Righteousness and Reputation

A third source of huiguan authority and an important aspect of community identification and cohesion involved the huiguan

directors' maintenance of group honor. As different regional groups interacted and competed with one another in the city, people from each native place developed reputations. An active tactic of native-place rivalry involved the creation of regional stereotypes and the defense of regional reputations. In the late Qing, as the following quotation illustrates, these reputations (and the native-place identifications they implied) were not given but contested:

People are born lucky or unlucky. If lucky, they are born in Qufu, and the closeness of sages will enable them to get a good education.... People who are unlucky enough to be born in a bad place suffer from having bad people as their fellow-provincials. We were not lucky, and thus we were born in Guangdong.... The people we call compradors, "foreigners' dogs," "Guangdong sluts" and "saltwater sisters" all come from Xiangshan county. The people of this county are born without a sense of shame. They are too low and despicable to mention.... Xiangshan people use their lack of shame as a way to make money.... In former times people could petition to change their native place. But we cannot change our native place, and thus we are in a dilemma. Gentlemen, in the future when you write your articles ... could you blame explicitly the compradors or the "foreigners' dogs"? Please don't say generally, "the Guangdong people."^[48]

During the 1870s and 1880s economic rivalry between Guangdong and Zhejiang people, combined with a Zhejiang-dominated press, produced a lively public discourse about Guangdong identity. Frequent press attacks on Guangdong identity sensitized the Guangdong community and activated the Guangdong elite to defend Guangdong honor. The existence of a positive Guangdong identity depended on its construction and vigilant defense by a wealthy Guangdong sojourner elite. In contrast, groups without influential elites lacked the wherewithal to establish and maintain their reputation and therefore lacked a key element in the formation of a positive sense of group identity. People from northern Jiangsu, for example, lacked advocates who could contest negative stereotypes. As Honig's study illustrates, although other people

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spoke of a Subei group, Subei sojourners themselves lacked both community and well-defined native-place identity.^[49]

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Figure 5.
Huiguan opera. The illustration depicts a Guang-
dong Huiguan opera performance which was held
to worship the god Guandi. The moralistic caption
describes the crowd as large and disorderly, crushing
and injuring a young man who was lured inside by
the sounds of gongs and drums. Having pointed out
the dangers of attending the opera, the author concludes
by admonishing young people to avoid such dangerous
pastimes. Source: Dianshizhaihuabao (Dianshi Studio
pictorial newspaper), 1983 Guangzhou reprint of late-
Qing edition (1884-1898).

Huiguan leaders maintained their native-place reputation through a variety of tactics. Huiguan prestige was bolstered by an association's ability to appropriate for itself high claims of moral purpose. Insofar as huiguan directors could present themselves as exemplars of Confucian virtue, they could be regarded as deserving leaders both in the sojourner community and in the city. As a consequence of this principle of authority and legitimation, huiguan were given to displays of benevolence. As

a correlate, huiguan were deeply sensitive to threats to the honor of their native place.

Righteous Charity. Huiguan and huiguan leaders demonstrated their benevolence in both ritual and substantive acts of public service and philanthropy. These included the support of hospitals and benevolent institutions (shantang ) which cared for orphans, widows, the ill and the poor; the provision of relief to tongxiang in Shanghai; the maintenance of "righteous burial grounds" for paupers; the sponsorship of "righteous performances"; and the observance of the correct ritual in the worship of native-place gods.

They also served as important collection agencies, organizing and dispensing relief in periods of natural disasters. As Shenbao editorials criticizing festival waste made clear, maintaining "face" in Shanghai included demonstrating care for one's native place. As their Shanghai resources grew in the 1870s and 1880s, huiguan responded to disasters in · their native areas with alacrity. When devastating floods hit Guangdong in 1885, for example, the Guang-Zhao Gongsuo launched a citywide relief-collection campaign, successfully soliciting contributions not only from tongxiang but also from other huiguan and from several foreign companies.^[50]

