From Egypt to Japan

by Henry M. Field

Next to the Yamun is the prison, in which are confined those charged with capital offences. We were admitted by paying a small fee to the keepers, and were at once surrounded by forty or fifty wretched objects, some of whom had been subjected to torture, and who held up their limbs which had been racked, and showed their bodies all covered with wounds, as an appeal to pity. We gave them some money to buy tobacco, as that is the solace which they crave next to opium, and hurried away.

But there is a place more terrible than the prison; it is the execution-ground. Outside the walls of Canton, between the city gate and the river, is a spot which may well be called Golgotha, the place of a skull. It is simply a dirty vacant lot, partly covered with earthenware pots and pans, a few rods long, on one side of which is a dead wall; but within this narrow space has been shed more blood than on any other spot of the earth's surface. Here those sentenced to death are beheaded. Every few days a gloomy procession files into the lane, and the condemned are ranged against the wall on their knees, when an assistant pulls up their pinioned arms from behind, which forces their heads forward, and the executioner coming to one after another, cleaves the neck with a blow. A number of skulls were scattered about—of those whose bodies had been removed, but whose heads were left unburied. In the lane is the house of the executioner—a thick, short-set man, in a greasy frock, looking like a butcher fresh from the shambles. Though a coarse, ugly fellow, he did not look, as one might suppose, like a monster of cruelty, but was simply a dull, stolid creature, who undertook this as he would any other kind of business, and cut off human heads with as little feeling as he would those of so many sheep. He picks up a little money by exhibiting himself and his weapon of death. He brought out his sword to show it to us. It was short and heavy, like a butcher's cleaver. I took it in my hand, and felt of the blade. It was dull, and rusted with stains of blood. He apologized for its appearance, but explained that it had not been used recently, and added that whenever it was needed for service, he sharpened it. I asked him how many heads he had cut off. He did not know—had not kept count—but supposed some hundreds. Sometimes there were "two or three tens"—that is, twenty or thirty—at once. Rev. Mr. Preston told me he had seen forty cut off in one morning. Dr. Williams had such a horror of blood that he could never be present at an execution, but he one day saw nearly two hundred headless trunks lying here, with their heads, which had just been severed from the bodies, scattered over the ground. Mr. Preston had seen heads piled up six feet high. It ought to be said, however, that in ordinary times no criminal convicted of a capital offence can be executed anywhere in the province (which is a district of nearly eighty thousand square miles, with twenty millions of inhabitants) except in Canton, and with the cognizance of the governor.

The carnival of blood was during the Taiping rebellion in 1855. That rebellion invaded this province; it had possession of Whampoa, and even endangered Canton. When it was suppressed, it was stamped out in blood. There were executions by wholesale. All who had taken part in it were sentenced to death, and as the insurgents were numbered by tens of thousands, the work went on for days and weeks and months. The stream of blood never ceased to flow. The rebels were brought up the river in boat-loads. The magistrates in the villages of the province were supposed to have made an examination. It was enough that they were found with arms in their hands. There were no prisons which could hold such an army, and the only way to deal with them was to execute them. Accordingly every day a detachment was marched out to the execution ground, where forty or fifty men would be standing with coffins, to receive and carry off the bodies. They were taken out of the city by a certain gate, and here Dr. Williams engaged a man to count them as they passed, and thus he kept the fearful roll of the dead; and comparing it with the published lists he found the number executed in fourteen months to be eighty-one thousand! An Aceldama indeed! It is not, then, too much to say that taking the years together, within this narrow ground blood enough has been shed to float the Great Eastern.

But decapitation is a simple business compared with that which the executioner has sometimes to perform. I observed standing against the wall some half a dozen rude crosses, made of bamboo, which reminded me that death is sometimes inflicted by crucifixion. This mode of punishment is reserved for the worst malefactors. They are not nailed to the cross to die a lingering death, but lashed to it by ropes, and then slowly strangled or cut to pieces. The executioner explained coolly how he first cut out an eye, or sliced off a piece of the cheek or the breast, and so proceeded deliberately, till with one tremendous stroke the body was cleft in twain.

