At This Stage It Is Usual For The Friends Of The
Criminal, Or The Turnkeys In Their Absence, To Give Him "Auspicious"
Food, Chiefly Fat Pork And Saam-Su, An Intoxicating Wine.
Pieces of
betel-nut, the stimulating qualities of which are well known, are
invariably given.
These delays being over, the criminal is carried into
the presence of the judge, who sits not in the judgment-hall but in the
porch of the inner gateway of his Yamun. On the prisoner giving his
name, a superscription bearing it, and proclaiming his crime and the
manner of his death, is tied to a slip of bamboo and bound to his head.
A small wooden ticket, also bearing his name and that of the prison
from which he is taken to execution, is tied to the back of his neck.
Then the procession starts, the criminals, of whom there are usually
several, being carried in open baskets in the following order: - Some
spearmen, the malefactors, a few soldiers, a chair of state, bearing
the ruler of the Naam-Hoi county, attended by equerries; and another
chair of state, in which is seated the official who, after all is over,
pays worship to the five protecting genii of Canton, a small temple to
whom stands close to the potter's field, and who have power to restrain
those feelings of revenge and violence which the spirits of the
decapitated persons may be supposed hereafter to cherish against all
who were instrumental in their decapitation. Last of all follows a
herald on horseback, carrying a yellow banner inscribed "By Imperial
Decree," an indispensable adjunct on such occasions, as without it the
county ruler would not be justified in commanding the executioner to
give the death stroke. This ruler or his deputy sits at a table covered
with a red cloth, and on being told that all the preliminaries have
been complied with, gives the word for execution. The criminals, who
have been unceremoniously pitched out of the dust baskets into the mud
or gore or dust of the execution ground, kneel down in a row or rows,
and the executioner with a scimitar strikes off head after head, each
with a single stroke, an assistant attending to hand him a fresh sword
as soon as the first becomes blunt. It is said that Chinese criminals
usually meet their doom with extreme apathy, but occasionally they
yield to extreme terror, and howl at the top of their voices, "Save
life! Save life!" As soon as the heads have fallen, some coolies of a
pariah class take up the trunks and put them into wooden shells, in
which they are eventually buried in a cemetery outside one of the city
gates, called "The trench for the bones of ten thousand men." It is not
an uncommon thing, under ordinary circumstances, for fifteen, twenty,
or thirty-five wretches to suffer the penalty of death in this spot;
and this number swells to very large dimensions at a jail delivery, or
during a rebellion, or when the crews of pirates are captured in the
act of piracy. My friend Mr. Bulkeley Johnson, of Shanghai, saw one
hundred heads fall in one morning.
Mr. Henry says that the reason that most of the criminals meet death
with such stoicism or indifference is, that they have been worn down
previously by starvation and torture. Some are stupefied with Saam-su.
It is possible in some cases for a criminal who is fortunate enough to
have rich relations to procure a substitute; a coolie sells himself to
death in such a man's stead for a hundred dollars, and for a week
before his surrender indulges in every kind of expensive debauchery,
and when the day of doom arrives is so completely stupefied by wine and
opium, as to know nothing of the terror of death.
We had not gone far into this aceldema when we came to a space cleared
from pots, and to a great pool of blood and dust mingled, blackening in
the sun, then another and another, till there were five of them almost
close together, with splashes of blood upon the adjacent pots, and
blood trodden into the thirsty ground. Against the wall opposite, a
rudely constructed cross was resting, dark here and there with patches
of blood. Among the rubbish at the base of the wall there were some
human fragments partly covered with matting; a little farther some
jaw-bones with the teeth in them, then four more crosses, and some
human heads lying at the foot of the wall, from which it was evident
that dogs had partially gnawed off the matting in which they had been
tied up. The dead stare of one human eye amidst the heap haunts me
still. A blood-splashed wooden ticket, with a human name on one side
and that of the Naam-Hoi prison on the other, was lying near one of the
pools of blood, and I picked it up as a memento, as the stroke which
had severed its string had also severed at the same time the culprit's
neck. The place was ghastly and smelt of blood.
The strangest and most thrilling sight of all was the cross in this
unholy spot, not a symbol of victory and hope, but of the lowest infamy
and degradation, of the vilest death which the vilest men can die. Nor
was it the solid, lofty structure, fifteen or twenty feet high, which
art has been glorifying for a thousand years, but a rude gibbet of
unplaned wood, roughly nailed together, barely eight feet high, and not
too heavy for a strong man to carry on his shoulders. Most likely it
was such a cross, elevated but little above the heads of the howling
mob of Jerusalem, which Paul had in view when he wrote of Him who hung
upon it, "But made Himself obedient unto death, _even the death of the
cross_." To these gibbets infamous criminals, whose crimes are regarded
as deserving of a lingering death, are tightly bound with cords, and
are then slowly hacked to pieces with sharp knives, unless the friends
of the culprit are rich enough to bribe the executioner to terminate
the death agony early by stabbing a vital part.
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