Suspect Rebels 193
lin couplet during his sojourn at the temple. That it had remained among his
belongings for more than twenty years might have been purely accidental.
However, it might have signified, as the magistrate suspected, that for monk Xu
the legend of the Shaolin guardian spirit had acquired an eschatological sig-
nificance. If this was the case—our evidence is not sufficient to ascertain
whether it was or not—the myth that had provided Shaolin monks with a di-
vine excuse for violence had similarly figured within a sectarian environment.
Qing period millenarian groups might have incorporated the Buddhist guard-
ian spirit into their pantheon, imagining him to lead his Shaolin troops in a
war of redemption.
Was the Qing-fear justified? Did Shaolin monks or Shaolin affiliates join
in rebellion? It is hard to answer this question, for the sources at our disposal
are likely biased. The official accounts are tainted by prejudice (against the
monastery), whereas its monks, if they had ever been involved in an insur-
gency, would not have recorded it. Bearing this methodological problem in
mind, our ethnographic study of the monastery does lend at least some cre-
dence to the government’s apprehension. We have seen in chapter 2 that
Shaolin’s is a fluid community, of which resident monks are a small minority.
Most Shaolin graduates—lay and clerical alike—leave the temple to pursue
itinerant military careers, at the same time as their monastic fellows regu-
larly train with outsiders. As a renowned center of the martial arts, Shaolin
attracts countless practitioners who go there to learn new techniques, test
their skills, and meet old friends. It is thus extremely difficult to separate the
monastery from the larger martial community. To the degree that Qing offi-
cials considered folk martial artists as dangerous, they could not but scruti-
nize the Shaolin Temple. Guarding against the society of the “rivers and
lakes” required supervision of its monastic hub.
Qing officials were fully aware of the professional and the social net-
works that tied the monastery to the larger martial community. Following
the failed Eight Trigrams uprising of 1813, some rebels apparently sought
shelter in the Shaolin Temple’s vicinity. Responding to the Jiaqing emperor’s
(r. 1796–1820) urgent query on the matter, Governor Fang Shouchou elabo-
rated on the monks’ association with suspected criminals: “The Shaolin
Temple is situated in Henan’s Dengfeng County, at the foot of Mt. Song. Re-
mote and desolate, the area is suitable for hiding. If persons similar to them with
whom they have been previously familiar arrive there, the monks are sure to wel-
come them, and offer them shelter.”^37 Because they belonged to the same
martial community, Shaolin monks were likely to harbor their fellows who
had been implicated in rebellion.
The Qing government was not concerned, then, with the Shaolin Temple
itself igniting a rebellion. The fear was rather of its association with rebels—
either that its itinerant alumni would join in insurgencies or that its resident
monks would give shelter to their former colleagues. Hence the government’s
repeated attempts to sever the ties between the monastery and the larger