Thus Chinese law illustrates its idea of punishment, which is to inflict it with tremendous rigor. It not only holds to capital punishment, but sometimes makes a man in dying suffer a thousand deaths. A gentleman at Fuhchau told me that he had seen a criminal starved to death. A man who had robbed a woman, using violence, was put into a cage in a public place, with his head out of a hole, exposed to the sun, and his body extended, and there left to die by inches. The foreign community were horror-struck; the consuls protested against it, but in vain. He lingered four days before death came to put an end to his agony. There were about twenty so punished at Canton in 1843, for incendiarism.

We shudder at these harrowing tales of "man's inhumanity to man." But we must not take the pictures of these terrible scenes, as if they were things which stare in the eyes of all beholders, or which give the fairest impression of Chinese law; as if this were a country in which there is nothing but suffering and crime. On the contrary, it is pre-eminently a land of peace and order. The Chinese are a law-abiding people. Because a few hundred bad men are found in a city of a million inhabitants, and punished with severity, we must not suppose that this is a lawless community. Those who would charge this, may at least be called on to point out a better-governed city in Europe.

This fearful Draconian code can at least claim that it is successful in suppressing crime. The law is a terror to evil-doers. The proof of this is that order is so well preserved. This great city of Canton is as quiet, and life and property are as safe, as in London or New York. Yet it is done with no display of force. There is no obtrusion of the police or the military, as in Paris or Vienna. The gates of the city are shut at night, and the Tartar soldiers make their rounds; but the armed hand is not always held up before the public eye. The Chinese Government has learned to make its authority respected without the constant display of military power.

The Chinese are the most industrious people on the face of the earth, for only by constant and universal industry can a population of four hundred millions live. When such masses of human beings are crowded together, the struggle for existence is so great, that it is only by keeping the millions of hands busy that food can be obtained for the millions of mouths. The same necessity enforces peace with each other, and therefore from necessity, as well as from moral considerations, this has been the policy of China from the beginning. Its whole political economy, taught long since by Confucius, is contained in two words—Industry and Peace. By an adherence to these simple principles, the Empire has held together for thousands of years, while every other nation has gone to pieces. China has never been an aggressive nation, given to wars of conquest. It has indeed attempted to subdue the tribes of Central Asia, and holds a weak sway over Turkistan and Thibet; while Corea and Loochoo and Annam still acknowledge a kind of fealty, now long since repudiated by Burmah and Siam. But in almost all cases it has "stooped to conquer," and been satisfied with a sort of tribute, instead of attempting roughly to enforce its authority, which would lead to perpetual wars. Thus has China followed the lesson of Confucius, furnishing the most stupendous example on the face of the earth of the advantage to nations of industry and peace.

The reason for this general respect and obedience to law may be found in another fact, which is to the immortal honor of the Chinese. It is the respect and obedience to parents. In China the family is the foundation of the state; and the very first law of society, as well as of religion, is: "Honor thy father and mother." In no country in the world is this law so universally obeyed. The preservation of China amid the wreck of other kingdoms is largely due to its respect to the Fifth Commandment, which has proved literally "a commandment with promise;"—the promise, "that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee," having been fulfilled in the preservation of this country from age to age.

As a consequence of this respect to parents, which imposes an authority over children, and binds them together, the family feeling in China is very strong. This, however noble in itself, has some evil effects, as it often separates the people of a town or village by feuds and divisions, which are as distinct, and as jealous and hostile, as the old Highland clans in Scotland. This interferes with the administration of justice. If a crime is committed, all of one's clan are in league to screen and protect the offender, while the rival clan is as eager to pursue and destroy him. Woe to the man who is accused, and who has no friend! But the disposition to stand by each other manifests itself in many acts of mutual helpfulness, of devotion and personal sacrifice.