How was bamboo tortured in China? What kind of punishment is this? You will find answers to these and other questions in the article.
For many of us, China is associated with extraordinary wisdom, dragons, expensive silks, a unique tea ceremony, and more recently, cheap products for every taste and color. But few people know that until the 20th century, special traditions of executions and torture were in force in the Middle Kingdom.
Torture bamboo
The term "Inquisition" (from the Latin Inquisitio) means "inquiry, interrogation." It was widespread even before the emergence of medieval church institutions with such a name in the legal field and meant clarifying the picture of the case by proceedings, usually through interrogations, often with the use of force. And only over time, the word "inquisition" began to understand the spiritual judgments of heresies anti-Christian.
The torture of the Inquisition had hundreds of variations. Some medieval torture devices have survived to our times. But very often even museum exhibits were reconstructed from descriptions in various sources. Their varieties amaze and cause horror. It turns out that not only medieval Europe was famous for its cruelty.
Torture with bamboo is a notorious worldwide reception of a terrible Chinese execution. This is probably a legend, since not a single documentary evidence has survived to this day that this torture was practiced in real life.
Bamboo is considered one of the fastest growing plants on our planet. Some of its varieties can grow by a meter in a day. Many historians claim that the deadly torture of bamboo was used not only by the ancient Chinese, but also by Japanese soldiers during the Second World War.
How does it work?
How was bamboo torture carried out in China? The executioner did the following:
- He sharpened the sprouts of living bamboo with a knife so that sharp “spears” were obtained.
- He hung the victim horizontally, with his stomach or his back over a bed of pointed young bamboo.
- Then bamboo quickly grew up, stuck into the skin of the martyr and sprouted through his abdominal cavity. As a result, a man died in terrible agony.
Research
Did torture really exist in bamboo? Can an escape pass through a person’s body? How long will it take? The study of the legendary bamboo torture "myth destroyers" engaged in the UFO TV channel. To get to the truth, the project leaders Heineman Jamie and Savage Adam made a substitute for the human body and sent him to the greenhouse. A synthetic leather torso of the necessary elasticity and density was placed over seven shoots, which only appeared above the surface of the earth.
Experts left the mannequin for a couple of days and looked forward to the results. The latter, by the way, stunned the entire crew. Amazingly, only three days later the torso split. Bamboo shoots pierced the likeness of flesh without any problems. And all because bamboo is able to survive in any conditions, because in the soil it has to break through stones, logs, roots and so on.
Sprouts from the earth tend to the surface with tremendous power. Bamboo unusually reproduces - new stems depart from the root system. Underground, the shoot is a very strong and sharp tip that instantly pierces any soil, even asphalt. And, as verification showed, the human body.
The hypothesis was fully confirmed. Bamboo can really be a tool of torture. And this is scary. A photo of the torture by bamboo, albeit in a schematic version, is presented in the article.
Qin Dynasty
At different times in every state there was a variety of torture. In China, they were especially sophisticated and cruel to humans. Moreover, the victims of torture were not only convicted criminals, but also innocent people who simply did not like the authorities.
In the code of the Qin dynasty, there were more than 4 thousand offenses that threatened punishment. Torture in ancient China existed as follows:
- The guilty person was placed in a dark and cold room. He was tied so that he could not move a single member, not even his head. During the entire period of stay in the room, water was dripping on his head. If the punished did not admit, then from such torture he either lost his mind or froze.
- A sheet of metal, studded with sharp needles, was rolled up in the form of a barrel with spikes inward. One of the executioners held this “barrel” with his hands, while the other grabbed the criminal by the hair and dragged through it. The needles shredded the flesh, at this time the tormentor, who was next to the jug of salt water, leisurely sprinkled with her a bloodied, torn body.
- The torture in China in ancient times was terrible. One of them was called "death from 1000 cuts." Tiny, but deep incisions were applied to the offender using special knives. The victim died either from loss of blood or from pain shock, because the injuries were inflicted without stopping, one after another. As a rule, not a single whole patch of skin remained on the human body at the end of this execution.
- What other torture existed in China? It is known that in this country the lower and upper executions were applied. As a result of the lower execution of a person, the kneecaps were castrated or cut out, as for the upper one - the criminal was cut off his nose or put a stigma on his face.
- The robber was fed rice undercooked porridge for a long period of time. As a result, porridge in the stomach swelled and tore its walls. After followed a painful death.
- The torture of women in ancient China was disgusting. So, if a lady was unfaithful to her husband, she was tied with her legs spread so that she could not move. The executioner poured milk into the vagina and threw a snake at the victim's feet. Feeling the smell of milk, the snake crawled inside the woman. After some time, the delinquent was dying.
- If the accused did not confess for a long time, then two punishers spread his legs apart, and the third inserted a very sharp dagger into his anus.
- The criminal was tied up, laid on the ground and doused with molten lead. More often back and shoulders.
