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The Origins of the Tiandihui: The Chinese Triads in Legend and History (review)

Article  in  China Review International · January 1995

DOI: 10.1353/cri.1995.0012

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Review
Reviewed Work(s): The Origins of the Tiandihui: The Chinese Triads in Legend and History
by Dian H. Murray and Qin Baoqi
Review by: Robert J. Antony
Source: China Review International, Vol. 2, No. 1 (SPRING 1995), pp. 194-197
Published by: University of Hawai'i Press
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 194 China Review International: Vol. 2, No. 1，Spring 1995

Dian H. Murray, in collaboration with Qin Baoqi. The Origins of the

Tiandihui: The Chinese Triads in Legend and History. Stanford: Stanford

University Press, 1994. xii, 350 pp. Hardcover $45.00.

Who were the Triads? When and where did they originate? Who was the founder?
For what purpose did they organize? These questions have vexed historians, Sino
logists, politicians, and bureaucrats both inside and outside China for over the past
century. Answers have ranged greatly in their extremes. Writers have variously ar
gued that the Triads were founded in the late Ming or early or middle Qing, that
they originated in Taiwan, Fujian, Guangdong, or even Sichuan, and that the pro
genitor was Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga), one of his chief lieutenants, a scion of
the last Ming emperor, or an impoverished monk. Those scholars who have argued
that the Triads were founded in the early Qing by Zheng Chenggong, his follow
ers, or descendants of the Ming emperor generally hold to the view that the Tri
ads were formed as anti-Manchu nationalist secret societies bent on overthrowing
the Qing and restoring the Ming. More recently, other scholars, arguing that the
Triads were founded in the mid-Qing period, see them as basically apolitical so
cial organizations formed for mutual aid and self-protection.
The Origins of the Tiandihui is an important book, but not because it offers
any new interpretations or profound insights. Much of what Murray has to say here
has been said before in various, though often obscure, Chinese publications by
such scholars as Zhuang Jifa, Cai Shaoqing, and her collaborator Qin Baoqi,1 and
in the unpublished dissertations by David Ownby and myself.2 Murray has done
the profession a great service, however, by bringing all these disparate materials
together and making them comprehensible and available to a larger audience. She
has astutely sifted through a huge body of primary and secondary sources in both
Chinese and English to present an excellent historiographical study of the origins
of the Heaven and Earth Society (Tiandihui), known more commonly as the Tri
ads. The main body of the book can be divided into three distinct discussions: the
early history and spread of the Tiandihui throughout south China prior to the
Opium War (chapters 1 and 2), the Western and Chinese historiography on the
Tiandihui (chapters 3 and 4), and the myths and legends about the Tiandihui
(chapter 5). The author also includes useful appendixes of translations and an ex
tensive Tiandihui bibliography.
In the first two chapters, Murray presents archival evidence3 that the Heaven
© 1995 by University
and Earth Society was founded in Zhangpu county (in the area which is now
of HawaiH Press
Yunxiao county) in southern Fujian Province in 1761 or 1762. The founder was a
monk known variously as Ti Xi, Monk Wan, Monk Hong Er, and Tu Xi; his real
name, however, was Zheng Kai. Over the next century the society spread to Tai

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 Reviews 195

wan, Guangdong, Jiangxi, and the rest of southern China as what the author calls
"a kind of poor man's huiguan，or native-place association" (p. 33). Formed as fra
ternal associations among China's lower orders, Triads engaged in an assortment
of illegal activities, including banditry, piracy, feuding, smuggling, gambling, prosti

tution, racketeering, and armed rebellion. Indeed, Murray forcefully demonstrates

that the Tiandihui was not originally organized as an anti-Manchu, Ming-restora
tionist society; in fact, the famous slogan fan Qingfu Ming (overturn the Qing
and restore the Ming) did not appear until the early nineteenth century, several
decades after the society was supposedly founded.
Regarding the founding date, place, and progenitor of the Tiandihui, the ar
chival evidence, at least on these issues, is inconclusive, somewhat circumstantial,

and at times contradictory. Although I, too, agree that the archival documents are
generally the most reliable sources, it is still impossible to make any absolute pro
nouncement regarding the origins of the Triads based solely on these materials.
Qing officials gathered a massive amount of testimony, under intense pressure
from the throne, in the wake of the Lin Shuangwen Rebellion on Taiwan (1787
1788). Among these sources Murray and Qin Baoqi rely heavily on the 1789 me
morial of Wula'na, governor-general of Fujian and Zhejiang, which claimed that
the Tiandihui was founded by Ti Xi at the Guanyin Temple in Gaoxi village in
Zhangpu county in 1761.4 But this, like the other official documents, was written
nearly thirty years after the fact and after all of the initial founding members were
dead. The reliability of these testimonies hinges on the imperfect memories and
torture-induced confessions of second- and third-generation members.5 Recently,
Zeng Wuyue, using both archival and Tiandihui sources, has suggested that Ti Xi
was perhaps a latter-day founder of the society, but not the original founder. He
believes it was founded in Zhangpu in the early Kangxi era.6
The origins issue, which Murray accurately describes as "one of the most pas
sionate controversies of all Chinese historiography" (p. 88), is significant not only
for historical but also for political reasons. The Western historiography, described
in chapter 3, began mainly among Dutch, French, and British civil servants in
Southeast Asia and Hong Kong who wrote about the Triads so that their respec
tive governments would be able the better to understand and control them. While
many of these late nineteenth-century writers were amateur scholars, often trying
to link the Triads with the Freemasons, it was not until the 1950s, after the Com

munist victory, that professional scholars began turning their attention to Chi
nese secret societies. Foremost among these "pre-archive era” scholars was Jean
Chesneaux, whose own work was greatly influenced by the Chinese Revolution
and Marxist scholarship. Recently, over the last decade, more Western scholars,
like their Chinese counterparts, have taken advantage of the vast resources in the
Qing archives in Taiwan and mainland China to analyze the social and political
history of the Triads. Others, like Barend J. ter Haar, have gone back to the

