providing introductions, and sanctioning revolutionary marriages.19 The supply of women and children for sale shrank accordingly. Other social changes of the early PRC even more dramatically curtailed demand. Communist municipal governments carried out vigorous campaigns to close brothels and reeducate prostitutes, but the transformation of the domestic realm was even more profound. Buyers of household help, who throughout the Republican period had enjoyed a degree of leniency, under communism could no longer plausibly claim to purchase people out of charity or for other reasons that would escape censure. The employment of servants, however engaged, would now condemn elite families as capitalist counterrevolutionaries and make their households targets in their communities. Although this book has not examined these later trends, it appears that communism, at least for a time, disrupted the traditions that had earlier made transactions in people an efficient way to establish and 322

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maintain family hierarchy. In the early Mao years, it was no longer profitable to be a trafficker or feasible to enjoy the fruits of the trade. … … … … … … … … …

The prevalence of trafficking waned after the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949, but the problem has crept back into contemporary Chinese society in new insidious forms, both national and transnational. Mao Zedong’s policies could not completely eliminate agricultural families’ reliance upon sons, and the slightly more balanced sex ratio of the early twentieth century proved temporary. The resulting shortage of women is once again contributing to the rise of trafficking for domestic, reproductive, and sexual ser vices. Since 1979 the combination of the “one child policy” with the economic liberalization of the reform era has further renewed incentives for traffickers. The PRC’s family planning policies created both supply and demand. Local governments penalize families for surplus out-of-plan children. At the same time, individual families experience an acute shortage of offspring as they confront infertility, the loss of a child, or even simply the burdens single children face as the older generation ages.20 While many families continue to place premium value on sons, organizing family planning around their conception and even obtaining sex-selective abortions, they also care deeply for the daughters they have. For many, the picturebook family includes a boy and a girl.21 For some, elaborate exceptions to the one- child rule made having an additional child possible.22 (China’s 2016 relaxation of its policy to allow families to have two children may signal an eventual end to the entire experiment.) However, when the birth of a child violates the population policy, local family planning officials have the authority to remove out- of-plan children. Chinese families with desired excess births have sometimes hidden unregistered newborns with relatives or registered their children under dif ferent names. The decision to abandon an infant at times involved a careful calculus, targeting childless neighbors, or identifying families the government policy would permit to incorporate a second child. The position of unregistered “black children” (hei haizi) is inherently insecure. In addition to being deprived of basic social ser vices and health care, these children are most likely to become caught up in a trafficking situation. Families who fear government reprisals or who simply 323

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find themselves at a loss for what to do with an out- of-plan child may succumb to the reassurances of a contemporary trafficker and sell their child for unofficial adoption. The state has frequently failed to distinguish unregistered family arrangements or the kindhearted rearing of foundlings from coercive trafficking.23 Chinese officials complain that parents who engage brokers or make independent adoption arrangements are ignorant of the law.24 In reality, ignorance of the law may have less to do with this behavior than fear of law enforcement. Just as in the past, traffickers stand ready to exploit fear, and families who desperately want a child feel entitled to adopt one they assume was unwanted or over quota. By engaging brokers and moving children between households, families have returned to practices with a long history. China’s policies have created a contemporary mutation of the transactional family. As Kay Ann Johnson writes, “By the end of the first decade of the 2000s, de facto adoption was heavily implicated in what the government considered ‘child trafficking’ and taking children from adopters was now rationalized as curbing kidnapping and trafficking.”25 To complicate matters further, family planning officials have been accused of selling confiscated babies, and orphanages have been caught purchasing infants and misrepresenting their origins. For their part, adoptive parents, both within China and internationally, have been tragically unaware of their children’s possible pasts.26 The relationship between adoption and international definitions of trafficking is especially fraught, for while across China kidnapped, abandoned, and out-of-plan children are at risk of being bought and sold for profit, sale for purposes of adoption does not conform with an international definition of trafficking based upon “exploitation.”27 The interaction of family needs and coercive state power fuels a host of official and unofficial trafficking activity.

Deeply human needs have always driven the Chinese market in people. The PRC’s family planning policy is unprecedented, but the ambiguities the Chinese government faces in the twenty-first century around defining and prosecuting trafficking are not new. Although the legal reforms of the early twentieth century criminalized the practice of selling people, testimony throughout the Qing and Republican archives indicates that intermediaries who coordinated these transactions did not view their activities 324

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in the same way the law did. Moreover, although their actions were illegal, the networks they relied upon were not inherently criminal. My discoveries for the late Qing and Republican periods resonate with what we know of contemporary trafficking practices around the world. In his study of Chinese international human smugglers, known as “snakeheads,” Sheldon Zhang has suggested that today’s international traffickers view themselves as helpful facilitators, enabling their clients to make significant improvements in their lives. Like their Qing and Republican predecessors, contemporary “snakeheads” consider themselves to be providing a much sought-after ser vice. Zhang’s interviews with traffickers reveal that although the ser vice these traffickers provide remains illegal, both in China and in their destination countries, international laws do not necessarily deflect smugglers from a basically positive self-appraisal of the services they offer.28 They maintain this perspective even while dispatching new arrivals into prearranged exploitative work conditions. Since the start of the twenty-first century the issue of human trafficking has received significant media attention within China. News reports have revealed domestic human traffickers who target the most vulnerable, obtaining forced labor by deceiving children, the poor, the elderly, and the mentally handicapped. During the summer of 2007, Chinese investigative journalists discovered thousands of forced laborers toiling in brick kilns in Shanxi Province.29 The resulting government investigation drew attention to the violent coercion that remains a fact of life for many in China and elsewhere. Several of the young children interviewed by Chinese state television described their first encounter with their kidnappers. In halting words, rescued children told television interviewers they had first been approached at the Zhengzhou train station in Henan. They had been picked up at one of the same stations—along the railway running from Beijing to Wuhan—where Republican railway police had observed traffickers operating throughout the 1920s. Today many domestic traffickers also specialize in kidnapping women to supply brothels and to sell as wives to men living in remote rural areas.30 Others steal young children to sell for adoption both at home and abroad, or to sell into forced labor in kilns, mines, and factories, and forced begging.31 Abductions like these have been the subject of a succession of purportedly “based on real events” major motion pictures in China.32 In 2009 the Chinese public security ministry established a DNA database to help reunite parents with their children, and trafficking has become 325

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an area of concern for the government- sponsored All China Women’s Federation. In 2015 the Chinese government calculated that 10,000 children are kidnapped each year, and unofficial sources place that number significantly higher.33 Even by the government’s most conservative estimate, hundreds of children disappear into the underground market every week. Stripped of the familial logic and social networks of traditional China, it is hard to view traffickers like these as anything other than exploitative. And yet today’s kidnappers ostensibly work to meet long-standing demands—for wives, for children, and for laborers—that have been exacerbated over the three and half decades of the country’s population control policies. The fundamental mechanisms tapped by contemporary traffickers might not, upon closer examination, differ dramatically from those their historical counterparts employed so effectively. Like the men and women who specialized in selling people during the early twentieth century, contemporary traffickers broker hope in exchange for power. Plying the vulnerable with promises of lucrative work or a more comfortable life, they also establish networks and reputations. One of the reasons Chinese workers are willing to place themselves in the hands of labor brokers, despite subsequent hardships, may be that the workers who manage to return home tend to be those who have done well for themselves. Cousins and siblings visit from the city with stories of a better life, some perfectly true, some exaggerated. International migrants who return home may even engage smugglers a second time to try again. In this way, traffickers and consumers of coerced labor successfully establish a culture of recruitment. The durability of this recruitment culture throws doubt upon the standard survival defense employed by many families involved in human trafficking and in brokering unfree labor. The idea that selling another person was a last resort—the result of having “no other choice” or being “unable to do otherwise” (meiyou biede banfa / feizuo buke)—rather than a pragmatic decision—is comforting, but often inaccurate. “No other choice” is an excuse, for scholars, activists, and traffickers alike. In many of the cases I encountered in my research, the participants did make decisions. Some decisions were good; some were bad. Some were rash or hasty, some calculating and considered. Sold people at times themselves seized the opportunities for escape that brokers promised. Others fell into traps laid by kidnappers and con artists. China’s trade in people has persisted in a realm of constrained choices and legislative loopholes. In 2007, as the details of the forced labor in 326

CONCLUSION

Shanxi came out, the All- China Lawyers Association submitted a petition to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress. The lawyers called for a revision of China’s current criminal laws, and asked that “enslavement” be named as a separate offense, with the possibility of incurring a life sentence.34 Forced labor is a crime under Article 244 of the PRC’s criminal law, punishable with three to ten years in prison. Prescribed punishments for traffickers in women and children are more severe, and can include life imprisonment and execution. Sentences for buyers remain more lenient than for sellers.35 Although the U.S. State Department reprimanded China for shortcomings in its human trafficking policy and implementation, the 2016 Trafficking in Persons Report declared the sentences on the books for trafficking women to be “sufficiently stringent and commensurate with those prescribed for other serious crimes, including rape.”36 Nearly one hundred years after China’s prohibition of human trafficking, the state again finds itself struggling with definitions of slavery, trafficking, international scrutiny, and questions of criminalization. Although publicity around the 2007 scandal led to a crackdown on the Shanxi kilns, more recent exposés confirm that the problem remains. “Recruiters” in Henan reportedly receive 300 to 500 yuan for each kidnapped worker they deliver to a kiln site.37 The illicit traffic in unfree labor—whether industrial, domestic, or sexual—remains active in China and elsewhere. … … … … … … … … …

Throughout late Qing and Republican China, transactions in people could be found at the heart of Chinese family life. The notion that a person had a price was not inherently troubling and could alleviate family distress in rough times. Successive governments wrestled with legislation to eliminate exploitative sales without disrupting essential social welfare and familybuilding mechanisms. Their challenge deepened with urbanization, modern transportation networks, diverse opportunities for commerce, and expanding military conflicts. Facing these strains, Chinese families began to rely upon mobile intermediaries with networks extending beyond their local communities. The early twentieth century saw a rise in the activity of entrepreneurial traffickers, men and women who took advantage of the transactional needs of Chinese families, in order to make a profit. Confucianism had once created the traditional hierarchies that made selling some members of a family for the sake of others make sense: it 327

SOLD PEOPLE

created a demand for heirs, and provided the patriarchal logic behind extended families and the elite acquisition of concubines. The transactional family was the unspoken mechanism that made the traditional Confucian family possible. When Confucian social structures deteriorated in the early twentieth century, transactional mechanisms remained in place, unchecked. Brokers continued to ply their trade in a climate of cultural acquiescence. Traffickers adapted quickly, identifying new markets and sources for people to sell. Today they exhibit the same ingenuity. There is broad international consensus that the exploitative trade in humans must be eliminated. Incarcerating those who perpetuate the trade does not eradicate the mechanisms that allow transactions to happen. If slavery and trafficking have flourished in tandem with, and capitalized upon, processes of family construction, then it becomes difficult to intervene without arousing strong cultural objections. The complications China faced in the early twentieth century continue in new forms, showing that governments need to do more than prosecute modern slavery. The history and legacy of the Chinese transactional family suggests we must deepen our understanding of processes that tie transactions in people to basic human relationships.

328

APPENDIX

N OT E S

CHINESE TERMS

ACKN OWLED G M ENTS

INDEX

APPENDIX

Selected Glossary from Zhou Shuzhao’s Interviews Nouns

(Literal)

Zhou Shuzhao’s explanation

laqian ዖ✢

(grasping twine)

the person acting as an intermediary or matchmaker

huachuanzi

(chain of flowers)

tricky abducted person, who is able to deceive the kidnapper, sometimes because they are in the business themselves

zhaoyan’r ᷭ∭‫؜‬

(shining eyes)

a person especially vulnerable to sale

haohua ௱⪹

(good blossom / good to spend money on)

a youngster, and therefore a profitable commodity

lingde 㪗↫

(zero-something)

a small child—of less than ten years

anhuku ᗈ⶛⒞

(concealed tiger’s den)

an unregistered brothel

shukou ḏߡ

(a cooked person / mouth)

a girl or woman who is already married or experienced in brothel life

shengkou ₟ߡ

(fresh person / mouth)

a girl who has not been married or used in a brothel, a virgin

shi Ђ

(business)

used to refer to the abducted person

kou’er ߡ‫؜‬

(mouth)

a measure for a person, the person to be kidnapped

⪹ϐീ

(continued)

331

APPENDIX

Nouns

(Literal)

Zhou Shuzhao’s explanation

wujian’r ẘђ‫؜‬

(without clothes or possessions)

a disenfranchised kidnapped person, or someone from outside of the province

laomenzi ⢤㥹ീ

(an old gate)

an old-timer

laoke ⢤ൽ

(an established customer)

a common term; used by traffickers to describe both intermediaries and buyers with whom they regularly did business

tunkeng นੱ

(stock pit)

the location where someone will be brought, often the back room of a store or the house of someone assisting the trafficker.

pizi ⇄ീ

(leather hide)

clothing

laotou Ẕ㭵

cell boss

Actions / Circumstances shidaohei ‫ݱ‬㕿䀕

(to lead into complete blackness)

after gathering children or women, to cut off all of their communication with their relatives

shangtiaoban

(to walk the gangplank)

to go into the trafficking business

shangtao ίௗ

(to enter the snare)

said when a person who will be abducted has entered the trap

pole bushang, zhanle fengshang ⋪Ͽ⾪ί, ⛌Ͽ✚ί

(torn cloth and ripped seams)

the plan has fallen apart, often because a lawsuit is being brought, or because the master who bought the abducted person was dissatisfied and has returned her / him, and the kidnapper is never able to obtain the money

tunhuo น㊜

(to stockpile goods)

gathered to be a wife or concubine / the product

banwolian ‫ݷ‬䒏⧿

(to half-grasp the face)

to gain partial agreement from the ambivalent family of the person being abducted

zhimen ⇺㥹

(front door)

to sell a woman to be a wife or concubine

pangmen ᔩ㥹

(side door)

to sell a woman as a prostitute or to a brothel

huomen ᪲㥹

(a living door)

after children are abducted, their parents still know how to look for them

simen ᥁㥹

(dead door)

after sons or daughters have been gathered up by the traffickers, their father and mother are not able to speak with them ever again

ί㎥ᙫ

332

APPENDIX

Nouns

(Literal)

Zhou Shuzhao’s explanation

mazhezou 㲃∰㌿

(to go by horse / to go by the ordinary way)

when copulating is part of the kidnapping scheme

hele ࡫Ͽ

(to be together / get along)

intercourse

yikeduan Ω⒟Ⓧ

said when all of the womenfolk and children of a family have been kidnapped in one fell act (In contemporary Beijinghua, yiguoduan’r Ω㤏Ⓧ‫؜‬ expresses “I killed them all.” It can represent greed, as in “I got all of it” or even a perfect score on an exam, similar to “I aced it.”)

you yige ヰΩԟ

(to deceive one)

to convince someone to leave their home on their own and of their own volition

liangde О↫

(clear)

when the family of the person being abducted fully comprehends the situation (in Zhou’s words: “that is to say, when no ‘face- grasping’ Ꮌ⧿ is necessary”)

dangtui ⃕⧆ shunkou 㭚ߡ

to pay the travel expenses of a kidnapped elderly person or child (a smooth talker)

to assuage the kidnapped person

zaixialai ᛼ΰӃ

to sell

kaiwaiche 㥿஫༤

to send away and then detain in one place

dadi ቺྣ

(hit bottom)

to spend money buying people, or to raise money to give to the families of people you have kidnapped

tiaole ጓϿ

(to select, to pick out)

to sell

diqian ྣ㞨

(basic money)

to obtain money from the kidnapped person’s family

di huaile huo lanle ྣ䒐Ͽ቉ṢϿ

(the ground has gone bad, or rotted away)

the kidnapped person has returned home, the opportunity is gone

dihao ྣ௱

(completely submerged)

the abducted person has no room to express repent

diqing ྣ᭘

(the foundation is scarce)

the profits are slim, minimal profits

buzouban β㌿ᙫ

(won’t walk off the plank)

said when the kidnapped person is reliable, and won’t run home to their family (continued) 333

APPENDIX

Nouns

(Literal)

Zhou Shuzhao’s explanation

zhongqian ό✢

(entwined)

to have the victim in the snare

chulüzi ‫ڎ‬ಁീ

(to slip off the tether)

to have an accident

dazaile ቺ᛼Ͽ

to lose a lawsuit

dahongle ቺ☿Ͽ

to win a lawsuit

About the trade zhazihang ᭬ീ

(dredging profession)

profession of buying and selling people

⼾ / ᠇ീ⼾

chuan zhuhua de ⒂ῆ⪹↫)

(wear pearls and flowers

to make a successful living as a matchmaker

chi ren ߺХ

(to eat people)

used to describe when the abducted person succeeds in tricking the kidnapper and stealing his property; can also be used to describe someone who profits by selling people

chi xingfan ߺ⦯㯿

(to eat rancid or uncooked meat / food)

another name for the business of buying and selling people

334

NOTES

Abbreviations BJMA

Beijing Municipal Archive ‫ݔ‬М༱ᢪᜅ㰣

DLCY

Xue Yunsheng, Duli cunyi chongkan ben ㆢӇേ⃦㚳‫ڛ‬ᘪ [Lingering doubts upon reading the substatutes]. 5 vols. Punctuated and edited by Huang Jingjia. Taipei: Chinese Materials and Research Aids Ser vice Center, 1970, reprint.

DLYJSLQW

Daliyuan jie shi li quanwen வ῟㨦ね㚱Ӈ‫ح‬ᓾ. Edited by Guo Wei 㗺㬭, 1927–1928. Taipei: Chengwen chubanshe, 1976, reprint.

DLYPJLQS

Daliyuan panjue li quan shu வ῟㨦‫ڮ‬ᨏӇ‫ح‬ᘆ. Edited by Guo Wei 㗺㬭, 1927–1928. Taipei: Chengwen chubanshe, 1976, reprint.

FHA

First Historical Archive ⓸Ω᤾߯ᢪᜅ㰣 (Beijing)

SHA

Second Historical Archive ⓸Ѓ᤾߯ᢪᜅ㰣 (Nanjing)

SMA

Shanghai Municipal Archive ί᫡ᢪᜅ㰣

STF

Shuntian Prefecture Archive 㭚ஶྩᢪᜅ

XKTB ZF

Xingke Tiben ‫␑ڠ‬㮆ᘪ Zhou Fu ࡐ⏠, Qiupu Zhou Shangshu (Yushan) quanji ␍᫔ࡐෙᘆ [ᾂบ]‫ح‬㩱, Jindai Zhongguo shiliao congkan 㔘фό੄߯ᔉߠ‫ڛ‬. Vol. 9:0082. Edited by Shen Yunlong ᨛ㪔䂭. Taipei: Wenhai Chubanshe, 1967.

335

NOTES TO PAGES 1–4

Chinese Periodicals

Da gong bao Da Zhonghua shangbao Jingcha yuekan Nüzi jie Picai zazhi Qianshuo riri huabao Shenbao

வ‫ذ‬ଐ வό⯂ࣾଐ ㆏ඪᘐ‫ڛ‬ ௩ീ₾ 㓹ት㪅ヨ ᭒ーᕃᕃᔝ⣨⃎ଐ ₯ଐ

Tianjin huabao

ஶ᪝⃎ଐ

Tongzi shijie

Ⓡീκ₾

Zhengfu gongbao

ᓈྩ‫ذ‬ଐ

Introduction 1. Zhou Shuzhao, Beiping youguai de yanjiu [A study of abduction in Beiping], master’s thesis, Yanjing University (Beijing: Yanjing daxue yanjiuyuan shehuixi, May 1933), appendix, 2. 2. Hsieh Baohua, Concubinage and Servitude in Late Imperial China (London: Lexington Books, 2015); Rubie S. Watson, “Wives, Concubines, and Maids: Servitude and Kinship in the Hong Kong Region, 1900–1940,” in Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society, ed. Rubie S. Watson and Patricia Ebrey (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 239. 3. Jerry Dennerline, “Marriage, Adoption, and Charity in the Development of Lineages in Wu-his from Sung to Ch’ing,” in Kinship Organization in Late Imperial China, 1000–1940, ed. Patricia Ebrey and Rubie S. Watson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 170–209; Susan Mann, “Grooming a Daughter for Marriage: Brides and Wives in the Mid- Ch’ing Period,” in Watson and Ebrey, Marriage and Inequality, 205. 4. Watson, “Wives, Concubines, and Maids,” 239. 5. Admittedly, these archives disproportionately document the legal problems of the poor—those most likely to take a pragmatic view of such transactions. 6. Matthew H. Sommer, Polyandry and Wife- Selling in Qing China: Survival Strategies and Judicial Interventions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015). 7. James L. Watson, “The Chinese Market in Slaves, Servants, and Heirs,” in Asian and African Systems of Slavery (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 223–250; James L. Watson, “Chattel Slavery in Chinese Peasant Society: A Comparative Analysis,” Ethnology 15, no. 4 (October 1976): 361–375. 336

NOTES TO PAGES 4–9

8. The Hong Kong region has received more attention than the rest of China with respect to coerced, purchased, and bonded female labor. Historically, the British colony became the target of abolition campaigns and parliamentary mandates issued from the metropole. John M. Carroll, “A National Custom: Debating Female Servitude in Late Nineteenth- Century Hong Kong,” Modern Asian Studies 43, no. 6 (November 2009): 1463–1493; Maria Jaschok, Concubines and Bondservants: The Social History of a Chinese Custom (London: Zed Books, 1988); Angelina Chin, Bound to Emancipate: Working Women and Urban Citizenship in Early Twentieth-Century China and Hong Kong (Plymouth, UK: Rowman and Littlefield, 2012). 9. On prostitution: Gail Hershatter, Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth- Century Shanghai (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Christian Henriot, Belles de Shanghai: Prostitution et sexualité en Chine aux XIXe–XXe siècles (Paris: CNRS Editions, 1997); Elizabeth J. Remick, Regulating Prostitution in China: Gender and Local Statebuilding, 1900–1937 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014); Sue Groenwald, Beautiful Merchandise: Prostitution in China, 1860–1936 (New York: Haworth Press, 1982). On poverty: Janet Y. Chen, Guilty of Indigence: The Urban Poor in China, 1900–1953 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012); Zwia Lipkin, Useless to the State: “Social Problems” and Social Engineering in Nationalist Nanjing, 1927–1937 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). On famine: Lillian M. Li, Fighting Famine in North China: State, Market, and Environmental Decline, 1690s–1990s (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007); Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley, Tears from Iron: Cultural Responses to Famine in Nineteenth- Century China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). 10. Manchester Guardian, March 11, 1910; San Francisco Chronicle, March 25, 1910; New York Tribune, May 11, 1910; Times of India, May 19, 1910; Afro-American, June 11, 1910. 11. Shen Jiaben, “Memorial to the Board of Punishments” (June 12, 1906), Shen Jiyi xiansheng yishu [Bequeathed writings of Shen Jiyi] (Taipei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1964), 887–889. 12. Zhou Shuzhao, Beiping youguai de yanjiu, appendix, 15–16. 13. Ibid., appendix, 16. 14. “Police Regulations,” BJMA J181-17-2776; Luo Suhao, “Domestic(ated) Slave Girls,” Picai Zazhi [Picai magazine], 1922 (1), 48–49; “Capital Police Court Outlaws the Raising of Slave Girls,” Jingcha yuekan [Police monthly], 1936 (4), 4; “Ministry of the Interior’s Method for Strictly Enforcing the Prohibition against Raising Slaves and Slave Girls,” Xinghua, 1933 (29), 44. 15. Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 19. Johnson draws this 337

NOTES TO PAGES 9–11

16. 17.

