Death by a thousand cuts
Encyclopedia
Slow slicing also translated as the slow process, the lingering death, or death by a thousand cuts , was a form of execution used in China
from roughly AD 900 until its abolition in 1905. In this form of execution, the condemned person was killed by using a knife to methodically remove portions of the body over an extended period of time. The term língchí derives from a classical description of ascending a mountain slowly.
Lingchi was reserved for crimes viewed as especially severe, such as treason and killing one's parents. The process involved tying the person to be executed to a wooden frame, usually in a public place. The flesh was then cut from the body in multiple slices in a process that was not specified in detail in Chinese law and therefore most likely varied. In later times, opium
was sometimes administered either as an act of mercy or as a way of preventing fainting. The punishment worked on three levels: as a form of public humiliation, as a slow and lingering death, and as a punishment after death.
According to the Confucian principle of filial piety or xiào
to alter one's body or to cut the body is a form of unfilial practice (see Xiao Jing
). Lingchi therefore contravenes the demands of xiao. In addition, to be cut to pieces meant that the body of the victim would not be "whole" in a spiritual life after death.
This method of execution became a fixture in the image of China among some Westerners. It appears in various accounts of Chinese cruelty, such as Harold Lamb
's 1930s biography of Genghis Khan
.
Lingchi could be used for the torture
and execution of a living person, or applied as an act of humiliation after death. It was meted out for offenses against the Confucian value system such as acts of treason
, mass murder
, parenticide or the murder of one's master or employer. Emperors used it to threaten people and sometimes ordered it for minor offences. There were forced convictions and wrongful executions. Some emperors meted out this punishment to the family members of his enemies. While it is difficult to obtain accurate details of how the executions took place, they generally consisted of cuts to the arms, legs, and chest leading to amputation of limbs, followed by decapitation or a stab to the heart. If the crime was less serious or the executioner merciful, the first cut would be to the throat causing death such that subsequent cuts served solely to dismember the corpse.
Art historian James Elkins
argues that extant photos of the execution make obvious that the "death by division" (as it was termed by German criminologist R. Heindl) involved some degree of dismemberment
while the subject was living. However, Elkins also argues that, contrary to the apocryphal version of "death by a thousand cuts", the actual process could not have lasted long. The condemned individual is not likely to have remained conscious and aware (if even alive) after one or two severe wounds such that the entire process could not have included more than a "few dozen" wounds. In the Yuan Dynasty
one hundred cuts were inflicted but by the Ming Dynasty
there were records of three thousand incisions. Reliable eyewitnesses, like Meadows, describe a fast process lasting no longer than 15 to 20 minutes. Available photographic records seem to prove the speed of the event as the crowd remains consistent across the series of photographs. Moreover, these photographs show a striking contrast between the stream of blood that soaks the left flank of the victim and the lack of blood on the right side, possibly showing that the first or the second cut has reached the heart. The coup de grâce
was all the more certain when the family could afford a bribe to have a stab to the heart inflicted first. Some emperors ordered three days' of cutting whilst others may have ordered specific tortures before the execution, or a longer execution. For example, records show that during execution, Yuan Chonghuan
was left shouting for half a day and then the sound stopped. The meat of the victims may also have been sold as Chinese medicine. As an official punishment, death by slicing may also have involved cutting up the bones, cremation, and scattering of the deceased's ashes.
, who claimed to have witnessed an execution by slicing, wrote that "Ling Chi [was] commonly, and quite wrongly, translated as 'death by slicing into 10,000 pieces' — a truly awful description of a punishment whose cruelty has been extraordinarily misrepresented ... The mutilation is ghastly and excites our horror as an example of barbarian cruelty; but it is not cruel, and need not excite our horror, since the mutilation is done, not before death, but after."
According to apocryphal lore, língchí began when the torturer, wielding an extremely sharp knife, began by putting out the eyes, rendering the condemned incapable of seeing the remainder of the torture and, presumably, adding considerably to the psychological terror of the procedure. Successive rather minor cuts chopped off ears, nose, tongue, fingers, toes and genitals before proceeding to grosser cuts that removed large portions of flesh from more sizable parts, e.g., thighs and shoulders. The entire process was said to last three days, and to total 3,600 cuts. The heavily carved bodies of the deceased were then put on a parade for a show in the public. Some victims were reportedly given doses of opium
, but accounts differ as to whether the drug was said to amplify or alleviate suffering.
J. M. Roberts, in Twentieth Century: The History of the World, 1901 to 2000 (2000), writes "the traditional punishment of death by slicing ... became part of the western image of Chinese backwardness as the 'death of a thousand cuts.'" Roberts then notes that slicing "was ordered, in fact, for K'ang Yu-Wei, a man termed the 'Rousseau
of China', and a major advocate of intellectual and government reform in the 1890s." (Roberts, p. 60, footnote 8)
Although officially outlawed by the Qing government
in 1905, língchí became a widespread Western symbol of the Chinese penal system from the 1910s on, and in Zhao Erfeng
's administration. Three sets of photographs shot by French soldiers in 1904-1905 were the basis for later mythification. The abolition was immediately enforced, and definite: no official sentences of língchí were performed in China after April 1905.
Regarding the use of opium, as related in the introduction to Morrison's book, Sir Meyrick Hewlett insisted that "most Chinese people sentenced to death were given large quantities of opium before execution, and Morrison avers that a charitable person would be permitted to push opium into the mouth of someone dying in agony, thus hastening the moment of decease." At the very least, such tales were deemed credible to British officials in China and other Western observers.
Confucian emperors, who had no legal checks on their power, ordered similar and less cruel tortures. Under Qin Er Shi
and during the first Han dynasty
, multiple tortures were applied to officials. Liu Ziye did to innocent officials.
Gao Yang
killed six people. An Lushan
killed a man. Língchí is known in the Five Dynasties period (907-960) and Gaozu of Later Jin
abolished it. It first appeared in the Liao dynasty
law codes, and was sometimes used. Emperor Tianzuo of Liao often executed people in this way during his rule. It became widespread in the Song Dynasty
under Emperor Renzong of Song
and Emperor Shenzong of Song
.
