Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018. xiv, 260 pp. (Maps, B&W photos, illustrations.) US$29.95, paper. ISBN 978-1-5036-0530-5.
Using a bachelor’s thesis completed in 1946 by Shen Baoyuan from the Department of Sociology at Yenching University as the main source, Di Wang has written a microhistory of the secret society the Paoge (the Gowned Brothers) in rural Sichuan province in the 1940s. Wang has successfully revealed two voices in his research: one of the protagonists, a local Paoge leader Lei Mingyuan and his family, and another of the author of the thesis, Shen Baoyuan. Through these two voices, Wang not only shows the social and cultural history of the Paoge in rural China in the 1940s, but also examines the academic and intellectual environment that influenced the creation of the thesis, enabling readers to gain insight into China’s broad political and intellectual development at the time. Wang further argues that “rural activists in Republican-era China made outstanding contributions to our current understanding of rural China” (14). This book not only contributes to our understanding of secret societies in modern Chinese society, but also sheds new light on the local control and social patterns in modern China. This work should be on the reading list of anyone interested in modern China.
The book has twelve chapters that are divided into three parts. Part 1 introduces the location of the research and a brief history of the Paoge. Part 2 further examines the Paoge organization, including its spiritual beliefs, its mode of communication (especially the using of secret codes), and the way they recruited and regulated members. Part 3 focuses on a local Paoge leader Lei Mingyuan and his family. Part 4 shows Paoge’s end under the Chinese Communist regime, and how the Chinese Paoge fits into the “social bandits” theory developed by E.J. Hobsbawm.
Wang has made an impressive contribution to our understanding of Chinese secret societies, specifically the Paoge, or Gelaohui (Sworn Brotherhood Society), an organization that emerged in the seventeenth century and lasted until around 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) controlled the country. Existing scholarship on secret societies has mainly focused on the Heaven and Earth Society and popular religions in the late imperial time. This book focuses on a different but equally influential organization: the Paoge. For those who have done research on the Paoge, much of the information on the organization provided in this book is already known. The book’s contribution lies in the way it allows readers to view Paoge life on a micro level, which is difficult due to the lack of sources for such marginalized groups. Additionally, Wang’s research focuses on the 1940s, an important transitional period in modern Chinese history. It showcases Chinese local society under the Republican government and the conditions that served as foundations for the system established later by the Chinese Communist government.
The book enriches our understanding of local control and social patterns in modern China, especially the important role played by secret societies. Wang’s findings add to existing studies and demonstrate that the Republican government of China had limited control over local society. He shows that the Paoge leaders in rural Sichuan played a crucial part in preserving social stability in local society, and even local government officials had to rely on them to deal with local affairs. Wang concludes that rural China in the 1940s was still mostly “cloaked in the past several centuries” despite various modernization movements initiated by the Republican government (32). Wang further explains that those modernization movements created opportunities for the Paoge organization to grow in early twentieth-century China (45).
The most fascinating part of the book is the chapter on Lei Mingyuan and his family. It offers a rare glimpse inside the life of a rural Paoge leader. By analyzing the Lei family’s economic, social, and familial situations, Wang provides a window through which to understand the broad Chinese rural society. Wang reveals that the CCP’s social systematization could not be applied to every part of China, and points out that the Communist government differed from previous regimes in that the former had wide support from local and rural places. By combining such support with brute force, the CCP forced the Paoge to vanish from Chinese society.
Wang adopts the methodology of new cultural history by utilizing various nonarchival sources such as literature. He questions the reliability of archives, as all archives are created and preserved with a purpose and therefore may be biased. Wang’s focus seems to be on government archives, but what about other types, such as missionary archives? In fact, Western missionaries left quite a lot of records about secret societies in China. Wang could have researched other aspects of the Paoge had he utilized more missionary sources. It might also have been helpful if the author had analyzed the reliability of literary works as sources in historical research.
Overall, this book is highly readable and is a welcome addition to the historiography of modern China. One minor issue is that Wang’s translation of the title of Shen’s thesis is not consistent. The Chinese title is, Yige nongcun shetuan jiating. Wang translates this as “A Family of the Rural Social Organization” on page 10 but as “A Family of the Rural Organization” on page 14. Based on the context, it seems the former translation should be used consistently throughout the book.
Hongyan Xiang
Colorado State University, Fort Collins