18.

19.

20. 21.

22. 23. 24.

25.

phrase from the autobiography of James W. C. Pennington, The Fugitive Blacksmith; or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington, Pastor of a Presbyterian Church, New York, Formerly a Slave in the State of Maryland, United States (London: Charles Gilpin, 1849), iv. David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 37. Describing plantation slavery of the American South, Ira Berlin (Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998]) emphasized the systematic economic dependence of the South upon slave labor and production. In contrast, Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff (Slavery in Africa in Historical and Anthropological Perspectives [Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979]) emphasize slavery as part of a continuum of kinship relations. Other Africanists take issue with their analysis, arguing that European intervention caused the kinship mode to be rapidly superseded by an indigenous plantation-style system; see Steven Feierman, “African Histories and the Dissolution of World History,” in Africa and the Disciplines, ed. Robert H. Bates, V. Y. Mudimbe, and Jean F. O’Barr (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 167–212. Dylan C. Penningroth, The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nineteenth- Century South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); Penningroth, “The Claims of Slaves and Ex-Slaves to Family and Property: A Transatlantic Comparison,” American Historical Review 112, no. 4 (2007): 1039–1069. Watson, “The Chinese Market in Slaves,” 8–9. Watson follows definitions proposed in H. J. Neiboer, Slavery as an Industrial System: Ethnological Researches (The Hague: Martinus Nijoff, 1910), and Moses I. Finley, “Slavery,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1968). Watson, “Chattel Slavery,” 374. Jaschok, Concubines and Bondservants; Chin, Bound to Emancipate; Chris White, “ ‘To Rescue the Wretched Ones’: Saving Chinese Slave Girls in Republican Xiamen,” Twentieth Century China 39, no. 1 (January 2014): 44–68. Statute 275, DLCY 4:726–735; Statute 313, DLCY 4:913–914. Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 21–27. Marinus J. Meijer, “Slavery at the End of the Qing Dynasty,” in Essays on China’s Legal Tradition, ed. Jerome Alan Cohen (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 348–352. If a son died, his father could be punished. Masters were not liable for the accidental death of their slaves. Statute 292, DLCY 4:850; Statute 313, DLCY 4:913–914.

338

NOTES TO PAGES 12–24

26. James Z. Lee and Wang Feng, One Quarter of Humanity: Malthusian Mythology and Chinese Realities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 7. 27. For parallel beliefs in Japan, see Amy Stanley, Selling Women: Prostitution, Markets, and the Household in Early Modern Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012). 28. Zhou Shuzhao, Beiping youguai de yanjiu, appendix, 23. 29. Ibid., appendix, 30–31. 30. Xiaoqun Xu, Trial of Modernity: Judicial Reform in Early Twentieth- Century China, 1901–1937 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008); David Strand, Rickshaw Beijing: People and Politics in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). 31. Zhou Shuzhao, Beiping youguai de yanjiu. 32. “Peking Orders Amnesty for All Save Tsao Kun and Parliamentary Plotters,” China Press, January 4, 1925, 1. 33. Wei Qingyuan, Qingdai nubi zhidu [System of slavery during the Qing dynasty] (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 1982); Meijer, “Slavery,” 327–357. 34. Terada Takenobu, “Yoseitei no semmin kaihorei ni tsuite” [On the emancipation of the lower orders by the Yongzheng emperor], Toyoshi-Kenkyu 17, no. 3 (December 1959); Jing Junjian, “Shilun qingdai dengji zhidu” [Discussion of the status system of the Qing dynasty], Zhongguo shehui kexue no. 6 (November 1980). 35. Christopher Mills Isett, State, Peasant, and Merchant in Qing Manchuria, 1644–1863 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press), 132. 36. Anders Hansson, Chinese Outcasts: Discrimination and Emancipation in Late Imperial China (Leiden: Brill, 1996). 37. Matthew H. Sommer, Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000). 38. Sommer, Polyandry and Wife-Selling in Qing China. 39. Strand, Rickshaw Beijing; Allison Dray-Novey, “Spatial Order and Police in Imperial Beijing,” Journal of Asian Studies 54, no. 2 (November 1993). 40. Hershatter, Dangerous Pleasures; Henriot, Belles de Shanghai. 41. Zhou Shuzhao, Beiping youguai de yanjiu, appendix, 5–7.

1. A Young Woman as Portable Property 1. FHA-STF 28-3-176. 2. Lillian M. Li, Fighting Famine in North China: State, Market, and Environmental Decline, 1690s–1990s (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007).

339

NOTES TO PAGES 24–29

3. Pierre-Etienne Will, Bureaucracy and Famine in Eighteenth- Century China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990). 4. Statute 79, DLCY 2:250–252; Statute 275-00, DLCY 4:726; Statute 367-00, DLCY 5:1086. 5. Zhu Qingqi, Xingan Huilan [Conspectus of legal cases] (Beijing: Beijing Airusheng, 2009), e- database, 246, 1359, 1829; Kishimoto Mio, “Tsuma o uttewa ikenai ka? Min-Shin jidai no mai qi / dian qi kanko,” Chugoku shigaku [Chinese historical studies] 8 (1998): 177–210, 194–195; Matthew H. Sommer, Sex, Law, and Society in Qing China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), 336, 341–375; Sommer, Polyandry and Wife-Selling in Qing China: Survival Strategies and Judicial Interventions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015), 294–302; Wu Tan, Da Qing lüli tongkao jiaozu [Examination of the Qing code], ed. Ma Jianshi and Yang Yutang (Beijing: Zhongguo Zhengga Daxue chubanshe, 1992), 951. 6. Statute 366, DLCY 5:1086; Statute 116, DLCY 2:312. 7. Marinus J. Meijer, “Slavery at the End of the Ch’ing Dynasty,” in Essays on China’s Legal Tradition (Studies in East Asia Law), ed. Jerome Alan Cohen, Fu-mei Chang Chen, and R. Randle Edwards (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), 333. 8. Ting Zhang, “Marketing Legal Information: Commercial Publications of the Great Qing Code, 1644–1911,” in Chinese Law: Knowledge, Practice, and Transformation, ed. Li Chen and Madeleine Zelin (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 231–251. 9. R. Randle Edwards, “The Role of Case Precedent in the Qing Judicial Process as Reflected in Appellate Rulings,” in Understanding China’s Legal System: Essays in Honor of Jerome A. Cohen, ed. C. Stephen Hsu (New York: New York University Press, 2003), 180–209. 10. Jonathan K. Ocko, “I’ll Take It All the Way to Beijing: Capital Appeals in the Qing,” Journal of Asian Studies 47, no. 2 (May 1988): 291–315. 11. Philip Huang, Civil Justice in China: Representation and Practice in the Qing (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996). 12. Melissa Macauley, Social Power and Legal Culture: Litigation Masters in Late Imperial China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998). On the translation of xishi ♥Ђ above, see Maura Dominique Dykstra, “Complicated Matters: Commercial Dispute Resolution in Qing Chongqing from 1750 to 1911” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2014). 13. T’ung-Tsu Ch’ü, Local Government under the Qing (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 14–35. 14. G. William Skinner, “Sichuan’s Population in the Nineteenth Century: Lessons from Disaggregated Data,” Late Imperial China 8, no. 1 (1987): 75. 15. Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley, Tears from Iron: Cultural Responses to Famine in Nineteenth- Century China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). 340

NOTES TO PAGES 29–38

16. James Z. Lee and Wang Feng, One Quarter of Humanity: Malthusian Mythology and Chinese Realities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 69–74. 17. Mara Hvistendahl, Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men (New York: Public Affairs, 2011), 208–212; Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea Den Boer, “A Surplus of Men, a Deficit of Peace: Security and Sex Ratios in Asia’s Largest States,” International Security 26, no. 4 (Spring 2002): 16–20. 18. Hsieh Baohua, “The Market in Concubines in Jiangnan during Ming Qing China,” Journal of Family History 33, no. 3 (July 2008): 274. 19. Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982). 20. Janet Theiss, Disgraceful Matters: The Politics of Chastity in EighteenthCentury China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). 21. Linxia Liang, Delivering Justice in Qing China: Civil Trials in a Magistrate’s Court (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 6. 22. Liang, Delivering Justice, 6; T’ung-Tsu Ch’ü, Local Government, 15. 23. The Missionary Herald, December 1871. 24. Guangxu shuntian fuzhi [Guangxu Shuntian municipal prefecture gazetteer], 1886, ed. Zhang Jiamei and Mou Quansun (Beijing: Beijing guji chubanshe, reprint, 2000). Shuntian remains a special place for historians, not only because the capital prefecture included Beijing, but also because it is one of a handful of locations for which detailed local records from the Qing period survive. This case comes from my collection of thirty-six local investigations between 1870 and 1905, categorized by Chinese archivists as pertaining to buying and selling of people. FHA-STF. 25. Philip Huang, “County Archives and the Study of Local Social History: Report on a Year’s Research in China,” Modern China 8, no. 1 (January 1982): 133–143. 26. Guangxu shuntian fuzhi [Guangxu reign gazetteer for Shuntian Prefecture], compiled by Zhou Jiamei and Miao Quansun, Beijing guji congshu (1987; repr. Beijing: Beijing guji chubanshe, 2001), 2:603; STF 22-1-36-002. 27. STF 28-3-176-157; Lishu 㪋ᘆ [Marriage severance document], “Tongzhi Reign, 10 ྈ” (February 19, 1871, to February 8, 1872). Six hundred strings of dongqian cash, a local currency, was the equivalent of 96 strings in standard cash. Frank H. H. King, Money and Monetary Policy in China, 1845–1895 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965), 58–65; Sommer, Polyandry and Wife-Selling in Qing China, 174. 28. Philip Huang, Code, Custom, and Legal Practice in China: The Qing and the Republic Compared (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 203. 29. Sommer, Polyandry and Wife-Selling in Qing China, 161. 30. Li, Fighting Famine, 85. 341

NOTES TO PAGES 38–58

31. Xu Xinwu and Byun-Kun Min, “The Struggle of the Handicraft Cotton Industry against Machine Textiles in China,” Modern China 14, no. 1 (January 1988): 41. 32. STF 28-3-176-160. 33. Huang Liu-hung, Complete Book Concerning Happiness and Benevolence, trans. Djang Chu (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1984). 34. Yihaili wujiapai zhuang ⃦᫡㚲ࠦඍ፶ྕ. 35. Niu jia pai zhuang Ẏඍ፶ྕ. 36. STF 28-3-176-159; Tongzhi 11.06.16 (July 21, 1872). 37. Prasenjit Duara, Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900–1942 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), 158–193. 38. Daily Press, Fuzhou, July 9, 1882. Reprinted July 21, 1882, in the North China Herald. 39. Sommer, Polyandry and Wife-Selling in Qing China, 141–142. 40. STF 28-3-176-165. 41. STF 28-3-176-166. 42. Qing code, Statute 116, DLCY 2:312. 43. yong bu cirao elai zi ᧞β᯴ᒖゖ㋗െ. 44. Duara, Culture, Power, and the State, 42–57. 45. STF 28-3-176-171; STF 28-3-176-175. 46. Sommer, Polyandry and Wife-Selling in Qing China. 47. Hsiao Kung- Chuan, Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1960); Bradley Reed, Talons and Teeth: County Clerks and Runners in the Qing Dynasty (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000). 48. STF 28-3-176-178; STF 28-3-176-179; STF 28-3-176-180. 49. Myron Cohen, Kinship, Contract, Community, and State (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005). 50. Qing code, Statute 367, DLCY 5:1087. 51. Qing code, Statute 102, DLCY 2:292. 52. Roushi (Zhao Pingfu) depicted a similar arrangement in his 1930 story “The Mother Who Was a Slave,” in Ruoshi xiaoshuo xuanji [Collected short stories of Roushi] (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1957). 53. Statute 314-4, DLCY 4:919. 54. Jing Junjian, “Shilun qingdai dengji zhidu” [Discussion of the status system of the Qing dynasty] Zhongguo shehui kexue 6 (November 1980); Wei Qingyuan, Qingdai nubi zhidu [System of slavery during the Qing dynasty] (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 1982). 55. Hsieh Baohua, “The Market in Concubines,” 275. Yang Yifan and Tian Tao, eds., Zhongguo zhenxi falu dianji xubian (Harbin: Heilongjiang renmin chubanshe, 2002), 8:475. 342

NOTES TO PAGES 59–66

56. Valerie Hansen, Negotiating Daily Life in Traditional China: How Ordinary People Used Contracts, 600–1400 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995). 57. Myron L. Cohen, “Writs of Passage in Late Imperial China,” in Contract and Property in Early Modern China, ed. Madeleine Zelin, Jonathan K. Ocko, and Robert Gardella (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 62, 37–93. 58. Jiang Daicheng and Zhang Zhiliang (1836). Private collection of Henry Ding. 59. Tian cang qiyue wenshu cuibian [Traditional Chinese contracts and related documents from the Tian Collection, 1408–1969] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2001). 60. Philip Huang, Code, Custom, and Legal Practice in China: The Qing and the Republic Compared (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 159; Statute 275, DLCY 4:726; Statute 370, DLCY 5:1090.

2. The Flow of Trafficking in the Late Qing 1. Zhishui shuyao [Essential account of water control], ZF 3691–5606. 2. Qiu ye [Autumn night], ZF 1114. 3. “Shupu jiu Yongdinghe huanshi” [Letter supplementing earlier thoughts on solving the Yongding River problem] (~1911), ZF 1001–1008. 4. Zongdu Li Hongzhang chou xiu jimen zhashu [Governor General Li Hongzhang’s Memorial Yongding River Jinmen Dikes], Tongzhi Reign 10ྈ1ᘐ1ᕃ (February 19, 1871). 5. Wang Zhiguo, Zhou Fu yu wan qing shehui [Zhou Fu and late Qing society] (Hefei: Hefei gongye daxue chubanshe, 2004). 6. Ibid., 196. 7. Cheng Lizhong, “Cong ‘fu xuan xianyu’ tan Zhou Fu de zhisheng guan,” in Anhui san da jiazu, yu jindai zhongguo shiye yanjiu (Hefei: Hefei gongye daxue chubanshe, 2010), 61; ZF 5618. 8. Wang Zhiguo, Zhou Fu, 196; Fuxuan xianyu, ZF 5618. 9. Wang Zhiguo, Zhou Fu, 197–198. 10. Joseph W. Esherick, Ancestral Leaves: A Family Journey through Chinese History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 66–67. 11. Mary C. Wright, The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism: The T’ung- chih Restoration, 1862–1874 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University, 1957). 12. Li Boyuan, Nanting biji [Notes from the Southern Pavilion], in Zhou Yiliang, Just a Scholar: The Memoirs of Zhou Yiliang, trans. Joshua Fogel (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 2. 13. Chen Juncheng, “Zhou Fu yishi” [Anecdotes about Zhou Fu], Anhui wenshi ziliao, no. 15; Zhou Yiliang, Just a Scholar, 2. 343

NOTES TO PAGES 67–76

14. Wang Zhiguo, Zhou Fu, 200–201. 15. Ibid., 58–59. 16. Paul A. Cohen, China and Christianity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 245. 17. The Tientsin Massacre, Being Documents Published in the Shanghai Evening Courier from June 16th to Sept 10th, 1870, with an Introductory Narrative (Shanghai: A. H. de Carvalho, 1870), xii. 18. Mary Clabaugh Wright, The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism: The T’ing- Chih Restoration (New York: Atheneum, 1957), 297. 19. O. D. Rasmussen, Tientsin: An Illustrated Outline History (Tianjin: Tientsin Press, 1925). 20. The Tientsin Massacre, 29. 21. Berend J. Ter Haar, Telling Stories: Witchcraft and Scapegoating in Chinese History (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 154–176. 22. The Tientsin Massacre, 9. 23. J. T. Candlin, John Innocent: Story of Mission Work, in North China (London: United Methodist Publishing House, 1909), 171. 24. Ruth Rogaski, Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 99–101. 25. Rasmussen, Tientsin, 47. 26. The Tientsin Massacre, 9. 27. Candlin, John Innocent, 171. 28. Rasmussen, Tientsin, 49. 29. Ibid., 50; Candlin, John Innocent, 169–173. 30. The Tientsin Massacre, 9. 31. Ibid., 114. 32. Wright, The Last Stand, 76. 33. Arthur Waley, The Opium War through Chinese Eyes (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1858). 34. The Tientsin Massacre, 114. 35. Rasumussen, Tientsin, 52; Michelle T. King, Between Birth and Death: Female Infanticide in Nineteenth- Century China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 156. 36. Candlin, John Innocent, 174. 37. The Tientsin Massacre, 118. 38. King, Between Birth and Death, 159. 39. Ibid., 131–132. 40. Cohen, China and Christianity, 230. 41. Ibid., 229–261. 42. Wright, Last Stand, 297. 43. King, Between Birth and Death, 157. 344

NOTES TO PAGES 76–82

44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

49.

50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55. 56. 57.

58. 59.

Ter Haar, Telling Stories. China Times, March 25, 1886. Rasmussen, Tientsin, 56. Shelly Chan, Diaspora’s Homeland: Modern China in the Age of Global Migration (forthcoming). John McDonald and Ralph Shlomowitz (“Mortality on Chinese and Indian Voyages to the West Indies and South America, 1847–1974,” Social and Economic Studies 41, no. 2 [1992]: 203–240) report that average deaths on Chinese voyages to the Americas between 1846 and 1974 ranged from 13 percent to 60 percent. Their overall average for the whole span is 25.5 percent. Perilous as these journeys were, they were still significantly less deadly than slave voyages across the Atlantic. For these par ticular ships, see Robert L. Irick, Ch’ing Policy toward the Coolie Trade, 1847–1878 (Taipei: Chinese Materials Center, 1982), 49, 218, 231, and Arnold J. Meagher, The Coolie Trade: The Traffic in Chinese Laborers to Latin America (Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2008). David Northrup’s figures in Indentured Labor in the Age of Imperialism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995) demonstrate significantly better survival rates on at least 25 percent of the ships carrying Chinese laborers, but the worst and most crowded ships had devastating records. Memorial from Li Hongzhang, August 21, 1872. Choupan yiwu shimo [Complete account of managing barbarian affairs] (reprint, Beijing, 1930), 87:32b3– 34a3. Irick, Ch’ing Policy, 256. Irick, Ch’ing Policy, 240–257. Ibid., 269. Chan, Diaspora’s Homeland. Ibid. John M. Carroll, “A National Custom: Debating Female Servitude in Late Nineteenth- Century Hong Kong,” Modern Asian Studies 43, no. 6 (November 2009): 1469; Smale to Hennessy, October 20, 1879, in British Parliamentary Papers, China, 26: Correspondence, Annual Reports, Conventions, and Other Papers Relating to the Affairs of Hong Kong, 1882–1899 [hereafter cited as BPP] (Shannon: Irish University Press, 1971), 177. Carroll, “A National Custom,” 1480; BPP 217–218. Carroll, “A National Custom,” 1486; Minute by Ng Choy [Wu Tingfang], July 2, 1880, BPP 247–248. Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley, Tears from Iron: Cultural Responses to Famine in Nineteenth- Century China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). Peking Gazette, August 13, 1879, 111. Elizabeth J. Perry, “When Peasants Speak: Sources for the Study of Chinese Rebellions,” Modern China 6, no. 1 (January 1980): 76. 345

NOTES TO PAGES 82–91

60. Lillian M. Li, Fighting Famine in North China: State, Market, and Environmental Decline, 1640s–1990s (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), 275. 61. Memorial from Tu Tsung-ying, governor of Henan, Peking Gazette, April 3, 1880, 61. 62. Yang Guozuo and Yang Guozhen, Zhongwu gong nainpu [A chronological biography of Duke Zhongwu (Yang Yuchun)], in Beijing tushuguan cang zhenben ninapu congkan (Beijing: Beijing tushuguan chubanshe, 1999), 124:206, 388. Thanks to James Bonk for drawing my attention to this. James Bonk, “Chinese Military Men and Cultural Practice in the Early Nineteenth- Century Qing (1800–1840)” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2014). 63. Xu Xiaoqun, “The Rule of Law without Due Process: Punishing Robbers and Bandits in Early-Twentieth- Century China,” Modern China 33, no. 2 (April 2007): 233. 64. Ibid., 234. 65. Ibid., 233. 66. FHA-STF 73:61–96. 67. Li, Fighting Famine, 273. 68. Ibid.; Edgerton-Tarpley, Tears from Iron. 69. FHA-STF 73:87 (28-3-177-187). 70. FHA-STF 73:68 (28-3-177-168). 71. Liang Linxia, “Rejection or Acceptance: Finding Reasons for the Late Qing Magistrate’s Comments on Land Debt Petitions,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 68, no. 2 (June 2005): 276–294. 72. FHA STF 73:90 [28-3-177-190]. 73. Li, Fighting Famine, 276. 74. Ibid. 75. Xu Yamin, “Wicked Citizens and the Social Origins of China’s Modern Authoritarian State, 1928–1937” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2002), 17; Li, Fighting Famine, 146. 76. Allison Dray-Novey, “Spatial Order and Police in Imperial Beijing,” Journal of Asian Studies 52, no. 4 (November 1983): 899. 77. Xu Yamin, “Wicked Citizens,” 15. 78. Pamela Kyle Crossley, Orphan Warriors: Three Manchu Generations and the End of the Qing World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990). 79. Li, Fighting Famine, 144. 80. Peking Gazette, 1878. 81. Xu Yamin, “Wicked Citizens,” 10; Han Guanghui, Beijing lishi renkou dili (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1986), 279; Fu Lehuan, “Guanyu Qing dai Manzu de jige wenti,” Zhongguo minzu wenti jikan (January 1957): 6:155. 346

NOTES TO PAGES 91–104

82. Xu Yamin, “Wicked Citizens,” 25. Lin Songhe, “Tongji shuzi xiade Beiping,” Shehui kexue zazhi 2, no. 3 (September 1931): 385. 83. Lillian M. Li, Alison Dray-Novey, and Haili Kong, Beijing: From Imperial Capital to Olympic City (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 83. 84. Crossley, Orphan Warriors, 147. 85. Zao Bao, Guangxu Reign, 3ྈ4ᘐ23ᕃ 3.4. 23 (June 4, 1877), FHA-XKTB 3991-(reel) 11:2050–2083. 86. XKTB 3991-11:2066–2067. 87. L. K. Tao, Livelihood in Peking: An Analysis of Sixty Families (Beijing: Social Research Department, 1928). 57. 88. XKTB 3991-11:2063–2065. 89. Ibid., 2051. 90. “yin laili buming, bujun shouliu” ਧӃ᤾βᕥ‫٭‬ᓁ⃂. 91. XKTB 3991-11:2051. 92. Ibid., 2068. 93. Ibid., 2050–2083. 94. Ibid. 95. Rebecca E. Karl, “ ‘Slavery,’ Citizenship, and Gender in Late Qing China’s Global Context,” in Rethinking the 1898 Reform Period: Political and Cultural Change in Late Qing China, ed. Rebecca E. Karl and Peter Zarrow (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 212–244. 96. Edward Hertslet and Godfrey E. P. Hertslet, eds., Treaties, &C., between Great Britain and China; and between China and Foreign Powers; and Orders in Council, Rules, Regulations, Acts of Parliament, Decrees, &C., Affecting British Interests in China, in Force on the 1st January, 1908, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1908). 97. Manchester Guardian, March 11, 1910; San Francisco Chronicle, March 25, 1910; New York Tribune, May 11, 1910; Times of India, May 19, 1910; Afro-American (June 11, 1910).

