AHR Forum

"Righteous Fraternities" and Honorable Men:
Sworn Brotherhoods in Wartime Chongqing

LEE McISAAC

Men in China have often relied on the language of brotherhood to establish ties to other men with whom they were not related by blood. These relationships, customarily sealed with a blood oath or in a solemn initiation ceremony, have provided protection, assistance, and friendship. In the late imperial and Republican periods, they also became the basis for a range of primarily non-elite associations, including secret societies, bandit groups, and urban gangs. These organizations varied in size, structure, and activities, but all brought together unrelated males in a fraternal relationship based on loyalty and mutual obligation by means of a blood oath.1 Collectively, they point to the power of the fraternal bond in China to draw together unrelated men for shared purposes.	1
Given the variety of models men had for relationships with other men, two of the most prominent of which are explored in the other articles in this Forum, why was the fraternal model used by men to establish relationships with other men? As Adrian Davis demonstrates, the bonds of brotherhood in China were not necessarily strong and were, in fact, often fraught with tension.2 Nevertheless, within a social scheme in which kinship was identified as the primary basis for close relationships, family ties provided a powerful idiom for establishing close relationships. Unlike friendship, which, as Norman Kutcher points out, was seen by Confucians as an inferior and ambiguous relationship, kinship entailed clear obligations and loyalties that were not built in to ideas about relations between friends. Within this context, fraternal association provided an effective bond between unrelated men because it used quasi-kin relations to extend the bonds of loyalty and obligation beyond the family and to create new relations that had the strength and force of kinship.3 In addition, as Kutcher suggests, friendship was not an ideal model for relations among men because of the perception that it was dangerous to the state. As a model for close relations, brotherhood was perhaps simply safer than friendship.	2
Scholarly interest in China's fraternal organizations has focused primarily on their political and economic roles. Without seeking to minimize their effectiveness as a basis for political mobilization or their importance as a survival strategy for poor and marginalized men, this article seeks to shift the focus of study of fraternal associations away from their economic and political functions toward the nature of the fraternal bond itself. As a survival strategy, fraternal associations were but one of a number of different groups formed by non-elite men.4 Yet, unlike the native place and occupational organizations with which they often overlapped, fraternal associations were clandestine and utilized specific rituals, codes, and symbols that imbued them and the relationships they encompassed with special meanings and gave them a unique significance in the eyes of those who participated in them (as well as those who did not).5 As Mary Ann Clawson noted in her study of Freemasons in America, "fraternalism, as an institution explicitly defined by ritual, especially demands to be analyzed as a historically-shaped symbolic form. Its significance resides not only in the social networks it created, reinforced, or displayed, but in the meanings it articulated, the cultural context it provided for social action."6	3
This article examines two major forms of fraternal association among men who worked in factories, coal mines, and on the docks in Chongqing (Chungking) during World War II, when that city served as the wartime capital of the Nationalist government, and explores the meanings they ascribed to the sworn brotherhood relationship. As a city with rapid population growth, a large immigrant population of rootless and marginalized men, a high level of violence, and weak state control, wartime Chongqing was characterized by precisely the sort of political and social context scholars have associated with the emergence of sworn brotherhoods throughout China.7 In addition, the population of the city was predominantly male. Accurate statistics are not available, but it is possible to get a sense of the extent to which men may have outnumbered women in the city's wartime population from censuses conducted by the Municipal Police Department. According to these surveys, the city's overall sex ratio in 1937 was 140 (277,808 men and 198,160 women). By 1945, the ratio had risen to 155 (637,218 men and 412,232 women). Sex ratios were most sharply skewed in the city's working-class districts. In the Xiaolongkan-Ciqikou District, where most of the large arsenals, steel mills, and textile mills were located, men still outnumbered women by more than two to one in January 1945 (the exact ratio was 208).8	4
Within the hostile and alien environment of this rapidly growing city, ambitious leaders of urban gangs found in the idiom of brotherhood a powerful tool for mobilizing loyal bands of followers and providing them with a social identity, which could be and often was used to build and enhance the power base of gang bosses. At the same time, individual men, many of them recent immigrants to the city, formed ties that provided them with mutual assistance and protection, as well as friendship and camaraderie, by "swearing brotherhood" (jiebai xiongdi) with other men. The flexibility and adaptability of the fraternal relationship to these varied uses resulted in two distinct forms of sworn brotherhood: the hierarchical and exploitative gang known locally as the Robed Brothers and the informal groups of sworn brothers known as "gold and orchid" brotherhoods (bai lanjiao).	5
Despite differences in size, structure, organization, and the nature of the relationships they encompassed, both forms of sworn brotherhood were based on the same model of fraternity. This was not the Confucian one described by Davis, with its emphasis on hierarchy and filial piety as essential fraternal values. Rather, Chongqing's sworn brotherhoods were modeled after the famous sworn brotherhoods depicted in popular works such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms and especially All Men Are Brothers (Shui Hu Zhuan).9 These fictionalized brotherhoods were voluntary communities of unrelated men who were drawn together, often through apparently chance encounters, by their shared commitment to the values of male friendship, loyalty (zhong), and righteousness (yi). Ranging in size from 3 to 108 members, these fraternities were further strengthened by a deeply felt sense of the congeniality that flows naturally among like-minded men. Their undying commitment to these virtues and to each other was affirmed in a solemn oath, which was typically accompanied by the drinking of wine in which the blood of each of the brothers or of a chicken had been mixed.	6
