FROM 'FOREIGN DEVILS' TO 'FOREIGN TICKETS' : BANDIT CAPTIVITY MEMOIRS FROM REPUBLICAN CHINA

概要

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This article looks at the experiences of the so-called 'foreign tickets', men and women whose fate it had been to fall into the hands of one of the bandit gangs that abounded in early 20^<th> century China, and to be held as an 'insurance' ticket against whatever it was that that particular gang was demanding. Inseparable as banditry was from the chaotic process of China's rebirth, were it not for the experiences of those foreign tickets we would know little about its detailed workings, for bandit life-stories are hard to track down. Fortunately, many of those who survived their captivity set down their experiences in the form of a memoir. From those memoirs, we are able to learn something of what it meant not only to be a foreign ticket, but also to be a bandit in those turbulent years. Through the prism of such accounts, this article seeks new insights into the nature of Chinese bandits and banditry, and pursues aspects of the mutual regard that often grew up between bandits and their foreign captives. Revealing a new and unexpected angle on the tragic and turbulent years of China's birth as a modern nation, foreign-ticket memoirs provide moving and accurate evidence by participant observers of what it was like to live the lives of hunted and despised bandits in China. These memoirs rescue China's bandits from the limbo of history and restore them, warts and all, to the ranks of people.
2001-03-01