CHAPTER VI
CHIA CHʽING
Chʽien Lung's son, who reigned as Chia Chʽing (high felicity—not to be confounded with Chia Ching of the Ming dynasty, 1522-1567), found himself in difficulties from the very start. The year of his accession was marked by a rising of the White Lily Society, one of the dreaded secret associations with which China is, and always has been, honeycombed. The exact origin of this particular society is not known. A White Lily Society was formed in the second century A.D. by a certain Taoist patriarch, and eighteen members were accustomed to assemble at a temple in modern Kiangsi for purposes of meditation. But this seems to have no connexion with the later sect, of which we first hear in 1308, when its existence was prohibited, its shrines destroyed, and its votaries forced to return to ordinary life. Members of the fraternity were then believed to possess a knowledge of the black art; and later on, in 1622, the society was confounded by Chinese officials in Shantung with Christianity. In the present instance, it is said that no fewer than thirty thousand adherents were executed before the trouble was finally
