Chapter One: Develop the Struggle Against the Shamans

Abstract

In the border region there are a great number of shamans. East Gate Village of Yanan City has a population of 149 households comprising over 400 people. Of these, 3 are shamans. If we assume that this ratio of 3 to 400 applies to the entire border region (a population of approximately 1.5 million people), then the number of shamans is rather large. Among their number, a small minority have turned into bona fide workers. They have put their ritual knife [literally, three mountain knife or, in Chinese, sanshan dao] to use as a hoe and have proclaimed that they will no longer cheat the people. But the greater number of them still secretly or openly continue to practice their shamanism by using ghosts and spirits and manufacturing rumors to mislead the masses. Most shamans are just the dregs [xiaerliu] of the society and opium addicts. Each year they swindle the masses of the border region out of millions of dollars, thus depriving them of their livelihood and also seriously injuring many of them in the process. This year the story of Shaman Yang Hanzhu from Baijiaping, Yanan City, was published in this paper, disclosing the many cruel details of his injury to the Chang family. These injuries ultimately resulted in forcing Chang Zhisheng into bankruptcy. This tragic story was in fact only one of many examples of the cruelty of the shamans.