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 196 China Review International: Vol. 2, No. 1，Spring 1995

Tiandihui legends and other writings to explore the culture and meaning of secret
society rituals.7
The Chinese historiography, discussed in chapter 4, is even more politically
charged. As Murray explains, "over the past century the origins question has been
closely intertwined with various political struggles" (p. 116)，as well as with politi
cal leaders from Sun Yat-sen to Mao Zedong. Armed with the nationalist and
revolutionary philosophies of this century, Chinese scholars have tried to use the
historical debate for their own political agendas. The dominant view has been,
and probably still remains, that the Heaven and Earth Society was founded in the
early Qing period as an anti-Manchu revolutionary secret society. This view, sup
ported by such prominent historians as Xiao Yishan and Luo Ergang, was based
on questionable methodology relying on internal Tiandihui legends and myths.
In chapter 5, Murray closely analyzes these legends (seven of which appear in Ap
pendix B), particularly the so-called Xi Lu Legend, and demonstrates that they
did not take shape until the early nineteenth century. The Xi Lu Legend was "the
product of later generations of Tiandihui members, and ... had a developmental
history of its own" (p. 151). Despite the opening of the Qing archives in the 1960s,
the origins debate, at least among Chinese scholars, continues unabated. Perhaps,
as the Taiwan scholar Lu Baoqian surmises, the debate will never be resolved.8
Finally, in a book whose chief aim is to present the historiography on the
Tiandihui, it is regrettable that there is no discussion of Japanese or Russian
scholarship.9 Only four of the 365 books and articles listed in her Tiandihui Bibli
ography are in Japanese; none are in Russian. Nevertheless, Murray has produced
a fine synthesis of past and recent Chinese and Western scholarship on the Tiandi
hui. This is a book well worth reading.

Robert J. Antony
Western Kentucky University and
Academia Sinica

NOTES 1. Murray (p. viii) acknowledges Qin's contributions specifically to the writing of chapters
1，2, and 4, which in turn rely heavily on his interpretation of the early history of the Tiandihui.

In particular see Qin's book, Qing qianqi Tiandihui yanjiu (Studies of the early Qing Tiandihui)

(Beijing: Zhongguo Renmin Daxue Chubanshe, 1988).

2. Portions of our research have recently been published in David Ownby and Mary

Somers Heidhues, eds.，u Secret Societies Reconsidered": Perspectives on the Social History of Mod

ern South China and Southeast Asia (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1993).

3. Most of the Qing archival materials relating to the early history of the Triads have been

published in the seven-volume set Tiandihui，compiled by Qin Baoqi and several associates

(Beijing: Zhongguo Renmin Daxue Chubanshe, 1981-1989). Murray gives a brief description of
the contents on page 321 of her book.
4. Murray provides a translation of this important memorial in Appendix A, pp. 190-196;

the Chinese version appears in Tiandihui, vol. 7, pp. 522-527.

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 Reviews 197

5. He Zhiqing, in an important article not cited in Murray's book, raises questions about
the reliability of this memorial; see "Lun Wula'na deng zouzhe you guan Tiandihui qiyuan d
jizai" (On Wula'na's memorial concerning the origins of the Tiandihui), in Bai Shouyi, ed.,
Qing shi guoji xueshu taolunhui lunwen ji (Shenyang: Liaoning Renmin Chubanshe, 1990), pp.
259-273.

6. Zeng Wuyue, "Tiandihui chuangshiren ji qihui niandai kaozheng" (A critical examina

tion of the founder and founding date of the Tiandihui), Dongnan wenhua (Nanjing) 1 (1993):
256-264.

7. See Ter Haar's chapter in the Ownby and Heidhues book mentioned above.
8. Lu Baoqian, cited in Zeng Wuyue, mentioned above, p. 48.
9. Murray also points out the need for a study of the Japanese historiography (p. 179). A
start in that direction has been provided by Song Jun, who is at the Qing History Institute of
People's University, in an unpublished article, "Riben xuezhe guanyu Qing dai huidang shi de
yanjiu" (A study of Japanese scholars on secret societies in the Qing period), Second Interna
tional Conference on Chinese Secret Societies, Beijing, October 1988. Dian Murray provided m
with a copy of this paper, but does not list it in her bibliography.

David Ownby and Mary Somers Heidhues, editors. “Secret Societies” Re

considered: Perspectives on the Social History of Early Modern South China

and Southeast Asia. Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1993. x, 259 pp.

Hardcover $59.95. Paperback $22.50.

This volume grew out of a panel at an annual meeting of the Association of Asian
Studies that brought together scholars from Australia, Europe, and North America,
specializing in both China and Southeast Asia, to discuss new research on Chinese
"secret societies” (hui).1 Unlike some collections of papers that leave the impres
sion that the contributors are oblivious to each other's work, the nine chapters in
this book have obviously been revised to reflect understandings and insights de
veloped in the wake of the original conference. While not speaking in absolute
unison, the contributors largely agree in their assessment of the functions and
significance of secret societies in early modern China and nineteenth-century
Chinese immigrant communities. This general concord strengthens the impres
sion that a significant new picture of these groups is being developed. Further
© 1995 by University more, by examining the rather different patterns of growth and evolution shown

ofHawai'i Press by secret societies in South China and in immigrant communities in Southeast
Asia, the authors are able to formulate new insights into the nature of the socie
ties as they developed within China, seeing them largely as a response to the dis

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