Other demonstrations of righteousness are better understood as purely symbolic. It is difficult otherwise to explain a single roundup of three thousand beggars by the Silk Huiguan for the purpose of feeding each one a bowl of rice gruel and sending them off with fifty copper cash.^[51] In a similar vein Tang Maozhi, the director of the Guang-Zhao Gongsuo, became deeply concerned with the shooting of stray dogs in the International Settlement. He arranged with a Shanghai benevolent institution that the dogs be caught and sent by boat to Suzhou, where they would be freed.^[52]

Defending Native-Place Honor . Benevolent activities and the creation of a righteous image, even through the rather crude, if en-

tirely traditional, habit of labeling their works "righteous" (yi ),^[53] reveal a concern for reputation based on Confucian ideals of governance which transcended the native-place identity of the tongxiang group. Huiguan leaders demonstrated leadership qualifies by joining together with directors of other huiguan to sponsor famine relief and contribute to local benevolent institutions. In this concern for righteous governance, huiguan appear as urban analogs to socially activist gentry institutions.

A contrasting area of huiguan concern for reputation appealed to a different source of righteousness, one which emphasized the purity and integrity of the tongxiang group and stressed the need for boundaries. In this regard, huiguan were deeply concerned with the purity and honor of tongxiang women. Because the huiguan as an institution depended on the maintenance of an idea of native-place community, it was critical for the huiguan leadership to act in such a way as to maintain the integrity of the community. In this type of behavior, huiguan acted in the manner of a lineage or kin network. A dramatic example of huiguan concern with community purity may be seen in the case of an ill-fated alliance between women of a wealthy sojourning Guangdong family and an actor who was not only despicable for his low profession but came from a rival native-place group.^[54]

Moving Mount Tai to Squash an Egg: The Tang Yuelou Case . At noon on December 23, 1873, a young Chinese woman in bridal dress was conveyed in an open wheelbarrow through the streets of the International Settlement on the way to the Mixed Court.^[55] This parody of a respectable wedding procession (in which the bride was normally hidden from public exposure, ensconced in an elaborate palanquin), attracted a crowd of people who spread notice of the impending case.

When the court convened the next day, the jostling onlookers over-flowed the courtyards, blocking traffic outside. The extraordinary interest aroused by the case owed to the twin attractions of a scandal staining a prominent family and rumors of illicit liaisons with the star of the Shanghai theater world.

The girl was of Guangdong origin. Her father, surnamed Wei, was a tea merchant and comprador for a foreign firm.^[56] Like other wealthy sojourning merchants, Mr. Wei maintained two households, one in Shanghai and one in his native place. Mr. Wei's concubine, néee Wang, was in charge of the Shanghai household. His other wives lived in Guangdong.

Madame Wei was an avid opera-goer who frequently attended the performances of the famous actor, Yang Yuelou.^[57] While Mr. Wei was transacting business in Fuzhou, Madame Wei betrothed her stepdaughter Abao to the actor, despite the fact that actors were considered disreputable.

During a trip to Shanghai, Mr. Wei's brother learned of the betrothal. Lacking the lineage solidarity he could have drawn on back home, he turned to his fellow-sojourners in the city. The huiguan directors discussed the impending threat to the honor of their community and ruled that Yang should annul the betrothal to save the face of the Wei lineage. They notified Yang of their decision, and Yang met with his Anhui fellow-countrymen to decide what to do.

Yang's tongxiang reasoned that the affair was already concluded because the betrothal had been properly arranged. Supported by his tongxiang, Yang refused to back out and concluded the marriage through secret negotiations with Madame Wei.^[58] Toward the end of December, servants delivered the bride to the Yang household. Madame Wei

packed her own belongings and secretly moved in as well. When Mr. Wei's servants discovered her absence and the absence of valuable household objects they reported the matter to friends of Mr. Wei.

Mr. Wei's friends were outraged by the secret marriage and called a meeting at the Guang-Zhao Gongsuo. The huiguan petitioned Magistrate Chen at the Mixed Court, demanding the arrests of the women and the actor, accusing Yang of kidnapping, rape and theft. Accordingly, the magistrate dispatched his runners. The runners broke into Yang's house and arrested Yang and the Wei women, whom they found in the midst of wedding festivities.