3. New Laws and Emerging Language 1. Li Guilian, Shen Jiaben yu Zhongguo falu xiandaihua [Shen Jiaben and China’s legal modernization] (Beijing: Guangming ribao chuban she, 1989). 2. North China Herald, March 25, 1910. 3. Minshi xiguan diaocha baogao lu [Report on the investigation of customs], Ministry of the Legal Administration of the Former Republican Government in Nanjing, 2 vols. (Beijing: Zhongguo zhengfa daxue chubanshe, 1998). 4. Statute 79, DLCY 2:250. 5. Statute 367-00, DLCY 5:1087. 347

NOTES TO PAGES 104–110

6. Statute 275, DLCY 4:726. 7. Matthew H. Sommer, Sex, Law, and Society in Qing China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000). 8. Janet Theiss, Disgraceful Matters: The Politics of Chastity in EighteenthCentury China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). 9. Statute 78, DLCY 2:246. 10. James L. Watson, “Transactions in People: The Chinese Market in Slaves, Servants, and Heirs,” in Asian and African Systems of Slavery, ed. James L. Watson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 223–250. 11. Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley, Tears from Iron: Cultural Responses to Famine in Nineteenth- Century China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 183–187. 12. Shenbao, July 19, 1894, 1. 13. Shenbao, November 23, 1895, 2. 14. Shenbao, November 11, 1893, 1. 15. Boston Daily Globe, December 23, 1900. 16. Zhongguo jiuji furu zonghui [China Society for Helping Women and Children] (also known as the “Anti-Kidnapping Society”), SMA Q–113–1. 17. Linda Pomerantz-Zhang, Wu Tingfang (1842–1822): Reform and Modernization in Modern Chinese History (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1992). 18. “Jetsam and Flotsam,” Central Law Journal (1874–1927), November 29, 1901, 53, 33. 19. “Wei wairen zhi nuli yu manzhou zhengfu zhi nuli wubie” [There are no differences between being slaves of foreigners and of the Manchus], written by an anonymous author for Tongzi Shijie [Children’s World], no. 24, May 2, 1903. Reprinted in Zhang Nan and Wang Renzhi, eds., Xinghai geming qianshinian jianshilun xuanji [A selection of materials from the ten-year period before the Xinhai revolution] (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1962), 1:2. 20. “Wu Talks of Lynchings . . . ,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 19, 1901. 21. Datongbao, June 24, 1905. 22. North China Herald, March 25, 1910. 23. “The Outbreak at the Mixed Court. Fight between Police and Runners. Extraordinary Incidents,” North China Herald and Supreme Court and Consular Gazette, December 15, 1905. 24. “The Proposed New Mixed Court Gaol,” North China Herald and Supreme Court and Consular Gazette, February 2, 1906. 25. “Miscellaneous Articles: The Outbreak at the Mixed Court, 9th December, 11th December,” North China Herald, December 15, 1905. 26. “Two Official Documents,” North China Herald, March 25, 1910.

348

NOTES TO PAGES 111–115

27. “Xiugai jianyu zhe” [Memorial on reforming prisons] (August 15, 1905), ZF 423. 28. Wang Zhiguo, Zhou Fu yu wan qing shehui [Zhou Fu and late Qing society] (Hefei: Hefei gongye daxue chubanshe, 2004), 183. 29. Yan Jingyue, “Beijing fanzui zhi shehui fenxi” [A sociological analysis of crime in Beijing], Shehui xuejie [Sociological World] 1 (June 1928): 33–77. 30. Zhou Shuzhao, “Beiping yibai ming nüfan zhi yanjiu” [A study of 100 female criminals in Beiping], Shehui xuejie 6 (1932): 31–86. 31. Immanuel Hsü, The Rise of Modern China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 489; Marinus J. Meijer, “Slavery at the End of the Ch’ing Dynasty,” in Essays in China’s Legal Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 357. 32. Meijer, “Slavery,” 340; Shen Jiaben, Shen jiyi xiansheng yishu jiabian [Bequeathed writings of Shen Jiyi, pt. 1] (reprint, Taipei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1964), 887. 33. Meijer, “Slavery,” 340. 34. “Memorial from Shanxi Censor, Wu Weibing, February 6, 1909,” in Qingchao Wenxian Tongkao (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1935–1946) (hereafter cited as QCWXTK), 26:7783. 35. Marina Svensson, Debating Human Rights in China: A Conceptual and Political History (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 71–97. 36. Outlook, June 11, 1910, 6. 37. Afro-American, June 11, 1910. 38. Times of India, May 19, 1910. 39. “Report to the Throne of the Imperial Chinese Commission on Constitutional Government Recommending the Abolition of Slavery Together with the Imperial Re-script Approving the Report and Ten Regulations for Its Enforcement” (hereafter cited as CCR), American Journal of International Law 4, no. 4 (October 1910): 359–373. 40. New York Times, April 30, 1905; Los Angeles Times, September 1912. 41. Carrie Chapman Catt, “The Traffic in Women,” The Woman Voter, March 1913, 14–15. 42. Shen Jiaben, Bequeathed Writings, 887; Meijer, “Slavery,” 340. 43. CCR. 44. Ibid. 45. QCWXTK, 7783. 46. Shibao, 1908. 47. QCWXTK, 7783. 48. CCR, 361; QCWXTK, 7783. 49. “Jin ge maimai renkou zhe,” ZF 468–469. Marinus Meijer (“Slavery,” 352) traces Zhou Fu’s quotation to an edict from Emperor Guang Wudi in the

349

NOTES TO PAGES 116–125

50.

51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

annals of Qianwu 11 from the Hou han shu [History of the later Han dynasty]. Tian Tao, Hugh T. Scogin Jr., and Zeng Qin, eds., Tian cang qiyue wenshu cuibian [Traditional Chinese contracts and related documents from the Tian Collection, 1408–1969] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2001); Niida Noboru, “Min Shin jidai hitouri oyobi hitojichi monjo no kenkyu” [A study of documents concerned with the sale and mortgage of humans during the Ming and Qing periods], Shigaku zasshi 46, no. 5 (1935); Madeline Zelin, Jonathan Ocko, and Robert Gardella, eds., Contract and Property in Early Modern China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004). Philip Huang, Code, Custom, and Legal Practice: The Qing and the Republic Compared (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 156. CCR; QCWXTK, 7783. Huang, Code, Custom, and Legal Practice, 202. QCWXTK, 7783. Ibid. “Correspondence Relating to the Mui-tsai Question,” Hong Kong Papers, no. 11, 1929, 199–261. Kristin Stapleton, Fact in Fiction: 1920s China and Ba Jin’s Family (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016), 17–47. Ba Jin, Jia [Family] (Beijing: Beijing renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1933, reprint 1981). Statute 115, DLCY 2:311. QCWXTK, 7784. Allison Dray-Novey, “Spatial Order and Police in Imperial Beijing,” Journal of Asian Studies 52, no. 4 (November 1993). “White Slave Traffic Conference: A Retrospect,” Manchester Guardian, July 5, 1913, 10. DLYJSLQW, 21. Mark Van der Valk, Interpretations of the Supreme Court at Peking, Years 1915 and 1916 (Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1968). July 7, 1913, DLYJSLQW, 25. May 2, 1913, DLYJSLQW, 8. June 16, 1913, DLYJSLQW, 21. March 26, 1913, DLYJSLQW, 4. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. David Strand, Rickshaw Beijing: City People and Politics in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 77.

350

NOTES TO PAGES 125–138

73. Jennifer M. Neighbors, “The Long Arm of Qing Law? Qing Dynasty Homicide Rulings in Republican Courts,” Modern China 35, no. 1 (January 2009): 3–37. 74. Sommer, Sex, Law, and Society; Theiss, Disgraceful Matters. 75. Huang, Code, Custom, and Legal Practice. 76. Statute 275, DLCY 4:726. 77. Shen Jiaben, Bequeathed Writings, 887; Meijer, “Slavery,” 341. 78. Huang Yuansheng, Minchu falü bianqian yu caipan (1912–1928) [Judgment and change in early Republican China] (Taipei: National Chengchi University, 2000). 79. Xu Yamin, “Wicked Citizens and the Social Origins of China’s Modern Authoritarian State: Civil Strife and Political Control in Republican Beiping, 1928–1937” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2002), 23–24. 80. BJMA J181–19–27543. 81. Statement from Li Liu Shi, in ibid. 82. Statement from Li Guo Shi, in ibid. 83. Statement from Li Guo Shi, in ibid. 84. shigang hutong ⊵⠂⥇ࠂ. 85. Statement from Li Shunxi, BJMA J181–19–27543. 86. Li Chen, Chinese Law in Imperial Eyes: Sovereignty, Justice, and Transcultural Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 91–99. 87. Mary Buck Young, “Law and Modern State-Building in Early Republican China: The Supreme Court of Peking (1911–1926)” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2004), 3. 88. League of Nations, Commission of Enquiry into Traffic in Women and Children in the East, Report to the Council (Geneva, 1932), 163.

4. Fictive Families and Children in the Marketplace 1. BJMA J181-19-14349. 2. Mei Jianzeng, “Beiping changji diaocha” [A survey of prostitution in Beiping], Shehui xuejie [Sociological World] 5 (June 1931): 105–146. 3. Zhong Jingwen, Beijing lao Tianqiao (Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 1996), 120. 4. Matthew H. Sommer, Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000); Sommer, Polyandry and Wife-Selling in Qing Dynasty China: Survival Strategies and Judicial Interventions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015). 5. Elizabeth Remick, Regulating Prostitution in China: Gender and Local State Building, 1900–1937 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014). 6. Mei Jianzeng, “Beiping changji diaocha,” 105–146.

351

NOTES TO PAGES 139–155

7. Gail Hershatter, Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in TwentiethCentury Shanghai (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). 8. Madeline Yue Dong, Republican Beijing: The City and Its Histories (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 172–207; Qi Ruishan, introduction to Zhang Cixi and Zhao Xianyu, Tianqiao yilan [Guide to Tianqiao] (Beijing: Beiping difang yanjiu congkan, 1970). 9. Mingzheng Shi, “From Imperial Gardens to Public Parks: The Transformation of Urban Space in Early Twentieth- Century Beijing,” Modern China 24, no. 3 (July 1998): 219–254. 10. Dong, Republican Beijing, 180. 11. Niu Nai’e, “Beiping yiqian erbai pinhu zhi yanjiu” [Study of 1,200 poor households in Beiping], Sociological World 7 (June 1933): 147–187. 12. BJMA J181-19-14349. 13. Ibid. 14. Peter Zarrow, China in War and Revolution, 1895–1949 (London: Routledge, 2005), 82. 15. David Strand, Rickshaw Beijing: City People and Politics in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 68. 16. Mary Buck Young, “Law and Modern State-Building in Early Republican China: The Supreme Court of Peking (1911–1926)” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2004); Strand, Rickshaw Beijing, 54. 17. BJMA J181-019-11508. 18. Ibid. (statement from Qi Baishun). 19. Ibid. (petition from Chen Gao Shi, March 16, 1916). 20. Ibid. (June and July 1916). 21. Philip Kuhn, Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990); Sommer, Sex, Law, and Society. 22. Mingzheng Shi, “From Imperial Gardens,” 219–254. 23. Shijie ribao [World Daily]: April 12, 1926; April 14, 1926; April 19, 1926; April 26, 1926; May 5, 1926; May 30, 1926; and previous and later issues. 24. Shijie ribao [World Daily], January 12, 1929, 7. 25. L. K. Tao, Livelihood in Peking: An Analysis of Sixty Families (Beijing: Social Research Department, 1928), 57. 26. The letter used the expression maimai renkou. 27. BJMA J181-19-8009 (March 1915); BJMA J181-19-8004 (March 1915). 28. BJMA J181-019-06622 (June 1914). 29. DLYJSLQW, telegram, June 16, 1913; M. H. van der Valk, Interpretations of the Supreme Court at Peking, 1915–1916 (Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1968), 244. 30. Fifty- one files for the Beijing prison refer to sentences for 104 dif ferent individuals convicted of crimes related to gambling. Sentences for the majority of those jailed ranged from two weeks to six months. Fines in this sample 352

NOTES TO PAGES 155–170

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42. 43.

44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

ranged from 1 to 30 yuan. (In total, the archive for Republican Beijing contains 3,560 files on gambling offenses.) Tong Lam, A Passion for Facts: Social Surveys and the Construction of the Chinese Nation State, 1900–1949 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). BJMA J181-19-8004 (March 16, 1915). Ibid. (statement from He Wang Shi). Ibid. (statement from Wei Dajin). mingxia wei hainü ࠃΰᵱ൓௩. BJMA J181-19-8004 (statement from Xu Xiaosu). Ibid. (statement from Jin Ma Shi). Yuqing’s use of zu ␙ to describe this arrangement directly borrows from property language. BJMA J181-19-8004 (statement from He Yuqing). Translation modified from M. H. Van der Valk, Interpretations, 70. Heizi was not an uncommon name. The police archive contains 31 distinct records involving girls and boys named Heizi, many cast- off children—who had been kidnapped, or sold, found on the street and taken into custody, including one child who wandered off while playing the pipa in a marketplace. BJMA J184-002-06090. SHA Q20-2-221. Grain prices for the previous year were: for one cattie of rice, 0.0589 yuan; for wheat, 0.058; for millet, 0.0495 yuan; and for the least expensive corn flour, 0.0346 yuan. T’ien-p’ei Meng and Sidney Gamble, Prices, Wages, and the Standard of Living in Peking, 1900–1924 (Peking: Express Press, 1926), 28. SHA Q20-2-221. Frank Ki Chun Yee, “Police in Modern China” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1942). Yan Jingyao, “Beijing fanzui zhi shehui fenxi” [Sociological analysis of crimes in Beijing], Shehui xuejie [Sociological World] (June 1928): 60. Alison Dray-Novey, “The Twilight of the Beijing Gendarmerie, 1900–1924,” Modern China 33, no. 3 (2007): 349–376. SHA Q20-2-221 (September 27, 1919). Yan Jingyao, “Beijing fanzui.” BJMA J181-018-14962 (June 1922).

5. Moving beyond the Reach of the Law 1. The term “sanbuguan” also referred to an irresponsible person who failed to provide his family with the three rudimentary necessities: food, clothing, and shelter. 353

NOTES TO PAGES 170–175

2. Gail Hershatter, The Workers of Tianjin, 1900–1949 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986), 184–189. 3. Madeline Dong, Republican Beijing: The City and Its Histories (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 178–183. 4. Kwan Man Bun, “Order in Chaos: Tianjin’s hunhunr and Urban Identity in Modern China,” Journal of Urban History 27, no. 1 (November 2000); Hershatter, The Workers of Tianjin, 125–126. 5. BJMA J181-19-25411 (March 29, 1919), J181-19-39802, J181-19-30491, J181-19-47013; “Shanghai Streets Paved with Gold,” North China Herald, March 20, 1935. 6. Hill Gates, China’s Motor: A Thousand Years of Petty Capitalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996). 7. Ellen R. Judd, “Niangjia: Chinese Women and Their Natal Families,” Journal of Asian Studies 48, no. 3 (August 1989): 525–544; James L. Watson, “Transactions in People: The Chinese Market in Slaves, Servants, and Heirs,” in Asian and African Systems of Slavery, ed. James L. Watson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 223–250; Margery Wolf, Women and the Family in Rural Taiwan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1972). 8. Fei-wen Liu, “Text, Practice, and Life Narrative: Bridal Lamentation and a Daughter’s Filial Piety in Changing Rural China,” Modern China 37, no. 5 (September 2011): 498–527; Anne E. McClaren, Performing Grief: Bridal Laments in Rural China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008); Rubie S. Watson, “Chinese Bridal Laments: The Claims of a Dutiful Daughter,” in Harmony and Counterpoint: Ritual Music in Chinese Context, ed. Bell Yung, Evelyn Rawski, and Rubie Watson (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), 107–129. 9. Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley, Tears from Iron: Cultural Responses to Famine in Nineteenth- Century China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 178–187. 10. Watson, “Transactions in People,” 223–250. 11. Janice E. Stockard, Daughters of the Canton Delta: Marriage Patterns and Economic Strategies in South China, 1860–1930 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989). 12. Judd, “Niangjia,” 525–544. 13. Henrietta Harrison, The Man Awakened from Dreams: One Man’s Life in a North China Village, 1857–1942 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), 61–63. 14. Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 5, 26. 15. FHA, Board of Punishments: Marriage, rape, kidnapping and family disputes, Zhili [FHA-xingbu-hunyin jianqing ‫ڠ‬㗵䐷ಔ౓ృᅌ], XB-HYJQ 1173 ‫ޛ‬.

354

NOTES TO PAGES 175–182

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29.

30. 31.

32. 33. 34.

35. 36.

Ibid. (statements from Chen Jishan and Cheng Xiu’er). Hershatter, The Workers of Tianjin, 184–189. FHA-XB-HYJQ 1173 (statement from Cheng Xiu’er). Ibid. (statement from Cheng Bao). Ibid. (statement from Cheng Xiu’er). Ibid. (statement from Chen Jishan). FHA-XB-HYJQ 1173. “Traffic in Boys in Kiangsi: Thousands sold annually,” North China Herald, December 11, 1915. Ibid. Edward Friedman, Backward toward Revolution: The Chinese Revolutionary Party (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 148–155. Phil Billingsley, Bandits in Republican China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), 41–69. “Traffic in Boys in Kiangsi.” L. K. Tao, Livelihood in Peking (Beijing: Social Research Department, 1928); Lilian M. Li, Fighting Famine in North China: State, Market, and Environmental Decline, 1690s–1990s (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), 333–334. Parallel practices continue today: Throughout 2007–2008 both Chinese and Western media reported boys from Henan being promised implausibly high wages to accompany traffickers to work as slave laborers in brick kilns in Jiangxi. Xinhua News Agency, June 14, 2007. “Traffic in Boys in Kiangsi.” Billingsley, Bandits in Republican China; Hsi-sheng Ch’i, Warlord Politics in China, 1916–1928 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1976); Lucien Pye, Warlord Politics: Conflict and Coalition in the Modernization of Republican China (New York: Praeger, 1971). Diana Lary, Warlord Soldiers: Chinese Common Soldiers, 1911–1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Anne Reinhardt, “Navigating Imperialism in China: Steamship, Semicolony, and Nation, 1860–1937” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2002). “Leading Away a Lost Child,” Shenbao, June 7, 1882; “A Record of Kinds of Deceit [on Steamships],” Shenbao, September 9, 1890; “Mother Reunited with Child [Kidnapped by Bandits],” Shenbao, October 6, 1895; “Kidnapping Brigand Captured,” Shenbao, December 14, 1897; “Kidnapping Uncovered on Steamship,” Shenbao, December 31, 1915. Buxing Wo Sheng Diedie, Beijing heimo daguan [An overview of Beijing’s black intrigues] (Shanghai: Shanghai guangwen shuju, 1915), 1:1–2. Reinhardt, “Navigating Imperialism in China,” 180.

