The Curious Case of Shi Jianqiao

The cliché that I have used to encapsulate the totality of the story of Shi Jianqiao may at first seem lazy, or contrived, but try as I might, and trust me I did, I simply could not come up with a better label for the story of Shi Jianqiao than “curious”. Her tale was one of intrigue, murder and above all revenge. Shi Jianqiao’s crime made an entire country feel sorry for a murderer and reconsider everything that the thought they were certain about with regard to mortality ethics, and whilst it would be relatively simple to find out what she did with a quick Google search and a click of a Wikipedia link, I hope to both do her story and to discuss what she did for China and how she discredited stereotypes of not only the Chinese people, but also common perceptions of women and daughters.

Shi Jiaoqiao (undated)

Shi Jianqiao (施剑翘) was born in the early 1900s in Anhui province, in a perilous time in China’s history, both politically and socially. The Qing dynasty was in its final years, and for good reason. The last couple of emperors had little to no control over the country, and instead it was overrun with warlords, one of whom was the infamous Sun Chuangfang (孙传芳), aka the “Nanking Warlord”, but more on him later. Shi Jianqiao’s grandfather was a farmer and a tofu salesman, common jobs at the time, which made it all the more impressive that his son (and Shi Jianqiao’s father) had managed to become a decorated soldier. This meant that the social status of the family was increased to a level at which Shi Jianqiao could be properly educated, an important factor in her later life. Despite this, Shi Jianqiao still grew up in a very traditional family, and had her feet bound in the customary Chinese fashion from a very young age. In October of 1925, Shi Jianqiao’s father was leading a brigade in an attempt to capture Guzhen, when he was attacked by Sun Chuanfang. The next day Sun had Shi Jianqiao’s father decapitated, and then displayed his severed head in public at a train station in Anhui. Less than two years later, the Kuomingtang took over China and ended the rule of the warlords, forcing Sun Chuanfang into retirement, after which he founded a branch of Buddism (Tianjin Qingxiu lay-Buddism 天津佛教居士林) with a fellow warlord.

Sun Chuanfang (undated)

Shortly after 3pm on the 13th of November 1935, Shi Jianqiao shot Sun Chuanfang three times from behind whilst he was leading a sutra-recitation session. This in itself was remarkable as Shi Jianqiao had been tracking her father’s murderer for ten years, but the truly incredible thing was that she did not run after the crime had been committed. What happened next was unprecedented, Shi Jianqiao distributed pamphlets to bystanders, explaining how Sun Chuanfang had murdered her father, and thus her crime was justified. Despite having murdered a man in broad daylight with many witnesses, Shi Jianqiao was granted a state pardon by the Nationalist government (the Kuomingtang) on October 14th, 1936.

At the time it was argued that what Shi Jianqiao did was morally justified because it fulfilled the traditional Chinese ideology of filial piety. Her case was highly politicised and spread across all of China as one of the first cases to gain public attention through the media, not just due to increased literacy rates in china and more access to newspapers and printing presses, but also because she managed to capture the hearts of the people by her actions. In 1949, she was elected vice-chair of the Women’s Federation of Suzhou and in 1957 she was appointed to the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, demonstrating quite how well she was respected post-crime.

The pamphlet Shi Jianqiao distributed after killing Sun Chuanfang (authenticated with her fingerprint)

Another unique facet of Shi Jianqiao’s case was her poetry. The pamphlets she handed out to witnesses were written as a poem, and when she was in prison, she continued to write poetry. Her inspiration for this probably came from her education as a youth, and without it her case probably would not have been quite so compelling. Her poetry from prison kept her relevant and she distributed it through the press to continually keep her name out there during her trials. Whilst it may seem that this is a cynical point of view of Shi Jianqiao’s motives behind her poetry, it worked well in her favour as she was released relatively quickly for a murderer. The trials were also accelerated because she had murdered Sun Congbin as revenge for killing her father. This is an example of filial piety, a virtue of respect for one’s parents, elders, and ancestors, which is central to Confucian role ethics and thus Chinese society which is founded upon Confucian beliefs. If this had merely been a simple murder case, Shi Jianqiao would not have been looked upon so favourably, and as China had (and still to this day) has the death penalty, it would not have ended well for her. Yet as it stands, Shi Jianqiao lived until 1979 and although little is known about her personal life, it stands to reason that she managed to live a relatively normal and successful life after her stint in prison.

In traditional Chinese culture, the role of women was well defined. They were to stay at home to look after the children and cook the meals and clean the house and wait for their husbands to come home. Shi Jianqiao had a husband, and children and fulfilled this classic role quite well until she murdered Sun Chuanfang. Interestingly, Shi Jianqiao plotted this revenge killing with her siblings, including at least one brother who could have committed the final act just as easily as Shi Jianqiao. This indicates that Shi Jianqiao and her siblings were not put off by gender stereotypes and even used them to their advantage. As unfair as it is, Shi Jianqiao would almost certainly not have got away quite so easily had she been male, not least due to the image of the plight of a weak young woman avenging her father’s murder by doing something not typically imagined of a woman, which is really what caught the hearts of Chinese society at the time. Yet her act was not one in an attempt for sufferage, it can be quite easily compared to that of Joan of Arc, in that she broke a stereotype, but not for the sake of equality, but rather a metaphysical personal justification and conviction that forced them into a situation, with their gender being completely irrelevant at the time.

Whether you agree with Shi Jianqiao and the rationalisations of her crime, her story presents us with a moral dilemma that has been debated for centuries. Despite being contrary to the childish epithet we are all taught as children; “Two wrongs don’t make a right”, Shi Jianqiao managed to convince a whole country that two wrongs did in fact make a right, in a time where you could be convicted for almost anything due to the political upheavals of the time. This is just a brief overview of an incredible woman’s life, and Eugenia Lean’s book Public Passions discusses her story in far more detail, but I hope this gives you some idea of what an striking individual Shi Jianqiao was in her era.