The immensely popular work All Men Are Brothers was a staple performance of storytellers and drama troupes in Chinese villages, towns, and cities from at least the late Ming dynasty.10 The "righteous fraternity" described in this work was particularly important as a model for "gold and orchid" brotherhoods among workers in Chongqing.11 Its approximately one hundred chapters describe the adventures of a band of outlaw men who lived in the Liangshan Marsh in Shandong province during the early twelfth century. Driven to become outlaws by the corruption of officials who ruled the society in which they lived rather than by any blackness in their own character, members of the brotherhood were portrayed as a group of heroes chosen by heaven to uphold justice and righteousness.	7
As a model for Chongqing's sworn brotherhoods, these fictionalized brotherhoods provided more than a means of bringing together unrelated men. They also promoted values, ideals, and patterns of behavior that played a central role in shaping working-class culture in Chongqing. In particular, they projected a vision of manhood that differed radically from the one promoted by Confucian culture. Whereas Confucians have long viewed marriage and the production of sons to carry on the family name as the essential elements of manhood, sworn brotherhoods instead promoted a style of masculinity expressed through bold action and demonstrable commitment to the values of loyalty and righteousness. Because these qualities were often expressed through violence, Chongqing's fraternal organizations also contributed substantially to the culture of violence that existed in the city.	8
Because of the clandestine nature and lack of centralized organization in sworn brotherhoods, evidence concerning membership is scant and primarily anecdotal, making it difficult to quantify the extent to which the city's workers joined fraternal organizations. Even Communist labor organizers working among factory workers and boatmen in Chongqing during the war often found it difficult to know who belonged to sworn brotherhoods.12 Nevertheless, my interviews with former workers, as well as written materials left by Communist labor organizers and reports written by factory foremen and managers, suggest that the majority of workers belonged to at least one of Chongqing's fraternal organizations, while many participated in both types.	9
The largest and most powerful of Chongqing's sworn brotherhoods was the Robed Brothers (Paoge). Often referred to outside of Sichuan as the Society of Brothers and Elders (Gelaohui),13 it was an essentially patriarchal organization in which the central defining relationship was between an elder (daye) and his disciples. The origins of this group are obscure, but it seems to have evolved from the numerous bandit gangs that operated in eastern Sichuan and mountainous areas along the borders of Hunan and Shaanxi provinces from at least the middle of the eighteenth century.14 Known to Qing officials as Guolu,15 these were loosely structured sworn brotherhoods that functioned as mutual assistance organizations for male immigrants, many of them unmarried, who lived in an increasingly harsh social and economic environment without access to more traditional sources of assistance from kin or community.16 Despite efforts of the Qing state to suppress these bands, by the middle of the nineteenth century some of these Guolu had evolved into an organization officials referred to in documents as Gelaohui. The brotherhood continued to grow and flourish in the warfare that engulfed Sichuan province during the first two decades of the Republican era (1911–1926). By the 1930s, the Robed Brothers had considerable power throughout Sichuan. In addition to their dominance of local markets,17 they controlled extensive opium smuggling activities, protection rackets, and gambling operations. Thus, in many ways, the Robed Brothers resembled ganglike organizations such as the Green Gang, the Red Gang, and the Triads that were active in other areas of China.18	10
The organization itself was a loose collective of five autonomous lodges (tang) active throughout southwest China. Of these, only two, the Lodge of Benevolence (ren tang) and the Lodge of Righteousness (yi tang), were active in Chongqing.19 Each lodge was further subdivided into independent branches (gongkou). The smallest of these branches had a few dozen members, while the largest had several hundred.20 The focal point for each branch was a teahouse, which also served as an office for its elder.	11
Despite the claims of some former elders, hierarchy permeated the Robed Brothers at all levels.21 Even the lodges themselves were hierarchically ordered. In Chongqing, the Lodge of Benevolence was generally considered to be superior and was associated more with the well-to-do members of society. Most ordinary workers joined the Lodge of Righteousness.22 Within each lodge, the relationship between members was also hierarchically ordered. An elder occupied the highest position in the hierarchy. His immediate disciples were the elders at the apex of each branch. Each branch also had second, third, and fifth elders. (The fourth rank was omitted, apparently because in Chinese "four" and "death" are homonyms, and the number is therefore considered unlucky.)	12
It was to one of these elders that ordinary workers swore allegiance when they joined the Robed Brothers in a simple initiation ceremony held annually on the Double Fifth festival. In this ceremony, new initiates bowed to the elder, signifying their acceptance of his patronage and protection. When the bowing had been completed, everyone sat down to enjoy a banquet provided by the elder. The act of bowing, which also played a role in establishing relations of dominance and subordination in wedding ceremonies and in official audiences, established the hierarchical nature of the relationship between an elder and his followers. The banquet emphasized his paternalistic care for them. After this initiation ceremony, each member's relationship with his elder was reaffirmed annually with the payment of a "gift" to him on his birthday. In some cases, "gifts" were also required on special occasions being celebrated by an elder.23 These did not amount to a large sum of money, but for workers in Chongqing, many of whom lived on the margins of survival, even a small sum of money was significant.	13
