Death by a Thousand Cuts

In a public square in Beijing in 1904, multiple murderer Wang Weiqin was executed before a crowd of onlookers. He was among the last to suffer the extreme punishment known as lingchi. Called by Western observers "death by a thousand cuts" or "death by slicing," this penalty was reserved for the very worst crimes in imperial China.A unique interdisciplinary history, "Death by a Thousand Cuts" is the first book to explore the history, iconography, and legal contexts of Chinese tortures and executions from the tenth century until lingchi´s abolition in 1905.