Suspect Rebels 187
monastery is falling apart. As I was visiting one or two of its dilapidated monks’
rooms, I ordered the novices to demonstrate their martial skills. Their perfor-
mance was no better than that of street beggars. It was not worth watching.”
The governor proceeded to detail the circumstances under which the monas-
tery had been destroyed in the 1640s:
During the Chongzhen reign (1628–1643) the traitor Chuang (Li
Zicheng) plundered like a vicious tiger. Liang Song mountain bandits^15
rose in swarms, each sacking another region. At Songyang [on the
southern slopes of Mt. Song]^16 there was one Li Jiyu (?–1647), who
agitated ten thousand men and stationed them atop the “Imperial Fort”
Mountain [the Shaoshi Peak overlooking the Shaolin Monastery]. He
burned and looted everywhere, but he particularly hated the Shaolin
monks, whom he regarded as potential thorns in his side. He pretended,
therefore, to befriend them, sending daily money to their abbot. The
monks believed him and offered no resistance.
One day Li sent a message to the monks that he would like to
commission the ceremony of the Thousand Buddhas Supplication for
his birthday. All the monks should prepare themselves for his arrival,
purifying themselves, burning incense, and reciting the scriptures.
Then, leading several hundred men clad in armor, Li entered the
monastery and stole his way to the Sutra Hall. Just as the monks were
beating the drums and prostrating themselves in prayer, the bandits
drew their swords and butchered them. The monks were not prepared,
and they were wiped out to a man.^17Wang’s is the only account in Shaolin’s history that suggests a tension be-
tween the monks’ religious duties and their military vocation. According to
him, Li Jiyu had been able to slaughter the clerics because they had been en-
gaged in a Buddhist ceremony. Even though the monks made no conscious
choice to favor their religious role over their military one—after all they had
been deceived by the Henan warlord—in this instance their two functions
clashed. The monks’ performance of their ritual duties hampered their effi-
cacy as warriors. Their identity of Buddhist priests collided with their role of
soldiers.
Li Jiyu, who butchered the Shaolin monks, emerged in 1640 as one of the
strongest warlords in northern Henan. Like other local bandits, he tried to
maintain his independence, shifting his alliances in accordance with the rap-
idly changing military situation. He had allied himself with Li Zicheng (in
1641), submitted to the Ming but colluded again with Li (1643), clashed with Li
(1643), yielded to the Nanjing regime of the Southern Ming (summer of 1644),
and finally surrendered to the Qing (December 1644), who did not trust him
and had him executed three years later.^18 (At one point, incidentally, Li had be-
friended the would-be founder of Taiji Quan, Chen Wangting).^19 The warlord’s