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Bodies and Structures 2.0: Deep-Mapping Modern East Asian History

Lucy Soothill (1857-1931)

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Regarding Others' Rituals
As mentioned earlier, Lucy Soothill (1857-1931) lived in Wenzhou for nearly 25 years (1884-1907). She was quite impressed with this water town, where she witnessed the practice of “sending off a boat”—or "spirit boats" as she called it. In her bibliographical book, A Passport to China (1931), she also provided a vivid account of this ritual. In the following section, we will read her account about the practice of this ritual as performed in Wenzhou.
Before we read Lucy's account, it is essential to address some issues. First, Lucy's descriptions provide a perspective not only from a foreign viewpoint but also as a Christian in the context of a Chinese local practice that was deeply rooted in popular religious beliefs. Similar to how she observed the Dragon Boat Festival, Lucy was primarily concerned about how local people performed and perceived religious practices. These may be "the others," that is, the Chinese and the non-Christians, as well as a few native Wenzhounese who converted to Christianity. As a result, in her account, she described how local gods were invited to the Boat temple, how the priests would chant the petitions, and how Chinese would have never dared to see the rituals unlike Lucy and her companions. She also discussed how spirits "worked" in this practice, such as that the sickness was caused by evil spirits, a young man's spirit was taken away by the boat, and the evil spirits were then escorted out of the city.
Second, while Lucy's accounts resemble those from other sources—including the one from the Wu Youru huabao: Fengsu zhi tushuo (1909)—her descriptions provide great insights regarding the process of the ritual, the viewers' and the participants' reactions, and her own reflections about the ritual and its surrounding beliefs. For example, the Wu Youru huabao stated that plenty of well-decorated items were stored in the boats. Lucy also mentioned this stating that these included "the offerings of the people in the shape of models of chairs, tables, cooking utensils, besides rice, dried fruits, clothes, cash or copper money." Lucy further observed that several ritual participants carried lighted lanterns when they marched outside the city gate, which, according to the Wu Youru huabao, was "making the night as bright as the daytime." After the boat-sending ritual and the lantern parade, as Lucy noted, ritual participants would "carefully blew out the lights in every lantern, lest the evil spirits should again come creeping back with them."
Finally, the space of water was also noted in Lucy's account. For example, as the ceremony was near completion, the people who were participating in the procession would prepare to send the boat of evil spirits, crying in this fashion:
“We people of the City-of-the-South are a poor, wretched, miserable set, not worth attention. But a little distance down the river is a fine large city. There the people are much richer, and the women more beautiful, and they invite you to go there and thoroughly enjoy yourselves!”
Apparently, water was used as a medium to propel evil spirits far away from the city. Similar to the practice in other places, another cleaner, namely fire, was used to burn the boat on the river. The procession, the water, and the fire, in combination thus served as an instrument to distinguish between the clean and the unclean realms of daily life.
Now, let's read the account of Lucy Soothill about the practice of sending off a boat:
ONCE, in our City-of-the-South, I set out with the intention of counting how many I met who were pitted with smallpox, but when I reached into the scores, they were too numerous, and I gave it up. I recall having heard it said that, from the dowry point of view, a woman who had had smallpox was of greater financial value, she being thus insured against contracting it again. The theory is that people should go out when they have the Great Guest, smallpox, but remain indoors when they have the Little Guest, measles.
The people believe that most, if not all, sickness is caused by evil spirits, and they have their own orthodox methods of dealing with them. Epidemics of cholera and typhoid are perhaps the worst visitations of evil spirits, and every year or two these grow out of hand and become rampant. Hundreds, nay thousands, die. Sometimes the coffin-makers cannot make coffins fast enough the death-wail is constantly heard, creating a terrible feeling of depression. The loud weird cries of women mourning beside the graves, or coffins, on the hillsides is so affecting that one longs for them to stop their wailing. One tries to comfort the soul with the thought that these public manifestations of grief are sometimes done as a duty.
In an epidemic of cholera, which usually happens in the autumn, evil spirits have taken possession of our city, and their anger must be appeased by feasts, gifts, and ceremonies. But the chief thing is to be rid of them and to hasten their departure the citizen's sung-jue, or Send a Boat. Three times do I remember this Sending a Boat. Each time the great religions observance cost thousands of dollars, and was largely contributed to by the rich. On the last occasion a banker subscribed a hundred dollars, and sums given varied from a hundred to half a dollar.