Some officials often used that to torture the rebels. The punishment remained in the Qing Dynasty
code of laws for persons convicted of high treason
and other serious crimes. Língchí was abolished as a result of the 1905 revision of the Chinese penal code by Shen Jiaben
(沈家本, 1840-1913. Reports from Qing dynasty jurists such as Shen Jiaben show that executioners' customs varied, as the regular way to perform this penalty was not specified in detail in the Penal code.
This form of execution was also known from Vietnam
, notably being used as the method of execution of the French missionary Joseph Marchand
in 1835 as part of the repression following the unsuccessful Lê Văn Khôi revolt
.
As Western countries moved to abolish similar punishments, some Westerners began to focus attention on the methods of execution used in China. As early as 1866, the year after the last recorded case of hanging, drawing, and quartering, Thomas Francis Wade
, then serving with the British diplomatic mission
in China, unsuccessfully urged the abolition of língchí.
The first proposal for abolishing lingchi was submitted by Lu You
陸游(1125–1210) in a memorial to the Emperor under the Southern Song dynasty. Lu You's elaborated argumentation against lingchi was piously copied and transmitted by generations of scholars, among them influential jurists of all dynasties, till the late Qing reformer Shen Jiaben introduced it in his 1905 memorial that obtained the abolition, eventually. This anti-lingchi trend met a more general attitude opposed to "cruel and unusual punishments' (such as the exposure of the head) which the Tang had not included in the canonic table of the Five Punishments
, and that defined the plainly legal ways of punishing crime. Hence the abolitionist trend is deeply ingrained in the Chinese legal tradition, rather than
being purely derived from Western influences.
An 1858 account by Harper's Weekly
claimed the martyr Auguste Chapdelaine
was killed by this method; in fact he was beheaded after death.
members stationed in and around Shanghai
between 1927 and 1941 brought evidence of human rights abuses to the United States
: "The prevalence of executions and torture is evidenced by the scrapbooks brought back from China
by the Marines. There are photographs of firing squads, beheadings, disembowelment
s, rape
and such torture as 'the death of a thousand cuts.'"
As the online Marine history notes, "Apparently these photographs were commercially available [in China], because there are exact duplicates in many scrapbooks with the name of a commercial studio stamped on the backs of the photographs." It is possible that photos from the 1910s were mistakenly associated with the ongoing atrocities of China in the 1920s, and the língchí photos were sold as curios.
Photographs from this same period, including lines of beheaded corpses, non-Chinese diplomats killed by gunfire, and a língchí victim, can be found in George Ryley Scott's A History of Torture.
The first Western photographs of língchí were taken in 1890 by William Arthur Curtis of Kentucky in Guangzhou
(Canton).
French soldiers stationed in Beijing
had the opportunity to photograph three different língchí executions in 1905:
The execution proclamation is reported to state "'The Mongolia
n Princes demand that the aforesaid Fou-Tchou-Le, guilty of the murder
of Prince Ao-Han-Ouan, be burned alive, but the Emperor finds this torture too cruel and condemns Fou-Tchou-Li to slow death by Leng-Tch-e (=different spelling of lingchi，cutting into pieces)."
Photographic material and other sources are available online at the Chinese Torture Database (Iconographic, Historical and Literary Approaches of an Exotic Representation) hosted by the Institut d'Asie Orientale (CNRS, France)
mentions the 1905 case in Regarding the Pain of Others (2003). One reviewer wrote that though Sontag includes no photographs in her book—a volume about photography
—"she does tantalisingly describe a photograph that obsessed the philosopher Georges Bataille
, in which a Chinese
criminal, while being chopped up and slowly flayed
by executioners, rolls his eyes heaven
wards in transcendent
bliss."
The philosopher Georges Bataille
wrote about lingchi in L'expérience intérieure (1943) and in Le coupable (1944). He included five pictures in his The Tears of Eros. (1961; translated to English
and published by City Lights
in 1989)
This book has been criticized for its language and its mistakes and allegedly dubious content
by George MacDonald Fraser
, reference is made to a prisoner being bound tightly in a thin wire mesh through which nubs of flesh protrude. These are then cut off by the torturer with a sharp razor. In order to kill the prisoner, the razor is run quickly over many nubs of flesh at once.
In the novel The Journeyer, author Gary Jennings
describes in greater detail a method of the "Death of a Thousand" as a torture procedure. The executioner explains to the main character, Marco Polo
, that one-thousand pieces of paper are placed in a container, and a paper is drawn out to determine where the cut will be made. For this procedure, there are 333 designated body parts, and each part is represented three times, for a total of 999 slips of paper, with the 1,000th paper representing immediate death. In the case of a finger, if the first paper drawn denoted a particular finger, the digit would be removed at the first joint; the second time a paper is drawn indicating the same finger, another section to the next joint is amputated. The third paper related to the same finger would indicate final amputation. Jennings also fictionalizes in the book that, in an extended form of the torture, the body parts and blood are fed to the condemned as his only nourishment.
In the 1965 novel Farabeuf
, Salvador Elizondo
used one of the 1905 Lingchí photographs along with the story of a 19th-century French surgeon to explore eroticism, photography, and memory. Farabeuf appears both as a secret agent who witnessed and photographed the execution, and as obsessed with the use of torture as a form of erotic ceremony. The reproduction of the 1905 photograph appears along the climax of his engulfing narrative, widely perceived as one of the main works of Mexican literature of the 1960s.
The "death by a thousand cuts" with reference to China features in Malcolm Bosse
's novel The Examination, Amy Tan
's novel The Joy Luck Club
, and Robert van Gulik
's Judge Dee
novels. The 1905 photos are mentioned in Thomas Harris
' novel Hannibal
and Julio Cortázar
's novel Rayuela
. Ling'Chi is used in the context of alternate settings in Mercedes Lackey
's novel The Serpent's Shadow
and Richard K Morgan's novel Broken Angels
.
