Attack of the ball-snatchers in 1950s China!

The event

The following is translated from 1950年代：谣言席卷千万国人 by 李若建 in 《先锋国家历史》2008年2月刊. That is, The 1950s: Rumors swept through millions of Chinese, by Li Ruojian, published in Pioneer National History, 2008 February, issue 10.



From 1950 to 1954, rumors of "egg cutting" (割蛋) broke out all over North China. It spread across Beijing, Hebei, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia and other provinces, involving hundreds of counties and tens of millions of people. During this period, over a hundred people were killed and thousands were arrested over these rumors.

The rumor is basically this:

The Soviet Union is going to make atomic bombs. The raw materials are men’s testicles, women’s breasts and uteri, and children’s intestines. The government promised to supply the Soviet Union, so they have sent plainclothes troops to cut these things to send to the Soviet Union. The egg-cutters were transformed into Buddhist monks, Taoists, merchants, and farmers. They have all been specially trained, can fly over the walls. They look for targets during the day, and pounce during the night.

According to these rumors, the government would send cadres to debunk this, but those were just propaganda. "The Communist Party is intent to deceive and paralyze you. If you believe in them, you would be cut."

There were rumors that because the egg cutters was sent by the government and was ordered by Mao Zedong, if they were caught and sent to the Public Security Bureau (the Chinese police department) they would be released after submitting their letters of introduction. Therefore, when people caught someone who was thought to be "cutting the egg", they would start beating without involving the police, and some innocent people were killed.

The rumors led to widespread panic. During the nights, some men stood guard on tops of the houses, and women slept together tightly packed in the same rooms. People dared not work in the fields, and pedestrians dare not walk alone. Due to the psychological stress, some people would panic when they hear dog barks or see shadows at night, causing misunderstandings. One villager would shout and alert the whole village, which would alert the neighboring villages. In Zhangjiakou (a city nicknamed "The North Door of Beijing" which incidentally will be one of the host cities at the 2022 Winter Olympics), during the 13 days from July 27 to August 8, 1950, there were 166 mass incidents attributed to panic about the egg cutters. In the suburbs of Beijing during the same period, a small village of 400 villagers bought 1000 flashlights, and 25 kg of kerosene was used for lighting every night.

According to analysis, the rumor may have first appeared in Taolin County (now a part of Qahar Right Rear Banner), Suiyuan Province in April 1950, and suddenly went viral in July 1950, then rapidly died down, though it was still spread around Changping County, Beijing as late as September 1950, and had a second wave in 1954.

Explanations

It was peculiar how it suddenly went viral in the span of a month in the sparsely populated northern parts of China in early 1950s, with no cars or telephones.

The official explanation was that it was a coordinated psychological operation by the Taoist religious group, Yiguandao, but it is a peaceful religious group with no serious political ambitions. Despite that, from 1949 to 1980s, Yiguandao was banned for being a dangerous, anti-government cult. Brutal government suppression between 1950 and 1953 eradicated most of the organizations of Yiguandao. Considering this, the official explanation is just propaganda.

Yiguandao survived in Taiwan, although for a while, the Taiwanese government also suppressed it as potential collaborators of communist China. Geez can't catch a break... Their luck turned in the 1980s, after the cultural revolution failed, and the government needed a new grand narrative for Chinese people. They settled on traditional nationalism. The thinking is that China has been great until recently, and by continuing the traditional values, China can be great again.

Whereas during the cultural revolution, temples were smashed and old books were burned, now temples are cultural heritage sites and old books are drilled into students' heads. I can still recite like several dozens of ancient verses by heart.

Yiguandao, being a traditional, Taoist religion, became a valuable ally, and from the 1990s, some Taiwanese Yiguandao educators were discreetly invited to return to the mainland, in order to slow down the rapid growth of Christian churches and sectarianism in rural areas.

See Yiguandao under the Shadow of Nationalism (Ching-chih Lin - Religion and Nationalism in Chinese Societies, 2017).

If not Yiguandao, then what? I think it was a combination of several factors that let this rumor went viral:

1. In Chinese, "bomb" and "egg" are both pronounced as "dan", and uneducated people could have easily imagined that making one "dan" requires another "dan".
2. The Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb in August 1949, an event widely reported in China. And the second wave of rumors in 1954 was likely associated with the first Soviet hydrogen bomb test of August 1953.
3. From December 1949 to February 1950, Mao was on a diplomatic mission to Moscow. It was Stalin's 70th birthday, and Mao went asking for help in rebuilding a nation emerging from decades of war. This long absence was unusual, as Chinese leaders had never left for long months on diplomatic missions. This made people nervous about Mao being too close to the Soviets.
4. In March 1950, the World Peace Council, which was a Soviet-led organization advocating for banning all nuclear weapons, launched a massive anti-nuclear petition, the Stockholm Appeal. If Encyclopedia Britannica is to be believed, exactly 273,470,566 persons signed the petition, including the entire adult population of the U.S.S.R.. The Chinese government joined the signature collection effort by organizing mass-signing events. However, most people did not understand what atomic bombs were, and all these massive anti-nuclear events made people fearful of a mysterious and deadly "dan" that could somehow harm fertility.