With part of the subscriptions is made a huge full-sized boat of bamboos. Into this are put the offerings of the people in the shape of models of chairs, tables, cooking utensils, besides rice, dried fruits, clothes, cash or copper money. Even a tiny opium pipe is added for the delectation of the spirits. These objects remain in the Boat for the seven days during which the vessel stands in one of the chief temples: and the Boat looks very gay with its decorations of coloured flags and sails. Everything is of paper, both the Boat and its contents, except the bamboo framework of the keel. Whilst it is waiting at the temple, a contingent of twenty priests chant prayers and petitions there from eight in the morning till mid-night-expecting to be heard for to air much speaking, it would seem.
The last year a pathetic incident roused the sympathies of all. The eldest son of a widow took cholera, and when death approached, he called to his distracted mother.
"I know I am dying. My soul is already on the Boat," he said.
With streaming hair, token of deepest distress, the poor woman at once went to the temple, and kneeling down beside the Boat, cried aloud to the evil spirits.
"Give me back my son's spirit!" she prayed. "Give me back my son's spirit!"
But, in spite of all her entreaties, her son died.
On the first of the seven days during which the Boat remains at the big temple, a number of the gods from other temples are invited to come there also. En route they are carried through those parts of the city supposed to be under their special protection. I had a full view of two of these gods in their large gaily decorated sedan-chairs. They were carved in wood, and grandly dressed in beautifully embroidered silks and satins. One god's face was painted bright red, another blue. Others had white or gold faces, but no green ones were in evidence, though I know not why. After the inspection of their districts these gods were taken to the Boat temple, where they remained for the seven days during which the priests were chanting petitions.
We were warned that the Boat would come along our front street on Saturday evening about eight o'clock, which meant that the evil spirits were then to be escorted out of the city in state. When the loud uproar announced the approach of the procession, Sing Su [William Soothill] and I, with one or two others, stood outside our door, as much in the shadow as possible, lest we bring more evil upon them. We waited. Presently on came the great throng. Hundreds and hundreds of men marched along in a disorderly sort of order, about six abreast. Each held aloft a lighted lantern, and shouted the peculiar cry with which boatmen start their journeys.
As a rule the religious ceremonies we see in the City-of-the-South are disappointing. But on this occasion, helped by the thought of the dying hundreds, the sight of the vast multitude's evident sincerity and the sound of their piercing cries thrilled us through. On came the Boat, borne on the shoulders of many men. Next came four smaller boats, all alight with hanging lanterns. After these came the gods who had been the visitors at the temple. More men carried lanterns, and a large following of people completed this remarkable procession. Those who were not doing duty in it were sitting quietly in their darkened houses, without lights, afraid to watch the procession lest the evil spirits should know of their presence and injure them in passing.
"This is the first time we have ever dared to do this thing," said the two Christian women who stood with us.
When the procession reached the outside of the city gate, with as little disturbance as possible the big Boat was fastened to two small boats. The people cried meanwhile to the spirits in the Boat after this fashion:
“We people of the City-of-the-South are a poor, wretched, miserable set, not worth attention. But a little distance down the river is a fine large city. There the people are much richer, and the women more beautiful, and they invite you to go there and thoroughly enjoy yourselves!”
One or two men then towed the Boat a mile or two down the river to the foot of a hill, where they set it on fire and burnt it. The people who formed the procession returned to the city. But before stealthily entering the gates, they carefully blew out the lights in every lantern, lest the evil spirits should again come creeping back with them. Once inside, with the big gates shut and barred, they relit their lanterns, and went home rejoicing in the belief that again the demons of sickness and death were exorcised from their homes and the city.
Sailing on the Bowl River
It was the French war with China which caused the Riot that had taken place in the City-of-the-South two months before I reached there. The people had been in a restless fever of excitement for some time, fearing an attack from the French, who had attacked Foochow directly to the south. The city had been officially placarded with instructions ordering each householder to have ready, outside his door, a heap of big stones. Carpenters worked hard, both day and night, fashioning huge wooden cases, which were towed some distance down the bank of the river. When the watching fishermen gave the signal that the enemy was at the mouth of the river, these stones were to be carried by each householder and emptied into the cases, which were then to be sunk in mid-stream. Thus an impassable barrier would block the entrance to our river, the Ao-or Bowl River-from whose month our city is distant twenty miles.