355

NOTES TO PAGES 182–191

37. “Record of Steamship Passengers Arrested for Kidnapping,” Shenbao, July 19, 1894. 38. Anne Waltner, Getting an Heir: Adoption and the Construction of Kinship in Late Imperial China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1990), 144. 39. “Interrogating a Kidnapper,” Shenbao, December 3, 1895; “A Case of Kidnapping from Suzhou to Shanghai,” Shenbao, June, 27, 1890. 40. Shijing [Book of poetry], Mao Commentary #196, Shisanjing Zhushu [The thirteen classics with commentaries and subcommentaries], ed. Ruan Yuan, 20.2b. 41. “Poor Families Sell Children,” Shenbao, January 1, 1911. 42. Rather than a national vision, train travelers developed a regional, point-topoint perspective. Elizabeth Koll, “Putting Revolution on Track: Railroad Guerillas and the Image Creation of Railroads in Post-War China,” paper at the Association of Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Boston, March 2007. 43. For a description of the erosion of local infrastructure in Henan in par ticular, see Billingsley, Bandits in Republican China, 41–45. 44. BJMA J181-18-8495. 45. Glenn Tiffert, “An Irresistible Inheritance: Republican Judicial Modernization and Its Legacies to the People’s Republic of China,” Cross Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review 7 (June 2013): 90–93. 46. BJMA J181-19-19875. 47. Ibid. (statement from Liu Liu Shi). 48. Ibid. (statement from Yang Xi’er). 49. Ibid. (statement from Zhang Chunhua). 50. BJMA J181-19-14349, J181-19-11508, J181-19-8004, J181-19-19875. 51. BJMA J181-19-19875 (statement from Xing Deming). 52. Sidney D. Gamble, Peking: A Social Survey (New York: George H. Duran Co., 1921), 260–261. Like other English-speaking Beijing residents, Gamble referred to the jiliangsuo for prostitutes as the Door of Hope. Although it was modeled on the Shanghai Door of Hope Mission, the Beijing reformatory was a Chinese state institution, not a missionary one. Elizabeth J. Remick, Regulating Prostitution in China: Gender and Local Statebuilding, 1900–1937 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 195. 53. Susan Gronewold, Beautiful Merchandise: Prostitution in China, 1860–1936 (New York: Harrington Press, 1985), 83; Gamble, Peking, 262. 54. BJMA J181-19-19875. 55. “Widespread Distress,” North China Herald, September 4, 1920; “The Plight of the Children,” North China Herald, October 16, 1920; “Gaunt Famine Stares Millions in Honan, Shantung and South Chihli,” Shanghai Gazette, September 3, 1920.

356

NOTES TO PAGES 191–195

56. Xia Mingfang, 20 shiji Zhongguo zai bian tu shi [Illustrated history of disasters in twentieth- century China] (Fuzhou: Fujian jiaoyu chubanshe, 2001), 65; Dwight W. Edwards, “The North China Famine of 1920–1921, with Special Reference to the West Chihli Area: Being the Report of the Peking United Famine Relief Commission” (Beijing: Peking United International Famine Relief Committee, 1922), 14, 87; Li, Fighting Famine, 301. 57. Li, Fighting Famine, 301. 58. “To Save Shensi,” North China Herald, October 23, 1920. 59. Edwards, “The North China Famine of 1920–1921.” 60. Xia Mingfang, 20 shiji Zhongguo zai bian tu shi, 64–65. 61. Pierre Emery Fuller, “Struggling with Famine in Warlord China: Social Networks, Achievements and Limitations, 1920–21” (PhD diss., University of California, Irvine, 2011), 223; Dagongbao, September 29, 1929. 62. Fuller, “Struggling with Famine,” 223; Chenbao, December 2, 1920. 63. Zhou Shuzhao, Beiping youguai de yanjiu [A study of abduction in Beiping] (Yanjing University master’s thesis) (Beijing: Yanjing daxue yanjiuyuan shehuixi, May 1933), appendix, 54–56. 64. A. J. Jowett, “China’s Water Crisis: The Case of Tianjin,” Geographical Journal 152, no. 1 (March 1986): 9–18. This ratio is even less favorable today. 65. Times of London, November 9, 1920. 66. “Widespread Distress.” 67. “N. China Threatened with Famine, Cholera Spreading,” Times of London, August 25 and 28, 1920. 68. “Famine Threat in China, Chaos Wrought by the Militarists,” Times of London, September 13, 1920. 69. 1920 headlines describing the famine in the Western media: “China Faces Worst Famine in History . . . Families Driven to Suicide; Parents Poison Children to End Misery” (Washington Post, November 21); “Starvation Grows in Northern China . . . Babies Sold in Tientsin” (New York Times, November 29); “China’s Famine Victims, Millions Sold for Food, Children Sold for Food” (Times of London, November 9). 70. “China’s Starving Millions,” Times of London, October 12, 1920. 71. Wang Zhiguo, Zhou Fu yu wan qing she hui [Zhou Fu and late Qing society] (Hefei: Hefei gongye daxue chubanshe, 2004). 72. Li, Fighting Famine, 302; John Earl Baker, “Fighting China’s Famines,” unpublished manuscript, microfilm from University of Wisconsin, Madison, 99. 73. Pierre-Etienne Will, Bureaucracy and Famine in Eighteenth- Century China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), 258–261. 74. Janet Y. Chen, Guilty of Indigence: The Urban Poor in China, 1900–1953 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012).

357

NOTES TO PAGES 196–205

75. “Wilson Aids Famine Fund,” New York Times, November 17, 1920; “Red Cross to Aid Starving Chinese,” Washington Post, October 3, 1920. 76. Will, Bureaucracy and Famine. 77. Fuller, “Struggling with Famine,” 9–10. 78. Walter H. Mallory, China: Land of Famine (New York: American Geographical Society, 1926), 2; Li, Fighting Famine, 299. 79. Katheryn Edgerton-Tarpley, “Family and Gender in Famine: Cultural Responses to Disaster in North China, 1876–1879,” Journal of Women’s History 16, no. 4 (Winter 2004): 138–140. 80. Li, Fighting Famine, 299. 81. Zhang Zuolin, Mukden Telegraph, October 1922, Nanjing Second Historical Archive (hereafter cited as SHA), Internal Affairs Ministry, Ministry of Communication and Transportation, 1001:3918. 82. Fuller, “Struggling with Famine,” 23. 83. Wei Yanlong and Su Yigong, Zhongguo jindai jingcha shi [A history of modern Chinese policing] (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 1999), 472. 84. Percy Horace Kent, Railway Enterprise in China: An Account of Its Origin and Development (London: Edward Arnold, 1908). 85. August 28, 1925, Beijing Hankou Railway Police Report, SHA, Internal Affairs Ministry, Ministry of Communication and Transportation File ‫ح‬൳ 1001‫ޛ‬3918. 86. SHA 1001:3918. 87. Ibid. 88. Ibid. (May 15, 1922). 89. Wei Yanlong and Su Yigong, Zhongguo jindai jingcha shi, 472–473. 90. BJMA J181-19-15450, J181-19-39802, J181-19-47013, J181-19-30401. 91. Wei Yanlong and Su Yigong, Zhongguo jindai jingcha shi, 471. 92. David Strand, Rickshaw Beijing: City People and Politics in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 68, 72–73. 93. Wei Yanlong and Su Yigong, Zhongguo jindai jingcha shi, 475. 94. SHA 1001:3918 (October 19, 1923). 95. Wei Yangong and Su Yilong, Zhongguo jindai jingcha shi, 478. 96. SHA 1001:3918 (April 25, 1922). 97. Ibid. (June 29, 1922; August 6, 1923; August 29, 1923; October 19, 1923; April 26, 1926). 98. Zhou Shuzhao, Beiping de youguai yanjiu, appendix, 54–56. 99. SHA 1001:3918 (January 22, 1924). 100. Ibid. (March 23, 1922). 101. Ibid. (August 14, 1925). 102. Ibid. (April 15, 1922). 103. Ibid. (August 8, 1923). 358

NOTES TO PAGES 206–213

104. Ibid. (June 29, 1922). 105. “The River Police,” North China Herald, April 14, 1923. 106. Shenbao, March 5, 1922.

6. The Warlord’s Widow and the Chief of Police 1. Nanjing Second Historical Archive, Internal Affairs Ministry, 1001–3981. 2. “1921 International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children,” in League of Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 9 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1922), 415–433. 3. Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 4. Christian Henriot, Prostitution and Sexuality in Shanghai: A Social History, 1849–1948, trans. Noel Castilino (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 317. 5. BJMA J181-18-21949; Stephanie A. Limoncelli, The Politics of Trafficking: The First International Movement to Combat the Sexual Exploitation of Women (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 10. 6. Limoncelli, The Politics of Trafficking, 78. 7. Xia Qingxi, “Wo suo jiede Yang Yide” [Yang Yide as I knew him], in Wenshi Ziliao (Beijing: Zhongguo wenshi chubanshe, 2002), 19a:589–597. 8. “Tianjin Police Injure Students,” Shenbao, October 16, 1919. 9. “Students Demand Yang I-teh’s Dismissal,” Canton Times, October 16, 1919; “Tientsin Student Agitation,” Canton Times, October 25, 1919; Shenbao, October 16, 1919. 10. “Struggle Continues in North China,” Millard’s Review of the Far East, February 7, 1920; Shanghai Gazette, January 29, 1920. 11. “Yang Yide Resigns—Attempts to Find a Successor,” Shenbao, June 29, 1925; “Nobody Wants Yang I-Teh to Resign,” North China Herald, July 4, 1925. 12. Yang Yide was a consummate survivor and, perhaps by temperament, a collaborator. Still, when the Japanese occupation regime approached Yang in 1937, he declined, claiming that he was too old to reprise his role as chief of police. Xia Qingxi, “Yang Yide,” 597. 13. Brett Sheehan, Trust in Troubled Times: Money, Banks, and State-Society Relations in Republican Tianjin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). 14. Gail Hershatter, The Workers of Tianjin, 1900–1949 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986); Kwan Man Bun, The Salt Merchants of Tianjin: State Making and Civil Society in Late Imperial China (Honolulu: University of 359

NOTES TO PAGES 214–227

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

Hawai‘i Press, 2001); Ruth Rogaski, Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). Robert Bickers, Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 64–68. Lucien Pye, Warlord Politics: Conflict and Coalition in the Modernization of Republican China (New York: Praeger, 1971), 185. Qianshuo Riri Xinwen Huabao no. 1223 (1912), 2. That candidate was Hua Jinkui, later known for his calligraphy as one of the “Eight Masters of Tianjin.” Qianshuo Riri Xinwen Huabao no. 1230 (1912), 3. Xia Qingxi, “Yang Yide,” 588. Ibid., 589. Ibid., 590. O. D. Rasmussen, Tientsin: An Illustrated Outline History (Tianjin: Tientsin Press, 1925), 268. Xia Mingfang, 20 shiji Zhongguo zai bian tu shi [Illustrated history of disasters in twentieth- century China] (Fuzhou: Fujian jiaoyu chubanshe, 2001), 43. “Flood Conditions . . . ,” Millard’s Review, October 13, 1917, 186. Xia Qingxi, “Yang Yide,” 587–589. SHA 1001:3918 (draft of telegram from Yang Yide). Xia Qingxi, “Yang Yide,” 593. Ibid. Ibid., 594. SHA 1001:3918 (Yang Yide, report to Internal Affairs Ministry). Ibid. (report of the Tianjin Police Court, May 8, 1923). Pye, Warlord Politics, 21. Diana Lary, Warlord Soldiers: Chinese Common Soldiers, 1911–1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 13. Zhengfu gongbao, no. 184 (January 27, 1922), 200. SHA 1001:3918 (Liu Si statement). Lary, Warlord Soldiers, 28. Ch’i Hsi-sheng, Warlord Politics in China, 1916–1928 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1976), 70–71. SHA 1001:3918 (Na Xingzhai interrogation). Ibid. SHA 1001:3918 (Na Lü Shi interrogation). Ibid. Zhengfu gongbao, January 27, 1922, 184:200. Brett Sheehan, Trust in Troubled Times: Money, Banks, and State-Society Relations in Republican Tianjin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). 360

NOTES TO PAGES 227–236

45. Sidney Gamble, Peking: A Social Survey (New York: George H. Doran Co., 1921), 183–184. 46. BJMA J181-18-14428, J181-19-10044, J181-19-25382. 47. Gamble, Peking, 232, 504–505. 48. Ibid., 269, 282. 49. C. G. Dittmer, “An Estimate of the Standard of Living in China,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 33, no. 1 (November 1918): 107–188; Gamble, Peking, 269–270. 50. Janet Y. Chen, Guilty of Indigence: The Urban Poor in China, 1900–1953 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 49–50. 51. BJMA J181-19-11508. 52. Maria Jaschok, Concubines and Bondservants: The Social History of a Chinese Custom (London: Zed Books, 1988), 91, 145–146. 53. Lary, Warlord Soldiers, 39. 54. SHA 1001:3918 (statement of Liu Si). 55. Ibid. (statement of Xue Wencheng). 56. Ibid. (statement of Qin Yunchang). 57. Ibid. (statement of Liu Qinggui). 58. Ibid. (statements of Zhang Wenxiang and Zhang Ren Shi). 59. Ibid. (statement of Liang Shi). 60. Ibid. (statement of Liu Shaoqing). 61. Vivien Shue, “The Quality of Mercy: Confucian Charity and the Mixed Metaphors of Modernity in Tianjin,” Modern China 32, no. 4 (October 2006). 62. James L. Watson, “Transactions in People: The Chinese Market in Slaves, Servants, and Heirs,” in Asian and African Systems of Slavery (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 234. 63. Jaschok, Concubines and Bondservants; John M. Carroll, “A National Custom: Debating Female Servitude in Late Nineteenth- Century Hong Kong,” Modern Asian Studies 43, no. 6 (November 2009): 1463–1493. 64. Guo Wei, Zuigao fayuan, jishili quanwen [Full text of Supreme Court explanations] (Shanghai: Faxue bianshe, 1928), 102–103; Huang Yuansheng, Wan Qing minguo xingfa shiliao ji zhu [A compilation of penal laws from the late Qing to Republican China, 1905–2010] (Taipei: Yuan zhao chuban youxian gongsi, 2010). Articles 257, 296, 298, 315 in The Chinese Criminal Code and Special Criminal and Administrative Laws (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1935), 107–108. 65. “Dr. Shurman’s Plain Words,” North China Herald, May 26, 1923; “The Culpable Delay at Lingcheng,” North China Herald, June 2, 1923. 66. Xu Youwei and Philip Billingsley, “When Worlds Collide: Chinese Bandits and Their ‘Foreign Tickets,’ ” Modern China 26, no. 1 (January 2000): 38–78. 67. Philip Billingsley, Bandits in Republican China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), 213. 361

NOTES TO PAGES 237–252

68. Ibid., 13–14. 69. Percival Finch, “Gun-Running and Organized Business in Shanghai,” China Weekly Review 37 (July 3, 1926), quoted in Frederic Wakeman Jr., Policing Shanghai (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 8, 315. 70. China Weekly Review, July 3, 1926.

7. Domestic Bonds 1. BJMA J181-18-14428 (statement from Song Liu Shi). 2. BJMA J181-18-14428. 3. Tong Lam, A Passion for Facts: Social Surveys and the Construction of the Chinese Nation-State, 1900–1949 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 64. 4. Ibid., 65. 5. Ibid., 70–71. 6. Susan Mann, “Grooming a Daughter for Marriage: Brides and Wives in the Mid- Qing Period,” in Chinese Femininities / Chinese Masculinities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 109. 7. Shiga Shuzo, “Family Property and the Law of Inheritance in Traditional China,” in Chinese Family Law and Social Change in Historical and Comparative Perspective, ed. David C. Buxbaum (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978), 109–150. 8. Kathryn Bernhardt, Women and Property in China, 960–1949 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 199, 110; Civil Code, Articles 1122 and 1123. 9. DLYPJLQS, 250. 10. Ibid., 210. 11. Hsieh Baohua, Concubinage and Servitude in Late Imperial China (London: Lexington Books, 2014). 12. By the 1930s the GMD Civil Code no longer honored these mutual contracts. Lisa Tran, “The Concubine in Republican China: Social Perception and Legal Construction,” Études chinoises 28 (2009); Tran, Concubines in Court: Marriage and Monogamy in Twentieth- Century China (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015), 7–8, 35–53, 175–197. 13. Susan L. Glosser, Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915–1953 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 4. 14. BJMA J181-19-17317 (statement of Yao Jinxing). 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. (statement of Li Yongchun). 17. Ibid. 18. Shenbao (Beijing: Airusheng e- database). 362

NOTES TO PAGES 252–265

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35.

36. 37. 38.

BJMA J181-31-4751. Ibid. BJMA J181-18-12221. BJMA J181-18-14428. Shen Congwen, Xiaoxiao ji, Shen Congwen bieji [Xiaoxiao, Shen Congwen separate collection] (Hunan: Foulu shushe chubanshe, 1995), 10–33. Arthur P. Wolf, Marriage and Adoption in China, 1845–1945 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1980), vi. Ibid., 162. BJMA J181-19-35602. Ibid. (statement from Wang Guan Shi). Vivian Ng, “Sexual Abuse of Daughters-in-Law in Qing China: Cases from the Xing’an Huilan,” in “Women’s Agency: Empowerment and the Limits of Resistance,” Feminist Studies 20, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 373–391. BJMA J181-44428. Matthew H. Sommer, Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000). Ba Jin, Jia [Family] (Beijing: Beijing renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1933; reprint 1981). BJMA J181-19-10044. Ibid. (statement from Chuan-Meng Shi). Alison Dray-Novey, “Policing Imperial Peking: The Ch’ing Gendarmerie, 1650–1850” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1982), 239, citing the Jinwu Shili 5.42a–43a. Charlotte Furth, “Concepts of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Infancy in Ch’ing Dynasty China,” Journal of Asian Studies 46, no. 1 (February 1987): 7–35. These were old ideas, but they persisted well into the twentieth century. See Juju, “Zen yang xuanze naima” [How to choose a wet nurse], Xinghua, 1932, 48; and Wang Ruyi, “Zen yang xuanzi naima” [How to choose a wet nurse], Xin funü kan [New Woman Magazine], 1947, 14. “The Influence of a Wet Nurse on a Child,” Linglong 1, no. 25 (September 2, 1931): 27. Interview with Lina Hsu, New York City, May 2012. Beverly Bossler, “A Daughter Is a Daughter All Her Life: Affinal Relations and Women’s Networks in Song and Late Imperial China,” Late Imperial China 21, no. 1 (2000): 77–106; Janet Theiss, “Explaining the Shrew: Narratives of Spousal Violence and the Critique of Masculinity in 18th- Century Criminal Cases,” in Law and Writing in Late Imperial China, ed. Robert Hegel and Katherine Carlitz (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007), 44–63; Margaret Kuo, Intolerable Cruelty: Marriage, Law, and Society in Early Twentieth- Century China (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2012); Ellen 363

NOTES TO PAGES 265–273

39. 40. 41.

42. 43.

44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

Judd, “Niangjia: Chinese Women and Their Natal Families,” Journal of Asian Studies 48, no. 3 (August 1989): 525–554. BJMA J181-21-9139. BJMA J181-19-25382. Qing wu gu naima [Please don’t use wet nurses], and Liang, “Yuer yu luma” [Infants and wet nurses], Nü duo yuekan [Women’s Bell Monthly] (22:12) no. 264 (May 1, 1934), 16–18, cited in Helen M. Schneider, Keeping the Nation’s House: Domestic Management and the Making of Modern China (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2011), 55. Furth “Concepts of Pregnancy.” Paul J. Bailey, Women and Gender in Twentieth- Century China (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 49–67; Siao- chen Hu, “The Construction of Gender and Genre in 1910s New Media: Evidence from the Ladies’ Journal,” in Dif ferent Worlds of Discourse: Transformations of Gender and Genre in Late Qing and Early Republican China, ed. Nanxiu Qian, Grace S. Fong, and Richard J. Smith (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 349–382. Ding Chuwo, editor of Nüzi Jie (1904–1907), authored numerous such pieces. BJMA J181-19-44583. BJMA J181-19-23582. Ibid. (statement from Gu Shi). Ibid. (statement from Jin Shan). Ibid. (statement from Zhu Yang Shi). Ibid. (statement from Gu Shi). Memorial from Shanxi Censor, Wu Weiping, February 6, 1909, in Qingchao Wenxian Tongkao [Comprehensive investigation of documents and literature from the Qing dynasty] (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1935–1946), 26:7783. Funü Zazhi [The Ladies’ Journal]; Shenbao; Liangyou [The Young Companion]. BJMA J181-18-18819. Ibid. (statement from Zeng Tian Shi). BJMA J181-19-8495. BJMA J181-21-9139 (statement from He Ning Shi). BJMA J181-19-226708, J181-21-9139. BJMA J181-21-9139 (statement from He Ning Shi).

8. Talking with Traffickers 1. Zhou Shuzhao, Beiping youguai de yanjiu [A study of abduction in Beiping], master’s thesis, Yanjing University (Beijing: Yanjing daxue yanjiuyuan shehuixi, May 1933), appendix, 22, 114.

364

NOTES TO PAGES 274 –281

2. Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, “From Europe to North America: The Development of Sociology in Twentieth Century China,” in China and the West: Ideas and Activists, ed. David S. G. Goodman (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1990), 130–146. 3. Madeline Yue Dong, Republican Beijing: The City and Its Histories (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 211–245; Siu-lun Wong, Sociology and Socialism in Contemporary China (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979). 4. Hsiao, “From Europe to North America,” 135; Wong, Sociology and Socialism, 11; John S. Burgess and Leonard S. Hsu, “The Teaching of Sociology in China,” Chinese and Political Science Review 11, no. 3 (1927): 374. 5. zhazihang ᭬ീ⼾. 6. Zhou Shuzhao, Beiping youguai, 2. 7. Edward Shils, “Teaching: Robert E. Park, 1864–1944,” American Scholar 60, no. 1 (Winter 1991): 120–127. 8. Y. L. Tong, “Poverty in Peking and Its Relief,” Chinese Journal of Sociology 1, no. 5 (1923). 9. Yan Jingyue, “Beijing fanzui zhi shehui fenxi” [A sociological analysis of crime in Beijing], Shehui xuejie [Sociological World] 1 (June 1928): 38. 10. Interview with Zhou Shuzhao’s niece, Lina Hsu, New York City, May 2012. 11. Frank Dikötter, Crime, Punishment, and the Prison in Modern China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002); Wang Yuanzeng, Jianyu guize jiangyi [Instructions on prison rules and regulations] (Beijing: Jingshi diyi jianyu, 1917). 12. Wang Yuanzeng, Jinshi diyi jianyu baogao [Report from Capital Number One Prison] (Beijing: Jingshi diyi jianyu, 1917), 83–84. 13. Zhou Shuzhao, Beiping youguai, 114. 14. Ibid., 10–11. 15. Ibid., 37–44. 16. Ibid., appendix, 2. 17. Ibid., appendix, glossary. 18. Ibid., 103. 19. Ibid., appendix, glossary. 20. This phrase, while literally referring to horse travel, to most people meant “by the ordinary way” or “the pedestrian way,” from mazou 㲃㌿, traveling by humble horse or by foot, as compared with traveling by cart. The most ordinary, or pedestrian, way to recruit a woman for trafficking purposes was through intercourse. 21. Zhou Shuzhao, Beiping youguai, appendix, glossary. 22. Lian Kuoru, Jianghu congtan [Collected talks of vagabonds and wanderers] (1936; reprint, Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2010), 317–321.