Men from all levels of Chongqing society joined the Robed Brothers, but those from its lower levels comprised the bulk of its membership. Workers joined the brotherhood primarily to gain protection from the myriad dangers they faced in the city. As one former cotton fluffer explained, almost everyone in the city joined the Robed Brothers "to get by a little better . . . If you didn't join, you'd have a hard time."24 Chief among workers' concerns was avoiding conscription into the army. To meet quotas, conscription agents snatched able-bodied males wherever they could find them. In the countryside outside of Chongqing, peasants were taken from their homes while they slept. Coolies hauling goods along the roads to the city were forcibly conscripted, as were sailors on boats. Conscription agents even went into factories and mines to dragoon workers. Because the majority of these agents were Robed Brother elders, they were able to offer protection to workers who accepted them as their masters. Most workers who joined the Robed Brothers during the war did so to avoid conscription, a consideration that certainly played a role in the spectacular growth of the Robed Brothers during the war years.25	14
Workers also joined the Robed Brothers to gain protection against physical attacks. This safeguard was especially important for sailors on the ships that plied the waters of Sichuan's rivers. Yang Huitang, a native of Wuhan who worked as a sailor on steamers during the war, recalled that membership in the gang was necessary in order to disembark safely at various river ports in Sichuan:	15
Most sailors joined the Robed Brothers . . . If you didn't, you couldn't get by. You'd get into tight spots, especially when you went to Luzhou or Yibin [two other river ports in Sichuan]. If you weren't a Robed Brother, when you arrived at the dock someone would ask if you wanted to die. They would kill you . . . They all had guns! . . . But if you joined the Robed Brothers, they wouldn't shoot you. Robed Brothers didn't shoot Robed Brothers.26
For men who worked in Chongqing's extensive transport industry and on its docks, membership in the Robed Brothers was a necessary prerequisite for getting a job. As in Tianjin and Shanghai, all aspects of Chongqing's transport industry were dominated by gang bosses. Each of them controlled a certain amount of territory, whether it was a dock, a street, or a neighborhood. All the goods that passed through that area had to be transported by workers who had sworn allegiance to the area boss.27	16
There was thus a decidedly coercive element to what drew workers into the Robed Brothers. Most joined to gain protection against the brotherhood itself, whether from the conscription agents who were its leaders or from members of the brotherhood who were defending their own territory (or, more accurately, that of their elder). Others joined in order to get jobs. In addition to protection and employment, the brotherhood provided workers with access to an extended social network on which they could draw for assistance, particularly in gaining the introductions that were necessary to get a job.28 Moreover, the brotherhood's extraordinary power and prestige in Chongqing provided workers who joined it with a measure of status.29 But because the coercive element dominated, workers in Chongqing viewed membership in the Robed Brothers primarily as a pragmatic strategy to help them survive in a dangerous and hostile environment. The Robed Brothers was, essentially, an organization that relied on the social metaphor of brotherhood to establish a social hierarchy and build the political power of individual men.	17
The second form of constructed brotherhood in wartime Chongqing, known as "gold and orchid" brotherhoods, reflected a somewhat different set of considerations among workers. While they relied chiefly on the Robed Brothers for protection in Chongqing's public spaces, they turned to their own immediate co-workers, often but not always, those with whom they shared native-place ties, to establish more intimate bonds on which they relied for loans in times of need such as illness or unemployment, assistance in financing weddings and funerals, and support in conflicts with other urban groups. These brotherhoods also served as social cliques, and sworn brothers often socialized together in teahouses after work or went to markets and theater performances on days off.	18
Unlike the Robed Brothers, "gold and orchid" brotherhoods were formed spontaneously and voluntarily among men who "got on well together."30 These brotherhoods usually ranged from three to twenty members, although groups of eighty to a hundred were not uncommon. The personal and affective nature of the ties that provided the basis for these relationships was reflected in the phrase "pledging close friendship" that workers used to describe them. "Close friendship" (lanjiao) is shorthand for "the relation between gold and orchids" (jinlan zhijiao), a reference to a passage in the Book of Changes that states: "When two people have the same heart, their strength can cut metal.31 Words that are of the same heart have the fragrance of orchids."32 It is admittedly difficult to believe that groups of eighty men were bound together by strong ties of close friendship, but it is the ideal here rather than the reality that is important.	19
Brotherhood was pledged in a simple ceremony held in a secluded spot such as a temple or an out-of-the-way place in the factory. One worker recalled that he had sworn brotherhood with friends in the factory kitchen when no one was there.33 This ceremony consisted simply of an oath of loyalty that was given by each member in turn, beginning with the eldest, who was thereafter referred to as "eldest brother," and ending with the youngest. Thus hierarchy was also present in these brotherhoods from the beginning.34 A variety of oaths were used, but all were modeled after the famous oath sworn in the Peach Garden by Liu Bei, Zhang Fei, and Guan Yu and described in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and all stressed the same essential virtues of loyalty to one's sworn brothers and commitment to righteousness (yi):	20
We three, Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, though of different families, swear brotherhood, and promise mutual help to one end. We will rescue each other in difficulty, and we will aid each other in danger. We swear to serve the state and save the people. We ask not the same day of birth, but we seek to die together. May Heaven, the all-ruling, and Earth, the all-producing, read our hearts, and if we turn aside from righteousness or forget kindliness may Heaven and man smite us!35
Some wine (or water if wine was not available) was shared to seal the oath. Ideally, this wine would have the blood of a chicken or of each of the brothers mixed in, but this custom was not always followed in practice.
