The Order of the Bloated Woman

Though his poem Goddess of the Black Fan establishes the creation of and defines the Order of the Bloated Woman, many of her worshipers ardently believe that Liu Chan-fang was merely the most recent prophet in a long history of the goddess’ manifestations. The semi-mythological Daji, the beautiful and cruel concubine to king Ti Hsin of Shang (c. 1040BC), who lured the royal court into the most grotesque of vices and brought about the revolution that plunged China into feudalism, is lovingly equated with the Black Fan Goddess. So are another semi-historical women, including the creation goddess Molichitian, the blood-drenched Empress Wu Zetian, and warriors such as Princess Pingyang and Shen Yunying. Their names are used synonymously for the Black Fan Goddess herself, particularly when uttering her true name would draw attention.

Whatever its primal origins, the cult’s modern form seems to have found root as a response to the increasing dominance of the Imperial Court’s eunuchs and it should come as no surprise that the worship of a powerful, sexual and – most importantly – female figure would appeal to those scholar-officials who detested the castrati clique’s grip on the throne. Unlike the circle of eunuchs that acted as advisers for the imperial household Ti Hsin and Daji however, the doctrines of the Black Fan Goddess made a mockery of the Mandate of Heaven. In 1542 the wicked and capricious Emperor Chia-Ching (in one of his few bold moves) brought about a purge of the Goddess’ cultists – nominally at the eunuchs’ instigation. This would be known as The First Great Disaster.

While the purge did not destroy the cult entirely, its highest ranks were wiped out at a stroke. Survivors were put to flight, hiding in the backwater regions of the empire. The faithful diffused along the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, arching down the eastern coastline as far south as the modern Fujian province. From here, alongside ranks of local government officials, the cult recruited merchants, landlords, and philosophers. By hiding in the relative lawlessness of these coastal regions it could grow and hold its rituals safely and fearlessly. In some ways, this retreat from civilization worked too well. Alliances and trade with the Sino- Japanese pirates (wokou) that set up pirate fiefdoms deep inland from the coast did help spread the Black Fan Goddess to Japan and beyond, but also served to promote personal wealth over cult good. By the 1550s these pirate “nations” had become the only form of government in some areas and the cult sided with them openly. It was during this period that the worshippers of the Black Fan Goddess seem to have begun forming alliances with wokuo who worshipped the ‘Great Sleeping One’, an aquatic deity, whose watery consorts aided devotees. Over time the Chinese government advanced into these lawless territories, uncovering tales of horror and debauchery as they went. Those members of the cult who had faltered and turned to reap personal riches were caught unawares and many were executed. It is during this period the Tale of the Priest Kwan is believed to have surfaced, a response to the destruction wrought as the government reasserted its control. The Black Fan Goddess cult again went to ground. This was the Second Great Disaster.

Having bought time by leaving both the faithful and innocent alike to the merciless hands of the government, the survivors licked their wounds and renamed and reinvented themselves as the Order of the Bloated Woman. Unlike previous incarnations, founded on academic pursuits and scholarly intelligence, the new Order marketed itself as a triad and secret society, recruiting from the peasant folk who resented the imperial bureaucracy. In the 17th century, those secret societies that had helped found the ruling Ming dynasty suddenly turned on it. The Order picked at the fringes. With the decline of the Ming came the northern Manchu peoples who swept south to seized the throne. The new Manchu elite separated itself from the native Chinese through a system of apartheid and repression, and resentment among the lower classes grew. The Order tapped into this racial and cultural xenophobia to gain new members and foment paranoia.

Over time, however, the Manchu overlords assimilated themselves to the native Chinese culture as much as they forced them to assimilate their own. The Order and other anti-HoManchu societies continued to stir up petty dissent, but by the turn of the 19th century had again lapsed into a search for personal riches. Then the ‘white ghosts’ arrived from the west and began demanding exclusive trading rights and power. This presented a welcome opportunity for the Order. Drawing strength from piracy and intolerance, they funded agents in all quarters – from brigands to bureaucrats – harassing both government and foreigners at every turn. A particular favorite of theirs was the insatiable pirate-lord Ts’ai Ch’ien. With a fleet of more than a thousand ships and twenty-five thousand men, Ts’ai Ch’ien purchased European weapons even as he robbed from them, killed Chinese officials even as he swore they were his kinsmen – and the Order was there to make sure he did the right thing at the right time. Caring little for either the Manchu empire or the European barbarians the Order revealed in the opium and slave- trade, while its use of modern firearms gave them financial and military clout. It was a clout that they would lose all too soon. Many branches became embroiled in supporting the failed Taiping Rebellion of 1851. This was the Third Great Disaster, and it destroyed any serious Order activity south of the Yangtze for the next half-century. The Taiping Rebels advocated a pseudo-socialist Utopian blend of Daoism and Christianity; the Order viewed them as a means to a future dominated by their goddess’ malignant power. European-supported Manchu troops finally seized Nanking from the rebels and destroyed them once and for all in 1854.

The cost of their misguided support for the Rebellion was the gutting of the Order. Once again it retreated, leaving outlying pockets without guidance or protection. This time it quartered itself in European-dominated Shanghai, where the hated barbarians rarely looked as far as their own noses and easily mistook Order activity for any other type of “foreign deviltry.” Wars with Japan and France at the end of the century, burdened with earlier anti- Western hatred, soon split the Order into two camps: one that believed it necessary to reform China under a nationalist banner – a nation where the Bloated Woman held sway – while the other held that any dilution of the core message would destroy the bonds that tied the Order to its goddess.

By the turn of the 20th century, the divided cult was a pale shadow of its former self. Government repression and internecine battles had weakened the Order in all parts of the country, particularly in the south, and membership had fallen to a historical low. In a desperate effort for power, the nationalist elements of the Order backed the Boxer Rebellion. It would be their last great mistake. Supported by the Manchu’s Empress-Dowager, the Society of Righteous Fists (known as “Boxers” in western circles) was a league of mystics and reactionaries whose main goals were killing foreigners and loving the Empire. For a time it seemed as though the Boxers might even force the Europeans from China; in an orgy of violence Europeans, Chinese Christians, and any who refused to join were murdered, tortured, and slaughtered. Those Europeans who could escape these rampaging mobs barricaded themselves in their legations, under siege from a militia that engaged in some of the most brutal and shocking acts of depravity that recent history had recorded. The Western World quickly united in an invasion that liberated the besieged foreign holdings, but in turn resigned itself to ransacking China’s palaces and cultural storehouses, and lording over the crushing and humiliating defeat it had enacted upon the Boxers and their Manchu backers.

As firecrackers ushered in the Chinese New Year of 1902 and the last of the Boxers were executed at foreign behest, the survivors of the Order of the Bloated Woman – many of whom had watched in disgust and amazement that their flock could forget their divine purpose for petty jingoism – met in Shanghai to talk of their future. With pockets of Order disciples scattered, the Order was divided between the “old hands,” intent on turning back the clock to a time before the recent catastrophe, and a blustering clique of radical young-bloods, many of whom were little more than sickle-wielding hooligans and untested idealists.

The Bloated Woman is a corpulent figure whose body convulses with numerous tentacles. Some 7 feet (2 m) tall, she has large tentacles in place of arms, with further tentacles sprouting from rolls of yellow-gray glistening flesh. Beneath a pair of transfixing eyes, a nose-like tentacle sits, beneath which clusters of rose-bow mouths rest upon numerous chins.