365

NOTES TO PAGES 283–304

23. Dikötter, Crime, Punishment and the Prison, 71. 24. Ibid. 25. Yan Jingyue, “Beiping jianyu jiaohui yu jiaoyu” [Beiping prison moral instruction and education], Shehui xuejie 4 (June 1930). 26. Zhou Shuzhao, Beiping youguai, 219–224. 27. In this way, Zhou Shuzhao’s interviews differed markedly from those conducted by her well- connected classmate and later academic supervisor (and future brother-in-law), Yan Jingyue. Yan encouraged the prisoner Chen Zhixi to write an account of his life for Prison Magazine that would reflect the “glory of the prison” and appeal to the prison warden when he became eligible for parole. Jan Kiely, The Compelling Ideal: Thought Reform and the Prison in China, 1901–1956 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), 86. 28. Zhou Shuzhao, Beiping youguai, appendix, 114–123. 29. Ibid., introduction. 30. Ibid., appendix, 114–124. 31. Ibid., appendix, 116–117. 32. Ibid., appendix, 117. 33. Ibid., appendix, 119. 34. Ibid., appendix, 114–124. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid., appendix,1–64. 37. Ibid., 61–62. 38. Report of prison warden Wang Yuanzeng, June 28, 1927, cited in Klaus Muhlhahn, Criminal Justice in China: A History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 85. 39. Zhou Shuzhao, “Beiping nüxing fanzui yu funü wenti” [Female criminals and women’s problems in Beiping], Dongfang zazhi [Orient Magazine] 31, no. 7 (1934): 5–12; Dong, Republican Beijing, 221. 40. Paul Bailey, “ ‘Women Behaving Badly’: Crime, Transgressive Behavior and Gender in Early Twentieth Century China,” Nan Nü 3, no. 1 (2006): 156–197. 41. Zhou Shuzhao, Beiping youguai, appendix, 33. 42. Ibid., appendix, 35–36. 43. Lian Kuoru, Jianghu congtan, 317–321. 44. Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); Zhou Shuzhao, Beiping youguai, appendix, 54. 45. Zhou Shuzhao, Beiping youguai, appendix, 40. 46. Ibid., appendix, 54. 47. “The Natural History of a Chinese Girl,” North China Herald, Peking Gazette, July 11, 1890, 17–18.

366

NOTES TO PAGES 304–319

48. Xu Yamin, “Wicked Citizens and the Social Origins of China’s Modern Authoritarian State: Civil Strife and Political Control in Republican Beijing, 1927–1937” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2002), 110. 49. Buxing Wo Sheng Diedie, Beijing heimo daguan ‫ݔ‬М䀕཮வが [An overview of Beijing’s black intrigues] (Shanghai: Shanghai guangwen shuju, 1915). 50. Zhou Shuzhao, Beiping youguai, appendix, 7. 51. Ibid., appendix, 59. 52. Yan Jingshan was the younger brother of Zhou Shuzhao’s senior classmate and mentor at Yanjing University, the sociologist Yan Jingyue. 53. Sun Yurong, “Zhou Shuzhao and Summer Night Stories,” Jinwan baokan, March 20, 2015; Zhou Shuzhao (Shu Ji) Xiaye de gushi [Summer night stories] (Taiwan: 1965).

Conclusion 1. United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (Vienna: UN Office on Drugs and Crime, 2000), 42. 2. See Chapter 3. 3. “Explaining Why It Should Be a Crime to Buy and Sell Slave Girls,” Sifa gongbao [Judicial Bulletin], October 19, 1929, 101; “New Order to Liberate Slave Girls in Shanxi,” Xinghua, 1933 (30:20), 41; “Raising Slave Girls Is Forbidden,” Libailiu [Saturday Magazine], 1932, 479. 4. BJMA J181-18-1091. 5. Critiquing James Watson’s strict “sale” definition, Orlando Patterson explains that the process of slavery includes not just the exploitative stage during which an individual is enslaved, but also the mechanisms of emancipation. Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 296. 6. Jennifer M. Neighbors, “The Long Arm of Qing Law? Qing Dynasty Homicide Rulings in Republican Courts,” Modern China 35, no. 1 (January 2009): 3–37. 7. Zhao Ma, Runaway Wives, Urban Crimes, and Survival Tactics in War time Beijing, 1937–1949 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015); Margaret Kuo, Intolerable Cruelty: Marriage, Law, and Society in Early TwentiethCentury China (New York: Rowan and Littlefield, 2012). 8. Elizabeth J. Remick, Regulating Prostitution in China: Gender and Local Statebuilding, 1900–1937 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014). 9. BJMA J181-17-2776.

367

NOTES TO PAGES 320–325

10. Xinghua, 1933 (30:20), 41; Sichuansheng zhengfu gongbao [Bulletin of the Sichuan Provincial Government] 47 (1936): 16; Jingcha Yuekan [Police Monthly] 4, no. 5 (1936): 4; Nüduo bao [Women’s Bell] 25, no. 4 (1936): 45. 11. Lifa zhuankan, vol. 4 (Shanghai, 1932), 4; Mark Van der Valk, “An Outline of Modern Chinese Family Law,” Monumenta Serica, Journal of Oriental Studies of the Catholic University of Peking (Beijing: Henry Vetch, 1939), 194 (translation modified). 12. Xinghua (30:20), 41. 13. League of Nations, Commission of Enquiry into Traffic in Women and Children in the East, Report to the Council (Geneva, 1932), 39. 14. Ibid., 138. 15. Zhao Ma, Runaway Wives; Kuo, Intolerable Cruelty. 16. Zhao Ma, Runaway Wives. 17. Yanzhong Huang and Dali L. Yang, “China’s Unbalanced Sex Ratios: Politics and Policy Response,” Chinese Historical Review 13, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 2. 18. Neil J. Diamant, Revolutionizing the Family: Politics, Love, and Divorce in Urban and Rural China, 1949–1969 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). 19. Traditional stakeholders in marriage arrangements sometimes influenced party recommendations, and in many villages arranged marriage patterns proved highly durable. Elizabeth Croll, The Politics of Marriage in Contemporary China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 20. Mei Fong, One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), 45. 21. Kay Ann Johnson, China’s Hidden Children: Abandonment, Adoption, and the Human Costs of the One- Child Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 14. 22. Susan Greenhalgh, “The Peasantization of the One- Child Policy in Shanxi,” in Chinese Families in the Post-Mao Era, ed. Deborah Davis and Stevan Harrell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 219–250. 23. Johnson, China’s Hidden Children. 24. Xinhua News Agency, January 24, 2016. 25. Johnson, China’s Hidden Children, 153–154. 26. Charlie Custer, “Kidnapped and Sold: Inside the Dark World of Child Trafficking in China,” The Atlantic, July 25, 2013; Charlie Custer and Leia Li, Living with Dead Hearts, Songhua Films, released 2013. 27. David M. Smolin, “Intercountry Adoption as Child Trafficking,” Valparaiso University Law Review 39, no. 2 (Winter 2004): 281–325. 28. Sheldon Zhang, Chinese Human Smuggling Organizations: Families, Social Networks, and Cultural Imperatives (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008). 368

NOTES TO PAGES 325–327

29. Xinhua News Agency and CCTV 1, June 14–17, 2007; Reuters, June 18, 2007; Associated Press, June 20, 2007. 30. Hill Gates, “Buying Brides in China, Again,” Anthropology Today 12, no. 4 (August 1996): 8–11. 31. Established in 2007 by Zhang Baoyan, the organization, Baby Come Home (www.baobeihuijia.com), provides parents with a place to post information about missing children and for survivors of kidnapping to seek their parents. In 2013 the Western advertising agency JW Thompson helped create a photomatching application to allow citizens to photograph children they suspect might have been kidnapped to compare with missing children in the Baby Come Home database. 32. Hu Minggang, Jia gei da shan de nüren [The story of an abducted woman], 2007; Li Yang, Mangshan [Blind mountain], 2007; Peter Chan, Qinaide [Dearest], 2014; and Yan Jiangang, Wei Nuli de Muqin [Slave mother], 2003, a television movie based on the short story by Rou Shi [Zhao Pingfu]. 33. U.S. State Department, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, “Country Report for China, 2015.” Numbers like these are notoriously imprecise. The problem with the PRC’s low estimate is immediately obvious when compared with official reports of numbers of children rescued. The Chinese national government effectively claims to be rescuing more than half of the children kidnapped in any given year. Reports from nonprofit agencies and from local law enforcement working on this issue indicate that this assertion is improbable. 34. Xinhua News Agency, June 28, 2007. 35. Articles 240, 241, 242. 36. China has been placed on the TIP “Tier Two Watch List.” U.S. State Department, “Trafficking in Persons Report, 2016,” 131. 37. Cui Songwang, “City Report: Zhengzhou,” Henan Television, September 2011.

369

CHINESE TERMS

anfen duri ൫‫ྱڗ‬ᕃ bangzi ᜲീ baofu jianyu ԃྩ⇫Ὄ baojia ԃ₮ baoyi ݆⽎ baomu ԃᦈ baozao ṘṂ baliu 㫋⃂ bazitie ‫د‬െ༿ binü ಛ௩ bu fei β‫ݟ‬ buke β߬ buke kending β߬⤞൶ buliao βᔉ baliu renkou 㫋⃂Хߡ bu nian shu βႩᘆ bugu shitu zhifen β㮛དྷ ၠϢ‫ڗ‬

bujun ᤷ㑌 buzhiqing β⊨ᅌ chang ౾ chi ren ߺХ

chi ren rou ߺХ⤂ chisha ↑֭ chong ᨨ chu bi ⃅ಛ chulüzi ‫ڎ‬ಁീ chuyi ࿙၌ Chunshuxia santiao hutong ឵ᡫΰή

diuwu chusuo ςẘⶢቪ dizi ⓪ീ dongqian ᙝ㞨 dou ᔈ dujun ≍㑌 eyou ᅣߓ Eryatou Ѓϊ㭵

ᙔ⥇ࠂ

congfu jiamai ၩஸ೜㋊ cong liang ၩ⪀ da laoye வ⢤Ṷ daisuren фイХ dan ⊵ danbao ᑸԃ Dalisi வ῟ශ Daliyuan வ῟㨦 Deyiyong ditan ju ၾ⡛᧞ ੝ᦡ෱

dian ‫غ‬ dianqi ‫غ‬ఠ Dianmennei cihuidian ੝൫㥹‫ج‬ᆲᇋ᥺ diuwu shike ςẘᖈ‫ۀ‬ 371

facai ↥㊖ fan ᷯ fangyan ᔤや fang ying ᓇ㽼 feimaibuke 㫡㋊β߬ feizuo buke 㫡Ҟβ߬ fengshui 㯒᧛ fuqi buhe ஸఠβ߾ fuyang zhi yiwu ኖ㰏Ϣ ⡛‫ܫ‬

ganjie ᚪᜐ ganqing ᆗᅌ geren zhuyu ԟХᩬᆋ gongtong shenghuo ‫ࠂذ‬ ₟᪲

CHINESE TERMS

gou renkou ㋝Хߡ guangun ‫ؗ‬ᝣ guanmei ൴ಷ gugong ‫ז‬༞ gugong ren ‫ז‬༞Х guinü 㦒௩ guomin ੄ᦾ hei haizi 䀕൓ീ Hongxian ᪡ᇾ Huangheyuan 䀋ᨿ㨦 hubu ቤ㗵 huidian shili ᘍ‫غ‬ЂӇ hucha ቤᚺ huji ቤ◈ hukou ቤߡ hunshu ಔᘆ hunyin ziyou ಔ౓⨙₭ huomen ᪲㥹 hutao ⶛ௗ hutong ⥇ࠂ huqin ⥇  jia ඍ jian ㋋ jianwu ృ᧼ jia de ren ඍ↫Х jiakun ுᝣ jianmin ㋋ᦾ jiashu zhuyi ඍถᩬᆋ jiating zhidu ඍྷ‫ྱڻ‬ jiazi ඍീ jiazhang ඍ㥳 jiaoyang ᓛ㰏 jiefang ねᓇ jieji 㩈♔ jiliangsuo ᳐⪀ቪ jiujisuo ᓓ᳐ቪ juganjie ‫ع‬ₚ♾ judi zhengfa ෥੝ᤵᩝ junzi ࠏീ

kang ᵙ kuai Ⴂ laoban ⢤ѿ laomadian ⢤೘䀟 laomi ⢤◟, laoshi ⢤དྷ lao xiansheng ⢤‫ؖ‬₟ li 㚲 liang ⪀ liang jia zhi nü ⪀ඍϢ௩ liangmin ⪀ᦾ liangren ⪀Х lianhuahe Ⲇ⪹ᨿ Lienüzhuan ‫ڤ‬௩֦ lihai ‫ڱ‬ඊ linchuang ℺Ⅲ lijue Ⓗᨏ lishu 㪋ᘆ lüe ⃋ lüemai ⃋㋊ lüeren lüemai ⃋Х⃋㋊ mai ㋊ maichang ㋊౾ mai liang wei chang ㋊⪀ ᵱ౾

maimai renkou wei sheng ㊨㋊Хߡᵱ₟ mai xiu mai xiu ㊨Ѥ㋊Ѥ maizuo ㋊ྲ manqiren ᰟᔺХ mazhezou 㲃⢧㌿ mei ಷ meiren ಷХ meiyou biede banfa ᨤᘑ ‫↫گ‬㓻ᩝ

menpai 㥹ẅ mingling ⺷⸀ mingxia wei hainü ࠃΰᵱ ൓௩

mu ᦈ mu ⃆ mui jai (meizi ఞീ) muqin ᦈ〿 naimai ௫೘ nainai ௫௫ nan 㪌 nannü pingdeng ₱௩྇┍ Nei cheng ‫ૂج‬ neiwufu ‫ྩܫج‬ nianpu ྈㆈ niaokang ᯣᵙ niangjia ౩ඍ nü gugong ௩㩲༞ nünu ௩௪ nüpu ௩ׂ nupu zhi ming ௪ׂϢࠃ paihuazi ዚ⪹ീ pi ⃿ pipa    pinli ⣤⏷ pinminsuo ㊛ᦾቪ pubao ⨼ԃ qianwen 㞨ᓾ qingyuan ᅌ㮏 qing ᅌ qi ௒ qinwang 〿ᾄ qiyue ௒☾ quanti ‫ح‬㵧 ruchang ϸ౾ ruma ϸ೘ rumu ϸᦈ sai man (ximin) sanbuguan difang ήβ╎ ੝ᔤ

372

CHINESE TERMS

sanbuguan ήβ╎ sancong ήၩ shanyang प㰏 sheilaiguan ヾӃ╎ shenjia 㑀‫כ‬ shenpanshu ප‫ڮ‬ᘆ shi ⊵ shifu དྷṲ shinü ӈ௩ shixiong དྷؒ shoufang de binü ᓁቩ↫ ಛ௩

shouyang ᓁ㰏 shumin ྿ᦾ siheyuan ਣ߾㨦 sifayuan ߴᩝؑ songgun ゙ᝣ songjiao xiyisuo 㕂Е⡾ ⵉቪ

suan ming ╇ࡠ suanmingren ╇ࡠХ suogong shishi ቪӓᕼන ta bing meiyou da wo кφ

Wai cheng ஫ૂ wei nubi ᵱ௪ಛ wen ᓾ wowotou ⒥⒥㭵 wufa sanbuguan difang ᷀ᩝήβ╎ ੝ᔤ

wushu ᤸ⽃ xiang 㘓 xinli buliang ႇ῟β⪀ xingbu ‫ڠ‬㗵 xi shi ♥Ђ xiucai ␆ት xiao jiating ෑඍྷ xiaokang zhi jia ෑ࿀Ϣඍ xiaomizhou ෑ◟☁ xiguan ⡾ᇈ xingji keyi ်㎕⃦߬ xiongdimen ؒညԤ xu bi ⃅ಛ xue xi ൟቡ xue xiju ൟቡ۶ xunrenbiao ෍Х⽒

ᨤᘑቺቅ

tiaotie ᝃ㊭ tongju gongcai ࠂ෵ ‫ذ‬㊖

tongku ℥⫥ tongyangxi Ⓡ㰏೎ tongyangxifu Ⓡ㰏೎ಞ tuanlian ੍⛵ tuchu ࠆ‫ڎ‬ tufei ੒‫ݟ‬ tunkeng นੱ

yamen ⽈㥹 yangnü 㰏௩ yang nubi 㰏௪ಛ yang nübi 㰏௩ಛ yangpiao ᪊⏄ yanxian ∭⛡ yatou ϊ㭵 yaoque 〧⠄ yesu / yezhu ⣌② / 㚴㉮ yigong dai zhen ц༞ф㊼)

373

Yijun ᦀ㑌 yike duan Ω⒟Ⓧ yiliu zhi shipu 㖝⃂Ϣκׂ yingli fanmai renkou ḽ‫ڱ‬ ㊝㋊Хߡ

yingli lüeyou ḽ‫⃋ڱ‬ヰ yiren ၌Х yishi ⃑Ђ yong bu cirao elai zi ᧞β ᯴ᒖゖ㋗െ

you ‫׾‬ youguai ヰዝ youxiao ᘑᓍ yue ☾ yuejuyuan ᡇቡ੉ Yunfangli 㪔⪺㚲 zahuopu 㪅㊜⨼ zayuan’er 㪅㨦‫؜‬ zhao bing ዧ‫ط‬ zhengfan ᤵồ Zhishui shuyao ᩆ᧛㔳〧 zhiye ⣵៚ zhongqian ό✢ zhu ϗ zi െ ziran ⨙᷋ ziyoumin ⨙₭ᦾ zoushi chusuo ㌿஽ⶢቪ zoushi shike ㌿஽ᖈ‫ۀ‬ zu ␙ zui ⠨ zuogong ՛༞ zuo mei wei sheng Ҟಷ ᵱ₟

AC KN OWLE D G M E NTS

When I first embarked upon this project as a graduate student at Yale, human trafficking had yet to capture the headlines it does today. I was often asked if a meaningful study of the sale of people in late Qing and Republican China was even possible; it was suggested that documentation would be inadequate, slavery was not a Chinese problem, or, alternatively, that the topic was simply too vast. One person who never suggested it couldn’t be done was my advisor, Jonathan Spence. For his faith in the worthiness of this topic and my ability to rise to the task, and for astute guidance over many years, I will always be grateful. Also at Yale, Beatrice Bartlett and Pauline Lin imparted tools for tackling archival challenges, turning my vague questions into targeted scavenger hunts. Thank you to Annping Chin, Valerie Hansen, Peter Perdue, and Helen Siu. My friend and teacher Mridu Rai instilled the methodological and theoretical confidence to tackle controversial subjects without academic quibbling. Jerry Dennerline’s classes at Amherst College first drew me to Chinese history. He has provided a model for reading sources with rigor and compassion ever since. Without question, I would not be where I am today without Jerry’s teaching, insights, and encouragement. Joseph Esherick, Janet Theiss, Ken Pomeranz, and Jacob Eyferth took time to read the entire manuscript. Their careful comments and our extensive conversations have helped frame my arguments. I feel immensely privileged to have Ken (with his blend of wisdom, sound judgment, and kindness) in the office next door as I finish this book. While inspiring teachers and colleagues helped to shape my ideas and improve the manuscript, responsibility for any remaining errors is mine alone. I would like to thank a number of institutions for their support. Yale University provided the A. Bartlett Giamatti Fellowship, summer language study funding from 375

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

the Council on East Asian Studies, an International Area Studies Research Grant, a John Enders Summer Fellowship, and a John Taylor Roberts Writing Fellowship. The Fulbright Foundation and a supplemental McMillan Center Research Grant supported nearly two years of research in China’s archives; my appreciation to Renmin University for providing a research affiliation. Later an Early Career Fellowship from the American Academy of Learned Societies and the Mellon Foundation sponsored leave time from teaching, graciously granted by McGill University. While teaching at McGill I also received an Établissement de Nouveaux Professeur- chercheurs Grant from the Province of Québec. Most recently, the University of Chicago has provided me with precious leave to finish the book. The histories in this book would never have come to light without the stewardship of archivists in China across centuries and access to their remarkable collections. I am grateful to China’s First Historical Archive in Beijing, Second Historical Archive in Nanjing, the National Library of China, the Nanjing Municipal Library, and the Shanghai Municipal Library. The Beijing Municipal Archive made my research on this topic possible, and I will never forget the attentiveness, warmth, and interest in the project with which Ai Qi, Wang Yong, Liu Huanchen, and Wu Keping welcomed me each morning. In North America, librarians Sarah Elman, Ellen Hammond, and Tao Yang of the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale, Macy Zheng of the McLennen Library at McGill, and Zhou Yuan at the University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library facilitated various stages of my research. The Department of History and Classical Studies at McGill University gave me my first position as a faculty member. Len Moore, Catherine Legrand, Nancy Partner, Elizabeth Elbourne, Judith Szapor, Lorenz Luthi, Yuzo Ota, and Colleen Parish all made Montreal a warmer place. I am especially grateful to Grace Fong, Robin Yates, and Griet Vankeerberghen for their friendship and for creating such a stimulating environment for China studies. Since joining the University of Chicago, I have been surrounded by dedicated, stimulating, and unstintingly generous colleagues. In addition to those already mentioned, Susan Burns, Kathleen Belew, Jane Dailey, Jan Goldstein, Priya Nelson, Amy Dru Stanley, and Tara Zahra read the manuscript in its entirety or some part and offered invaluable comparative insights from outside the China field, allowing me to see the Chinese transactional family in a dif ferent light. Jane, in par ticular, helped hone the structure of the introduction. In the history department office, Cyndee Breschok, David Goodwine, Sonja Rusnak, and Joanne Berens have supplied administrative support and good humor. Beyond the University of Chicago, Rachel Berger, James Krapfl, Micaela Garrido, and Kathleen Poling read drafts of the introduction on short notice. Li Chen was a careful reader, providing corrections, insight, and encouragement throughout the text. I am pleased of course to have received precious feedback from these colleagues, but am even more happy to have their camaraderie through the finish line. 376