The simplicity of this ceremony masked its profound symbolic significance. Through the swearing of an oath of mutual loyalty and the sharing of a ritual drink, members joined the long tradition of sworn brotherhood associated with the famous fraternities of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and especially All Men Are Brothers.36 For these participants, as for others in this tradition, the ceremony also marked the creation of a new community of friends who were committed to a common purpose. Whereas the initiation ceremony of Chongqing's Robed Brothers emphasized the subordination of an individual to his elder, the ceremony of the "gold and orchid" brotherhoods stressed mutuality of obligations and sentiments. Although hierarchy was still present in the latter in the ranking of members by age, the emphasis was on consolidating mutual obligations and shared values of loyalty and righteousness that defined the sworn brotherhood tradition.37	21
When men pledged brotherhood with one particular group, they were not bound exclusively to that group. They could and did swear brotherhood with other groups of men. Membership in different brotherhoods sometimes overlapped, thereby providing workers with interlocking networks on which they could draw for assistance (and further extending the sense of community that brotherhoods offered). If one individual belonged to two separate brotherhoods that had no other shared members, men in both groups who had never sworn brotherhood to each other would nevertheless honor obligations to their brother's brothers.	22
Given the prominence of secret societies in political rebellion and criminal activities during the late imperial era in China, it is not surprising that the relationship between sworn brotherhoods and violence has been a familiar theme in the literature on sworn brotherhoods. The motivations for this violence are usually located in the political or economic objectives of these organizations. However, what is less often acknowledged is that violence also played a central role in the sworn brotherhood ideology and in the meaning of the fraternal relationship itself. Despite many differences, both the Robed Brothers and "gold and orchid" brotherhoods shared a commitment to clearly defined values and the use of violence to demonstrate such commitment and protect the fraternal community. A full discussion of the many and varied roles violence played in these organizations is beyond the scope of this short article. Here, I will only suggest some of the ways in which violence was integral to the sworn brotherhood ideal projected by "gold and orchid" brotherhoods.	23
As the Peach Garden Oath suggests, violence was envisioned from the beginning of the formal relationship as a means by which sworn brothers could demonstrate their mutual loyalty. Although the pledge to "rescue each other in difficulty" and "aid each other in danger" did not necessarily require violence, it was present as a possibility within the oath itself. Moreover, violence was implied as an ideal end for sworn brothers, in the sense that it would provide the simultaneous and united death they had pledged to seek.	24
Looking beyond the oath to the activities sworn brotherhoods engaged in, one sees that violence was also an essential component of the image of heroism projected in stories such as All Men Are Brothers. Above all else, members of the brotherhood described in that work were heroes chosen by heaven to defend justice and uphold righteousness in a world dominated by corrupt and venal officials and greedy and avaricious citizens.38 Demonstrating the essentially honorable character of the members of the brotherhood through descriptions of their efforts to defend righteousness and uphold justice is a central preoccupation of this work. Violence is essential to this task, and the stories contain vivid and detailed descriptions of gory fights between the members of the brotherhood and the forces of evil they oppose. Violence is also one of the primary means through which men demonstrate their loyalty to their sworn brothers. It is important to emphasize that the glorification of violence in these stories is not for the sake of violence itself. Rather, it serves as the means by which vengeance is exacted, justice achieved, and men express their righteousness and loyalty to the brotherhood, thereby confirming their manhood.39	25
With the centrality of violence promoted by these stories, sworn brotherhoods modeled after them played a role in much of the violence that punctuated working-class life in wartime Chongqing. Conflict among workers in China's wartime capital was rampant and often violent throughout the war years. Fights regularly broke out on the city's docks, streets, and in factories, teahouses, restaurants, and inns. Seemingly trivial incidents involving individuals or small groups of workers frequently escalated into large-scale brawls in which dozens or even hundreds of workers faced off against each other. The weapons used in these confrontations ranged from bare hands and fists to wooden cudgels, pieces of factory equipment, knives, guns, and occasionally even heavy artillery when arsenal workers were drawn into the fray. Factory managers and police in Chongqing tended to blame sworn brotherhoods for many of these incidents, but this assessment does not seem to result from an actual investigation of the relationships among those involved.40 Certainly, sworn brotherhoods were not the "cause" of all the violence that occurred in Chongqing, nor were they involved in every conflict. Nevertheless, a clear pattern in which "trivial incidents" between individuals regularly escalated, apparently spontaneously, into brawls involving dozens or hundreds of men clearly points to the presence of the kinds of social networks and ties of loyalty associated with sworn brotherhoods. Moreover, the prominence of issues of righteousness and vengeance in much of the conflict that occurred highlights the presence of values associated with the sworn brotherhood tradition.41 The following example is typical of many others that occurred in Chongqing during the war years.	26
One afternoon in early March 1945, Zhou Kun, an unskilled worker at the Number 50 Arsenal, was drinking tea at the Yiletian Teahouse. Another customer at the teahouse did not have enough money to get back to town, so Zhou loaned him 500 yuan to cover the fare, accepting the other worker's hat as collateral. The traveler agreed to return the next day with an additional 200 yuan in interest to redeem the hat. The next day at the teahouse, Zhou met a friend of the hat's owner who had been sent to retrieve the hat. As agreed, the latter turned over 700 yuan, but Zhou apparently hesitated to return the hat. Mrs. Shi, the wife of the owner of the teahouse who was observing the scene, accused Zhou of "harboring evil intentions," and an argument between the two ensued that quickly turned into a brawl. Shi joined in, helping his wife to beat up Zhou. The fight ended only when some of the people who were standing around pulled them apart.	27