In the 1966 film The Conqueror, this execution was called the "Slow Death." Three of the main characters threaten to see the punishment inflicted at different points in the story. The "Slow Death" as described in the Conqueror accords with the more sensationalistic depictions of Slow Slicing, but with the added refinement that the victim's severed parts are to be fed to animals before his very eyes.
Death by slow slicing is also portrayed or referenced in the 1966 film
The Sand Pebbles
, the 1968 film
Carry On... Up the Khyber, the 1996 film
Fled
, the 2007 film
Rush Hour 3
, and the BBC 2006 TV series Robin Hood.
A Chinese Torture Chamber Story 2 (1998) starts with a woman being sentenced to 'death by a thousand cuts', which is carried out eventually.
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
from roughly AD 900 until its abolition in 1905. In this form of execution, the condemned person was killed by using a knife to methodically remove portions of the body over an extended period of time. The term língchí derives from a classical description of ascending a mountain slowly.
Lingchi was reserved for crimes viewed as especially severe, such as treason and killing one's parents. The process involved tying the person to be executed to a wooden frame, usually in a public place. The flesh was then cut from the body in multiple slices in a process that was not specified in detail in Chinese law and therefore most likely varied. In later times, opium
Opium
Opium is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy . Opium contains up to 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The latex also includes codeine and non-narcotic alkaloids such as papaverine, thebaine and noscapine...
was sometimes administered either as an act of mercy or as a way of preventing fainting. The punishment worked on three levels: as a form of public humiliation, as a slow and lingering death, and as a punishment after death.
According to the Confucian principle of filial piety or xiào
Xiao
Xiao may refer to:* Xiào, “filial piety", or "being good to parents", a virtue* Xiao , a Chinese end-blown flute* Xiao , a rank used for field officers in the Chinese military* Xiao , a Chinese surname* Xiao County, in Anhui, China...
to alter one's body or to cut the body is a form of unfilial practice (see Xiao Jing
Xiao Jing
Xiao Jing or Classic of Filial Piety is a Confucian classic treatise giving advice on filial piety; that is, how to behave towards a senior .-Authorship:...
). Lingchi therefore contravenes the demands of xiao. In addition, to be cut to pieces meant that the body of the victim would not be "whole" in a spiritual life after death.
This method of execution became a fixture in the image of China among some Westerners. It appears in various accounts of Chinese cruelty, such as Harold Lamb
Harold Lamb
Harold Albert Lamb was an American historian, screenwriter, short story writer, and novelist.Lamb was born in Alpine, New Jersey. He attended Columbia University, where his interest in the peoples and history of Asia began. Lamb's tutors at Columbia included Carl Van Doren andJohn Erskine. ...
's 1930s biography of Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan , born Temujin and occasionally known by his temple name Taizu , was the founder and Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death....
.
Description
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
and execution of a living person, or applied as an act of humiliation after death. It was meted out for offenses against the Confucian value system such as acts of treason
Treason
In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's sovereign or nation. Historically, treason also covered the murder of specific social superiors, such as the murder of a husband by his wife. Treason against the king was known as high treason and treason against a...
, mass murder
Mass murder
Mass murder is the act of murdering a large number of people , typically at the same time or over a relatively short period of time. According to the FBI, mass murder is defined as four or more murders occurring during a particular event with no cooling-off period between the murders...
, parenticide or the murder of one's master or employer. Emperors used it to threaten people and sometimes ordered it for minor offences. There were forced convictions and wrongful executions. Some emperors meted out this punishment to the family members of his enemies. While it is difficult to obtain accurate details of how the executions took place, they generally consisted of cuts to the arms, legs, and chest leading to amputation of limbs, followed by decapitation or a stab to the heart. If the crime was less serious or the executioner merciful, the first cut would be to the throat causing death such that subsequent cuts served solely to dismember the corpse.
Art historian James Elkins
James Elkins
James Elkins is an art historian and art critic. He is E.C. Chadbourne Chair of art history, theory, and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago...
argues that extant photos of the execution make obvious that the "death by division" (as it was termed by German criminologist R. Heindl) involved some degree of dismemberment
Dismemberment
Dismemberment is the act of cutting, tearing, pulling, wrenching or otherwise removing, the limbs of a living thing. It may be practiced upon human beings as a form of capital punishment, as a result of a traumatic accident, or in connection with murder, suicide, or cannibalism...
while the subject was living. However, Elkins also argues that, contrary to the apocryphal version of "death by a thousand cuts", the actual process could not have lasted long. The condemned individual is not likely to have remained conscious and aware (if even alive) after one or two severe wounds such that the entire process could not have included more than a "few dozen" wounds. In the Yuan Dynasty
Yuan Dynasty
The Yuan Dynasty , or Great Yuan Empire was a ruling dynasty founded by the Mongol leader Kublai Khan, who ruled most of present-day China, all of modern Mongolia and its surrounding areas, lasting officially from 1271 to 1368. It is considered both as a division of the Mongol Empire and as an...
one hundred cuts were inflicted but by the Ming Dynasty
Ming Dynasty
The Ming Dynasty, also Empire of the Great Ming, was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming, "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history", was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic...
there were records of three thousand incisions. Reliable eyewitnesses, like Meadows, describe a fast process lasting no longer than 15 to 20 minutes. Available photographic records seem to prove the speed of the event as the crowd remains consistent across the series of photographs. Moreover, these photographs show a striking contrast between the stream of blood that soaks the left flank of the victim and the lack of blood on the right side, possibly showing that the first or the second cut has reached the heart. The coup de grâce
Coup de grâce
The expression coup de grâce means a death blow intended to end the suffering of a wounded creature. The phrase can refer to the killing of civilians or soldiers, friends or enemies, with or without the consent of the sufferer...
was all the more certain when the family could afford a bribe to have a stab to the heart inflicted first. Some emperors ordered three days' of cutting whilst others may have ordered specific tortures before the execution, or a longer execution. For example, records show that during execution, Yuan Chonghuan
Yuan Chonghuan
Yuan Chonghuan was a famed patriot and military commander of the Ming Dynasty who battled the Manchus in Liaoning. A commander of Cantonese origin, Yuan Chonghuan was known to have excelled in artillery warfare and successfully incorporated Western tactics with those of the East...
was left shouting for half a day and then the sound stopped. The meat of the victims may also have been sold as Chinese medicine. As an official punishment, death by slicing may also have involved cutting up the bones, cremation, and scattering of the deceased's ashes.
