Sandalwood Death

CHAPTER NINE





Masterpiece


Razor-tipped knife in hand, Zhao Jia stood in the center of the parade ground, a bowlegged young apprentice at his side, facing a tall pine post to which the failed assassin of Yuan Shikai was bound, awaiting execution by the slicing death of five hundred cuts. Arrayed behind him were dozens of high-ranking officers of the New Army, seated on fine horses, while behind the execution post, five thousand foot soldiers stood in tight formation, looking from a distance like a forest, and up close like marionettes. Dry early winter winds swept powdery alkaline dirt into the soldiers’ faces. All those gazes made Zhao Jia, who had carried out hundreds of executions, slightly nervous, and somewhat self-conscious. By force of will he suppressed these feelings, which could only have a negative impact on his work, and focused on the condemned man before him, refusing to look at either the mounted officers or the formation of soldiers.

Something his shifu, Grandma Yu, had told him was on his mind: A model executioner does not see a living being as he prepares to carry out his task. Before him is nothing but strips of muscle and flesh, discrete internal organs, and a skeleton. After forty years in the trade, Zhao Jia had attained that degree of perfection. But for some reason, on this day he was on edge. After plying his trade for decades, during which he had ended the lives of nearly a thousand people, before him now was the finest specimen of the male body he had ever seen: a proud nose and capacious mouth, slanting eyebrows and starry eyes, his naked body a scene of perfection, with chiseled chest muscles and a flat, taut abdomen, all covered with glossy bronze skin. What truly caught his attention, however, was the ubiquitous taunting smile on the face of the young man, who was returning Zhao Jia’s scrutiny. A sense of shame engulfed Zhao in much the same way that a misbehaving child cannot bear to look his father in the eye.

Three steel cannons stood on the edge of the parade ground, busily attended by a squad of a dozen soldiers. Three rapid explosions startled Zhao Jia and made his ears ring. For a moment that was all he could hear. The acrid smell of gunpowder nearly choked him. The condemned man nodded in the direction of the cannons, as if in praise of the artillerymen’s skill. Zhao Jia, who was badly shaken, saw flames spew from the mouths of the cannons, followed immediately by another series of explosions. He watched as the bright, golden-hued shell casings flew behind the big guns, so hot they seared the patches of grass they landed on, marked by puffs of white smoke. Then three more explosions, after which the artillerymen stepped behind their guns and stood at attention, a sign that the fusillade was over, although the echoes hung in the air.

“Present—arms!” came a shouted command.

Five thousand soldiers raised Steyr rifles over their heads, forming a forest of long guns, a vast expanse of glossy blue steel to the rear of the execution post. Zhao Jia stared tongue-tied at this demonstration of military might. He had observed many martial drills by the Imperial Guard during his years in the capital, but nothing he had seen could compare with what he was witnessing today. The effect on him was apprehension and a powerful sense of unease. His self-confidence was shaken, his self-possessed demeanor, which had never wavered on the capital’s marketplace execution ground, now gone.

The foot soldiers and mounted officials remained at respectful attention for the arrival of their commander, which was heralded by the blare of trumpets and a clash of cymbals. A palanquin, covered in dark green wool and carried by eight bearers, emerged from a path through a grove of white poplars like a multi-decked ship riding the waves, crossed the parade ground, and settled gently earthward in front of the execution post. A young recruit ran up with a stepping stool, which he placed on the ground before reaching up to pull back the curtain. Out stepped a hulking figure, a red-capped official with big ears, a square face, and a prominent moustache. Zhao Jia recognized him immediately, an acquaintance from twenty-three years earlier, when he was still the young scion of an official family; now he was Commander of the New Army, His Excellency Yuan Shikai, who, in a break from the usual protocol, had summoned him from the capital to Tianjin to carry out the execution.

Dressed in full uniform under a fox fur cape, he cut an impressive figure. With a wave to the military complement assembled on the parade ground, he sat in a chair draped with a tiger skin. The commanding officer of the mounted troops shouted:

“Parade rest—!”

The soldiers shouldered their rifles on command, sending a deafening shock wave across the field. A young officer with a ruddy complexion and yellowed teeth, a sheet of paper in his hand, bent low to whisper something in Excellency Yuan’s ear. With a frown, Yuan turned his head away, as if to avoid the young officer’s bad breath. But “yellow teeth” would not let the distance between his mouth and Yuan’s ear increase. Zhao Jia could not have known, and never would learn, that the dark, gaunt young man with the yellow teeth would one day be known throughout the land as the Imperial Restorationist General Zhang Xun. Zhao Jia actually felt sorry for Yuan Shikai, being subjected to the stench from Zhang Xun’s mouth. Once Zhang had finished what he had to say, Yuan Shikai nodded and straightened up in his chair, while Zhang Xun stood on a bench and read what was on the paper in a voice loud enough for all to hear:

“The condemned, twenty-eight-year-old Qian Xiongfei, known also as Pengju, is from the city of Yiyang in Hunan Province. In the twenty-first year of the Guangxu reign, Qian took up studies at a military school in Japan, where he cut off his queue and joined an outlaw gang of conspirators. Upon his return to China, he joined forces with the Kang Youwei–Liang Qichao rebel clique. Under instructions from Kang and Liang, he assumed the role of a loyalist and infiltrated the Imperial Guard, where he operated as a planted agent for the rebels. When the Wuxu rebels were executed in the capital, like the fox that mourns the death of the hare, the frenzied Qian made an attempt on the life of our commander on the eleventh day of the tenth month. Heaven interceded to spare the life of Excellency Yuan. The criminal Qian was thwarted from carrying out this sinister and unpardonable act. In accordance with the laws of the Great Qing Empire, anyone found guilty of an assassination attempt on a representative of the Court is to suffer the slicing death of five hundred cuts. The sentence, approved by the Board of Punishments, will be carried out by an executioner brought from the capital to Tianjin . . .”