Zhou returned to the factory and gathered together a group of seventeen or eighteen of his sworn brothers, all of whom worked in the same workshop (and all but one of whom was from Sichuan). On the evening of March 6, the group, led by Zhou, proceeded to destroy the teahouse. They cut the electric lights and smashed tables, chairs, and tea bowls. Soy sauce spilled out of broken vats and flowed all over the floor. Shi's wife and other workers who were drinking at the teahouse were attacked. (Shi himself, sensing trouble when the workers had arrived, had gone off to report the attack.) Total damages amounted to almost 10,000 yuan.42	28
This conflict suggests the various roles violence played in Chongqing's sworn brotherhoods. First, by destroying the teahouse on Zhou's behalf, his sworn brothers demonstrated their loyalty to him, thereby fulfilling their original oath. While proving their loyalty did not necessarily require such drastic action, incidents such as this one provided, ironically, a relatively easy, accessible, and risk-free way for men with scant resources to demonstrate loyalty and righteousness.43 Although such violence always involved the possibility of injury or even death, this element of danger actually served to remind men of the original Peach Garden Oath and the potential of dramatically fulfilling its ideal through a united death. Moreover, for Zhou himself, violence provided the only means by which he could reclaim the manhood he had lost in his altercation with Shi's wife. Although there are variations across cultures in the extent to which notions of masculine honor are dependent on conflict and violence, studies of honor societies throughout the world highlight the importance of violence in the process of claiming and defending it.44 In China, however, manliness is not commonly associated with violence, at least not within Confucian culture. Nevertheless, violence has not been entirely absent there as a means by which men could claim and defend their masculinity. In a study of village guardsmen and violence in the "bachelor subculture" of south China, James Watson pointed out that violence was the only means by which unmarried men could preserve and enhance their "male image."45 And in a recent work on images of masculinity in mainland Chinese fiction of the 1980s, Kam Louie has shown that these images relied on displays of physical strength and prowess.46 Nor is the link between violence and expressions of manhood a new development in the twentieth century. Kimberly Besio has recently suggested in her study of changing depictions of Romance of the Three Kingdoms' hero Zhang Fei in Yuan and Ming fiction and drama that the values associated with martial heroes may have enjoyed wider popularity before the Ming dynasty (1368–1644).47	29
Nevertheless, Confucianism in China has long emphasized marriage and the production of sons to carry on the family name as the essential element of manhood. For Confucians, the expectation that men would marry and produce sons was more than a desirable ideal, it was an obligation. As Mencius said, "There are three things which are unfilial, and the greatest of them is to have not posterity."48 But by the 1920s, poor and marginalized men found it increasingly difficult to realize this vision of manhood, as an agrarian crisis coupled with demographic changes resulted in the decline of peasant families in many areas of China. A full discussion of the complex economic and demographic factors that contributed to this "family crisis" is beyond my scope here.49 Briefly stated, agrarian decline that may be traced back to the nineteenth century resulted by the early twentieth in increasing immiseration of the peasantry in many areas of China. As family resources dwindled, the size and complexity of agrarian households declined, and many peasant families found it difficult to maintain existing families and create new ones. In addition, practices such as concubinage and historically skewed sex ratios lowered the pool of prospective brides available for marriage to lower-class men. By the early twentieth century, the convergence of these economic and demographic factors resulted in extremely low rates of marriage among peasant men in many areas of China.50 Surveys of marriage rates found that in some areas anywhere from 30 percent to nearly 100 percent of agrarian laborers were unable to marry.51 In cities, where many poor peasants migrated in search of work, the gap between the numbers of men and women in the population could be especially striking, as it was in wartime Chongqing (see above). The difficulties men in Chongqing faced in meeting wedding expenses during the 1930s and 1940s is poignantly suggested by the fact that one of the central functions of "gold and orchid" sworn brotherhoods was to pool resources to meet wedding expenses.	30
For men living in a society that validated few alternatives to marriage and family life, widespread bachelorhood had deep emotional and practical ramifications and contributed to the growth of sworn brotherhood organizations. Their association with a long and glorious tradition, as well as their popular image as a refuge for just and righteous men who found themselves pushed to the margins of society, meant that fraternal organizations were uniquely suited to playing an important role in helping to fill this void. Edward Friedman noted in his study of a rural area in Guangdong province:	31
In a society where men are not complete unless they marry and have male heirs . . . village migrants who could afford neither wife nor home probably experienced themselves as immoral. The opportunity to join as a peer a brotherhood of valued comrades may have led to an experience almost of holiness in the fulfillment of the new affirmation . . . The virile life of an armed hero fulfilled deep, culturally defined masculine needs that were satisfied in no other way.52
While Friedman probably overstates the religious nature of the crisis of masculinity experienced by Chinese peasants in the Republican era, he is correct in pointing to the need for alternative values and ideals and the possibilities for them that participation in fraternal associations opened up in this social and cultural context. Through the practice of swearing brotherhood, workers in Chongqing claimed for themselves a social identity as honorable men whose role in defending justice and upholding righteousness brought them from the margins of Chinese society to its center.
