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Tiger, Tyrant, Bandit, Businessman: A Few Words on the Sources

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Brian DeMare
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Abstract

While all historical sources must be used with care, the archival documents found in Tiger, Tyrant, Bandit, Businessman: Echoes of Counterrevolution in New China demanded extra attention. These archival sources—four criminal casefiles from a rural Public Security Bureau in Poyang County, Jiangxi Province—are packed with detail. But they were also composed by outsiders who were unfamiliar with local conditions even as they held preconceived notions about village life. This essay discusses some of the most challenging aspects of working with such documents, including issues of authorship, outsider bias, and the many silences in the historical record.

Keywords

ArchivesGrassroots HistoryRural ChinaLocal Administration
Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 20 , Issue 16 , September 2022 , e13
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2022

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References

Notes

1 Learning that officials posted to their native places were most likely to enrich their relatives, deviate from their imperial instructions, or perhaps even rise in rebellion, imperial states used the ‘law of avoidance’: magistrates had to be outsiders. This helped magistrates and other bureaucrats avoid entanglements as they implemented the will of the imperial state in Poyang County. Their jobs were not easy. As the representative of imperial power in the countryside, the magistrates oversaw everything from bandit suppression to tax collection. For a list of Poyang magistrates, see 鄱阳县志 [Poyang County Gazette], Beijing: Fangzhi Chubanshe, 2010, 421–24.

2 The Fifth Corps of the Second Field Army liberated Poyang County. The cadres who accompanied them were a fraction of a much larger force organised for the takeover of Nationalist-held regions. As discussed by James Gao, in 1948, the party had called for the training of some 53,000 cadres for this task nationwide, estimating that a county such as Poyang would need 75 cadres. Recruiting northern cadres to travel south was hampered by the localism of rural cadres, who preferred to return to farming once the Civil War ended. Southbound cadres were also forbidden from marriage for two years, lest they lose focus on the task at hand, although as seen at the end of this essay, some northern cadres quickly tied the knot. To balance these factors, the party emphasised the honour of serving the revolution and gave southbound cadres a promotion. Not all these cadres were farmers. Other southbound cadres included intellectuals, student activists, and former government employees. See James Gao, The Communist Takeover of Hangzhou: The Transformation of City and Cadre, 1949–1954, Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2004, 19–52.

3 A key moment was in late 1951 when Poyang was divided into 17 districts and 274 townships. For everything on Poyang County administration, see the Poyang County Gazette, 52–55.

4 上饶红色故事汇（69）四菜一汤办婚礼 [Collection of Red Stories from Shangrao (69): A Wedding with Four Dishes and One Soup].' 上饶日报 [Shangrao Daily], 20 July 2021.