When Lucy Soothill arrived in Wenzhou, it was only two months after a conflict between China and France. Residents and the government designed a water barrier close to the mouth of the Bowl River. It was not the first of its kind in this region, as similar designs had formerly appeared in the neighboring waters. The design that Lucy described, which was mainly based on the narratives of her husband, William Edward Soothill, simply demonstrated how significant this river was in local defense and regional transportation.
Lucy quickly learned about salt smugglers and battles around the water. It was also at this time that Lucy learned that pirates existed in this area:
Later, an amah of mine told me how, twenty years earlier, her own father was a passenger in a junk which was seized by pirates in these waters. With the rest of the passengers, he was thrown overboard. When he clung to the sides of the boat to save his life, they loosened his hold by stashing off his fingers with their knives. He fell back and was drowned. To Amah this seemed to be just another of life's trials, to be accepted with resignation.
Apparently, Lucy was quite impressed with this new world associated with the water. The clean and beautiful water seemed to be not so peaceful. Yet as she recalled, even if many foreigners had experienced extremely dangerous situations long before she arrived, she had “never heard a single protest against the rare visits of a British, or other foreign, gunboat.” She quickly got used to life in this water town, and even witnessed an important religious practice in Wenzhou, “Send a Boat”–a ritual performed to expel demonic elements– on three occasions.
What had brought all these elements – salt smugglers, pirates, and the practice of “Send a Boat” — to this water town? What constructed the life and culture of this city? In the following sections, I will examine the major waterways and the formation of Wenzhou's canal system. I will then further explore religious life on the water, with a focus on the dragon boat races that had long been popular in Wenzhou.
Feuding, Racing, and Religious Conflicts
The great Dragon Festival provided the people with the desired opportunity of showing the young man their opinion of his detested foreign proclivities. "As one of us," they said in effect, "you shall not worship that outside barbarian god, Yi-su [Jesus], and you shall worship on the other hand our own great dragon god, both for yourself and also as our representative" — the latter a ceremony he had never before been called upon to perform.
When Lucy Soothill lived in Wenzhou, she witnessed how local people—like many others in the rest of the country—performed the Dragon Boat Festival, as it was widely associated with local affairs and people's daily lives. The "great dragon god," Lucy described, was perceived as a deity that any community member, who was treated by his fellows as "one of us," should worship in their communities. On the contrary, Lucy's God was viewed as an "outside barbarian god," especially when it was deemed as a threat to local beliefs and cultures.
Lucy was primarily concerned about her mission, and hence her only account of dragon boat incidents was correlated to the tensions between Christians and non-Christians. Yet, the incident she described was not merely about how a few native Wenzhounese converted to Christianity or about how the majority of local communities held hostile attitudes towards them. The case here was closely related to a feud between several villages. While fighting over dragon boat races was a convenient excuse to organize campaigns for local political struggles, it was also a way to mobilize those who would like to resist the influence of foreign religions.
The incident happened in 1895, around 10 years after Lucy's husband encountered a serious religious incident in Wenzhou. Two villages along the Cedar Creek (Nanxi River), Maple Grove (Fenglin) and Crag Head (Yantou), experienced decades-long feuding. The clans of these two villages even had a strict intermarriage ban, going back years. When the Crag Head villagers heard that a man from Maple Grove, Ding-er (Xu Ding'ao), had converted to Christianity, their anger rose again. They disturbed the opposing villagers immediately by accusing them of introducing an "evil religion."
The antagonism between the two villages eventually became an anti-Christian campaign within each community. Lucy's husband, William Soothill, had previously preached the gospel in these villages. He had helped several men convert to Christianity, including Ka-kung, who was from Ding-er's opposing village, Crag Head. Ka-kung was once obsessed with fighting, cursing, and gambling. He decided to change his lifestyle after becoming a Christian. Yet his opponents still held enmity toward him and sought opportunities to get him in trouble.
In 1895, severe persecution of Christians took place in Maple Grove. William Soothill negotiated with the government in order to rescue Ding-er. The process took almost six months, after which Ding-er was eventually released from prison. However, the conflicts did not cease. Ding-er and Ka-kung were continuously harassed by the villagers. Ka-kung was beaten and his wife was insulted, to the extent that she once attempted suicide.