The Chinese state has viewed sworn brotherhoods as subversive organizations since the early Qing dynasty and has regularly banned them. However, as recent scholarship on secret societies and sworn brotherhoods has shown, despite the popular and historiographical association of secret societies with activities against the state, most sworn brotherhood organizations were not overtly political in nature. In wartime Chongqing, fraternal organizations encompassed a range of relationships and meanings for the men who joined them. But, for the most part, overtly anti-state activities were not one of their features.	32
Nevertheless, they did in many ways constitute a challenge to the political order being developed by the Guomindang state. Even as they adopted a largely Confucian vocabulary to define their values and ideals, probably as a way to legitimate their own existence, Chongqing's sworn brotherhoods shifted the social arena within which those values were to be practiced away from the family and state and toward the independently formed community of the fraternity. By providing an alternative to the models of kinship and society defined by Confucian ideology and promoted by the Chinese state, and by glorifying the bonds of loyalty and commitment to righteousness that had brought them together, fraternal organizations inevitably weakened the ties of loyalty to the family and the state that were the cornerstone of Confucian ideology. Moreover, sworn brotherhood constituted a powerful bond among men that enabled them to resist the intrusion of more formal forms of state power. This may be seen most clearly in the central government's difficulties in breaking the deeply entrenched local power of the Robed Brothers in Chongqing during the war, as the exiled government sought to establish its own power and legitimacy in an area in which its influence had previously been minimal.	33
Yet, by the 1930s, while they recognized the potential danger to state hegemony that was posed by even the smallest sworn brotherhood organizations, Chiang Kai-shek and other members of the Guomindang government also understood the extraordinary power and usefulness of the sworn brotherhood relationship in consolidating relations and building ties of loyalty among men, and used these relationships to build loyalty to themselves and state institutions. Thus, though fraternal organizations of all types were banned by the Guomindang state, Chiang Kai-shek relied on the practice of swearing brotherhood to consolidate his own ties with leaders of powerful gangs in Shanghai and Sichuan.53 And, as Wen-hsin Yeh has demonstrated, Dai Li, chief of the Nationalist military intelligence service, effectively utilized the sworn brotherhood ideology to build a secret police that was fiercely loyal to him.54 Thus, by the 1930s, even though members of the Guomindang state recognized the potentially subversive aspects of the fraternal bond, some also recognized its power and used it for their own ends.	34
Lee McIsaac is an assistant professor of history at the University of Vermont. She received her PhD from Yale University in 1994, where she studied with Jonathan Spence and Emily Honig. Her article "The City as Nation: Creating a Wartime Capital in Chongqing," was published this year in Joseph Esherick, ed., Remaking the Chinese City: Modernity and National Identity, 1900–1950. She is currently completing a book on the social identities of workers in Chongqing during World War II. She is a co-founder and member of the editorial board of Wall and Market: Chinese Urban History Newsletter. Notes An earlier version of this article was presented at the 1996 annual meeting of the American Historical Association. I am grateful to the other members of the panel, Norman Kutcher, Adrian Davis, Susan Mann, and Gail Hershatter, as well as to the members of the audience, for their comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank the editors at the AHR and the anonymous reviewers whose criticisms helped me to refine my argument and avoid some errors. Research was funded, in part, by generous grants from the Committee on Scholarly Communication with China and the University Committee on Research and Scholarship at the University of Vermont. 1 David Ownby has recently argued that, because of this fundamental similarity, these varied organizations should be seen as a continuum of all-male associations rather than as unrelated and distinct groupings. Ownby, Sworn Brotherhoods and Secret Societies in Early and Mid-Qing China: The Formation of a Tradition (Stanford, Calif., 1996), 2. 2 Others have similarly noted that the fraternal bond was in reality "one of the most fragile bonds in Chinese society." Maurice Freedman, Family and Kinship in Chinese Society (Stanford, Calif., 1970), 3–4. 3 Mary Ann Clawson has pointed out that constructed brotherhood is a common form of association in societies in which kinship has remained a primary basis for solidary relationships. Clawson, Constructing Brotherhood: Class, Gender, and Fraternalism (Princeton, N.J., 1989), 15. 4 Working-class women similarly formed "sworn sisterhoods" (jiemei hui) for purposes of mutual assistance and protection. The most comprehensive discussion of these organizations is in Emily Honig, Sisters and Strangers: Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919–1949 (Stanford, Calif., 1986), 209–17; See also Gail Hershatter, The Workers of Tianjin, 1900–1949 (Stanford, 1986), 175–77. 5 In their clandestine nature and reliance on ritual, China's fraternal organizations resemble those in North America and Europe. See, for example, Mark Carnes, Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America (New Haven, Conn., 1989); William H. Sewell, Jr., Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (London, 1980), 40–61. 6 Clawson, Constructing Brotherhood, 11. 7 See, for example, Ownby, Sworn Brotherhoods and Secret Societies, 12–20; Liu Ch'eng-yun, "Kuo-lu: A Sworn Brotherhood Organization in Szechwan," Late Imperial China 6 (June 1985): 59–61. 8 He Yaozu, Chongqing yaolan [Important sights in Chongqing] (Chongqing, 1945), 15, 19. 9 Although Water Margin is a more accurate translation of Shui Hu, I have used Pearl Buck's translation because it echoes the Mencian quote, "Within the four seas, all men are brothers," which is invoked throughout the novel and highlights the centrality of male relationships in it. The importance of All Men Are Brothers and Romance of the Three Kingdoms as models for sworn brotherhoods has been noted by a number of scholars. See, for example, Dian H. Murray, citing Luo Ergang, The Origins of the Tiandihui: The Chinese Triads in Legend and History (Stanford, Calif., 1994), 169–70; and Brian Martin, The Shanghai Green Gang: Politics and Organized Crime, 1919–1937 (Berkeley, Calif., 1996), 24–26. 