- "Hanging balls embroidered." The blacksmith made a small sword, on the blade of which there were 4 or 5 tiny hooks. He easily entered the human body, but when the executioner pulled it out, hooks clung to the flesh, pieces of meat scattered to the sides.
- Piercing nails was considered a humane torture. To the guilty bamboo stick, they pierced the nails on the hands and feet. If he was stubbornly silent, his fingers were pierced through him.
- The torture for girls in China was such. The criminal was forced to sit on a metal triangle with a vagina. If she was silent, then she was imprisoned by force until the end. And in the end, the pyramid tore it up.
- In ancient China, torture by rats was also very popular. The executioner placed cells with starving rats on the chest and stomach of the robber. He opened the bottom of the cages and scared rodents with fire. Rats sought a way out and gnawed at human flesh in the hope of escape.
When the Manchu Qin dynasty was overthrown, the use of such tortures during interrogations was prohibited in 1912, March 2, by decree of the President of the Republic of China.
The Ling Chi Torture
We continue to examine torture and executions in ancient China. "Ling-chi" is translated into Russian as "a bite of a sea pike." There was another name - "death from a thousand cuts." This technique was mentioned above, but we will consider it in more detail. It was used during the reign of the Qin Dynasty. In this way, only reputable officials convicted of corruption were executed.
Each year, 15-20 such criminals were recruited. The execution of Ling-chi was unimaginably painful. It consisted of phasing out tiny parts from the body. For example, the executioner cut off one phalanx of a finger, burned a wound and proceeded to the next.
The court determined the number of pieces that needed to be cut off from the body. The most popular solution was cutting 24 pieces. The most notorious robbers were sentenced to three thousand cuts.
In such cases, a person was drunk with opium: he lost consciousness, but even through the veil of drug intoxication the pain was palpable. Sometimes the ruler showed mercy and ordered the executioner to first kill the victim with one blow and only then torture the corpse. This execution technology has been practiced for 900 years and was banned in 1905.
Rebuttal
Most likely, many have heard stories about Chinese torture. Their list is huge. But only the majority of these tortures never really existed, more precisely, "their existence is not confirmed by authoritative evidence."
This also applies to the history of torture in general. Very often, authors of works on this subject rely on all kinds of tales and gossip, which in practice turn out to be either BDSM fantasies, propaganda, or an intricate mixture of both.
Of course, there is no smoke without fire, and, say, the Inquisition of Spain was not the most pleasant institution. Nevertheless, the terrible tales of the Inquisition and the allegedly terrible and often simply physiologically impossible torture, as it turned out, were taken from propaganda booklets of Protestants, long-standing opponents of Spain, the Inquisition and Catholicism.
Myth formation
Europeans at the end of the last century attributed a lot of incredible cruelty to the Chinese. At that time, China seemed to be a many mysterious state inhabited by strange people, with its own laws and orders. It has become a very suitable object for those who like to dream on BDSM-themes.
The French were particularly distinguished in this matter, in particular the shocking writer Mirbo Octav, who was very popular at the end of the 19th century. In 1889, he wrote the novel The Garden of Torture, which allegedly refers to China. Anyone who is even a little familiar with the canons of this country cannot read this book without a smile.
Nevertheless, this flight of sadomasochistic fantasy (and other similar, albeit less well-known) formed the myth of Chinese torture and in many respects influenced the attitude towards the Celestial Empire.
Ancient Chinese canons
Were medieval Chinese humanists? Of course not. Probably, the Chinese punishers were inferior to their Japanese and German contemporaries, but they knew a lot about executions and torture. What, in reality, were real Chinese tortures? It is known that China appeared when Tutankhamun ruled Egypt, and Assyria was the main military state of the Middle East. Where is that Pharaoh's Egypt and that Assyria today? There is no trace left, but China is.
In the 7th century AD e. in China, the Tang Dynasty ruled. It was then that the legislation of the Middle Kingdom was drafted, which, with minor changes, lasted almost until the end of the last century.
Antique China was the kingdom of "zhou xing." This word is translated into Russian as "corporal punishment," but a more accurate translation would be "self-harming punishment." Indeed, the canons of the ancient Celestial Empire are full of phrases: “Weapons and armor are used for a great reprisal (meaning a campaign against the rebels), for the next - axes and axes (the death penalty), for medium retaliation - saws and knives, for the next - drills and chisels, for the lung - whips and sticks. "
The aforementioned saws and knives were used to saw off hands and feet, and kneecaps were removed with drills and chisels. However, this list is not complete. In the I millennium BC. e. uniform legislation has not yet been formed, and each judge, each prince invented his own reprisals against prisoners and robbers. The most popular were:
- ear cutting;
- removal of patella;
- branding;
- cutting off the nose;
- sawing off of the foot (at first one foot was taken, and for the offender who got to the second time - and the second).
All these "penalties" in the texts of those times are mentioned quite often.
