The punishments of China: 1804 book
The NY Public Library has scans of an 1804 book from China that shows 22 engravings of common punishment methods of the day. Shown here: a malefactor enduring the "punishment of the wooden collar." Can anyone translate the Chinese characters on the collar?
Link (Via BibliOdyssey)
the latest
latest episodes
We prefer to call them "extended interrogation techniques."
Oh! That reminds of me of a book! The Remarkable Journey of Prince Jen, by Lloyd Alexander. I loved that book! I must've read it at least a half dozen times on long roadtrips.
One of the characters gets caught up in a wooden collar and stumbles about the Chinese countryside. I highly reccommend it.
Unless I'm mistaken, that is the Chinese writing for General Tso's chicken, fried rice and egg roll.
@ LAMARLOWE: That's a low blow, isn't it? It's 2008; get with the program.
It actually says, "Im in ur drafting tabel, starin at ur ceiling cat."
Jeopardy-style answer-in-the-form-of-a-question:
What is Chinese for 'Alberto Gonzales said this wasn't torture'?
Those appear to be the ideograms for "I went to Beijing and all I got was this lousy collar."
My personal favorite torture instrument is called "pear of anguish" & here is a photo of it:
http://www.tian.cc/2007/01/vacation-in-austria.html
I'm half-Chinese. My Dad left China when he was seven, before he had the chance to learn how to read (he learned how to read English like a pro, though, and became a doctor in England in the 1960s); after what he saw in China, before part of the family escaped to Malaysia, he was adamant that his kids shouldn't learn the language, and became very Anglicised himself.
As a result, I speak a only a very little Fuzhao. I only know about ten ideograms, none of which are represented above. I also know that you, sir, are a prick.
I believe it says "Kirk 'Goatse' Johnson, sit here."
Now THAT'S what I call torture.
lol @ #5 antinous!!1!
The image is too small for the characters to be very clear, but taking a quick glance, the right and left sides are pretty similar. In the bottom right might be 'three months' (三月) - maybe the length of the punishment? In the bottom left, the final two characters are 'to show the public' (示衆) Meaning that this punishment is to show the people as an example of what happens when you do bad things. On the top is the name of the bureau that is doing the punishing - 兩廣部堂, which doesn't ring a bell for me at all, but Google seems to think that it's the mark of the Office of the Viceroy of Canton. Makes sense.
I hereby sentence LAMARLOWE to suffer the punishment of the wooden collar.
The characters probably told the culprit's crime.
The cangue was actually a fairly well thought-out method of correction. Not only did the miscreant have to lug around a heavy piece of wood everywhere s/he went, but the device also prevented him/her from eating or drinking without assistance from another person. If you didn't have someone to help you out, you were screwed.
Here's the info you're looking for from this link:
Snippet:
Detailed info via link above:
Moo.
And also this, from http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Cangue
CANGUE, or Cang, the European name for the Chinese Kia or Kea, a portable pillory, carried by offenders convicted of petty offences. It consists of a square wooden collar weighing from 20 to 60 lb, through a hole in which the victim's head is thrust. It fits tight to the neck and must be worn day and night for the period ordered. The offender is left exposed in the street. Over the parts by which it fastens slips of paper bearing the mandarin's seal are pasted so that no one can liberate the condemned. The length of the punishment is usually from a fortnight to a month. As the cangue is 3 to 4 ft. across the convict is unable to feed himself or to lie down, and thus, unless fed by friends or passers-by, often starves to death. As in the English pillory, the name of the man and the nature of his offence are inscribed on the cangue.
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?trg=1&strucID=1056438&imageID=1565325&total=23&num=12&parent_id=1056419&word=&s=¬word=&d=&c=&f=&sScope=&sLevel=&sLabel=&lword=&lfield=&imgs=12&pos=19&snum=#
This one reminds me of that futon I had in college...
Interesting that this punishment was also used as a libel against the native Tibetan government and social order to justify the Chinese invasion and genocide.
Who learned it from who?
I know it's a common theme for people on BoingBoing to get their panties in a knot, but seriously #4 / #9 -- lighten up.