Because of the value of Wei household objects found in the Yang compound, Magistrate Chen concluded that the magnitude of the case exceeded the jurisdiction of the Mixed Court.^[59] He sent the accused for interrogation by the Shanghai District Magistrate. The District Magistrate was the Guang-Zhao Gongsuo director, Ye Tingjuan. When Yang first appeared before him, Ye ordered lictors to suspend his body and inflict one hundred and fifty blows of the bamboo rod on his ankles. Under torture, Yang confessed to abducting Abao. After a lashing on the back Madame Wei admitted that she had permitted the marriage even though the Wei family had deemed it inappropriate. The magistrate also interrogated Abao, who feebly protested that she had only followed the maxim, "If you marry a chicken then you follow a chicken." When an examination proved that she was not a virgin, Yang was accused of rape. Powder discovered at Yang's home was produced in court and declared an aphrodisiac, used by Yang to incite ill behavior on the part of the women (making Yang's crime more despicable and the women more innocent).^[60] Magistrate Ye sentenced Yang to branding, exile and forced military service, a verdict the Shenbao described as

a Guangdong victory.^[61]

Although the disposal of the case reportedly pleased the guardians of

Guangdong honor in the city, the actions of the Guang-Zhao Gongsuo also aroused criticism, as did Magistrate Ye's ruling. Editorials appeared criticizing the magistrate's regional bias. Although the first reports condemned Yang as a wanton habitué'e of prostitutes who had a reputation for getting into fights, they also shamed the Guangdong people by impugning the character of their women. Abao was described as being "as beautiful as a prostitute."^[62] Rumors circulated that Madame Wei was lascivious and had arranged the marriage in order to live with Yang herself. Front-page editorials declared that the entire case was a false accusation by the Guangdong people, who tried to save face by pretending that a legal marriage was a matter of seduction, rape and theft.

By January the Guangdong people in Shanghai were a regular object of ridicule in the newspaper. Because they had mobilized "the power of the people of an entire province to accuse an actor and an escaped daughter," they were portrayed as "moving Mount Tai to squash an egg."^[63] Not only did editorials daily debate the merits of the case, the newspaper also began to publish articles describing "saltwater sisters" and focused attention on Guangdong-organized kidnapping and trade in young women, further piquing the ire of the Guangdong community.^[64]

A struggle ensued between the Guangdong people and the Shanghai Magistrate on the one hand and the Daotai, Zhejiang and Shanghai people on the other, a struggle no doubt informed by underlying economic tensions between these regional groups. On January 29, 1874, the North China Herald reported that the enraged Guangdong people twice

stormed the Daotai's office threatening to burn down the Shenbao office and kill the editors if he did not take action. Daotai Shen Bingcheng, a Zhejiang native, declined. Unable to force the Daotai into action, the Guangdong people insisted the Chinese staff of the newspaper be punished, sending Magistrate Ye to make their case before the British Consul, Mr. Medhurst.^[65] Failing to persuade Mr. Medhurst, the magistrate posted notices in the Chinese city and at the city gates proclaiming that the Shenbao had accepted the bribes of Yang's clique and printed lies.^[66]

The Yang Yuelou case reveals how, in a city of immigrants like Shanghai where families were fragmented, the tongxiang group (through the institution of the huiguan ) could fulfill the function of a substitute kin network. It also reveals the considerable influence of such an organization on the administration of justice. When the Guang-Zhao Gongsuo acted to prevent a marriage which would stain the reputation of the community, although the virtues of the particular response were hotly debated, the ideas that the matter concerned the huiguan and that the huiguan bore responsibility for its outcome were generally taken for granted. The central role of the huiguan as the organized expression of the native-place community in dealings with the courts was undisputed. Although critics attacked the huiguan for overreacting and exposing a matter better left out of court, they accepted as natural the role of the huiguan in issuing the petition and the efficacy of a petition sent to the court by the huiguan.^[67]

