Slow slicing
Lingchi was a form of torture and execution used in China from roughly 900 until it was banned in 1905. In this form of execution, a knife was used to methodically remove portions of the body over an extended period of time, eventually resulting in death. Lingchi was reserved for crimes viewed as especially heinous, such as treason.
About Slow slicing in brief
Lingchi was a form of torture and execution used in China from roughly 900 until it was banned in 1905. In this form of execution, a knife was used to methodically remove portions of the body over an extended period of time, eventually resulting in death. Lingchi was reserved for crimes viewed as especially heinous, such as treason. Some Westerners were executed in this manner. Even after the practice was outlawed, the concept itself has still appeared across many types of media. The Western perception of lingchi has often differed considerably from the actual practice, and some misconceptions persist to the present. The term lingchi first appeared in a line in Chapter 28 of the third-century philosophical text Xunzi. In the Yuan dynasty, 100 cuts were inflicted but by the Ming dynasty there were records of 3,000 incisions. Some emperors ordered three days of cutting while others may have ordered specific tortures before the execution, or a longer execution. For example, records showed that during Yuan Chonghuan’s execution, Yuan was heard shouting for half a day before his death. As an official punishment, death by slicing may also have involved slicing the bones, cremation, and scattering of the deceased’s ashes. The flesh of the victims may also has been sold as medicine. It is described as a fast process lasting no longer than 15 to 20 minutes.
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. It was meted out for major offences such as high treason, mass murder, patricidematricide or the murder of one’s master or employer. The body of the victim would not be \”whole\” in spiritual life after death. This method of execution became a fixture in the image of China among some Westerners. The distinction between the sensationalised Western myth and Chinese reality was noted by Westerners as early as 1895, when George Ernest Morrison claimed to have witnessed an execution that was ‘death by slicing into 10,000 pieces’ – a truly awful description of a punishment whose cruelty has been extraordinarily misrepresented… The mutilation is ghly and excites our horror as an example of barbarian cruelty; but it is not cruel, since the mutilation was done, not before death, but after death, according to apocryphal lore, after torture, adding the remainder of the torture, rendering the condemned incapable of seeing the remainder. If the crime was less serious or the executioner merciful, the first cut would be to the throat causing death; subsequent cuts served solely to dismember the corpse. The actual process could not have included more than a few dozen wounds.
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This page is based on the article Slow slicing published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 29, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
