Ethnic Identity in Imperial China

An Online Sourcebook

Annotated translations of primary sources for the study of ethnicity in Chinese history, from the ancient dynasties to the nineteenth century

Future chapters

Chapter 6: Inner Asian immigrants

Chapter 7: Foreign religions

Chapter 8: “Barbarian” emperors

Chapter 9: “Han” identity

Chapter 10: The Qing empire

4.38 Gan Bao, Soushen ji (An Account of Inquiries into the Supernatural), ca. 330

The Soushen ji is a collection of several hundred tales about gods and immortals, human encounters with the supernatural world, and anomalous events. A prominent and influential example of the zhiguai (anomaly account) literary genre, the collection is attributed to the Eastern Jin court historian Gan Bao (d. 336). The passage below builds on Zhang Hua’s description of the Head-dropping People (see source 4.37) and elaborates on the Wu state’s encounters with them.

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In the time of the Qin empire, there were Head-dropping People (luotou min 落頭民) in the south whose heads could fly. People of their kind made regular offerings to them called “insect drops” (chongluo), and that is where their name came from.

In the Wu state, the general Zhu Huan (177-238) bought a female slave. After going to sleep at night, her head would always fly off suddenly. It left the house and came back in through the small door for the dog, or through the skylight. It used its ears as wings and came back close to dawn. This happened time and time again. Other people found this strange and shone a light on her body at night. It was headless and slightly cold and breathing very slowly. They then covered it up with a blanket. At dawn, the head returned but, being obstructed by the blanket, could not reattach itself. Two or three times, it fell to the ground, crying out in great anxiety. The body began breathing heavily as if about to die. They removed the blanket, the head rose off the ground and reattached to the body, and calm was restored. Zhu Huan found this very bizarre and was afraid to continue having such a person in his home, so he sent her away. Later, after inquiring further, he realized this was the woman’s natural behavior.

At the time, generals who campaigned in the south often captured such people.1 There was a case when someone placed a bronze plate over the neck, and the head could not reattach. The person [whose head had detached] then died.

  1. This probably refers to Wu generals campaigning against rebels or native peoples in Guangxi and northern Vietnam. ↩︎