Dangers on the Road: Travelers, Laoguazei, and the State in Eighteenth-Century North China

“I fear they harmed my father on the road!” On October 20, 1742, An Rong pleaded with the prefect of Shanzhou prefecture, Henan, for an official inquiry into an imprisoned laoguazei. Two years earlier, while at home to the north in Jiangzhou prefecture, Shanxi, An Rong had received a letter from the clerk working in his father’s flower shop far to the northeast in Xinle county, Zhili, asking for his father to come as soon as possible. But his father had left home a month earlier and should have arrived by then. What had happened on the way? Was he stranded in some place, sick from eating the wrong food or incapacitated with a broken leg from falling off the mule? Had he been bitten by a snake, robbed by gangsters, or taken by bandits? With all kinds of dreadful possibilities rushing through his mind, An Rong had left home to look for his father. But two years of futile searching slowly drained his hope. Finally, upon learning of a recently captured gang who had murdered many travelers over the years across Henan, Shandong, and Zhili, An Rong rushed to