Ummmm, Corpse1, I'm much more conversant with British idioms than of Chinese idiograms, so I believe the correct phrase is, "knickers in a twist!" Thank you, though, sincerely. I'm sure that one day following lots of therapy, I will get over being called 'sir.'
The top of the piece reads:
兩廣部堂
"Hall of the department of the two Guangs," which refers to a prefectural administrator of relatively high rank during the Qing dynasty. The "two Guangs" refers to Guangdong (Canton) and Guangxi in southern China.
The above readers are right that the sides appear to explain the crime. The right begins with 吾, an old word for "I". I can see the following characters after 吾:
惡, 土, 名, 律, 號, 示, 象. The are clearly written by a non-native writer.
I think it must say something along the lines of: "Having wronged....I am made to where this as a sign of..."
Any Ming legal specialists out there to clarify this?
There's some great caption contest material in these pictures. My favourite is picture number 8:
"I'm going to play ping pong with your head!"
It's a diaper change station
"Oh no, not again...you kids go away, stop using my wooden collar to play knock-hockey...OUCH!!"
I sure hope our descendants have as much fun with the photos from Abu Ghraib, waterboarding, etc...
@23, your sincere and deeply held concern has been duly noted at the highest levels, and it will be addressed in a prompt and socially responsible manner as soon as humanly possible!
<sound of toilet flushing>
#18, the British idiom is "knickers in a twist"; "panties in a knot" and panties in a bunch" are common American equivalents.
木枷之刑
Tian: I've always thought the pear of anguish seemed like a particularly nasty device myself. (Incidentally, Wikipedia's information on it seems to have vanished from existence, or at least the current page versions; unfortunately, this seems to be happening a lot lately.
It turns out that the editing process doesn't always improve articles. In fact it looks like eventually it'll reach the point where the two processes are in equilibrium and the overall quality stops increasing, or even begins to decrease as good editors get fed up with going nowhere and leave. Arguably, some areas are already suffering from this.)
Wikipedia having fallen down on the job, here's a site with a bit more info on the "Pear" and other European instruments of punishment and/or torture.
http://www.occasionalhell.com/infdevice/
useful to be reminded of this particular kind of torture, when it's been recently announced that China is to shift to using lethal injections.
eight tables, no waiting, we deliver (you want kidney with that?)
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=5754
I agree with #23. Torture humor has lost its luster for me. To understand why, check out this hilarious video of a Current's Kaj Larsen undergoing waterboarding.
http://www.thebluestate.com/2007/11/video-waterboar.html
Har har.
I pity anyone who thinks torture is amusing.
Neato! "Outlaws of the Marsh" was chock full of these. I always wondered why those unspeakable badasses had such a hard time whuppin' butts with a measly wooden collar around their necks. Now I know!
Another memorable punishment from the book: having your face tattooed with your crime. Yowza!
#23, I am reminded when a dear friend of mine found out that his great-grandfather did not die of pneumonia, but was shot while robbing a bank -- a great tragedy for his grandmother, covered up and never mentioned in family lore until somebody did some genealogy research.
When enough time has passed, tragedy loses some of its sting, enough that one can find a little bit of bitter humor....
I'm not sure, but I believe it says, "All Your Base Are Belong to Us." Hm, wonder what that could mean.
collar in chinese may be 枷锁
re: passing of time
I recall an interview with the cartoonist Charles Schultz when he made a comment about the past.
He referred to the WWI ace part of his comic strip. He thought that it would be alright if he used a character from WWI since another major conflict had passed since that point in time.
I would have to say it was certainly an American point of view about the Great War.
Hope it all in past ;))
I think their punishments where most painful in the world.
Alya
Corpse 1 (19), I take it as a rule of thumb that anyone who comes into a conversation for the first time and instructs the people in it to "lighten up" is at that moment being a jerk.
Ill Lich (10), another good rule of thumb is that the minimum period between gratuitous mentions of goatse should be three to six months.
Chris Tucker (26), that trope is funnier if you leave off the exclamation point and the sound effect.
Can't tell you what the writing is, but I recognize the punishment style from when Xena Warrior Princess went to China. TV teaches us so much about culture, doesn't it?