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

During the course of writing this book I have participated in numerous conference panels and conversations with scholars who have shaped my ideas about trafficking, legal history, and family life. For company with contentious questions, I thank David Ambaras, Indrani Chatterjee, Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley, Cristina Firpo, Joy Kim, Margaret Kuo, Matthew Sommer, Amy Stanley, Kristen Stapleton, Glenn Tiffert, Margaret Tillman, and Yi-Li Wu. My thanks to Wu Tao, Feng Xiaocai, Zhang Shiming, Shen Xiaoyun, and Zhang Yan for assistance on the ground. Cheng Zhangcan—with characteristic intellectual generosity and curiosity—helped me puzzle over a particularly intriguing case. In Beijing, Henry Ding shared his contract collection. Two long conversations over tea with Zhou Shuzhao’s niece, Lina Hsu, gave me a new perspective on the Zhou clan. I appreciate Hoyt Tillman connecting me with the family. Thank you to Leia Li and Charlie Custer for your compelling documentary and our conversation, and to Stevenson (Steve) Upton of the Upton Sino-Foreign Archive. Francesca Simkin supplied copyediting suggestions that much improved one chapter. Portions of Chapter 7 were originally published in “Inside the Home, Outside the Family: Wet Nurses in Republican China,” Nan Nü, vol. 17, no. 2 (2015), 96–128, © Koninklijke Brill NY, Leiden, 2015, reprinted here with the journal’s permission; I appreciate Harriet Zurndorfer’s editorial skill and the opportunity to give those arguments an early airing. For professional encouragement, my heartfelt gratitude to Stan Katz and Bill Kirby. On the first of many visits to the Beijing Municipal Archive I met Zhao Ma, an inspired fellow traveler in the police files. He remains an enormous encouragement to my research, and quite simply a terrific friend and colleague. Friends from graduate school, the archives, China, and beyond have enriched these years of research and writing. Thank you to Nicole Barnes, Chen Qiang, Haydon Cherry, Jiachen Fu, Marco Garrido, Eleonora Gilburd, Denise Ho, Janise Simpson Jackson, Susan Jakes, Matthew Johnson, Charles Keith, Olivia Kraef, Sue Metzler, Jeff Prescott, Priscilla Song, Helen Veit, Brian Vivier, Wendy Warren, Wook Yoon, Zhang Xiaoye, and Zhang Xin. For timely infusions of insight and good sense, I am especially grateful to Lori Watt. My editor, Kathleen McDermott, waited a long time for this manuscript. I deeply appreciate her patience, perception, and care with the text. I would also like to thank Katrina Vassallo at Harvard University Press; my copy editor, Wendy Nelson; and my production editor, Pamela Nelson, for a smooth publishing process. Thank you also to anonymous readers for their meticulous comments. Isabelle Lewis worked with precision and efficiency on the maps, while Michael Donovan at the Visual Resources Center photographed Republican-period pictorials. Abigail Ransmeier and Heinrich Lipp beautifully adapted the detail from the Guangxu- era map of Baodi County. Thank you to Ron and Diane Knight for being family, and for stepping in during childcare closures to allow us to keep working. Thank you also to Diane for braving 377

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

the northern cold to look after Merkel, who knows his contribution and is much missed. There are no words to contain how blessed I am to have been born into a compassionate, intellectually curious, loving family. John, Judith, Abigail, and Peter Ransmeier, anything I accomplish is possible only because of you. My parents have—at one stage or another—read nearly every word of this book. Many of these words are better due to your keen eyes. I will always write with you in my heart. If my pursuit of history flourishes, it is because you nourished all my interests and taught me to think and to love. Finally, David Andrew Knight, my wonderful partner in work and life, thank you for being part of this book from beginning to end. All my love to you and our Viola, for all that we are, and all that we will be.

378

INDEX

Numbers followed by letters i and t refer to illustrations and tables, respectively. Abduction (lüeyou): accusations of, to retrieve runaway wives, 321; and adoption, intersection of, 183; of children, by family members, 164–167; Qing code on, 104; use of term, 127, 127t; as women’s crime, 306; women serving sentences for, 297. See also Kidnappers; Kidnapping Adopted daughters (yangnü), slave girls renamed as, 137 Adoption: and abduction, intersection of, 183; of heirs, 58, 235; intrafamilial, 65, 104, 308; monetary transactions in, 312; of “mulberry grubs” (minglingzi), 183; Qing code on, 104–105; sale of children presented as, 156, 160, 161, 162, 320; slavery conceptualized in language of, 8; unofficial, in contemporary China, 324 Adultery, and wife selling, 25–26, 104, 205 Agency: of slaves and servants, 271, 314, 319; of sold people, 3, 290–291 Alienation: marriage and, 172–174, 256, 265. See also Isolation All China Women’s Federation, 326 American Red Cross, 195 Amnesties, in Republican period, 17, 298, 307 An Guoqing, 49, 50

An Guorui, 40, 44, 46, 48 Anhui Province: officials from, 64; Taiping Rebellion and, 65–66 Anqing, Taiping Rebellion and, 65–66 Antiharassment document, 41, 46, 47, 48 Antikidnapping societies, 107 Apprentices: family arrangements for, 150; missing-person reports for, 252; in performing beggar troupe, 145–149; sold children presented as, 166 Armies: local, in defeat of Taiping Rebellion, 66, 69, 80–81, 90; New, mutiny within, 122; Qing (Manchu) banner, deterioration of, 64, 69, 81, 90. See also Soldiers; specific armies Arranged marriages, 34–35; girls’ age at, 233; girls running away from, 151; May Fourth activists on, 210; prohibition edict of 1910 and rules for, 5, 118–119; for servant girls, 118–119, 250–251 Atlantic slave trade: coolie trade replacing, 8, 77, 79; legacies of, 12; perspectives on, 9 Ba Jin, 119, 259 Bandits (tufei): executions of, 83; during famine of 1920–1921, 194, 196; in Henan, 179; hijacking of “Blue Express” by, 235–236; and

379

INDEX

Bandits (tufei) (continued) military, ties between, 236; in Republican era, 180; in sanbuguan territories, 170 Banner households, in Beijing, 90, 91, 92; kidnapping by, 92–100; sense of entitlement of, 98–99; slaveholding privileges of, 114, 118 Banner troops. See Manchu (Qing) banner armies Baodi County, Shuntian Prefecture: archive of, 16, 56; famine refugees from, 90; flooding in, 34; magistrate of, 25, 28, 33–34, 39, 41, 42, 46, 49, 51, 54–56; map of, 36i; villages in, distances from county seat, 48 Baojia registration system, 241 Bazitie (eight- character card), 158–159 Beijing: banner households in, 90, 91, 92, 98–99; brothels in, 138–139; children trafficked to, 187–191; courtyard communities of, 106, 154, 159, 187, 242; domestic servants in, 239–240; entertainment (Tianqiao) district in, 138–141, 140i, 151, 162, 170; famine refugees in, 90; grain supplies of, 91; Inner City population of, 90, 91; kidnapping in, 92–100, 106, 151; in late Qing era, 90–91; loss of administrative significance, 214; map of (1925), 140i; merchants in, 90; neighborhoods of, sale of children in, 154–162, 163–168; Outer City population of, 91; parks in, 141, 151; police force in, 121, 144–145; population shifts in early Republican period, 91–92, 131, 141; runaways in, 185; street performers / beggars in, 138, 139–149, 153; Temple of Agriculture in, 94, 140i, 151; and Tianjin, 164–165, 214; in trafficking networks, 1–2, 19, 164–165, 296; transportation system in, 140i, 141 Beijing-Fengtian Railway Line, 202 Beijing-Hankou Railway Line, 140i, 141, 197i; administrative units of, 201–202; and cholera epidemic, 194; famine refugees on, 192; impact on farmers, 179; police on, 198–206, 215, 229; trafficking on, 198–199, 201t, 203–206 Beijing Municipal Archive, 16, 155 Beijing Number One Prison: Cheng Huang at, 13, 15, 296; extension prison compared to, 297; interviews of prisoners at, 15, 273,

274–275, 277–278, 280, 282–305, 307; life in, 277; location of, 140i; sociological research at, 273, 274; Zeng Shunde at, 273, 277 Beijing-Tianjin Railway Line, 140i, 141, 165 “Black children” (hei haizi), 323 Board of Punishments: death sentences authorized by, 83; face- saving decision by, 56, 176; on legitimacy of transactions in people, 99; on trafficking cases, 176, 177 Board of Revenue (hubu), 242 Boston Sunday Globe (newspaper), 107 Boxer Rebellion, 101; reforms undertaken after, 102–103; Tianjin after, 217 Boys: as adopted heirs, 58, 235; desire for, and leasing of wife (dianqi), 57; in Henan, trafficking of, 177–180; military squires, trafficking of, 83 Bride price, 34–35, 103; communist regime on, 322; prohibition edict of 1910 on, 116; Qing code on, 25; Republican jurists on, 123; and trafficking, legitimation of, 3, 172 Brides: indebtedness of, 3; kidnapping of, 14, 103; resale of, 40; runaway, 151, 301. See also Child brides (tongyangxi) British: on Hong Kong slave girls (mui tsai), 79–80, 119; Shanghai riots and, 109, 110; treaty port rights for, 181 Brokers: employment (laomadian), 300, 326; entrepreneurial, 20, 231, 306, 312, 327. See also Intermediaries Brothels: in Beijing, 138–139; child brides (tongyangxi) sold to, 258; communist government and closure of, 322; leasing of wives to, 159–160; runaway wives sold to, 151; sales of children to, 157, 159, 162, 303; sales of women to, 139, 173, 287, 290, 292 Burgess, John S., 274, 283 Cao Jinxiang, 217 Cao Kun, 223 Cash crops, railway development and, 178, 179 Cathedral Notre Dame des Victoires, Tianjin, 70i, 70–72 Catt, Carrie Chapman, 113 Charity: during famine of 1920–1921, 195–196; as justification for purchase of people, 160–161, 169, 174, 205, 320

380

INDEX

Chastity: and eligibility for sale, Qing jurists on, 104; vs. filial responsibility, 13, 32, 100 Chattel principle, 9, 10, 105, 301, 319 Chen Baozhen, 148 Chen Erge, 148 Cheng Bao, 175–176, 177 Cheng Chongcha, 203 Cheng Huang, 13–15, 278, 293–305; amnesty of, 17, 298; approach to trafficking, 15, 280, 290–291, 293–296, 300–301, 303–304, 306–307; emotions of, 22, 282, 304–305; first prison sentence of, 17, 296–297; and Liao Yuting, 1, 13, 14–15, 294, 296, 302; loyalty to family, 22–23, 297–300, 302–303; return home from prison, 298–300; second prison sentence of, 304; vengefulness of, 14, 302; youth of, 7, 294, 308 Cheng Tao, 299, 301, 303, 306–307 Chen Guorui, 82 Cheng Xiu’er, 175–177 Chen Jishan, 175–177, 218 Chen Kuang, 148 Chen Yuqing, 34, 35, 40, 41, 51, 55, 61; daughter of, 24–25, 30, 34–37, 38, 41, 45, 51–55, 61, 98; testimony of, 44–46 Chen Zhiming, 302 Chiang Kaishek, 214 Chicago School of sociology, 274, 275 Ch’i Hsi- sheng, 224 Child brides (tongyangxi), 103, 253–259, 313; contract for, 158–159, 256, 257; cultural changes and, 254–255, 257; exploitation of, 253–254, 257; negotiations regarding, 155–156, 158; physical abuse of, 256; prohibition edict of 1910 and, 255; reduced security of, 264; rescue of, by natal family, 256, 299–300; sexual abuse of, 257–258; trafficked girls sold as, 95 Children: abduction (lüeyou) of, by family members, 164–167; abused, rescue and rehabilitation of, 144, 157, 161–162; adoption vs. purchase of, 320; “black” (hei haizi), 323; in contemporary China, 323–325; as household emergency assets, 61; indebtedness of, 3; indenture of, 1910 edict on, 117–118; kidnapping of, 124, 151–153, 232, 302–303, 325–326; out- of-plan, in contemporary China, 323–324; pawning of, 258;

portable status of, 139; protections of, in 1910 edict, 117; punishment of, parents’ latitude in, 11; as servants, 257i, 269i; starvation of, 191; as street performers / beggars, 138, 139–149, 153, 313; trafficked, countryside as source of, 186–187; of traffickers, threats to, 299–300, 302, 303–304; in vocational workhouses (xiyisuo), 148–149, 190; vulnerability to trafficking, 1–2, 9; working outside the home, in Republican period, 146i, 151, 152, 153i. See also Boys; Child brides (tongyangxi); Children, sale of; Girls Children, sale of: in Beijing, 187–191; contracts used in, 189, 190, 233, 235; famine and, 81–82, 191, 194; justification for, 80, 174; to missionaries, 76; police investigation of, 155–160; punishment of parents for, 26; as rational economic decision, 150; Tianjin trafficking ring and, 221, 225–235, 228t; transportation improvement and, 178–180, 188, 228–229 China International Famine Relief Committee (CIFRC), 195 Cholera epidemic, 194 Chonghou (Qing imperial commissioner), 72, 73, 78 Chu Deshan, 164–166, 168 Chu Fukui, 84–89, 98 Chu Fuzhong, 84–89, 98 Chulalongkorn (King Rama V, Siam), 109 Chu Liu Shi, 85–89 Civil code: development of, 21, 103, 112, 124, 136; Guomindang, 243; promulgation of, 21, 317 Cixi (Empress Dowager), 29 Clark, Helen, 113 Classes (jieji): dif ferent, prohibition of marriage between, 120; in Republican period, 259 Coerced labor: in contemporary China, 325, 327; famine of 1920–1921 and, 195 Coerced military ser vice, 288, 306 Cohen, Myron, 59, 60 Cohen, Paul, 76 Collectivization, 322 Commoners (liangmin): vs. mean people (jianmin), 18, 104, 116; hired laborers (gugong) as, 57; sale of, Qing code on, 25, 97, 104

381

INDEX

Communist period. See People’s Republic of China Concubine(s): Confucianism on, 328; family ties of, 265; Guomindang laws on, 320; legal status of, in Qing vs. Republican era, 243; “lower,” slave girls as, 258; May Fourth activists on, 210; obligations of, 3; prohibition edict of 1910 and, 119, 312–313; as property, 10, 313; purchase of, 161i; Qing code on, 10, 45; sale of child brides as, 256; sale of servants as, 244, 249–250; sale of wives as, 40; serving maids to, 96, 240, 244 Confucianism, 8; and family, 313, 327–328; hierarchy based on, 26, 327; and marriage patterns, 172–174; in post-Taiping reconstruction era, 31; and Qing code, 27; on self- sacrifice by women, 13, 32, 100 Consensual enticement (heyou), use of term, 127, 127t, 128 Contract(s): antiharassment, 41, 46, 47, 48; for child brides (tongyangxi), 158–159, 256, 257; dian (conditional), 56–57, 60, 302; forged, 96; marriage, 59; marriage severance (lishu), 35–37, 38, 39, 43, 45, 46, 47–48, 58–59; missionaries’ use of, 76; monetary exchange in, 60; performing beggar troupes and, 147; power of, 48; prohibition edict of 1910 on, 116, 121; for prostitution, 139; pseudolegal, 46–48; Qing code on, 58; red, 57; in Republican period, increased prominence of, 241, 243, 260, 268; for sale of children, 189, 190, 233, 235; for sale of slaves, 58; use in kidnapping, 124; use in trafficking, 13, 58, 59, 124, 125–126, 200; for wet nurses, 260, 263; white, 57, 59 Coolie trade, 63, 77–78; abolition of Atlantic slave trade and, 8, 77, 79; vs. domestic trafficking, 79–80; end of, 63, 171; treaties restricting, Li Hongzhang and, 63, 77, 78, 79 Courts: face- saving decisions by, 176; modern, in late Qing period, 126; in Republican period, 15, 130, 131–135. See also Supreme Court Crimps, in coolie trade, 78, 79 Cui Sheng, 261–263

Debt. See Obligations Deception, by traffickers, 171–172, 234, 289, 306; social changes and increased opportunities for, 260, 312 Deferred execution (jianhou) cases, 83 Dian (conditional sale), 56–57, 60, 302 Dianqi (leasing of wife), 56–57 Divorce: in communist period, 322; contract of (lishu), 35–37, 38, 39, 43, 45, 46, 47–48, 58–59; men’s justifications for, 47; payment for, 37, 44–45; wife selling as alternative to, 205; women’s ability to get, conditions for, 53–54. See also Marriage severance Documents of compromise (juganjie), 55 Domestic laborers: as employees, conceptualization in Republican period, 270, 272; shortage of, and trafficking, 12–13. See also Servants Dong Zhenjin, 146, 147 Dowry, 2, 35 Drought, 34, 85, 193 Drugs: crimes associated with, 297; and trafficking, 288, 289 Duan Qirui, 209, 212, 213; amnesty under, 17, 298, 299; and Zhenwu Army, 222, 223

Datongbao (newspaper), 109 Da Zhonghua Shangbao (newspaper), 218

Families, Chinese: boundaries of, shifting definition of, 6, 242, 243–244; Confucianism

Edgerton-Tarpley, Kathryn, 196 Edwards, J. H., 78 Eight- character card (bazitie), 158–159 Emigration, prohibition of, 79 Employment: of domestic laborers, new concept of, 270, 272; misleading promises of, as trafficking strategy, 186; of women, increased opportunities for, 260, 312 Employment brokers (laomadian), 300, 326 Enslaved men (saiman / ximin), in rural southern China, 10 Entrepreneurial brokers, 20, 231, 306, 312, 327 Execution: immediate (lijue) vs. deferred (jianhou), 83; of traffickers, 78, 80, 82 Extortion: antiharassment document as protection against, 41, 46, 47, 48; sale of people and, 41, 46, 49; underground police and, 219, 220; yamen toughs and, 49–50

382

INDEX

and, 313, 327–328; coresidency as definition for, 242–243; disintegration into microhouseholds, 143; natal, wives’ / concubines’ alienation from, 172–174, 256, 265; permeability of, 240–241; and perpetuation of trafficking, 2, 11–13, 126, 163, 168–169, 320, 321; prostitution encouraged by, 176–177; role in trafficking, 85–89, 98, 100, 150–151, 159–160, 164–167, 174; small (xiao jiating), 244; as social security, 174; sold and indentured people’s view of, 243; structural changes in early twentieth century, 242–244, 260. See also Transactional families, Chinese Family (Ba Jin), 119 Family loyalty, among traffickers, 22–23, 294–295, 297–300, 302–303, 307, 308 Famine: of 1876–1878, 24, 34, 80–82, 84–85, 90, 105, 196; executions during, 83; foreign aid during, 195–196; grain reserves during, 91; and human trafficking, 81–82, 85–89, 191–193, 196, 198, 237; of 1920–1921, 191–196, 198, 223–224, 237 Farmers: abandoning of farms by, 194; railway development and, 178, 179; vulnerability to weather / soil fluctuations, 24–25, 34, 38, 84–85, 179, 193 Female slaves (binü). See Slave girls Feminists, Western, 113 Feng Guozhang, 209 First Historical Archive, 16, 56 First Opium War, 74 Floods: of 1871, 34, 62–63, 70, 77; Hai River and, 68, 70, 70i, 84–85; of 1917, 218; Yellow River and, 68; Yongding River and, 34, 62–63, 68, 70 Fontanier, Henri-Victor, 72 Food-for-work programs, 63, 194–195 Foot binding, 156, 157, 273 Foreign aid, famine of 1920–1921 and, 195–196 Foreign concession areas: criminal activities in, 185, 221; in Shanghai, 112, 185, 213; in Tianjin, 213, 221. See also Treaty ports Foreigners: and coolie trade, 77–78, 79; floods of 1871 and, 77; hijacking of, 236; kidnapping by, rumors of, 63, 71–76, 77, 79; pressures on

Qing dynasty, 74; tensions with, 68, 74, 109, 110; in Tianjin, police chief and, 218, 219; Tianjin massacre of, 64, 72–75, 76. See also Missionaries, foreign Fortune-tellers, 66, 96, 143, 170 Freedom: ideal of, vs. everyday necessities, 314; Western vs. Confucian concept of, 8 French Catholics: cathedral in Tianjin, 70i, 70–72; massacre in Tianjin, 72–77 Fuller, Pierre, 196 Gamble, Sidney, 274, 283 Gambling, illegal, 154–155, 159, 160 Gao Yonglu, 149 Gendarmerie: investigation of trafficking cases, 98, 165, 176; vs. new police, 165 Girls: trafficking to Hong Kong, 235. See also Child brides; Slave girls Glosser, Susan, 244 Grand Canal, xiii, 68, 87, 214 Guomindang period: capital in, 214; definition of household in, 243; laws pertaining to families in, 320; legal code revisions in, 128 Gu Xianji, 266–267 Hai River, 68; flooding of, 68, 70, 70i, 84–85 Heads of household (jiazhang): authority of, 1910 edict on, 118–119; authority of, Qing code on, 25; changing position in Republican period, 272; power of, 315; sale of family members by, 150–151; trafficking organized by, 189, 191. See also Masters He Guizhen, 159, 162 He Long, 154–162 Henan: forced labor in, 325, 327; hardship in, 178, 179, 193, 194; human trafficking in, 81, 82–83, 178–180, 187–191 Henriot, Christian, 19 Hershatter, Gail, 19 Heyou (consensual enticement), use of term, 127, 127t, 128 He Yuqing, 159 He Zhikuan, 159 Hierarchy, household, 272, 315; debt and, 3–4; master’s obligations in, 263; servants in, 315, 317–318; transactions in people and, 2, 241, 313

