Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 August 1876 — Cutting Off Chinese Queues. [ARTICLE]

Cutting Off Chinese Queues.

The China papers continue to notice the alarm -which prevails in many Chinese cities respecting the supposed cutting off of queues by some supernatural agency. The North. China Herald says: The phantasy that has been lately prevalent in the cities of Soocbow, Chinkiang, Yangchow and Nankin, touching the pranks of mischievous sprites, who have taken to cutting off the lieges’ queues, has spread to Shanghai. For several weeks little else has been talked about in the tea shops of this province and city. These sprites are of paper, cut by magicians to resemblethe human figure, and dispatched after certain incantation to create annoyance. On this occasion j they have been directed to cut the queues of numerous persons in large cities. They always presage trouble in. the state, rebellion or some thing of the kind being sure to follow their appearance. They became conspicuous, for example, a few years before the Taeping rebellion, and hence it isthatofficialsarenot a little perturbed by the present panic, seeing that it Is but one of what are, popu larly regarded as portents of a revolution The saw, “ A prosperous government is known by felicitous occurrences; a government about to be overthrown has ominous portents,” is in everybody’s mouth, and tends to effect such an overthrow. When droughts, floods, epidemics, defeats and such calamitous occurrences begin, magic comes to aid in further confusion. As an instance of the excitement which the queue cutting mania iscausing among the Chinese, we may mention that tlmcirculation of the Shenpaa has increased by several hundred since it began. One man relates that he was walking near the North Gate and suddenly he heard a sound as of rushing wind, when lo! his queue was gone Another case related is of a child who went out to play, when in a moment his queue was gone, and he came hfune, crying, to relate his loss. However all this may be, there is no doubt that a number of queues do get cut off, and that great alarm exists in. consequence. What heightens the panic is a saying that a man only lives one hundred days after the catastrophe has happened to him. Thk Burlington Hawk-Bye is inclined to harbor the conviction that, “No man can realize the geological histoiy of creation, the slow, regular development and shaping of things m the slow unfolding centuries and ages, until he has watched a gang of men at work on the streets. ”