Western perceptions
The western perception of língchí has often differed considerably from the actual practice, and some misconceptions persist to the present. The distinction between the sensationalized Western myth and the Chinese reality was noted by Westerners as early as 1895. That year, Australian traveler G.E. MorrisonGeorge Ernest Morrison
George Ernest Morrison , also known as Chinese Morrison, was an Australian adventurer and The Times Peking correspondent.-Early life:...
, who claimed to have witnessed an execution by slicing, wrote that "Ling Chi [was] commonly, and quite wrongly, translated as 'death by slicing into 10,000 pieces' — a truly awful description of a punishment whose cruelty has been extraordinarily misrepresented ... The mutilation is ghastly and excites our horror as an example of barbarian cruelty; but it is not cruel, and need not excite our horror, since the mutilation is done, not before death, but after."
According to apocryphal lore, língchí began when the torturer, wielding an extremely sharp knife, began by putting out the eyes, rendering the condemned incapable of seeing the remainder of the torture and, presumably, adding considerably to the psychological terror of the procedure. Successive rather minor cuts chopped off ears, nose, tongue, fingers, toes and genitals before proceeding to grosser cuts that removed large portions of flesh from more sizable parts, e.g., thighs and shoulders. The entire process was said to last three days, and to total 3,600 cuts. The heavily carved bodies of the deceased were then put on a parade for a show in the public. Some victims were reportedly given doses of opium
Opium
Opium is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy . Opium contains up to 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The latex also includes codeine and non-narcotic alkaloids such as papaverine, thebaine and noscapine...
, but accounts differ as to whether the drug was said to amplify or alleviate suffering.
J. M. Roberts, in Twentieth Century: The History of the World, 1901 to 2000 (2000), writes "the traditional punishment of death by slicing ... became part of the western image of Chinese backwardness as the 'death of a thousand cuts.'" Roberts then notes that slicing "was ordered, in fact, for K'ang Yu-Wei, a man termed the 'Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...
of China', and a major advocate of intellectual and government reform in the 1890s." (Roberts, p. 60, footnote 8)
Although officially outlawed by the Qing government
Qing Dynasty
The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....
in 1905, língchí became a widespread Western symbol of the Chinese penal system from the 1910s on, and in Zhao Erfeng
Zhao Erfeng
Zhao Erfeng was a Qing official and Chinese bannerman, who belonged to the Plain Blue Banner. He is known for being the last amban in Tibet, appointed in March, 1908. Lien Yu , a Manchu, was appointed as the other amban...
's administration. Three sets of photographs shot by French soldiers in 1904-1905 were the basis for later mythification. The abolition was immediately enforced, and definite: no official sentences of língchí were performed in China after April 1905.
Regarding the use of opium, as related in the introduction to Morrison's book, Sir Meyrick Hewlett insisted that "most Chinese people sentenced to death were given large quantities of opium before execution, and Morrison avers that a charitable person would be permitted to push opium into the mouth of someone dying in agony, thus hastening the moment of decease." At the very least, such tales were deemed credible to British officials in China and other Western observers.
History
Qin Er Shi
Qin Er Shi , literally Second Emperor of Qin Dynasty, personal name Huhai, was emperor of the Qin Dynasty in China from 210 BC until 207 BC.-Name:...
and during the first Han dynasty
Han Dynasty
The Han Dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin Dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms . It was founded by the rebel leader Liu Bang, known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu of Han. It was briefly interrupted by the Xin Dynasty of the former regent Wang Mang...
, multiple tortures were applied to officials. Liu Ziye did to innocent officials.
Gao Yang
Emperor Wenxuan of Northern Qi
Emperor Wenxuan of Qi , personal name Gao Yang , courtesy name Zijin , was the first emperor of the Chinese dynasty Northern Qi. He was the second son of Eastern Wei's paramount general Gao Huan, and the death of his brother and Gao Huan's designated successor Gao Cheng in 549 became the regent...
killed six people. An Lushan
An Lushan
An Lushan was a general who rebelled against the Tang Dynasty in China.His name was also transcribed into Chinese as Āluòshān or Gáluòshān ,...
killed a man. Língchí is known in the Five Dynasties period (907-960) and Gaozu of Later Jin
Gaozu of Later Jin
Shi Jingtang was the founder of the Later Jin Dynasty , the third of the Five Dynasties that controlled much of northern China from 907 to 960. The Later Jin Dynasty was the second of three successive Shatuo Turk dynasties that made up the middle three of the Five Dynasties.-Background and early...
abolished it. It first appeared in the Liao dynasty
Liao Dynasty
The Liao Dynasty , also known as the Khitan Empire was an empire in East Asia that ruled over the regions of Manchuria, Mongolia, and parts of northern China proper between 9071125...
law codes, and was sometimes used. Emperor Tianzuo of Liao often executed people in this way during his rule. It became widespread in the Song Dynasty
Song Dynasty
The Song Dynasty was a ruling dynasty in China between 960 and 1279; it succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, and was followed by the Yuan Dynasty. It was the first government in world history to issue banknotes or paper money, and the first Chinese government to establish a...
under Emperor Renzong of Song
Emperor Renzong of Song
Emperor Renzong was the fourth emperor of the Song Dynasty of China. His personal name was Zhao Zhen . He reigned from 1022 to 1063. Renzong was the son of Emperor Zhenzong of Song. Despite his long reign of over 40 years, Renzong is not widely known...
and Emperor Shenzong of Song
Emperor Shenzong of Song
Emperor Shenzong of Song was the sixth emperor of the Chinese Song Dynasty. His personal name was Zhao Xu...