Defending the public image of the native-place community was as much an integral aspect of huiguan activity as the public building, religious processions, ostentatious funeral rites, and charitable activities which established the native-place presence and enhanced the group's power and prestige in the Shanghai community. Newcomers to Shanghai, particularly those who had risen swiftly to wealth, like the people from Guangdong, were called on to demonstrate their moral virtue if

they were to exercise power in the community. If their activities backfired, the case nonetheless suggests the lengths to which the Guangdong community would go in its attempts to save face. In this respect the case provides a notable but not unrepresentative example. In August 1873, for example, the Guang-Zhao Gongsuo repeatedly published advertisements correcting a report which suggested that a Guangdong woman was seen kidnapped and taken to a brothel. According to the "revised supplementary report" published by the huiguan (which had investigated the case), the woman simply went by herself to a temple near the brothel quarter to pray for her sick child.^[68]

The Yang Yuelou case, in its urban approximation of the codes of honor and revenge that might be associated with rural clan feuds, involved a process of community definition which—like huiguan charity, drama and religion, bound together elite and non-elite sojourners. The case was not simply about a low-class marriage which threatened an upper-class family. The case must also be understood against the background of a preexisting feud. Prior to contact between Yang and the Wei women, a street brawl had taken place between Chaozhou shop hands and Yang's acting troupe. According to one account, as a consequence of this fight (which engaged several hundred combatants and necessitated the intervention of local officials, soldiers and huiguan directors before the matter was calmed) the Guangdong people had vowed everlasting enmity for Yang.^[69] If a huiguan director's family permitted a marriage alliance with an individual identified as an enemy of the Guangdong people, the huiguan would violate community boundaries drawn by a preexisting feud. By punishing Yang, the huiguan performed an act of revenge that endeared it to the broader tongxiang community and maintained the purity of the group against pollution from outsiders.^[70]

The Yang Yuelou case reveals, finally, how critical the maintenance of hierarchy was to community definition. The case received as much attention as it did because it involved the conduct of women and raised questions about the correct governance of women. In a Confucian context, in which proper management of the realm was understood to be linked to proper management of the family, the huiguan, as the urban

equivalent of lineage alders, was responsible not simply for defending the honor of women from its native place but also for enforcing the authority of men over women. Although female family members may have been freer in Shanghai than at home, public commentary on the case suggests that the huiguan (representing the absent head of the household) was expected to step in to circumvent this excessive autonomy. Using reasoning reminiscent of the Confucian classic, "The Great Learning" (Daxue ), one critic argued that the mismanagement of the Wei household and the buiguan 's incorrect decision to bring a lawsuit had caused more universal disharmony. Because the buiguan, rather than quietly removing the women from Yang's household and covering the matter up, exposed family mismanagement, they harmed the reputation of the tongxiang. Moreover, because the case involved officials and the officials made an incorrect decision, it was bad for the country.^[71]

This chapter has examined practices which defined and constituted the native-place community, practices without which it would be difficult to speak of community. The creation of a larger native-place community depended heavily on the wealth and status of a sojourning elite which could provide the funding for religious, recreational and charitable practices and could command the respect and influence needed for both successful adjudication of disputes within the native-place community and for maintaining community reputation in the urban area of Shanghai. Because the extent to which a given group of sojourners could constitute community depended on their wealth, native-place identity in the city ranged from the elaborate constructions of native-place culture and community found in the powerful Guangdong and Ningbo communities, to the striking absence (despite their large numbers in the city) of institutionalized community among poor sojourners from northern Jiangsu.

The practices that created native-place community reinforced an internal hierarchy which was centered on the huiguan oligarchs, who as directors filled a position equivalent to the heads of an extended kin network. This ensured that the huiguan worked to define and confirm gender hierarchy as well as economic/occupational hierarchy.

The practices of native-place community were, of course, embedded in larger networks of authority which extended beyond the sojourner group in the city. Huiguan oligarchs also provided a critical link to the

state, a link which further legitimized their local positions of authority. The next chapter describes the pivotal role of the merchant leaders in positioning the native-place community in relation to the state through the mediating institution of the huiguan, which served the state by assuming quasi-governmental functions. This link, which symbolically corresponded to the link between family head (as subject) and the state, meant that the practice of huiguan leadership could not be limited by exclusive orientation toward the native place or toward the native-place community in Shanghai. In the late nineteenth century, the directors of the major Shanghai huiguan became actors on a national stage.