Poverty Destroys the Family
Interestingly, the three cases discussed above were reported within a two- year period, meaning that the same provincial-level officials would likely have read the reports along with hundreds of other homicide reports.
We will never know if superior officials sympathised with the individual plights of Wang Chen, Huang Bang or Kuang Wenqi, but the wanton use of violence against innocent children and the alarming vulnerability of the family no doubt appalled judicial officials. Strikingly, both Kuang Wenqi and Huang Bang directed their murderous frustration at the children of their elders and superiors. One obvious lesson was that poverty not only destroyed the families of the impoverished; the impoverished also destroyed families of the better off. The broader implications of these crimes would not have been lost on the literati elite who staffed the Chinese bureaucracy. It was up to these pillars of patriarchal power to protect the foundations of Chinese civilisation, but the task was daunting, particularly when the local patriarchs, the presumed paragons of moral behaviour, were guilty of moral lapses.The case of Feng Shiji and his wife Ms Zhang not only demonstrates the fragility of the family, the vulnerability of women and the ideological paradox that limited leniency in Chinese law; it also illustrates the limits of relying on the moral authority of the patriarch. Feng Shiji was an itinerant labourer in Shandong.[608] While he was away seeking work, his wife, Ms Zhang, stole some beans from a senior clansman Feng Fazhen. The theft was uncovered and the beans were returned. When Feng Shiji returned home and heard what had happened, he berated his wife and also went to Feng Fazhen's home to make the appropriate apologies. Feng Fazhen, an unmarried and, as subsequent events would reveal, randy old man (67 years old), recognised Ms Zhang's precarious position and was emboldened to make advances.
The next month when Feng Shiji was again away from home, the old man sneaked into Ms Zhang's room at night and secretly left some money. The next morning, Feng Fazhen informed Ms Zhang that he had left the money and he made sexually suggestive comments. Clearly alarmed, Ms Zhang told him she did not want his ‘filthy money' and she cursed him several times. Ms Zhang hurried home and informed her mother-in-law.When her husband returned that night and received the news of Feng Fazhen's harassment he wanted to attack Feng Fazhen immediately, but his father persuaded him otherwise. That evening Ms Zhang wept after her husband scolded her for stealing and blamed her for the ‘loss of face' resulting from Feng Fazhen's untoward behaviour. Despite her innocence, Ms Zhang faced the humiliation that many women suffered in Qing China when they were victims of sexual harassment.
Apparently still angry, the next morning Feng Shiji concealed an iron bar on his person and went to confront Feng Fazhen. Shiji found Fazhen on the outskirts of the village in a wooded area digging with a spade. When Shiji asked Fazhen about the matter, Fazhen, without saying a word, raised his spade to strike Shiji. In the ensuing melee, Shiji disarmed Fazhen, pinned him to the ground with his knee and beat him with the iron rod. Feng Sanpo, an uninvolved passer-by, broke up the fight, disarmed Feng Shiji, and sent the two men on their respective ways. Unfortunately, the matter did not end there.
After witnessing her husband leaving the house with the iron bar, Ms Zhang had gone to Feng Fazhen's home and hanged herself. Tragically, female suicide was not uncommon in cases of attempted rape or sexual harassment. In many cases male relatives pressured women to forego reporting ‘disgraceful matters' to protect the family's reputation but at the same time berated women who were victims of sexual harassment or assault.[609] When Feng Shiji returned home and did not find his wife he searched for her.
Eventually, he found her corpse hanging from a rafter in Fazhen's home. Distraught, Feng Shiji took a wooden mallet and went to look for Fazhen to ‘vent his anger'. When he found Feng Fazhen he struck him in the eye and repeatedly hit him over the head as well as the upper body and wrist. A local constable, Li Tingzhang, intervened and stopped the assault. Feng Fazhen was seriously injured and died later the next day.While there was no doubt that Feng Shiji was responsible for the death of Feng Fazhen, under interrogation Shiji emphasised several mitigating factors. Regarding the first brawl, Shiji depicted it as self-defence because Fazhen has raised his shovel first. After the brawl ended and Shiji discovered his wife's corpse he immediately went home and got the mallet and proceeded to
Homicide and Punishment in Eighteenth-Century China attack Fazhen again. The point being there was no premediated violence. Finally, laying the possible groundwork for a statutory pardon in the Qing Code, Shiji noted that both his adoptive parents were 71 years old and that he was their sole support.