.
Some officials often used that to torture the rebels. The punishment remained in the Qing Dynasty
Qing Dynasty
The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....
code of laws for persons convicted of high treason
Treason
In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's sovereign or nation. Historically, treason also covered the murder of specific social superiors, such as the murder of a husband by his wife. Treason against the king was known as high treason and treason against a...
and other serious crimes. Língchí was abolished as a result of the 1905 revision of the Chinese penal code by Shen Jiaben
Shen Jiaben
Shen Jiaben . Late Qing Chinese scholar and jurist from Wuxing 吳興 in Zhejiang province （modern Huzhou city 湖州）. Shen was in charge of the 1905 revision of the Qing Code, abolishing several cruel punishments such as "slow slicing" ....
(沈家本, 1840-1913. Reports from Qing dynasty jurists such as Shen Jiaben show that executioners' customs varied, as the regular way to perform this penalty was not specified in detail in the Penal code.
This form of execution was also known from Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
, notably being used as the method of execution of the French missionary Joseph Marchand
Joseph Marchand
Joseph Marchand was a French missionary in Vietnam, and a member of the Paris Foreign Missions Society....
in 1835 as part of the repression following the unsuccessful Lê Văn Khôi revolt
Le Van Khoi revolt
The Lê Văn Khôi revolt was an important revolt in 19th century Vietnam, in which southern Vietnamese, Vietnamese Catholics, French Catholic missionaries and Chinese settlers under the leadership of Lê Văn Khôi opposed the Imperial rule of Minh Mạng.-Origin:The revolt was spurred by the...
.
As Western countries moved to abolish similar punishments, some Westerners began to focus attention on the methods of execution used in China. As early as 1866, the year after the last recorded case of hanging, drawing, and quartering, Thomas Francis Wade
Thomas Francis Wade
Sir Thomas Francis Wade, GCMG, KCB , was a British diplomat and Sinologist who produced a syllabary in 1859 that was later amended, extended and converted into the Wade-Giles romanization for Mandarin Chinese by Herbert Giles in 1892...
, then serving with the British diplomatic mission
Diplomatic mission
A diplomatic mission is a group of people from one state or an international inter-governmental organisation present in another state to represent the sending state/organisation in the receiving state...
in China, unsuccessfully urged the abolition of língchí.
The first proposal for abolishing lingchi was submitted by Lu You
Lu You
Lu You , was a Chinese poet of the Southern Song dynasty.-Early life and marriage:Lu You was born on a boat floating in the Wei River early on a rainy morning, October 17, 1125...
陸游(1125–1210) in a memorial to the Emperor under the Southern Song dynasty. Lu You's elaborated argumentation against lingchi was piously copied and transmitted by generations of scholars, among them influential jurists of all dynasties, till the late Qing reformer Shen Jiaben introduced it in his 1905 memorial that obtained the abolition, eventually. This anti-lingchi trend met a more general attitude opposed to "cruel and unusual punishments' (such as the exposure of the head) which the Tang had not included in the canonic table of the Five Punishments
Five Punishments
The Five Punishments was the collective name for a series of physical penalties meted out by the legal system of pre-modern Dynastic China. Over time, the nature of the Five Punishments varied. Before the time of Western Han Dynasty Emperor Han Wendi they involved tatooing, cutting off the nose,...
, and that defined the plainly legal ways of punishing crime. Hence the abolitionist trend is deeply ingrained in the Chinese legal tradition, rather than
being purely derived from Western influences.
An 1858 account by Harper's Weekly
Harper's Weekly
Harper's Weekly was an American political magazine based in New York City. Published by Harper & Brothers from 1857 until 1916, it featured foreign and domestic news, fiction, essays on many subjects, and humor...
claimed the martyr Auguste Chapdelaine
Auguste Chapdelaine
Father Auguste Chapdelaine was a French Christian missionary of the Paris Foreign Missions Society.-Biography:He was born in La Rochelle-Normande, France...
was killed by this method; in fact he was beheaded after death.
Famous executions
- Liu JinLiu JinLiú Jĭn was a well-known Chinese eunuch during the reign of the Chinese Ming Dynasty Zhengde Emperor . Liu was famous for being one of the most corrupt officials in Chinese history and the emperor in all but name for some time...
— a eunuchEunuchA eunuch is a person born male most commonly castrated, typically early enough in his life for this change to have major hormonal consequences...
during the Ming DynastyMing DynastyThe Ming Dynasty, also Empire of the Great Ming, was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming, "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history", was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic...
. - Yuan ChonghuanYuan ChonghuanYuan Chonghuan was a famed patriot and military commander of the Ming Dynasty who battled the Manchus in Liaoning. A commander of Cantonese origin, Yuan Chonghuan was known to have excelled in artillery warfare and successfully incorporated Western tactics with those of the East...
— a military leader. - Joseph MarchandJoseph MarchandJoseph Marchand was a French missionary in Vietnam, and a member of the Paris Foreign Missions Society....
– French missionary and participant in the Lê Văn Khôi revolt.
Published accounts
- Sir Henry NormanHenry NormanSir Henry Norman, 1st Baronet PC was an English journalist and Liberal politician. Norman was educated privately in France and at Harvard University, where he obtained his B.A...
, The People and Politics of the Far East, (1895). Norman was a widely travelled writer and photographer whose collection is now owned by the University of CambridgeUniversity of CambridgeThe University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
. Norman gives an eye-witness account of various physical punishments and tortures inflicted in a magistrate's court (yamen) and of the execution by beheading of fifteen men. He gives the following graphic account of a lingchi execution but does not claim to have witnessed such an execution himself. "[The executioner] grasping handfuls from the fleshy parts of the body such as the thighs and breasts slices them away... the limbs are cut off piecemeal at the wrists and ankles, the elbows and knees, shoulders and hips. Finally the condemned is stabbed to the heart and the head is cut off." - G.E. MorrisonGeorge Ernest MorrisonGeorge Ernest Morrison , also known as Chinese Morrison, was an Australian adventurer and The Times Peking correspondent.-Early life:...