10 Parts of it were performed by storytellers in marketplaces as early as the Song dynasty. C. T. Hsia, The Classic Chinese Novel: A Critical Introduction (New York, 1968), 76. All Men Are Brothers has continued to be popular in the People's Republic of China, where it has served as a model for a number of stories and dramas and been used for propaganda purposes. See Bonnie McDougall, ed., Popular Chinese Literature and Performing Arts in the People's Republic of China, 1949–1979 (Berkeley, Calif., 1984), 211, 214–17. 11 Workers I interviewed in Chongqing uniformly stressed the importance of this work as a model for their "gold and orchid" sworn brotherhood relationships. Although the influence of All Men Are Brothers on the Robed Brothers was less explicit in the minds of workers, it was still present, as is evidenced in the promotion of the core values of loyalty and righteousness and the use of lodge names from the story. 12 See, for example, "Yuqu bannian lai gongyun gaikuang" [The conditions of the labor movement in Chongqing during the past six months], in Sichuan gongren yundong shiliao xuanbian [Selected compilation of historical materials on the labor movement in Sichuan] (Chengdu, 1988), 282. 13 For a more complete discussion of the complex relationship between the Robed Brothers and the Gelaohui, see Lee McIsaac, "The Limits of Chinese Nationalism: Workers in Wartime Chongqing, 1937–1945" (PhD dissertation, Yale University, 1994), 112–13. 14 The linkages between the guolu bandit gangs of eighteenth-century Sichuan and the Republican-era groups known locally as Paoge are extremely tenuous, but most historians trace the origins of the Robed Brothers/Gathering of Elders to these earlier groups. See, for example, Liu Cheng-yun, "The Ko-lao hui in Late Imperial China" (PhD dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1983); Cai Shaoqing, "On the Origin of the Gelaohui," Modern China 10 (October 1984): 481–508; Zhao Qing, Paoge yu tufei [Robed Brothers and local bandits] (Tianjin, 1990); Barend ter Haar, "The Gathering of Brothers and Elders (Ko-lao hui): A New View," unpublished paper, n.d. I am indebted to Barend J. ter Haar for initially drawing my attention to this link. Personal communication with the author, July 25, 1993. 15 There has been considerable disagreement about the meaning of this term, both among Qing officials reporting on these bands and also among scholars writing about them over the last two decades. Some scholars have suggested that it represents the term for "gamblers" in Sichuan dialect, while others have argued that it represents the pronunciation of gelao in Sichuan dialect. See Liu Cheng-yun, "Ko-lao hui in Late Imperial China," 19–20, for a full discussion of the various meanings of this word; also Cai Shaoqing, "On the Origin of the Gelaohui," 484. 16 Liu Ch'eng-yun, "Kuo-lu." 17 G. William Skinner, "Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China," Journal of Asian Studies 24 (November 1964): 37. 18 These other gangs also originated from sworn brotherhoods and secret societies that date back to imperial China. Their evolution into powerful criminal gangs in major cities suggests the strength of the fraternal model for building alternative power structures in late imperial and Republican China. See, for example, Martin, Shanghai Green Gang, 9–15. 19 Others were the Lodges of Wisdom (zhi tang), Rites (li tang), and Sincerity (xin tang). 20 Tang Shaowu, et al., "Jiefang qian Chongqing de paoge" [Chongqing's Robed Brothers before Liberation], Chongqing wenshi ziliao [Materials on the culture and history of Chongqing] 31 (1989): 141. According to Tang, et al., there were about 300 branches of the Lodges of Benevolence and Righteousness in Chongqing on the eve of the War of Resistance. 21 In their article on the Robed Brothers, Tang Shaowu, et al., assert that "with the exception of bowing in the [initiation] ceremony," hierarchical relations were absent in the brotherhood. Nevertheless, while relations between men who became followers of one elder may be described as horizontal, the core relationship with their elder was decidedly hierarchical in nature. See "Jiefang qian Chongqing de paoge," 127. 22 Membership in the Robed Brothers was closed to certain occupational groups including hairdressers and pedicurists. By the late 1940s, members of these occupational groups had formed their own branch of the Robed Brothers in Chongqing. 23 Workers I interviewed disagreed about the frequency with which gifts had to be paid to an elder. This disparity probably reflects variations among the elders themselves. 24 Zhao Quanyi, interview by the author, November 5, 1992, Chongqing, China. 25 Competition from the Green Gang and massive immigration also played a role. See McIsaac, "Limits of Chinese Nationalism," 177–78. 26 Yang Huitang, interview by the author, November 1, 1992, Chongqing. 27 Very little systematic information about Chongqing's transport industry is available. Guilds that dated from the early years of the Republican period controlled certain aspects of it, especially along the docks, but the various territories into which the city was carved up by those who controlled the transport industry do not seem to have represented areas controlled by official guilds. 28 Tang Yuangui and Zuo Wenqing, interviews by the author, October 31, 1992, Chongqing. 29 Gao Honglin, interview by the author, May 31, 1995, Chongqing. 30 Workers I interviewed in Chongqing all drew a sharp distinction between the Robed Brothers and the smaller sworn brotherhoods known as "gold and orchid" brotherhoods. The central difference they all identified was the more affective and voluntary nature of the bonds that drew together men in the latter form. 31 Because jin is a generic term used to refer to metal, as in, for example, the five metals (wu jin) of gold, silver, copper, iron, and tin, it seems appropriate to translate it variously in this paragraph as both "gold" and "metal" in order to reflect the different contexts and uses referred to in these two sentences. 32 Ciyuan [Dictionary of word origins] (Beijing, 1990), 2741. 33 Ye Shaohua, interview by the author, May 31, 1995, Chongqing. 