Waist chop or waist cutting (), also known as cutting in two at the waist, was a form of execution used in ancient China. As its name implies, it involved the condemned being sliced in two at the waist by an executioner.

History

Waist chopping first appeared during the

Zhou dynasty The Zhou dynasty ( ; Old Chinese ( B&S): *''tiw'') was a royal dynasty of China that followed the Shang dynasty. Having lasted 789 years, the Zhou dynasty was the longest dynastic regime in Chinese history. The military control of China by th ...

(c. 1046 BC – 256 BC). There were three forms of execution used in the Zhou dynasty: '' chēliè'' (車裂; quartering the prisoner alive), ''zhǎn'' (斬; waist chop), and ''shā'' (殺; beheading). Sometimes the chopping was not limited to one slice.

Gao Qi Gao Qi (, 1336–1374), courtesy name Jidi (), pseudonym Qingqiuzi (), was a Chinese poet who lived in the early Ming dynasty. He is generally acknowledged as one of the greatest creators of Ming poetry. Gao Qi was born and raised in the shore o ...

, a

Ming dynasty The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last ort ...

poet, was sentenced by the

Hongwu Emperor The Hongwu Emperor (21 October 1328 – 24 June 1398), personal name Zhu Yuanzhang (), courtesy name Guorui (), was the founding emperor of the Ming dynasty of China, reigning from 1368 to 1398. As famine, plagues and peasant revolts i ...

to be sliced into eight parts for his politically satirical writing. An episode not attested in the official histories recounts that in 1734, Yu Hongtu (俞鴻圖), the Education Administrator of

Henan Henan (; or ; ; alternatively Honan) is a landlocked province of China, in the central part of the country. Henan is often referred to as Zhongyuan or Zhongzhou (), which literally means "central plain" or "midland", although the name is a ...

, was sentenced to a waist chop. After being cut in two at the waist, he remained alive long enough to write the Chinese character ''cǎn'' (慘; "cruel, awful") seven times with his own blood before dying. After hearing this, the

Yongzheng Emperor The Yongzheng Emperor (13 December 1678 – 8 October 1735), also known by his temple name Emperor Shizong of Qing, born Yinzhen, was the fourth Emperor of the Qing dynasty, and the third Qing emperor to rule over China proper. He reigned from ...

abolished this form of execution.林濤《正說清朝三百年》 In the modern

Chinese language Chinese (, especially when referring to written Chinese) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the ...

, "waist chop" has evolved to become a

metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wi ...

for the cancellation of an ongoing project, especially cancellation of television programs.

References

{{Capital punishment Execution methods Amputations

History

See also

References