, An Australian in China, (1895) differs from some other reports in stating that most Ling Chi mutilations are in fact made post mortem. Morrison wrote his description based on an account related by a claimed eyewitness: "The prisoner is tied to a rude crossCrossA cross is a geometrical figure consisting of two lines or bars perpendicular to each other, dividing one or two of the lines in half. The lines usually run vertically and horizontally; if they run obliquely, the design is technically termed a saltire, although the arms of a saltire need not meet...
: he is invariably deeply under the influence of opiumOpiumOpium is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy . Opium contains up to 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The latex also includes codeine and non-narcotic alkaloids such as papaverine, thebaine and noscapine...
. The executioner, standing before him, with a sharp sword makes two quick incisions above the eyebrows, and draws down the portion of skin over each eye, then he makes two more quick incisions across the breast, and in the next moment he pierces the heart, and death is instantaneous. Then he cuts the body in pieces; and the degradation consists in the fragmentary shape in which the prisoner has to appear in heavenHeavenHeaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...
." - Tienstin (TianjinTianjin' is a metropolis in northern China and one of the five national central cities of the People's Republic of China. It is governed as a direct-controlled municipality, one of four such designations, and is, thus, under direct administration of the central government...
), The China Year Book (1927), p 1401, contains contemporary reports from fighting in Guangzhou (Canton) between the Nanjing Government and Communist forces. Stories of various atrocities are related, including accounts of língchí. There is no mention of opium, and these cases appear to be government propaganda. - The TimesThe TimesThe Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, (9 December 1927), A Times journalist reported from the city of Canton that the communists were targeting Christian priests and that "It was announced that Father Wong was to be publicly executed by the slicing process." - George Roerich, "Trails to Inmost Asia" (1931), p119, relates the story of the assassination of Yang Tseng-hsin, Governor of Sinkiang in July 1928, by the bodyguard of his foreign minister Fan Yao-han. Fan Yao-han was seized, and he and his daughter were both executed by ling-chi, the minister made to watch his daughter's execution first. However Roerich was not an eyewitness to this event, having already returned to India by the date of the execution.
- George Ryley Scott, History of Torture, (1940) claims that many were executed this way by the Chinese communist insurgents; he cites claims made by the Nanking government in 1927. It is perhaps uncertain whether these claims were anti-communist propaganda. Scott also calls the it "the slicing process" and differentiates between the different types of execution in different parts of the country. There is no mention of opium. Riley's book contains a picture of a sliced corpse (with no mark to the heart) that was killed in GuangzhouGuangzhouGuangzhou , known historically as Canton or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of the Guangdong province in the People's Republic of China. Located in southern China on the Pearl River, about north-northwest of Hong Kong, Guangzhou is a key national transportation hub and trading port...
(Canton) in 1927. It gives no indication of whether the slicing was done post-mortem. Scott claims it was common for the relatives of the condemned to bribe the executioner to kill the condemned before the slicing procedure began.
U.S. military accounts
One account reports that United States Marine CorpsUnited States Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...
members stationed in and around Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
between 1927 and 1941 brought evidence of human rights abuses to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
: "The prevalence of executions and torture is evidenced by the scrapbooks brought back from China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
by the Marines. There are photographs of firing squads, beheadings, disembowelment
Disembowelment
Disembowelment is the removal of some or all of the organs of the gastrointestinal tract , usually through a horizontal incision made across the abdominal area. Disembowelment may result from an accident, but has also been used as a method of torture and execution...
s, rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
and such torture as 'the death of a thousand cuts.'"
As the online Marine history notes, "Apparently these photographs were commercially available [in China], because there are exact duplicates in many scrapbooks with the name of a commercial studio stamped on the backs of the photographs." It is possible that photos from the 1910s were mistakenly associated with the ongoing atrocities of China in the 1920s, and the língchí photos were sold as curios.
Photographs from this same period, including lines of beheaded corpses, non-Chinese diplomats killed by gunfire, and a língchí victim, can be found in George Ryley Scott's A History of Torture.
1890
The first Western photographs of língchí were taken in 1890 by William Arthur Curtis of Kentucky in Guangzhou
Guangzhou
Guangzhou , known historically as Canton or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of the Guangdong province in the People's Republic of China. Located in southern China on the Pearl River, about north-northwest of Hong Kong, Guangzhou is a key national transportation hub and trading port...
(Canton).
1905
French soldiers stationed in Beijing
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
had the opportunity to photograph three different língchí executions in 1905:
- Wang Weiqin 王維勤, a former Official who killed two families, executed on the 31 October 1904:
- Unknown, reason unknown, possibly a young deranged boy who killed his mother, and was executed in January 1905. Photographs were published in various volumes of Georges Dumas' Nouveau traité de psychologie, 8 Vols., Paris, 1930-1943 , and again nominally by Bataille (in fact by Lo Duca), who mistakenly appended abstracts of Fou-tchou-li's executions as related by Carpeaux (see below).
- Fou-tchou-li or Fúzhūli , a Mongol guard who killed his master, the prince of Inner MongoliaInner MongoliaInner Mongolia is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China, located in the northern region of the country. Inner Mongolia shares an international border with the countries of Mongolia and the Russian Federation...
n Aohan Banner, and who was executed on the 10 April 1905; as língchí was to be abolished two weeks later, this was presumably the last attested case of it in Chinese history. or said Kang Xiaoba (康小八) Photographs appeared in books by Matignon (1910), and Carpeaux (1913), the latter claiming (falsely) that he was present. Carpeaux's narrative was mistakenly, but persistently, associated to photographs published by Dumas and Bataille. Even related to the correct set of photos, Carpeaux's narrative is highly dubious; for instance, an examination of the Chinese judicial archives show that Carpeaux bluntly invented the execution decree below:
The execution proclamation is reported to state "'The Mongolia
Mongolia
Mongolia is a landlocked country in East and Central Asia. It is bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south, east and west. Although Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan, its western-most point is only from Kazakhstan's eastern tip. Ulan Bator, the capital and largest...
n Princes demand that the aforesaid Fou-Tchou-Le, guilty of the murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
of Prince Ao-Han-Ouan, be burned alive, but the Emperor finds this torture too cruel and condemns Fou-Tchou-Li to slow death by Leng-Tch-e (=different spelling of lingchi，cutting into pieces)."
