The Beginning and End of an Emperor

The Chinese Peasant Gazette' of June 6, 1982 reported the arrest in Hunan of a man with a peculiar destiny: He was to be the next emperor of China. His claim was not unique in that other emperors have appeared from time to time in both the mainland of China and Taiwan.2 However, this emperor was perhaps unusual in the extent to which he was able to gather and keep a following before coming to the attention of the authorities. Even more striking was that this story occurred not in an economic backwater of Hunan Province, but in its heartland-the area south of Lake Dongting and the area embraced by the rivers Zi and Xiang. The sphere of his activities, in fact, circumscribes the very area that figured so prominently in Mao's 1927 Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan, a document that transformed revolutionary practice in China. Indeed, the main scene of these more recent events lies not more than 100 kilometers from the birthplace of Mao Zedong. We may well ask, how did this man's imperial pretensions acquire such a