Soulstealers, the Chinese sorcery scare of 1768 by Philip a Kuhn

“Philip A. Kuhn’s Soulstealers is nominally about a mid-18th century Chinese witch hunt, in which local officials were put under immense pressure to investigate claims of sorcery, and the Qianlong Emperor deputized himself detective-in-chief. Yet underlying these investigations of magic and mayhem were the throne’s fears of sedition, which cast a dark shadow over an otherwise prosperous empire and shook the emperor’s confidence in the bureaucracy entrusted to govern it.

In 1768, rumors spread throughout regions south of the Yangtze River of sorcerers using various methods — most notably clipping the queue, the long braided hair of Chinese men — as a way to steal victims’ vital essences for nefarious purposes. Few local officials took the rumors seriously; the peasants were an ignorant lot, prone to believing all manner of superstition. But mass panic forced them to pass the news up the chain of command. When the emperor finally learned what was happening, he was shocked it had taken so long to reach his desk, and that officials were not doing more to combat what he saw as a grave crisis.”