Calling Back the Soul (Jiaohun)

Belief and household practice

*Jiaohun*, also called *hanhun*, *zhaohun* or “calling away fright” in some local traditions, refers to folk beliefs and rites concerning the soul, shock and illness. A common explanatory idea held that severe fright might cause a person to lose the soul or part of its vitality. Family members might call the person's name, use an article of clothing or perform a symbolic rite intended to restore calm. Procedures were locally diverse and should not be presented as a practice uniformly shared by all Manchu families.

The custom was not exclusive to Manchu society. Its manifestations in northeastern communities require evidence from local gazetteers, oral histories and descriptions of specific rites. Such practices belong to the history of how people interpreted distress and uncertainty, not to treatments established by modern clinical evidence.

The Soulstealing Affair of 1768

The same Chinese expression also evokes a separate historical episode: in the thirty-third year of the Qianlong reign (1768), rumours concerning queues, sorcery and the theft of souls provoked anxiety across multiple regions and prompted official investigations. Scholarship discussed by the Chinese Social Sciences Network presents differing explanations of the affair's origins, state response and imperial intentions. This judicial and political crisis must not be conflated with everyday household rites intended to soothe a frightened individual. The distinction between a customary healing belief and an episode of empire-wide suspicion is indispensable for interpreting the historical vocabulary.

For related historical context and vocabulary, consult The Back-to-the-Lamp Sacrifice (Beideng Ji).

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