Sǎo Mí Zhǒu 掃迷帚
The Broom That Sweeps Away Superstition by 壯者 (撰)
About the work
Sǎo Mí Zhǒu 掃迷帚 (The Broom That Sweeps Away Superstition) is a late-Qīng novel of social criticism in 24 huí 回, written under the pseudonym Zhuàngzhě 壯者 (identity unknown). It was first serialized from the first to fifth months of Guāngxù 31 (1905) in Xiùxiàng Xiǎoshuō 繡像小說, issues 43–52, and subsequently published as a separate volume by the Shāngwù Yìnshūguǎn 商務印書館 in Guāngxù 33 (1907). It was later anthologized by Ā Yīng 阿英 in his Wǎnqīng Wénxué Cóngchāo · Xiǎoshuō Yī Juàn 晚清文學叢抄·小說一卷 (Zhōnghuá Shūjú, 1960). The novel is a systematic attack on superstitious customs throughout Chinese society, presented through a combination of debate, satirical vignette, and travel narrative.
Tiyao
The following 提要 (notice) is embedded in the source text and is translated here:
“A Qīng-dynasty novel in twenty-four chapters, attributed to Zhuàngzhě. Published in Xiùxiàng Xiǎoshuō 繡像小說, issues 43–52, from the first to fifth months of Guāngxù 31 [1905]. A separate edition was published by the Shāngwù Yìnshūguǎn in Guāngxù 33. It was later included in Ā Yīng’s anthology Wǎnqīng Wénxué Cóngchāo · Xiǎoshuō Yī Juàn [Zhōnghuá Shūjú, 1960].
Sǎo Mí Zhǒu is a book opposed to superstitious customs. It comprehensively analyzes the origins and harms of superstitious practices in China, and describes in detail the various manifestations of such customs in the Jiāngnán region — a panoramic survey. The opening chapter sets out the work’s guiding thesis that superstition is ‘the greatest obstacle to China’s evolution.’ The protagonist, Biàn Zīshēng 卞資生, a commoner (bùyī 布衣) of Wújiāng county, Jiāngsū — a man who throughout his life has championed practical reason and despised all talk of ghosts, spirits, immortals, demons, astrology, and divination — is introduced in the first chapter. The first three chapters are devoted to Zīshēng’s debates with his cousin Yáng Xīnzhāi 楊心齋, demolishing the fallacies of fate, ghosts, and gods. From the fourth chapter onward, Zīshēng, Xīnzhāi, and their companions travel through Sūzhōu, Hángzhōu, Wújiāng, and Zhènjiāng, witnessing a parade of credulity: blind fortune-tellers cheating the gullible, geomancers beaten in broad daylight, magicians stealing lamp oil, officials deluded by fengshui, educational commissioners propitiating gods, county magistrates building pagodas, foolish women erecting shrines, ghost possession, ridiculous spirit-medium pronouncements, frogs venerated as deities, sacrificial offerings, spirit-women curing illness by sprinkling water, ‘heavenly masters’ exorcising demons for profit, amulets and illusions of every bizarre variety, shamans and sorcerers in all their ugliness — and whenever epidemics broke out, temple incense burned more vigorously than ever, monks and nuns run off their feet performing services: sitting with corpses, chanting sūtras, repentance ceremonies, feeding the hungry ghosts, lighting tree-lanterns, the Ten Kings’ feast, and so on. Drawing symbols, chanting spells, ‘dancing open the ghosts,’ yin-world runners — all these spirit-masters and female shamans profited handsomely. Most remarkable of all: a monk from the Néng Rén Temple in Sūzhōu came to Hángzhōu to collect donations, set up a wooden cage in an open space with several hundred padlocks on its door, stood inside it barefoot on knives to demonstrate bodily sacrifice — contributors who donated money could open one lock, at varying prices, and only when all locks were opened could the monk emerge alive, otherwise he would die on the spot — drawing crowds of Hángzhōu residents in a frenzy of devotion that raised over two thousand taels in three days. The text further includes morally degrading entertainments such as jīng-chàng 經唱 (scripture-singing), xuān juàn 宣卷 (scroll-proclaiming), and the duì qí dà huì 對臍大會 (navel-gazing assembly) — too numerous to list, yet delightful to read today.
Sǎo Mí Zhǒu has the value of a historical source on folk customs. It preserves a number of rare firsthand field-survey records — the Ghost Festival (Yúlánpén huì 盂蘭盆會) in Sūzhōu, the village theatrical and lantern festivals of Wújiāng, geomancy (kānyú 堪輿), inauspicious junctions (guānshā 關煞), talismanic counter-measures (yāshèng 厭勝), prayer rituals, and all manner of illusory arts — all stated with precision and thoroughness. It may rightly be called a gazetteer of superstitious customs. Its analysis is penetrating, its examples widely drawn, its prose elegant; and it has its own merits.”
Abstract
Sǎo Mí Zhǒu is one of the most sustained works of Enlightenment rationalism in late-Qīng fiction. The author’s pen name Zhuàngzhě 壯者 (“a vigorous man”) remains unidentified; no biographical information has been located. The novel belongs to the qǐméng 啟蒙 (Enlightenment) strand of late-Qīng reformist fiction that flourished in the first decade of the twentieth century, alongside works such as 陳天華’s Shīzi Hǒu 獅子吼 KR4k0225. Unlike political reform novels, Sǎo Mí Zhǒu focuses on popular religion and folk belief as the primary obstacle to national regeneration.
The novel’s first-person framing is slight — it proceeds essentially through dialogue and reported observation. Its protagonist Biàn Zīshēng 卞資生 is less a fully realized character than a vehicle for ideological critique, reflecting the “thesis novel” (wèntí xiǎoshuō 問題小說) tendency of the period. The geographic sweep through Sūzhōu, Hángzhōu, Wújiāng, and Zhènjiāng gives the work an ethnographic dimension, and modern scholars have drawn on it as a primary source for the history of popular religion in late imperial Jiāngnán.
The novel was first published in Xiùxiàng Xiǎoshuō, one of the principal vehicles of late-Qīng reform fiction (established 1903 by the Shāngwù Yìnshūguǎn). Its inclusion in Ā Yīng’s 1960 anthology secured its place in the late-Qīng fiction canon. The composition date is 1905 (the year of serialization); no earlier draft is known.
Translations and research
- Ā Yīng 阿英, ed. Wǎnqīng Wénxué Cóngchāo · Xiǎoshuō Yī Juàn 晚清文學叢抄·小說一卷. Zhōnghuá Shūjú, 1960. (Includes the text.)
- A Ying (Qian Xingcun). Wanqing xiaoshuo shi 晚清小說史. Reprinted Zuojia chubanshe, 1955. (Survey of late-Qīng fiction that provides context.)