Shortly after that, a more brutal persecution happened at the neighboring village of Vu-yoa (Furong). It was the home village of Ding-er's nephew, who had made it public that he followed his uncle's Christian teachings. The villagers had warned this young man to stay away from the foreign religion and took advantage of a Dragon Boat Festival to instruct him on how to worship the dragon god—in order to be "one of them."
Apparently, all these warnings did not work, and the use of dragon boats only fueled the sentiment against foreign religion and opponents. During this persecution, Ding-er and Ka-kung, together with another Christian, Pang-di, went to Vu-yoa in hopes of reasoning with the antagonists. The three men did not even have a chance to start a discussion, as a brutal attack quickly came upon them. Ka-kung was almost beaten to death. Ding-er, on the other hand, successfully escaped. Pang-di was pelted with stones and thrown into the center of a pool deep enough to drown him. Fortunately, he was saved by an old man, received treatment, and recovered in the following days.
Ka-kung was not that lucky. He was beaten several times, and was dragged out again and again. His clansmen at Crag Head now thought it was a good opportunity to amass a crowd of villagers to march to Vu-yoa. Due to these new conflicts, along with previous ones, the two villages were now serious and intense adversaries. The Vu-yoa elders eventually advised their young villagers to release Ka-kung. Unfortunately, tensions continued in the following years, as the two villages also had a rivalry with Maple Grove.
Lucy had never visited the conflict scenes herself. But she heard that the fighting had lasted for years—not only between Crag Head and Vu-yoa, but also between Maple Grove and Crag Head. In her book, she mentioned that due to the fighting between Crag Head and Maple Grove, the men from the latter burnt down the homes of the former, while the former, in turn, brought guns to threaten those from the latter village. Right after that, the magistrate told them that he had already "been [up there] sixty times to hold inquests on violent deaths, and the year had yet some months to run."
Fighting was a common way to resolve disputes; however, it also enhanced rivalry and exacerbated the existing tensions. Lucy's narratives reveal how local feuds were mixed with religious conflicts and dragon boat races. While the accumulated hatred led to serious injuries and deaths, it also increased the demand for making peace and for adjusting inter-village relations through varied means.
Building on Water
Our enforced isolation on the River's Heart had one advantage. It gave us better opportunities to explore the neighbourhood than we ever had again. The City-of-the-South is considered to be one of the most picturesque of Chinese cities, and I have heard it grandiloquently called the Venice of China. We certainly made the most of its river, charming scenery, and encircling hills, thereby provoking sarcastic comments from the Commissioner. "You cannot eat hills. A club would be more satisfying," he said.
In 1931, Lucy Soothill (1857-1931) made this vivid comment in her bibliographical book, A Passport to China. She and her husband, noted Sinologist and missionary William Edward Soothill (1861-1935), lived in Wenzhou for nearly 25 years (1884-1907; William arrived in 1881). They once lived in the “River's Heart” — an island in the middle of the river that housed the British consulate during their stay. They also established many churches and used them as major sites for their mission. After heading to North China for another two-decade journey, the couple still reminisced about this beautiful city. They began calling it “The City-of-the-South,” as this town had been so special in their long trip across China.
To Lucy, this “[one] among the cleanest of Chinese cities” had brought them incredible memories. Rivers and canals scattered across the city. Bridges and boats connected the communities, and people used waterways as often as land routes. While these appeared to be exotic to Lucy, they also left her with unforgettable experiences. Lucy greatly enjoyed the convenience of canals and small boats. She noted how canals in Wenzhou differed from the English rivers she used to live beside:
The waterways of South China are wonderful. Some of the canals are as wide as our English rivers, run long distances, and are often beautiful. We sat in the bottom of the little boat, our bedding making excellent back-rests, being so arranged by our youthful attendant, the Bright One. The canal carried us "past twenty towns and half a hundred bridges." At one o'clock we stopped outside the temple of The Narrow Gate, where we ate our lunch and obtained boiling water for our coffee… At three in the afternoon we reached the City-of-Clear-Music-Ngoh-ts'ing… There were no railways, cars, cabs, horses, or carts; no mills, gas, or electric light. Nothing but the long rows of one-storeyed dwellings, plenty of empty spaces, and several fine canals.
Apparently, Lucy was quite impressed by how vastly this city was “built on” the water. In the following parts of this module, I offer examples of these incidents during the late 19th century and the early 20th century, to elaborate on what this water town was like during the turn of the century and how it went through social and political transformations throughout this period.