Killing the Family

Legislatively, the meaning of ‘bare stick' was expanded to include morally reprehensible behaviour regardless of economic or social status. At grass­roots level, where county magistrates investigated violent crime at first hand, it was no doubt apparent that not all bare sticks were impoverished males, and not all impoverished males were bare sticks.

Homicide and Punishment in Eighteenth-Century China magistrate, who took the depositions of the individuals involved and wrote the foundational narrative. Increasingly terse and formulaic over time, these case records nevertheless often included evocative language meant to facil­itate leniency,^{[603] [604]} but also to convey the pitiful conditions of the rural poor.¹¹ A recurring image that haunted many homicides, particularly from extremely destitute counties in Shandong, was the violent disintegration of the family, the essential building block of Chinese civilisation.

The Qing Empire was vast and individual provinces were similar in size to European countries, but with twice the population. Historically, Shandong was among the most disaster-stricken, with drought in 233 different years in the 268 years of the Qing dynasty and with the Yellow River bursting its banks on 127 separate occasions. Parts of the province were among the most impoverished in the empire.

The crime was heinous and brutal, and there was no question that the punishment would be severe. In a society rooted in patriarchal privilege and filial piety what could be worse than the destruction of his master's

patriline. Huang was sentenced to ‘lingering death’^{[606] [607]} for the premeditated killing of his master’s two sons. Still, in composing the account of the crime the county magistrate included this pitiful quote from Huang Bang regard­ing the threat to take him to court over gambling debts: ‘This clearly would put an end to my livelihood and would lead to my death’.

Sometimes a single homicide report poignantly encapsulated the precar­ious existence of a rural household. Sadly, the case of Kuang Wenqi epitomised the slow, agonising and dehumanising descent into rootlessness and poverty that could end in atrocious violence. Wenqi had been raised by his uncle Kuang Yuxiang and his aunt Ms Dong, with whom he shared a home.1⁵ By all accounts, Ms Dong was mean and petty. She discouraged her husband from loaning money to Wenqi and she disparaged Wenqi to his wife. While Kuang Wenqi was away from home engaged in petty trading, his mother and younger brother died of disease, though Wenqi mistakenly suspected that his aunt had ‘worked them to death’. The following year, Wenqi resorted to the illegal but frequent practice among the rural poor, of selling his wife to raise money. Bereft of family, Wenqi left home again and wandered as a vagrant. When he eventually returned home, Ms Dong refused to let him in the house. ‘Cold and hungry and without a home or kin to support him’, Wenqi blamed all his troubles on his aunt. The next day he returned to the house with a knife. He stabbed Ms Dong six times. When her 12-year-old son fled, Wenqi chased the boy and slashed him with the knife. Returning to the house, he found the 5-year-old daughter crying and killed her too. Covered in blood, Wenqi immediately turned himself in to the authorities. Clearly, his crimes were unforgivable. He also was sentenced to ‘lingering death’ for killing three members of the same family. Despite the heinousness of his crime the county magistrate still interspersed his report with language clearly meant to illustrate the depth of Kuang’s privation. Indeed, Kuang Wenqi’s life was a depressing illustration of rural distress and the disintegration of a family. He had lost his mother and brother to disease, sold his wife, and his only kin had harassed him and rejected him in his hour of need.