Photographic material and other sources are available online at the Chinese Torture Database (Iconographic, Historical and Literary Approaches of an Exotic Representation) hosted by the Institut d'Asie Orientale (CNRS, France)
Popular references
Accounts of Ling'Chi or the extant photographs have inspired or referenced in numerous artistic, literary, and cinematic media. Some works have attempted to put the process in a historical context; others, possibly due to the scarcity of detailed historical information, have attempted to extrapolate the details or present innovations of method that may be products of an author's creative license. Some of these descriptions may have influenced modern public perceptions of the historic practice.Non-fiction
Susan SontagSusan Sontag
Susan Sontag was an American author, literary theorist, feminist and political activist whose works include On Photography and Against Interpretation.-Life:...
mentions the 1905 case in Regarding the Pain of Others (2003). One reviewer wrote that though Sontag includes no photographs in her book—a volume about photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
—"she does tantalisingly describe a photograph that obsessed the philosopher Georges Bataille
Georges Bataille
Georges Bataille was a French writer. His multifaceted work is linked to the domains of literature, anthropology, philosophy, economy, sociology and history of art...
, in which a Chinese
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
criminal, while being chopped up and slowly flayed
Flaying
Flaying is the removal of skin from the body. Generally, an attempt is made to keep the removed portion of skin intact.-Scope:An animal may be flayed in preparation for human consumption, or for its hide or fur; this is more commonly called skinning....
by executioners, rolls his eyes heaven
Heaven
Heaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...
wards in transcendent
Transcendence (philosophy)
In philosophy, the adjective transcendental and the noun transcendence convey the basic ground concept from the word's literal meaning , of climbing or going beyond, albeit with varying connotations in its different historical and cultural stages...
bliss."
The philosopher Georges Bataille
Georges Bataille
Georges Bataille was a French writer. His multifaceted work is linked to the domains of literature, anthropology, philosophy, economy, sociology and history of art...
wrote about lingchi in L'expérience intérieure (1943) and in Le coupable (1944). He included five pictures in his The Tears of Eros. (1961; translated to English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and published by City Lights
City Lights Bookstore
City Lights is an independent bookstore-publisher combination that specializes in world literature, the arts, and progressive politics. It also houses the nonprofit City Lights Foundation, which publishes selected titles related to San Francisco culture. It was founded in 1953 by poet Lawrence...
in 1989)
This book has been criticized for its language and its mistakes and allegedly dubious content
Literature
In the novel Flashman and the DragonFlashman and the Dragon
Flashman and the Dragon is a 1985 novel by George MacDonald Fraser. It is the eighth of the Flashman novels.-Plot introduction:Presented within the frame of the supposedly discovered historical Flashman Papers, this book describes the bully Flashman from Tom Brown's Schooldays...
by George MacDonald Fraser
George MacDonald Fraser
George MacDonald Fraser, OBE was an English-born author of Scottish descent, who wrote both historical novels and non-fiction books, as well as several screenplays.-Early life and military career:...
, reference is made to a prisoner being bound tightly in a thin wire mesh through which nubs of flesh protrude. These are then cut off by the torturer with a sharp razor. In order to kill the prisoner, the razor is run quickly over many nubs of flesh at once.
In the novel The Journeyer, author Gary Jennings
Gary Jennings
Gary Jennings was an American author who wrote children's and adult novels. In 1980, after the successful novel Aztec, he specialized in writing adult historical fiction novels.-Biography:...
describes in greater detail a method of the "Death of a Thousand" as a torture procedure. The executioner explains to the main character, Marco Polo
Marco Polo
Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant traveler from the Venetian Republic whose travels are recorded in Il Milione, a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, travelled through Asia and apparently...
, that one-thousand pieces of paper are placed in a container, and a paper is drawn out to determine where the cut will be made. For this procedure, there are 333 designated body parts, and each part is represented three times, for a total of 999 slips of paper, with the 1,000th paper representing immediate death. In the case of a finger, if the first paper drawn denoted a particular finger, the digit would be removed at the first joint; the second time a paper is drawn indicating the same finger, another section to the next joint is amputated. The third paper related to the same finger would indicate final amputation. Jennings also fictionalizes in the book that, in an extended form of the torture, the body parts and blood are fed to the condemned as his only nourishment.
In the 1965 novel Farabeuf
Farabeuf
Dr. Louis Hubert Farabeuf , French surgeon who is said to have introduced hygiene in French medical schools. His statue dominates the central court of the National School of Medicine in Paris whose main amphitheater is also named after him. Farabeuf wrote some short surgical booklets and designed...
, Salvador Elizondo
Salvador Elizondo
Salvador Elizondo Alcalde was a Mexican writer of the 60s Generation of Mexican literature.Regarded as one of the creators of the most influential cult noirè, experimental, intelligent style literature in Latin America, he wrote as a novelist, poet, critic, playwright, and journalist...
used one of the 1905 Lingchí photographs along with the story of a 19th-century French surgeon to explore eroticism, photography, and memory. Farabeuf appears both as a secret agent who witnessed and photographed the execution, and as obsessed with the use of torture as a form of erotic ceremony. The reproduction of the 1905 photograph appears along the climax of his engulfing narrative, widely perceived as one of the main works of Mexican literature of the 1960s.
The "death by a thousand cuts" with reference to China features in Malcolm Bosse
Malcolm Bosse
Malcolm Joseph Bosse was an American author of both young adult and adult novels. His novels are often set in Asia, and have been praised for their cultural and historical information relating to the character's adventures. Bosse mostly wrote historical fiction novels after the publication of The...