34 As Davis and Kutcher point out in their articles, the principles of ranking and hierarchical ordering of members are fundamental to Chinese conceptions of ordered relationships, including that between brothers. The notion of fraternal egalitarianism that plays such an important role in European and American conceptions of brotherhood is completely absent in China, where hierarchical ranking and observance of it is often seen as fundamental to social stability. 35 Quoted by Martin in Shanghai Green Gang, citing Lo Kuan-chung, Romance of the Three Kingdoms: San kuo Chih Yen-I, C. H. Brewitt-Taylor, trans., 2 vols. (Shanghai, 1925), 5–6. In the quote, romanization has been changed to pinyin. 36 This was mentioned by David K. Jordan as one of the appealing aspects of swearing brotherhood by men he interviewed in Taiwan. See Jordan, "Sworn Brothers: A Study in Chinese Ritual Kinship," in The Chinese Family and Its Ritual Behavior, Hsieh Jih-Chang and Chuang Ying-chang, eds. (Taipei, 1985), 236. 37 These probably did not cancel out loyalties to one's family, but no information is available for studying the potential tension between obligations to sworn brothers and one's blood relations in Chongqing. 38 Robert Ruhlman, "Traditional Heroes in Chinese Popular Fiction," in Arthur F. Wright, ed., The Confucian Persuasion (Stanford, Calif., 1960), 166–73. 39 Hsia, Classic Chinese Novel, 96–97. 40 Archival records of interrogations of workers involved in conflict do not record this question. Of course, this may also reflect an awareness that these kinds of activities on behalf of other men would only be undertaken by those who were sworn brothers. 41 Sworn brotherhoods also contributed to working-class violence in Chongqing by creating boundaries between insiders and outsiders. See, for example, a petition written by Lu Chaosui, a worker at Yu Feng Cotton Mill, to the Bureau of Social Affairs, June 1946, Archives of the Chongqing Municipal Bureau of Social Affairs, 16: juan 180/12, 39, Chongqing Municipal Archives. For a more extensive discussion of the role of sworn brotherhoods in violence in wartime Chongqing, see McIsaac, "Limits of Chinese Nationalism," 184–88. 42 Report on investigation, Archives of the Number 50 Arsenal, mu 3, juan 105, 85–94, Chongqing Municipal Archives. 43 The risks associated with demonstrating loyalty through, for example, providing financial loans to sworn brothers, were made clear to the sworn brothers of one man who had borrowed money from them in order to get married and then had died shortly after the wedding without repaying the loan. These men were left with no way to claim the money owed to them. See the report dated September 7, 1945, Archives of the Number 50 Arsenal, mu 3, juan 105, 182. 44 The literature on the concept of male honor is vast. See, for example, Pierre Bourdieu, Algeria, 1960, Richard Nice, trans. (Cambridge, 1979); Robert Nye, Masculinity and Honor in Early Modern France (New York, 1993). For an overview of the concept of honor, see Julian Pitt-Rivers, "Honor," in David Sills, ed., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 6 (New York, 1968). 45 James Watson, "Self-Defense Corps, Violence and the Bachelor Sub-culture in South China: Two Case Studies," Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Sinology (Taiwan, 1988), 216. 46 Kam Louie, "Masculinities and Minorities: Alienation in 'Strange Tales from Strange Lands,'" China Quarterly 132 (1992): 1119–35; also Louie, "The Macho Eunuch: The Politics of Masculinity in Jia Pingwa's 'Human Extremities,'" Modern China 17 (April 1991): 163–87. 47 Kimberly Besio, "Zhang Fei in Yuan Vernacular Literature: Legend, Heroism, and History in the Reproduction of the Three Kingdoms Story Cycle," Bulletin of Sung-Yuan Studies 27 (1997): 63–98. 48 Quoted in Judith Stacey, Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution in China (Berkeley, Calif., 1983), 32. 49 See Stacey, Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution, 79–97, for a more complete summary discussion of the causes and consequences of agrarian decline and its effects on peasant families and men in particular. 50 Population statistics for China are extremely unreliable before the 1950s, but anecdotal evidence and censuses suggest that men have often outnumbered women. A number of factors have contributed to the predominance of males in China's population, but one of the most important is the favoring of male children within the Confucian patriarchal system. Female infanticide was the most dramatic expression of the bias toward male children. In the nineteenth century, the killing of girl babies was routine in several parts of China, even within wealthy families (who were concerned about dowry payments). The practice of concubinage, through which wealthy men in China claimed a disproportionate share of women available for marriage, was another factor that reduced the pool of women. As a result, even before the beginning of the twentieth century, China had a permanent pool of unmarried and rootless men. For a discussion of China's population and sex ratios within it, see Ho Ping-ti, Studies on the Population of China (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), 57–62. 51 Stacey, Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution, 92–94, cites Fei Hsiao-tung, Peasant Life: A Field Study of Country Life in the Yangtze Valley (London, 1939), 53; Sidney Gamble, Ting Hsien: A North China Rural Community (1954; rpt. edn., Stanford, Calif., 1968), 28; Martin Yang, A Chinese Village (New York, 1945), 51; and Hu Chi-hsi, "The Sexual Revolution in the Kiangsi Soviet," China Quarterly 59 (July–September 1974): 479. As far as I know, no surveys of marriage rates were conducted in Sichuan during the 1930s and 1940s, but when Gregory Anthony Ruf interviewed villagers in western Sichuan during the 1980s, he found that "the low social status and weak economic power faced by most landless laborers made it difficult if not impossible to marry and reproduce" in Sichuan during the years before the revolution. Ruf, "Pillars of the State: Laboring Families, Authority, and Community in Rural Sichuan, 1937–1991" (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1994), 110–11. 52 Edward Friedman, Backward toward Revolution: The Chinese Revolutionary Party (Berkeley, Calif., 1974), 135. 53 Martin, Shanghai Green Gang, 21; Tang, et al., "Jiefang qian Chongqing de paoge," 164. 54 Wen-hsin Yeh, "Dai Li and the Liu Geqing Affair: Heroism in the Chinese Secret Service during the War of Resistance," Journal of Asian Studies 48 (August 1989): 545–62.

LOCKSS system has permission to collect, preserve, and serve this Archival Unit

Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.