383

INDEX

Hierarchy, social: and Chinese legal codes, 116–117, 121; Confucianism and, 26, 327; in post-Taiping reconstruction era, 31; and Qing justice, 26; in Republican period, 137; and social security, 264; and trafficking, acceptance of, 312 Hired laborers (gugong): farmers working as, 42, 47, 85; female slaves (binü) preferred to, 115; treatment in master’s household, 57–58; white- contract slaves as, 57; women working as, 38, 47. See also Servants Hong Kong: and coolie trade, 79; illicit activities in, 185; market for people in, 229; slave girls in, 79–80, 119; slavery in, 4, 105; trafficking of children to, 225, 226, 228–229, 231, 232, 234–235 Hong Xiuquan, 30 Hong Zhong, 250 Hostage taking, 236 Household(s), Chinese: baojia registration system for, 241; child brides in, 254; hired laborers (gugong) in, 38, 57–58; members of, 313; Republican vs. Guomindang civil code on, 243; servants in, 105, 239–241; state’s conception of, changes in, 242; structural changes of in early twentieth century, 242–244, 260; support obligations of, weakening of, 260, 263; women and management of, 133, 241. See also Heads of household (jiazhang); Hierarchy, household Household inspections (hucha), 155, 187, 242–243, 258 Household registration regime (hukou / huji), in communist China, 322 Huai Army, 66, 69 Huang, Philip, 116, 128 Hu Dianying, 232 Human trafficking: League of Nations on, 209–210, 310; United Nations on, 310–311. See also Trafficking, in China Hunhunr gangsters, 171 Husbands: leasing wives as prostitutes, 159–160; retrieving runaway wives, 321; selling wives, 40, 43, 60; of wet nurses, 265, 266, 267, 268, 270; wives as property of, 10, 60, 172–174; wives indentured by, 259

Industrialization, in China, 105–106; and trafficking, 106–107, 120, 296 Informants, in police investigations, 221, 230–231, 277 Innocent, John, 73 Insurance, women as, 25, 32, 61 Intermediaries: in contemporary China, 324; criminalization of benign activities of, and trafficking, 312; prohibition edict of 1910 on, 119, 121, 123, 312, 317, 319; ser vices provided by, 2, 20; social acceptance of, 63; strategies employed by, 306. See also Intermediaries, in trafficking; Matchmakers (mei) Intermediaries, in trafficking, 200, 231; government as, 190, 315, 316i, 319, 324; kinsmen and neighbors as, 61, 86, 151, 159–160, 164, 167, 168, 313, 318; local matchmakers as, 96, 151, 167; positive self- appraisal of, 324–325; prosecution of, 167; public censure reserved for, 61; Qing- era, 100; Qing vs. Republican law on, 296; Republican- era, 312; Republican Supreme Court on, 161; servants as, 314, 315, 316–317, 318; women as, 95–97, 100, 233, 241 International Agreement for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic, 121 International migrants, 326 International trafficking, efforts to combat, 121, 209–210, 310–311 Isolation: of domestic laborers, 265; of trafficking victims, 171, 172, 180, 184–185; of women, marriage and, 172–174, 256, 265 Japan: loans from, during World War I, 222; occupation by, trafficking during, 321; police force of, as model for Chinese police, 213; rights in China, after World War I, 210 Jiang Daicheng, 59 Jianmin (mean people): commoners (liangmin) distinguished from, 18, 104, 120; emancipation of, 18, 104, 112; prohibition edict of 1910 on, 120; sale of, Qing code on, 97 Jingdezhen, boys trafficked to, 179–180 Jing Junjian, 18, 58 Jinling. See Nanjing (Jinling) Jin Shan, 267

384

INDEX

Jin Shunqing, 291 Johnson, Kay Ann, 324 Johnson, Walter, 9 Kawashima Naniwa, 144 Kidnappers: execution in post-Taiping era, 78; prosecution of, and prevention of antiforeign riots, 68; punishment of, 60, 78, 98; Shanghai trial of, riots during, 109–110 Kidnapping (youguai): accusations of, 39, 41, 46, 106; in Beijing’s Inner City, 92–100; in Beijing’s Tianqiao district, 151; of brides, 14, 103; of children, 151–153, 232, 302–303, 325–326; contracts used in, 124; coolie trade and, 77–78, 79; demand elements of, 105; by foreigners, rumors regarding, 63, 71–76, 77, 79; of foreigners, 236; newspaper reports of, 89, 106, 151–152, 181, 182, 305; public fear of, 106–107; to sanbuguan territories, 170–171, 175–177; seduction of women and, 175; sociological research on, 276; vs. trafficking, 281; on trains, 199, 204–205; as women’s crime, 306 King, Michelle, 75–76 Kinship / kinsmen: fictive, 163, 168; as intermediaries in trafficking, 61, 86, 151, 159–160, 164, 167, 168, 313, 318; role in trafficking, 6, 85–89, 98, 100, 150–151, 164–167; among street performers / beggars, 144, 149–150, 153, 163, 313 Lam, Tong, 241, 242 Land: of average household, 38; conditional sale of (dian), 56–57, 60, 302; sale of, trafficking compared to, 10, 55, 56, 281 Lao She, 248 Lary, Diana, 222, 230 Last resort rhetoric, in trafficking, 139–140 Law(s), Chinese: vs. practice, 106; vs. tradition, in addressing trafficking, 135–136. See also Civil code; Prohibition edict of 1910; Qing code Law enforcement, in cities vs. rural areas, 186–187. See also Gendarmerie; Police League of Nations: China’s delegate to, 218; on human trafficking, 209–210, 310, 321 Leasing of wives (dianqi), 56–57

Legal system: in Guomindang period, 128, 320; in late Qing period, reform efforts during, 101, 102–103, 110–116, 122, 136; in People’s Republic of China, 327; in Republican period, 15, 122–131, 136–137, 163 Li, Lillian, 91, 191 Liangjiang: international trade in, Chinese law and, 112; Ma Xinyi as governor general of, 68, 74; Zeng Guofan as governor general of, 75; Zhou Fu as governor general of, 62, 63, 102, 109–110 Liangmin. See Commoners (liangmin) Liang Yinting, 227, 229, 231, 233 Lian Kuoru, 281 Liao Yuting: and Cheng Huang, 1, 13, 14–15, 294, 296, 302; relations with police, 291; reputation of, 6–7; tricks of trade of, 11, 14 Li Eryatou, 255–256 Li Guozhen, 34–35, 37–38, 39, 40–47, 49, 52, 54, 55, 56 Li Hongzhang, 68–69; and coolie trade, treaties restricting, 63, 77, 78, 79; famine of 1870s and, 81, 89–90; as governor general of Zhili Province, 64, 68, 75, 77, 78, 91; rumors of foreign kidnappings and, 63; Tianjin massacre and, 64; and Zhou Fu, 63, 64, 66–67, 68 Li Lianbi, 204 Li Lude, 204 Li Mao, 35, 37–39, 40–41, 42, 49 Li Mingyuan, 49 Lincheng, hijacking of “Blue Express” in, 235–236 Lin Dehai, 92–99 Li Shirong, 49, 50, 54 Li Tao, 250 Literacy, as legal capital, 46–48 Liu Guolin, 230 Liu Kecheng, 185 Liu Shaoqing, 233 Liu Si, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 227, 230–231, 233–234 Li Yongchun, 246, 247, 248 Li Yuanhong, 209, 246 Low, Frederick, 76 Loyalty: of domestic servants, 259, 317–318; to family, among traffickers, 22–23, 294–295, 385

INDEX

Loyalty (continued) 297–300, 302–303, 307, 308; rhetoric of, in trafficking, 169, 224, 225, 226 Lüeyou. See Abduction Ma, Zhao, 321 Macau, in coolie trade, 78, 79 Magistrate(s), local: of Baodi County, 25, 28, 33–34, 39, 41, 42, 46, 49, 51, 54–56; decision to hear civil dispute, 27–28; forensic work of, 39; investigation of trafficking cases, 33–56, 87–89, 98; leniency in trafficking cases, 54–56, 60–61, 80, 89; Qing code and, 27; responsibilities of, 25, 27, 28, 29, 33, 39; urban police and, 165, 187; and yamen agents, 50, 55–56 Maimai renkou (buying and selling people), 7–8; charges of, 134–135; vs. household arrangements, 137; use of term, 127, 127t, 129. See also Trafficking, in China Manchu (Qing) banner armies: deterioration of, 64, 69, 81; men not assigned to, 90, 92, 98–99; squires in, trafficking of, 83 Manchu banner families: in Beijing, 90, 91, 92; kidnapping by, 92–100; slaveholding privilege of, 114 Mao Zedong, 322, 323 Maritime Customs, 183, 222 Marriage: alienation and exploitation of women in, 172–174, 256, 265; coercion and, 12–13; family disputes around, 131, 133–135; free, evolving notions about, 254–255; freedom of, communist regime and, 322; monetary transactions in, 312; of people from dif ferent social classes, Qing code on, 120; and prostitution, overlap of, 18, 32; second, following divorce, 40, 45, 49; and trafficking, legitimation of, 2–3. See also Arranged marriages; Bride price; Brides; Husbands; Marriage severance; Wives Marriage severance: buying and selling of (maixiu maixiu), ban on, 54, 104; contract of, 35–37, 38, 39, 43, 45, 46, 47–48, 58–59. See also Divorce Masters: changing position in Republican period, 272; obligations of, 263, 314; punishment of slaves / servants by, 11; relationship with servants, changes in

Republican period, 260, 263, 264; resistance to authority of, 271, 314, 315; servants’ loyalty to, 259, 317–318; trusted servants representing, 247, 248, 259, 261, 263, 267, 318 Matchmakers (mei): charges against, 267–268; for child brides, 255; Communist Party as, 322; depositions of, 318–319; fictional literature on, 318; independent operations of, 58; licensing of, Qing code on, 58; payments to, 60, 116, 167; vs. professional traffickers, distinction between, 167; prohibition edict of 1910 on, 116, 119, 167; Qing vs. Republican law on, 296; role in trafficking, 96, 151, 167, 168, 200; and sale of children, 155–156, 158; for second marriage, 40, 45; ser vices provided by, 6, 264; social acceptance of, 63; for wet nurses, 260, 261, 264, 266, 267–272 Ma Xinyi, 68; assassination of, 74, 75; kidnapping rumors and, 68, 74, 78 May Fourth Movement of 1919, 210, 211–212, 222; child brides (tongyangxi) in aftermath of, 257; family structure in aftermath of, 244; literature of, 254, 259 Ma Zhaokui, 138, 139, 140–145, 149, 153 Mean people. See Jianmin (mean people) Meijer, Marinus J., 18 Men: and coerced military ser vice, 288, 306; divorce of, justifications for, 47; enslaved (saiman / ximin), in rural southern China, 10; idle, in Beijing’s Inner City, 90, 92, 98–99; kidnapping of for coolie trade, 78, 79; percentage of Beijing’s population, 91. See also Boys; Husbands Migrants, international, 326 Military: and bandits, ties between, 236; and railway security, 236–237. See also Armies; Soldiers Military ser vice, coerced, 288, 306 Ministry of Communications and Transportation, 192, 196, 198, 200–203, 207 Missionaries, foreign: and antikidnapping societies, 107; expansion of work of, 74; floods of 1871 and, 77; massacre of (Tianjin massacre), 72–77; payment for children, 76; on trafficking of women, 105 Mobility: communist regime and end to, 322; and family structure, changes in, 260;

386

INDEX

infrastructure development and, 177–178, 180; and trafficking, 238, 296 Modern slavery, concept of, 310 Monetary transactions, in family relationships, 12, 312. See also Transactional families, Chinese Mongolian banner families: in Beijing, 92; slaveholding privileges of, 114 Mui tsai. See Slave girls “Mulberry grubs” (minglingzi), adoption of, 183, 235 Nanjing (Jinling): as capital, 214; kidnapping rumors around, 74; Second Historical Archive in, 16, 196; Zhou Fu as magistrate for, 67 Nanjing, Treaty of, 181 Na Shunhong, 223, 224, 226; widow of, 225–235, 236, 237, 238, 306 Natural disasters: and market for people, 13, 179, 311. See also Drought; Floods Na Xingzhai, 224, 225, 227, 230, 231, 234, 235, 236, 237 New Armies, mutiny within, 122 Newspapers: on adoption of “mulberry grubs,” 235; reporting on arrests and trials, 130; reporting on illicit activities, 155; reporting on kidnappings, 89, 106, 151–152, 181, 182, 305; reporting on slave girls, 320; tips to police in, 106, 155; and visibility of trafficking, 89, 100–101, 106; warning about fictitious sales of wives, 304 Ng, Vivian, 258 North China Herald (newspaper), 109–110, 178–179 Nüzi Shijie (magazine), 265 Obligations: Confucian concept of, 8; and household hierarchy, 3; of social support, weakening of, 260, 263; of sold people, 3–4; of women, 13, 32, 51 One child policy, and sex ratio imbalance, 323 Opium crimes, 297 Ordinary people (shumin), slaves owned by, 58 Orphanages, purchases of infants from, 324 Pan Chunfu, 164, 165, 166 Parents: petitions to retrieve children from workhouse, 148–149; punishment of children

by, 11; sale of children by, punishment under Qing code, 26 Paris Peace Treaty, 210 Park, Robert E., 275–276 Parks, in Beijing, 141, 151 Patterson, Orlando, 11, 31 People’s Republic of China: family planning policies of, 323–324; forced laborers in, 325, 327; legal system of, 327; social changes in, 322–323 Pethick, W. N., 78 Petitions: to local magistrates, 28, 176; to police or courts, 125; to retrieve children from workhouses, 148–149 Photographs, police use of: in arranged marriages, 250–251; in missing-person cases, 107, 253 Police: in Beijing, 121, 144–145; in Beijing’s entertainment district, 138–141; and family arrangements, involvement in, 6, 143–144, 250–251, 313; founding of, 214; household inspections (hucha) by, 155, 187, 242–243, 258; infor mants used by, 221, 230–231, 277; interrogation process of, 148; investigation of family disputes, 133–135, 261–264; investigation of gambling and child trafficking, 154–162; investigation of runaway servants, 239–240, 246–251, 252, 319; investigation of street performers, 142–149; investigation of trafficking cases, 124–125, 219–220, 291, 317; journalists’ tips to, 106, 155; kidnapping hysteria and, 106; and magistrates, 165, 187; missing-person reports and, 239–240, 251–252; neighbors’ complaints to, 106, 154, 242; and prohibition edict of 1910, enforcement of, 15, 121, 154, 244–245, 256; on railways, 198–206, 215, 229, 291; records of, 16, 144, 313; servants questioned by, 239–240, 247–249, 252–253; on slave girls, ambivalence regarding, 319–320; social welfare duties of, 144, 157, 161–162, 250–251; on steamships, 207; terms used to describe trafficking, 126–129, 127t, 131; threat of calling, traffickers and, 292, 295; in Tianjin, 209–212, 221–222, 225–235; visibility of, 130, 130i Polyandry, 103

387

INDEX

Population: Beijing, shifts in Republican period, 91–92, 131, 141; challenges in assessing, 241–243; growth under Qing dynasty, 29 Poverty: and children, portable status of, 139; and dianqi (leasing of wife), 56–57; as justification for sale of people, 4, 5, 31, 61, 84, 117, 233, 235, 278–280, 292; sociologists on, 276; and vulnerability to trafficking, 9, 97 Poyang Lake, 178, 181 Press gangs, 288, 306 Prisons: conversions in, 283; deferred execution (jianhou) cases in, 83; inmates in, 279i; interviews of traffickers in, 15, 273, 274–275, 277–278, 280, 282–305; life in, 277, 297; new, in Republican period, 130; reform of, Zhou Fu on, 111; sociological research in, 15, 274–276, 307–309; as training grounds, 297; women in, 109, 111, 166, 296–297 Prohibition edict of 1910, 5, 101–102, 103, 115–121, 311; accusations of trafficking after, 131, 134–135; and child brides (tongyangxi), 255; clauses of, 115–120, 317; implementation difficulties in Republican era, 113, 122–131, 136–137; on intermediaries, 119, 121, 123, 312, 317, 319; international reaction to, 113–114; language used in, 129; limitations of, 120–121; loopholes in, 5–6, 116, 136, 183, 311; motivations for, 106, 121; objections to, 114–115; police enforcement of, 15, 121, 154, 244–245, 256; slave girls after, 11–12, 113, 312–313, 315; trafficking after, 312–313; Zhou Fu’s memorial and, 101, 102, 108, 110–112, 115 Property: concubines as, 10, 313; servants as, 10, 252; women as, 10, 22, 32, 60, 61, 139, 172–173 Prostitutes: indebtedness of, 3–4; mortgaging, 103; purchasing, prohibition of, 120; reeducation under communist regime, 322; in vocational workhouses (xiyisuo), 190; wives leased as, 159–160 Prostitution: family pressure and, 176–177; forced, 175–176; marriage and, overlap of, 18, 32; prohibition edict of 1910 on, 120; Qing code on, 104; in Qing period, 138; in Republican period, 138; seduction and

trafficking of women for, 175–176; Yongzheng edicts and, 18 Psychological violence, human trafficking and, 172 Punishment: for child abduction, 166; for failure to draw up contract, 58; for gambling, 154, 155; of hired laborers (gugong), 57–58; for kidnapping, 98; of officials, Qing code on, 28; physical, outlawing of, 102; of slaves / children, Qing code on, 11; social status of criminal and, 26, 60, 110, 116–117; of street performers / beggars, 148–149; after Tianjin massacre, 74–75; of traffickers, in late Qing era, 26, 80–84; of traffickers, in People’s Republic of China, 327; of traffickers, in Republican period, 204, 235, 256; for trafficking, 1910 edict on, 116 Pu Yantang, 258 Puyi (Xuantong emperor), 122, 213 Pye, Lucien, 215 Qianshuo Pictorial, 215–216, 216i Qi Baishun, 145–149, 150, 153 Qi Baolin, 146–147, 149 Qing code, 25–27, 136; on adoption, 104–105; on concubines, 10, 45; Confucianism and, 27; on contracts, 58; contradictory statutes in, 311, 317; on divorce, 47, 53, 104; on marriage of people from dif ferent social classes, 120; on punishment of kidnappers, 60; on punishment of slaves / children, 11; on punishment of traffickers, 26; revisions of, 27, 101, 102–103, 110–113, 114, 115–116, 136; on slaves, 25; on trafficking, 5–6, 8, 17–18, 25–26, 57, 97, 103–104, 114, 295–296; use in Republican period, 122, 124, 163, 317; on wife selling, 88, 104; on women as property, 10, 60 Qing dynasty, late: collapse of, 114, 121–122, 136; emigration policies of, 79; food-for-work programs of, 63, 195; foreign pressures on, 74; instability during, 18–19, 30, 69, 83; legal reform efforts of, 101, 102–103, 110–116, 122; limited opportunities for women during, 100; marriage patterns during, 173; military restructuring and, 69–70; population management during, 241–243; in postTaiping reconstruction era, 30–31;

388

INDEX

punishment for human trafficking in, 80–84, 89; tolerance for trafficking during, 30–31; weakness of, 24–25, 28–29, 63–64 Qin Yunchang, 232 Qi Shan, 199 Railways: in Beijing, 140i, 141; and famine refugees, 192; hijacking of, 235–236; impact on local communities, 178, 179, 184; security on, 198–206, 215, 229, 236–237, 291; steamship travel compared to, 183–184, 228–229; in Tianjin, 214; and trafficking, 165, 175, 177, 182, 184–185, 186, 188, 198–199, 201t, 203–206, 286, 290–291, 303, 325. See also specific railway lines Rape: prosecution of, status of victim considered in, 120; and sale of women, 205; of trafficking victims, 94, 95 Recidivism, among traffickers, 17, 23, 185, 275, 277–278, 280, 297, 300 Red contracts, 57 Refugee(s): famine of 1876–1878 and, 90; famine of 1920–1921 and, 192; flooding and, 63, 105, 218; and market for people, 13; Zhou Fu as, 66, 70 Rehabilitation homes (jiliangsuo): former prostitutes in, 190; runaway servants in, 315; trafficked children in, 162 Relief homes. See Welfare institutions Republic: establishment of, 122; transition to, 136 Republican period: amnesties during, 17, 298, 307; Beijing during, populations shifts in, 91–92, 131, 141; classes (jieji) in, 259; contracts in, increased prominence of, 241, 243, 260, 268; courts of, 15, 130, 131–135; criminalization of trafficking in, 295–296; expansion of trafficking in, 311–313; implementation of 1910 edict during, 113; law enforcement in, 21; legal system in, 15, 122–124; masterservant relationship in, changes in, 260, 263, 264; positive developments in, 21; prostitution in, regulation of, 138; punishment of traffickers in, 204, 235; Qing code used in, 122, 124, 163, 317; shift from transacting to trafficking in, 312; sociological research in, 274–276; trafficking cases and strains on

legal system of, 122–131, 136–137; upheaval of, and trafficking, 237, 312; warlords in, 214–215, 222–223 Revolutionary ideas, 20–21 Revolution of 1911, 126; Qing reforms preempted by, 112, 113, 121 Rivers, in North China, 193. See also Floods; specific rivers Runaways: brides, 151, 301; children, 175–177; servants, 97, 98, 185, 239–240, 244, 251–253, 314–315, 319; in urban environments, 185; wet nurses, 267–268, 269, 270–271; wives, 7, 53, 151, 204–205, 287, 318, 321 Sacrifice, expectation of, and trafficking of women, 13, 32, 100, 139, 289, 312 Sanbuguan territories (no-man’s-lands): foreign concession areas compared to, 185; railways and creation of, 184; of Tianjin, 170–171, 175–177, 218; trafficking in, 170–171, 175–177 Scribes: payments to, 60; petitions written by, 28, 125 Second Historical Archive, Nanjing, 16, 196 Seduction, and trafficking of women, 175–177, 186, 286–290, 292, 293 Serrano, Juan, 78 Servants: accusations of intent to traffic, 244–251; agency of, 271, 314, 319; arranged marriages for, 118–119, 250–251; in Beijing households, 239–240; changing definitions of family and, 240–241; child brides as, 253–254, 257; children as, 257i, 269i; children hired as, 1910 edict on, 117–118; family conflicts involving, 244–251, 252; growing sense of entitlement of, 244; hierarchy among, 241; as intermediaries in trafficking, 314, 315, 316–317, 318; loyalty to masters, 259, 317–318; marital relations of, 239, 249; missing, police investigations of, 239–240, 246–251, 252; physical abuse of, 244, 249; position in household, 105; prohibition edict of 1910 and, 5, 117–118; as property, 10, 252; questioning of by police, 239–240, 247–249, 252–253; relationship with masters, changes in Republican period, 260, 263, 264; resistance by, 271, 314, 315; rivalries among, 259, 262, 271, 317; role in Chinese society,