Castration
Castration has often been used in China. It is known that both men and women were subjected to this punishment. With men, everything is clear, but from the texts it is clear that the punishers did something with the genitals of the ladies. Although the essence of the procedure is not clear from the preserved documentation. However, the researchers found that this unknown punishment was painful and forever made sexual intercourse either painful or impossible for the criminal.
Castrated men were turned into guards or eunuchs, and women were made palace slaves. However, many people after such punishment died from blood poisoning. It is known that the eminent historian of China, Sima Qian, was castrated. However, for him, this punishment was a mercy, since it replaced the death penalty.
The death penalty
Today, it seems that China and the torture of women are incompatible concepts. But you already know that in antiquity this was not so. There have also been many types of capital punishment in this country. The guilty were crucified, cooked in boilers, chopped in half, burned at the stake, torn to pieces in chariots. Often ribs were broken out.
In addition to decapitation, burial alive in the ground was very popular. That is how they dealt with the prisoners, therefore, even today archaeologists find specific burials of repose alive people (in crooked poses, with open mouths, often a dozen souls in one grave).
Five types of retaliation
The judges wanted to aggravate the punishment, so they came up with the execution, which was called "the implementation of the five types of retaliation." At the same time, the offender had to “be branded first, then cut off his nose, then chop off his left leg and right, beat with sticks to death, and put his head on public display in the market”.
For especially serious offenses, the entire clan of the robber was subject to destruction. It was necessary to kill not only the one who broke the law, but also his mother, father, wife, sons, concubines, sisters (with husbands), brothers (with wives).
Nevertheless, in the era of the Han Dynasty (II century BC. - II century BC. E.) Penalties noticeably softened. In 167 BC e. many self-punishing punishments were abolished (some of them sometimes appeared in canons until they disappeared completely in the 7th-8th centuries). Beheading of kneecaps and noses was replaced by sending to hard labor or beating with bamboo sticks. The number of variations of the death penalty has also decreased.
Real changes occurred only in the 7th century, during the rule of the Tang Dynasty. The rulers introduced a system that lasted almost a half thousand years.
Prisons
What was torture in prisons in China? Prison is an unpleasant place, and this fully applies to ancient Chinese dungeons. These were adobe houses with no windows, and one wall was a wooden lattice through which the jailers watched the prisoners. In those days, in China, prisoners were not kept in casemates - this pleasure was too costly, since people needed to be fed and guarded. Medieval dungeons were identical to the current bullpen - they were either sentenced to deportation and death, or those under investigation.
The jailers made sure that the prisoners did not escape. Pads helped them in this. The most common type of this device was kanga (in Chinese "jia"). Almost all prisoners were shackled into this block. In the Qin era (1644-1911), this device was a 1 x 1 m rectangular board, in the center of which a circular cut was made. This board consisted of two sliding parts. The prisoner’s neck was placed in it, and then locked. The prisoner had to constantly drag around his neck and shoulders something like a sliding table without legs weighing 10-15 kg (weight and parameters depended on the severity of the crime).
Hand pads and iron handcuffs were also used. They were not equipped with a lock; they simply were riveted tightly, forcing the prisoner to spend months with his hands bound behind his back.
There were more “serious” types of shackles. The most terrible variation was the "bed" in which the robbers, inclined to escape, were placed. It was like a bed to which the offender was tied by the neck, legs, arms and belt. Tormented by lice and bugs, in complete stillness, in his own feces, the prisoner spent long weeks. He could only thank the neighbors if they, by the kindness of the rats, were driven away from him.
For transporting villains over long distances, they used a special cart. It was an ordinary box on wheels. The bandit was squatted into him, and his head was poked into the hole made in the top lid of the box. This hole was identical to the kanga. As a result, the man was in a box, and his head stuck outside, pinned by a block. He could not eat without help, he had to defecate under himself.
Nuances
Since the Tang Dynasty (VII-X centuries), the law recognized only three variations of permissible tortures, any ingenuity and initiative of investigators was suppressed, especially if the prisoner was dying.
The execution of the Lynchs officially appeared in Chinese canons in the 12th century, although it was used from ancient times. So, at the end of the III century BC. e. it was in this way that all the daughters of the ruler Qin Shi-huang were executed. The new rulers did not want the Qin family to survive. They decided to get rid of their rivals in the most reliable way: the princes were killed immediately, and the princesses (there were more than 20 from different concubines) were thrown into prison. After the girls, they took them to the main square of the capital and executed there, “tying them to the pillars naked and cutting off their legs and arms”.
By the way, European travelers were often witnesses of the execution in China, and at the end of the last century, tourists even took a couple of photos. Until the 20th century, there were no clear notions in the Celestial Empire of the presumption of innocence and the parties to the charge. Therefore, confession during the torture was considered evidence of the truth, and not only the defendants, but also the witnesses were tortured.