Tellingly, the county magistrate interrogated Feng Shiji a total of five times. To an experienced reader of Qing homicide reports the questioning followed a familiar pattern. The magistrate probed to be sure that there was no premeditation or intent. Another indication of the dire exigencies of the eighteenth-century rural poor was the ‘opportunistic use of cadavers' and the use of false accusations.[610] For this reason it was not unusual for the magistrate to question whether Ms Zhang had falsely accused the old man of sexual harassment as a form of blackmail. Similarly, regarding the death of Feng Fazhen, the magistrate consulted the autopsy and observed the number and variety of the wounds implying that Feng Shiji must have intended to kill the old man or may have had accomplices. No doubt the county magistrate was also concerned to alleviate any possible doubts the superior judicial officials might raise.
Ultimately, the magistrate accepted Feng Shiji's version of events. He concluded that there was no evidence of a long-standing grudge and that Feng Shiji's resort to violence, while extreme, was not unprovoked and nor was it premeditated. Regarding Ms Zhang's suicide, the magistrate acknowledged the flirtation, and concluded that Ms Zhang was ashamed and regretful after her husband scolded her over the petty theft and the loss of face. Thus, the magistrate surmised that it was her ‘clear intention' to ‘sacrifice her life'. The important point here was that Ms Zhang was an honourable women who had not been involved in trading sex for food, and who had committed suicide out of shame. Based on my own reading of thousands of case records, Feng Shiji would have had a good chance of leniency given the circumstances of the crime. Furthermore, the fact that he was an only son of aged parents qualified him for a statutory pardon to care for parents over the age of 70. Unfortunately, Chinese law had a long history of differential punishment based on kinship relations. The fact that Feng Fazhen was a senior clansman was an aggravating circumstance. Under Chinese law, anyone found guilty of killing a senior clansman, regardless of the circumstances, was usually sentenced to beheading and imprisoned awaiting a final decision at the autumn assizes. Despite the fact that the killer's father was over 70, Feng Shiji had
committed the very serious crime of killing a senior clansman and the magistrate ruled that the circumstances did not warrant a pardon to care for his aged father.
The death of Feng Fazhen, the suicide of Ms Zhang and the conviction of Feng Shiji succinctly exemplify the contradictions that plagued eighteenth-century society and Qing criminal justice and the material and ideological predicaments that the rural poor faced in the eighteenth century. With no land of his own, Feng Shiji was forced to seek work outside his village for weeks at a time. Ms Zhang's plight vividly illustrates the risks that households encountered when the men left home to seek gainful employment.
Away from home for days, weeks or months at a time, itinerant male labourers exposed their wives, mothers and children to economic exploitation, harassment and sexual assault. Tragically, male mobility created female vulnerability. Furthermore, despite the official scapegoating of bare sticks as rapists, in the case of Ms Zhang her assailant was a relative. In fact, the perpetrators of sexual assault and harassment in eighteenth-century China usually were men known to the victim.[611]As appalling as Ms Zhang's fate was, it was even more repugnant given that she was victimised by a senior clansman. From the point of view of a scholar official steeped in Confucian ideology, patriarchs should demonstrate benevolence towards their juniors. Instead, Feng Fazhen selfishly exploited Ms Zhang's economic insecurity. While there is no defence for Fazhen's actions, as recent research on polyandry and wife-selling demonstrates, ‘sharing' a wife in return for material support, although illegal, was one of the desperate survival strategies of the rural poor.[612] In this case, however, it was clear that neither Feng Shiji nor Ms Zhang were interested in such an arrangement. Finally, because protecting patriarchal privilege was paramount in Qing law, Feng Shiji was punished severely regardless of the circumstances (provocation, absence of intent or premeditation, suicide of his wife) surrounding the crime and despite the fact that he would have qualified for a statutory pardon to care for his elderly father if the victim had not been a senior relative. Legally, the harsher sentencing of the killer and the denial of pardon to care for an elderly parent was justified by the principle of patriarchal privilege. Ironically, while upholding the protection of the deceased patriarch, the law denied a living and morally correct patriarch, Feng Shiji's aged father (who had wisely counselled against violent action), the support of his son. Keeping in mind that homicides underwent thorough judicial review and multiple sentencing reviews, the irony, if not inequity, of the result in a case like this would have been painfully apparent to judicial bureaucrats at every level of administration.