389

INDEX

Servants (continued) 105; runaway, 97, 98, 185, 239–240, 244, 251–253, 314–315, 319; sale of, 245–246; sexual violence against, 257–258; slave girls compared to, 115; slaves redefined as, 1910 edict on, 117, 118; trusted, as masters’ representatives, 247, 248, 259, 261, 263, 267, 318; women traffickers befriending, 295 Serving maid (shinü), disappearance of, 239–240, 244, 253 Sex ratio imbalance, 12, 29–30; in Beijing, late Qing, 91; communist regime and improvement in, 322; in contemporary China, 323; and human trafficking, 25, 61, 311, 323 Sex trade, international, convention targeting, 121. See also Brothels; Prostitutes; Prostitution Sexual relations: previous, and trafficking, 176, 186; for wet nurses, discouragement of, 265 Sexual violence, against child brides (tongyangxi), 257–258 Shame: of traffickers, 192, 284, 307; as trafficking strategy, 186 Shanghai: culture of prostitution in, 19; foreign concessions in, 112, 185, 213; riots during kidnapping trial in, 109–110; Tianjin compared to, 213, 218; trafficking cases in, 123 Shanxi: famine in, 80–81; human trafficking in, punishment for, 81–82 Shenbao (newspaper): on adoption of “mulberry grubs,” 235; kidnapping reports in, 106, 181, 182; missing-person reports in, 251–252; on use of photographs in missing- person cases, 107 Shen Congwen, 254 Shen Jiaben, 101, 108, 311, 320; legal codes drafted by, 101, 103, 112, 114, 136; on maimai renkou, 129; on Zhou Fu’s memorial, 111 Shijie ribao (newspaper), 151 Shi Lao’er, 286 Shuntian Prefecture, 30; famine of 1876–1879 in, 85; flooding in, 34, 84–85. See also Baodi County Siam (Thailand), abolition of slavery in, 109 Sisters of Mercy: Catholic school run by, 71; kidnapping rumors regarding, 71–72, 76; massacre of, 73

Slave girls (binü / mui tsai), 8, 313; contract of sale for, 59; Guomindang laws on, 320; hired servants compared to, 115; in Hong Kong, 79–80, 119; indebtedness of, 3; intermediaries in purchase of, 2; isolation of, 265; liberated, concerns about social integration of, 118–119; May Fourth activists on, 210; missing-person report for, 252; newspapers on, in 1930s, 320; powerlessness of, 119; after prohibition edict of 1910, 11–12, 113, 312–313, 315; as property, 252; purchase of, 96–97; reduced security of, 264; renamed as adopted daughters (yangnü), 137; tolerance regarding, 319–320 Slavery: abolition in Siam, 109; abolition in U.S., 108; abolition of, vs. prohibition of trafficking, 126, 311; abolition of, Zhou Fu’s memorial advocating, 101, 102, 108, 110–112, 115, 116; in China, international press on, 107; definitions of, 10–11; in Hong Kong, 4, 105; justifications and explanations for, 9–10; labor shortage and, 12; language of, revolutionary nationalists and, 101; in late Qing and Republican China, 9; modern, concept of, 310; as power relationship, 10, 11; as process vs. status, 315–316; as property relationship, 10; Qing code on, 25; trafficking compared to, 9–12, 172–173; Western concept of, vs. Chinese transactional practices, 8; white, concept of, 113, 310. See also Prohibition edict of 1910 Slaves (nuli / nu / nubi): emancipation regulations in Republican period, 137; ordinary people owning, 58; punishment of, Qing code on, 11; red- contract, 57; redefined as servants under 1910 edict, 117, 118; resale of, Qing code on, 25; white- contract, 57 Smale, John, 79 Small family (xiao jiating), after May Fourth Movement, 244 “Snakeheads,” 325 Social safety net: family relationships as, 174; for hired labor, reduction in, 260, 261–264; trafficking as, 5, 31, 84, 117, 327. See also Welfare, in China Sociology: development in China, 15, 274; research in prisons, 15, 274–276, 307–309

390

INDEX

Soldiers: in Manchu banner armies, deterioration of, 69; traffickers dressed as, 205, 206i; trafficking by, 82, 83, 188–190, 222, 225–226, 230–232, 236, 237–238, 286–289; in warlord armies, 222–223, 224 Sommer, Matthew, 18, 43, 104, 117, 258 Spencer, Herbert, 274 Starvation, as justification for sale of people, 5, 191 State: as broker in trafficking, 190, 315, 316i, 319; intervention in transactional relationships, 13 Status hierarchies, and Chinese legal codes, 26, 60, 110, 116–117, 120 Steamships: development of, 181; and famine relief, 178; policing of, 207; in Tianjin, 214; trafficking on, 106, 171, 182–183, 185i, 207, 228–229, 230, 237; train travel compared to, 183–184, 228–229 Street performers: children, 138, 139–149; kinship ties among, 144, 149–150, 153, 163, 313; women, former prostitutes, 175 Supreme Court: on abduction of child by family members, 163–164, 166–167; appeals related to trafficking, 131, 132t; appeals to, 16, 130; on charity and purchase of people, 160–161; establishment of, 122, 129; on family members’ claims for support, 243; on gambling, 155; on trafficking cases, 122, 124, 129, 163–164, 166–167 Survival logic, and trafficking, 31, 61, 100, 105, 117, 169, 174, 321–322, 326 Taiping Rebellion, 18–19, 30; impact on Zhou Fu, 65–66, 68; local armies raised to defeat, 66, 69; reconstruction era after, 30–31; Zhou Fu in aftermath of, 64, 67 Takenobu, Terada, 18 Tang Shaoyi, 222 Tang Yulun, 200 Temple of Agriculture, Beijing, 94, 140i, 151 Ter Haar, Barend, 76 Thailand (Siam), abolition of slavery in, 109 Tianjin: after Boxer Rebellion, 217; famine of 1876–1878 and, 90; famine of 1920–1921 and, 223–224; flooding in, 70, 70i, 90, 218; foreign concessions in, 213, 221; grain shipments from, 91; investigation of trafficking in,

219–220, 221; kidnapping rumors in, 63, 71–76, 77; massacre in, 64, 72–75, 76; police chief in, 209–212, 211i, 214, 215, 218–219, 221–222; sanbuguan of, 170–171, 175–177, 218; strategic location of, 214; trafficking of Beijing children to, 164–165; trafficking ring in, 221–222, 225–235, 236; undercover police (“black detectives”) in, 219–220, 221; warlord, criminal, and police worlds in, 213–214; warlord families in, 213, 226; Zhou Fu in, 69 Tianjin, Treaty of, 74 Tianjin-Pukou Railway Line, hijacking on, 235–236 Tianqiao district, Beijing, 138–141, 140i, 151, 162, 170 Tian-Su, Mrs., 164, 166 Tongyangxi. See Child brides Tongzhou, 86–87 Torture, use during interrogation, 42; black detectives and, 220; outlawing of, 102 Traffickers, 167–168; anonymity of, 185–186; children of, threats to, 299–300, 302, 303–304; collaboration among, 295, 296; contemporary, 326, 328; disguised as soldiers, 205, 206i; entry into trafficking, 277, 280, 284, 294; execution of, 78, 80, 82; family loyalty among, 22–23, 294–295, 297–300, 302–303, 307, 308; fascination with, 6–7; fears of, 275; international, 325; interviews of, 15, 273, 274–275, 277–278, 280, 282–305, 309; ordinary people as, 187–191; public censure reserved for, 61; recidivism among, 17, 23, 185, 275, 277–278, 280, 297, 300; relatives and friends as, 6, 85–89, 98, 100, 150–151, 164–167; rivalry among, 1, 13, 291–293, 302; soldiers as, 82, 83, 188–190, 222, 225–226, 230–232, 236, 237–238, 286–289; strategies of, 11, 171–172, 186, 204–205, 317; vs. traditional matchmakers, 167; and trafficked, blurring of boundaries between, 1; vocabulary of, 281–282; women as, 1, 111, 225–235, 236, 237, 238, 293–296, 306, 307 Trafficking, in China: agency of sold people in, 3, 290–291; appeal of, 278; bride price and legitimation of, 3, 172; broad definition of, 3, 19; as business, 280; challenges of, 273, 275, 282; charity as justification for, 160–161, 169,

391

INDEX

Trafficking (continued) 174, 205, 320; childhood indicator for, Zhou Shuzhao’s search for, 307–308; communist regime and disruption of, 322–323; contemporary, 323–324; deep roots of, 310, 311; expansion in Republican period, 311–313; family system and perpetuation of, 2, 11–13, 126, 163, 168–169, 320, 321; famine and, 81–82, 85–89, 191–193, 196, 198, 237; food-for-work programs and, 195; geographic scope of, expansion of, 296; increased criminalization in Republican period, 295–296; industrialization and, 106–107; justifications for, 4, 5, 9–10, 169, 174, 179, 205; laws vs. traditions in addressing, 135–136; local customs and, 2–3, 172, 183; longdistance, 171–172, 188; mobility and, 238, 296; moral ambiguity of, traditional family arrangements and, 168; need to eliminate, 328; opposition to, modernization and, 105–106; persistence and pervasiveness of, 2, 17, 18, 19, 305, 311, 313; police investigations of, 124–125, 219–220, 291, 317; popular vs. official conception of, 84; poverty rationale for, 4, 5, 9–10, 31, 61, 84, 117, 160, 233, 235, 276, 278–280, 292; as process, 3, 9, 315–316; profitability of, 14, 160, 167–168, 287, 300, 303; prohibition of, vs. abolition of slavery, 126, 311; and prostitution, 139; Qing code on, 5–6, 8, 17–18, 25–26, 57, 97, 103–104, 114, 295–296; Qing tolerance for, 30–31; on railways, 165, 175, 177, 182, 184–185, 186, 188, 198–199, 201t, 203–206, 286, 290–291, 303, 325; Republican legal system and, 122–131, 136–137; shift from transacting to, in Republican period, 312; shortage of women and, 12–13, 29–30, 323; slavery compared to, 9–12, 172–173; social acceptance of, 3, 4–6, 9, 26, 89, 99, 100, 105; as social safety net, 5, 31, 84, 117; socioeconomic conditions for, 12–13; on steamships, 106, 171, 182–183, 185i, 207, 228–229, 230, 237; survival logic for, 31, 61, 100, 105, 117, 169, 174, 321–322, 326; terms for, 1, 7–8, 126–129, 127t, 131, 280–281, 294; Tianjin trafficking ring, 221–222, 225–235, 236; transactional families and, 103, 238, 311, 328; transportation technologies and, 20, 100,

169, 171, 175, 177, 178–186, 188, 198–199, 203–208, 228–229; visibility in twentieth century, 100–101, 106. See also Prohibition edict of 1910 Trafficking, international efforts against, 209–210, 310–311 Trains. See Railways Transactional families, Chinese, 2, 4, 12–13, 80, 100, 103, 312; communism and changes in, 322; Confucianism and, 313, 328; in contemporary China, 324; loopholes in anti-trafficking legislation and, 311; members of, 313; protective characteristics of, dissolution in Republican period, 312; and trafficking, 103, 238, 311, 328; urbanization / commercialization and, 20, 238 Transportation, modern: in Beijing, 140i, 141; famine of 1920–1921 and impetus for, 194–195; and famine relief, 178, 192; impact on farmers, 178, 179; impact on ordinary people, 177–178, 180; in Tianjin, 214; and trafficking, 20, 100, 169, 171, 175, 177, 178–186, 188, 198–199, 201t, 203–208, 228–229, 238, 312. See also Railways; Steamships Treaty ports, 181, 183; complaints about slavery in, 113 Tuanlian militias, 69 United Nations, on human trafficking, 310–311 United States: abolition of slavery in, 108; discriminatory immigration legislation of, 108, 109; foreign aid to China, during famine of 1920–1921, 195–196; on slavery in China, 113 University of Chicago, 274, 275 Urbanization, and trafficking, 20, 120, 238, 296, 312 Versailles Peace Treaty, 210, 222 Violence: against child brides (tongyangxi), 256, 257–258; in human trafficking, 32, 94, 95, 172, 175, 176. See also Rape Vocational workhouses (xiyisuo), 195; children in, 148–149, 190; women in, 190 Wang Anshi, 63 Wang Delu, 164, 166, 167

392

INDEX

Wang Erge, 151–153 Wang Hongling, 165 Wang Rongde, 225, 226, 227, 231, 234 Wang San, 71, 73 Wang Tonglin, 255 Wang Yuanzeng, 274 Wang Yuzhen, 204 Warlords: during famine of 1920–1921, 194, 196, 198; former, in Tianjin, 213, 226; in Republican period, 214–215, 222–223 Watson, James, 4, 10, 105, 173 Wei Dajim, 155–162 Wei Detao, 283, 284 Wei Qingyuan, 17 Wei Yujin, 199 Welfare, in China: food-for-work programs, 63, 194–195; police and, 144, 157, 161–162, 250–251. See also Social safety net; Welfare institutions Welfare institutions: placement of trafficked children in, 144, 148–149, 161–162, 190, 207; transactions in people at, 190, 315, 316i, 319; women escaping to, 244, 245i. See also Rehabilitation homes (jiliangsuo); Vocational workhouses (xiyisuo) Wermoth, Otto, 78 Wet nurses (naima), 259–272; advice on hiring, 265; contracts for, 260, 263; dependence on, 266, 268–269; family ties of, 265–266, 271; income of, 264, 266, 270; market for, 270; reduced security of, 261–264; resistance to exploitation, 271, 314; runaway, 267–268, 269, 270–271; terms used for, 262 White contracts, 57, 59 White slavery, 113, 310 Widows: as targets of trafficking, 150, 306; trafficking by, 225–235, 236, 237, 238, 294, 295, 306 Wilson, Woodrow, 195 Witnesses: on antiharassment document, 48; on contracts of sale, 2, 40, 41, 59, 60, 190, 200, 233; Qing vs. Republican law on, 296 Wives: age of, in arranged marriages, 233; divorce by, conditions for, 53–54; fictitious sales of, 304; isolation of, 172–174, 256, 265; leased as prostitutes, 159–160, 162; leasing of (dianqi), 56–57; natal families of, alienation

from, 172–174, 256, 265; as property, in Qing code, 10, 60; return to natal family, reasons for, 47; runaway, 7, 53, 151, 204–205, 287, 318, 321; young, responsibilities in household, 266–267. See also Bride price; Brides; Wives, selling of Wives, selling of, 40, 43, 60, 103, 199, 205; for adultery, 25–26, 104, 205; by kinsmen, 85–89; May Fourth activists on, 210; Qing code on, 88, 104 Wolf, Arthur, 254 Women: education for, Zhou Fu on, 273; as employment brokers (laomadian), 300; employment of, increased opportunities for, 260, 312; escape to relief homes, 244, 245i; famine of 1920–1921 and sale of, 192; foot binding of, 156, 157, 273; as household insurance policy, 25, 32, 61; and household management, 133, 241, 256; as intermediaries in trafficking, 95–97, 100, 233, 241; during Japanese occupation, 321; justifications for selling, 25; monetary value of, 3, 32–33, 35, 43; as moveable property, 2, 10, 22, 32, 60, 61, 139, 172–173; multiple sales of, 24, 25, 55, 304; multiple social statuses and roles of, 52; natal family of, marriage and alienation from, 172–174, 256, 265; obligations of, 13, 32, 51; in poor households, 13; in prison, 109, 111, 166, 296–297; sale of, Qing code on, 25; seduction and trafficking of, 175–177, 186, 286–290, 292, 293; self- sacrifice of, 13, 32, 100, 139, 289, 312; sexual availability and value of, 95, 99; shortage of, and trafficking, 12–13, 29–30, 323; survival during famine, trafficking and, 105, 196; as traffickers, 1, 111, 225–235, 236, 237, 238, 293–296, 306, 307; traveling on trains, vulnerability of, 204–205; victims of trafficking, blaming of, 278–280; in vocational workhouses (xiyisuo), 190; vulnerability to trafficking, 1–2, 9; wet nurses, 259–272; willingness to be sold, 290–291. See also Widows; Wives Women’s rights, Chinese advocates of, 101, 326 Workhouses. See Vocational workhouses (xiyisuo) Wright, Mary, 66, 76

393

INDEX

Wu An, 48–49, 50, 53 Wu Guangyi, 38–46, 50, 53, 54, 55, 56, 61 Wu Kuang, 261–264 Wu Peifu, 202, 223 Wu Sanrong, 245, 246–251 Wu Tingfang, 80, 107–108, 136 Wu Weibing, 112, 115, 116, 268 Xiang Army, 66, 69, 80–81 Xiao Runbo, 218 Xiao Yonglan, 164–166 Xia Qingxi, 219, 220 Xing Deming, 188–191 Xing Yu, 189, 190, 191 Xue Wencheng, 231 Xue Yunsheng, 58, 311 Xu Xiaosu, 156–162 Yamen (magistrate’s office): corruption in, 49–50, 54; in Republican period, 165; and sale of adulterous wives, 26 Yamen runners, 33, 40, 44, 48, 49–50, 54–56 Yan Fu, 274 Yang Daqing, 287 Yang Xi’er, 188 Yang Yide (Yang Yijan), 211i; career of, 215–217, 216i; hijacking of “Blue Express” and, 235–236; investigations of trafficking, 219, 221, 227, 234, 236; relations with foreigners, 218, 219; as Tianjin police chief, 209–212, 214, 215, 218–219, 221–222; undercover force (“black detectives”) of, 219–220, 221 Yangzi River: inland foreign trade on, 181; Taiping flotilla on, 65; trafficking on, 106, 180, 182 Yan Jingshan, 308 Yanjing University: old campus of, 140i; sociology department at, 274, 275–276 Yao Jinxing, 244–251 Yellow River: flooding along, 68; railway line crossing, 198 Yongding River, flooding along, 34, 62–63, 68, 70 Yongzheng emperor, emancipation edicts of, 18, 104, 112 Yuan Shikai, 123, 144, 209, 213; finance minister under, 68; and police force, 214; presidential guard to, 246; and Yuan Yide, 217

Zao Bao, 98 Zeng Guofan: execution of kidnappers by, 78; relations with foreigners, 68–69; Tianjin massacre and, 73, 74–75; Xiang Army of, 66, 69, 80–81, 90; younger brother of, 80 Zeng Guoquan, 80–81; army recruited by, 80, 90; and famine relief, 81, 89; response to human trafficking, 81–82 Zeng Shunde, 273, 277–278, 284–290; arrest of, 291–293; family loyalty of, 307, 308 Zhang, Sheldon, 325 Zhang Baoyuan, 204 Zhang Biying, 314–315 Zhang Chunhua, 188–189, 190 Zhang Fuhuan, 291–292, 293 Zhang Fujie, 92–100, 152 Zhang Guixing, 230 Zhang Hui’en (Lewd Zhang), 148, 149 Zhang Lisan, 217, 219, 221 Zhang-Ren, Mrs., 229, 230, 231, 232 Zhang Ruting, 230 Zhang Song, 206 Zhang Wan’an, 81–82 Zhang Wenxiang, 232 Zhang Xun, 211, 213 Zhang Zhiliang, 59 Zhang Zuolin, 198, 209, 222, 223 Zhao Er, 92–100 Zhao Lao Taitai, 291–292, 293 Zhengfu Gongbao (newspaper), 226 Zhenwu Army, soldiers from, 222, 223, 225, 231–232, 237 Zhili Province, 18; famine of 1877 in, 81; floods of 1871 in, 34, 62–63, 68, 70; Li Hongzhang as governor general of, 64, 68, 75, 77, 78, 91; Tianjin’s significance in, 214; water control commissioner of, 22, 62–63, 64, 67, 68, 70; white contract from, 59; Yuan Shikai as governor of, 144; Zeng Guofan as governor general of, 7, 68–69, 73 Zhou Fu: adoption of younger brother of, 65, 104, 308; career of, 64, 67, 68–70; childhood of, 64–65; children of, 68; death of, 273; and food-for-work programs, 63, 194–195; as governor general of Liangjiang, 62, 63, 102, 109–110; great- granddaughter of, 111, 273–274, 276; and Li Hongzhang, 63, 64, 66–67, 68;

394

INDEX

memorial advocating abolition of slavery, 101, 102, 108, 110–112, 115, 116, 317; progressive ideas of, 273; as refugee, 66, 70, 112; during Taiping occupation, 65–66, 68; after Taiping Rebellion, 64, 67; as water control commissioner, 22, 62–63, 64, 67, 68, 70, 112 Zhou Guangde, 65 Zhou Shuxian, 308

Zhou Shuzhao, 273–283, 307–309; academic studies of, 274–276; blaming of victims by, 278–280; on childhood indicator for trafficking, 307–308; correspondence with former inmate, 307; interviews of traffickers, 15, 273, 274–275, 277–278, 280, 282–305, 309; methodology of, 278, 284–285 Zhou Xuexi, 68

395