's novel The Examination, Amy Tan
Amy Tan
Amy Tan is an American writer whose works explore mother-daughter relationships. Her most well-known work is The Joy Luck Club, which has been translated into 35 languages...
's novel The Joy Luck Club
The Joy Luck Club
The Joy Luck Club is a best-selling novel written by Amy Tan. It focuses on four Chinese American immigrant families in San Francisco, California who start a club known as "the Joy Luck Club," playing the Chinese game of mahjong for money while feasting on a variety of foods...
, and Robert van Gulik
Robert van Gulik
Robert Hans van Gulik was a highly educated orientalist, diplomat, musician , and writer, best known for the Judge Dee mysteries, the protagonist of which he borrowed from the 18th-century Chinese detective novel Dee Goong An.-Life:Robert van Gulik was the son of a medical officer in the Dutch...
's Judge Dee
Judge Dee
Judge Dee is a semi-fictional character based on the historical figure Di Renjie , magistrate and statesman of the Tang court. The character first appeared in the 18th century Chinese detective novel Di Gong An...
novels. The 1905 photos are mentioned in Thomas Harris
Thomas Harris
Thomas Harris is an American author and screenwriter, best known for a series of suspense novels about his most famous character, Hannibal Lecter...
' novel Hannibal
Hannibal (novel)
Hannibal is a novel written by Thomas Harris, published in 1999. It is the third in his series featuring Dr. Hannibal Lecter and the second to feature FBI Special Agent Clarice Starling. The novel takes place seven years after the events of The Silence of the Lambs and deals with the intended...
and Julio Cortázar
Julio Cortázar
Julio Cortázar, born Jules Florencio Cortázar, was an Argentine writer. Cortázar, known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, influenced an entire generation of Spanish speaking readers and writers in the Americas and Europe.-Early life:Cortázar's parents, Julio José Cortázar and...
's novel Rayuela
Rayuela
Hopscotch is a novel by Argentine writer Julio Cortázar. Written in Paris and published in Spanish in 1963 and in English in 1966, the English translation by Gregory Rabassa won the 1967 U.S. National Book Award. Hopscotch is an introspective stream-of-consciousness novel where characters...
. Ling'Chi is used in the context of alternate settings in Mercedes Lackey
Mercedes Lackey
Mercedes "Misty" Lackey is a best-selling American author of fantasy novels. Many of her novels and trilogies are interlinked and set in the world of Velgarth, mostly in and around the country of Valdemar...
's novel The Serpent's Shadow
The Serpent's Shadow
The Serpent's Shadow is a novel by Mercedes Lackey, part of her Elemental Masters series. It is set in London in 1909 and is based on the fairy tale Snow White.-Plot summary:...
and Richard K Morgan's novel Broken Angels
Broken Angels
Broken Angels is a military science fiction novel by Richard Morgan. It is the sequel to Altered Carbon, and is followed by Woken Furies.- Plot :...
.
Film
Inspired by the 1905 photos, Chinese artist Chen Chien-jen created a 25-minute film called Lingchi, which has generated some controversy.In the 1966 film The Conqueror, this execution was called the "Slow Death." Three of the main characters threaten to see the punishment inflicted at different points in the story. The "Slow Death" as described in the Conqueror accords with the more sensationalistic depictions of Slow Slicing, but with the added refinement that the victim's severed parts are to be fed to animals before his very eyes.
Death by slow slicing is also portrayed or referenced in the 1966 film
1966 in film
The year 1966 in film involved some significant events.-Events:Animation legend Walter Disney, well known for his creation of Mickey Mouse, died in 15 December 1966 of acute circulatory collapse following a diagnosis of, and surgery for, lung cancer...
The Sand Pebbles
The Sand Pebbles (film)
The Sand Pebbles is a 1966 American period war film directed by Robert Wise. It tells the story of an independent, rebellious U.S. Navy Machinist's Mate aboard the fictional gunboat USS San Pablo in 1920s China....
, the 1968 film
1968 in film
The year 1968 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* October 30 - The film The Lion in Winter, starring Katharine Hepburn, debuts.* November 1 - The MPAA's film rating system is introduced.-Top grossing films :- Awards :...
Carry On... Up the Khyber, the 1996 film
1996 in film
Major releases this year included Scream, Independence Day, Fargo, Trainspotting, The English Patient, Twister, Mars Attacks!, Jerry Maguire and a version of Evita starring Madonna.-Events:...
Fled
Fled
Fled is a 1996 action film directed by Kevin Hooks. A remake of the 1958 film The Defiant Ones, the film stars Laurence Fishburne and Stephen Baldwin as a pair of escaped criminals on the run from the police, corrupt officials and the Cuban Mafia....
, the 2007 film
2007 in film
This is a list of major films released in 2007.-Top grossing films:Please note that following the tradition of the English-language film industry, these are the top grossing films that were first released in the USA in 2007...
Rush Hour 3
Rush Hour 3
Rush Hour 3 is a 2007 martial arts/action-comedy film, and the third installment in the Rush Hour film series, starring Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, that began with the 1998 film Rush Hour and continued with the first sequel Rush Hour 2 in 2001. The film was officially announced on May 7, 2006,...
, and the BBC 2006 TV series Robin Hood.
A Chinese Torture Chamber Story 2 (1998) starts with a woman being sentenced to 'death by a thousand cuts', which is carried out eventually.
See also
- Death by a Thousand Cuts (book)Death by a Thousand Cuts (book)Death by a Thousand Cuts is a book by the historians Timothy Brook and Gregory Blue and scientific researcher Jérôme Bourgon which examines the use of slow slicing or lingchi, a form of torture and capital punishment practised in mid- and late-Imperial China from the tenth century until its...
- ScaphismScaphismScaphism, also known as the boats, was an ancient Persian method of execution designed to inflict torturous death. The name comes from the Greek word skaphe, meaning "scooped out"....
, a similarly slow form of torturous execution.