KAIFENG: Crowds flock to a temple in this former imperial capital, where they offer food and incense and kneel before the statue of a man who lived 1,000 years ago: Judge Bao Zheng, China’s most famous “clean” official.
His myth fed by abundant folklore and detective stories, Judge Bao is a household name in China.
Although most people visit the temple as tourists or out of simple respect, some stuff allegations of modern-day corruption into the donation box in front of the statue. Others write letters addressed: “Kaifeng Prefecture, Judge Bao Temple, Attention: Judge Bao.”
“They know perfectly well that this man lived a thousand years ago, but they send the letters anyway out of desperation,” said Li Liangxue, an expert on Bao at the Kaifeng Municipal Museum in central China’s Henan province.
To ordinary people, “Judge Bao is justice incarnate,” Peking University historian Zhang Xiqing said.
As Kaifeng’s magistrate, Judge Bao let complainants come directly into the great hall where he heard their cases, past lower officials who might otherwise try to extort money in exchange for letting them in.
This ancient tradition of appealing grievances to top officials continues to this day. Citizens who cannot get satisfaction from local officials often take their cases all the way to Beijing, the capital. Some live for decades in Beijing’s “petitioners’ village,” searching for a fair-minded, Judge Bao- like figure who will hear their case.
Others, locals say, have tried to attract attention to their plight by lying on railroad tracks or throwing themselves at the passing motorcades of top officials. Chinese leaders who have stood up for the common people have invited comparisons to Judge Bao, including the country’s charismatic premier, Zhu Rongji.
Zhu’s stern appearance and blunt speech, hatred of bureaucrats’ corruption and waste, and professed willingness to challenge the powerful and champion the poor all fit the cultural archetype of the qing guan, or upright official, that Judge Bao represents.
“Zhu is held in high esteem among many older Chinese citizens, especially those who cling to the traditional mode of thought that Judge Bao will save the world,” observed the April issue of the newsmagazine Nanfeng Chuang.
Bao and Zhu are heirs to a tradition of Chinese populism known as minben sixiang.
This school of thought held that, as Bao wrote in a memorandum in 1059, “the people are the root of the state.” It also held that rulers shouldn’t constrict people’s livelihoods or persecute them for speaking their minds.
“Pacifying the people depends on carefully selecting local officials and gradually getting rid of arbitrary taxes,” Bao wrote in the memorandum.
As Kaifeng’s magistrate, Bao served as detective, prosecutor, judge and jury all in one. He famously tricked or tortured confessions out of suspected criminals with the use of branding irons, finger clamps or numerous strokes of the birch pole, all of which were customary and legal at the time.
Judge Bao’s status owes much to popular mythologizing in opera, plays and novels. In recent years, several television series about his sleuthing exploits have become wildly popular from the Korean peninsula to Vietnam.—Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) The Los Angeles Times