Wang Xiuchu

Wang Xiuchu was a 17th century middle-class scholar who lived through the Manchu conquest of Ming China. Wang's most significant accomplishment is his writing of the "Yangzhou shiri ji," an account that details his survival of the notorious Massacre of Yangzhou that was perpetrated by Prince Dodo of the Manchus. In this account five members of Wang's extended family are killed by Qing troops, and he witnesses the rapes and killings of many of his neighbors. In the end of the narrative he is rescued by a sympathetic Manchu officer who orders his soldiers to spare the lives of Wang and his surviving family members.

Wang's account is also used as verification to the death of the Ming viceroy in Yangzhou, Shi Kefa.

Source:

Struve, Lynn A. "Voices from the Ming-Qing Cataclysm: China in Tiger's Jaws." London: Yale University Press, 1993.