On queues and contract-enforcement through hair in the Qing dynasty

The Qing Dynasty imposed a distinct hairstyle on its Han subjects — the queue (辮子). A queue is the iconic 19th century Chinese hairstyle. The front hemisphere of the head shaven, the rear grown into a long braided tail.

I used to puzzle over this blanket imposition: why would the Qing be so committed to a single hairstyle?

Reading Lu Xun’s Storm (風波) I learned that the queue was a form of loyalty-enforcement.

It goes like this: imagine an outlying village, somewhere outside the direct zone of Qing military and political control. Depending on a certain Brownian motion, some months of the year the town is occupied by bandits, others by the Qing.

How can the ruling power enforce loyalty? How can the ruling power retroactively discover who among the villagers betrayed them in their absence?

The solution was to grow a symbol on the top of each subject’s head, a symbol that takes years to fully develop, and suffuse that symbol with the significance of loyalty.

‘Those with a full queue are loyal to the Qing, those without are enemies”

This is the mechanism of this technology of enforcement: when bandits invade the village, queues signify loyalty to the Qing. Any man allowing his queue to be shaved thereby breaks his symbolic allegiance to the Qing. When the Qing retake the town, they can readily identify who has betrayed them.

Ideally, the male villagers are expected to resist unto death, never to forfeit their queue.

Where the enforcement announces itself: anyone who betrayed the Qing will need another three or four years before they can pass themselves off as Qing-loyal again, until their hair has fully regrown.

This drama is played out in Lu Xun’s Storm (風波), as villagers contemplate their fate and punishment, having shaven their queues to appease some invaders, waiting for the Qing to return. Will they be executed? Will the Qing be forgiving?

The queue is simultaneously the extreme of long and short. The long provides that durable externally verifiable seal of allegiance. Maybe then the short provides a daily reminder, a renewal of loyalty.

One quick addendum: compare the queue to a face tattoo: both can be used to signify an ingroup and outgroup, but the face tattoo does not required a daily re-affirmation of allegiance / subservience. If my face is tattooed by a conqueror, I can plausibly deny my consent in the conqueror’s absence. Seen through this lens, the queue is the more brutal enforcement technique: “You will wear the mark. Not only that, you will daily reaffirm your commitment to the mark.”