Zhao Jia felt the eyes of the assembled witnesses on him. Sending an executioner from the capital to the provinces was unprecedented, not just during the Qing Dynasty, but throughout the country’s history. The enormity of his responsibility put him in a state approaching alarm.

Now that the death warrant had been read, Yuan Shikai removed his fox fur cape and stood up, his eyes sweeping the formation of five thousand soldiers before he began to speak. Blessed with powerful lungs, he began, his words ringing out with great sonority:

“Men, I have been a military commander for many years and love my troops as if you were my own sons. If a mosquito bites you, my heart aches. This you already know. The idea that Qian Xiongfei, whom I had regarded with such favor, could one day turn his deadly rage on his own commander was alien to me. This act came as not only a horrible shock, but an even greater disappointment.”

“Men,” Qian Xiongfei shouted from the execution post to which he was bound, “the treacherous Yuan Shikai has betrayed friends and allies in order to seek Imperial favor, crimes for which death is too good for him. Do not be taken in by his fine-sounding words!”

Zhang Xun, who saw Yuan Shikai’s face redden, ran up to the execution post and punched Qian Xiongfei in the face.

“Keep your f*cking mouth shut and die with a little class!”

Qian spat a mouthful of bloody saliva in Zhang Xun’s face.

With a wave of his hand, Yuan Shikai stopped Zhang Xun, who was about to hit Qian a second time.

“Qian Xiongfei, you were a wizard with a gun and smarter than most people. That was why I gave you a pair of gold-handled pistols and granted you special responsibilities as a trusted confidant. My benevolence not only went unappreciated, but actually led you to make an attempt on my life. If that can be tolerated, what then cannot? Even though I nearly died at your hands, I grieve over the loss of your talent and cannot bear the thought of your punishment. But the law can show no favoritism, and military law is unimpeachable. I am powerless to save you from it.”

“If you’re going to kill me, do it, but spare me the sermon!”

“Now that things have reached this point, I can only take a lesson from Marquis Zhuge Liang, who ‘wept as he beheaded Ma Su.’”

“Excellency Yuan, drop the act!”

Yuan Shikai shook his head and sighed.

“Since you insist on being stubborn and stupid, there is nothing I can do for you.”

“I am prepared to die, and have been for some time. Do what you must, Excellency Yuan!”

“For you I have done everything humanity and duty call for. Tell me of your last wishes, and I shall see that they are carried out.”

“Excellency Yuan, though Qian Ding, the Gaomi County Magistrate, is my brother, I disavowed our kinship long ago. I ask that he not be implicated in my activities.”

“You may rest easy on that score.”

“I thank Your Excellency for that,” Qian said, “but that you would send someone to remove the bullets from my guns to ensure my defeat when victory was within reach was unimaginable. Pity, what a pity!”

“No one removed your bullets,” Yuan said with a laugh. “It was heaven’s intervention.”

“If heaven decided to spare the life of Yuan Shikai,” he said with a sigh, “then you win, Excellency.”

Yuan Shikai cleared his throat and declared:

“Men, your commander’s heart is breaking over the need to subject Qian Xiongfei to the slicing death, for he was once an officer with a bright future. I had great expectations for him, but he cast his lot with those rebelling against the Throne and committed a heinous, unpardonable act. It is not I who am putting him to death, nor the Throne. No, this is an act of suicide. I would have been willing to grant him a simple execution, keeping his body intact, but the national penal code is involved, and I dare not bend the law for one of my own. In my desire to allow him a dignified death, I made a point of asking the Board of Punishments to send us its finest executioner. Qian Xiongfei, that is my final gift to you, and I hope you calmly accept your punishment as an example for the soldiers of our New Army. Listen to me, men. You have been brought here to witness this execution in order, as the adage goes, to scare the monkeys by killing the chicken. It is my hope that you will take away with you a lesson learned on the body of Qian Xiongfei, one of fealty and good faith, caution and prudence, fidelity to the Throne and obedience to your superiors. If you act in accordance with my guidance, I can guarantee you a bright future.”

Led by their commanding officers, the soldiers shouted in unison:

“Absolute fidelity to the Throne, devoted service to His Excellency!”

Yuan Shikai returned to his seat and nodded imperceptibly to his aide, Zhang Xun, who grasped his meaning at once.

“Let the execution begin!” he shouted.

Zhao Jia stepped up in front of Qian Xiongfei, where his apprentice handed him a knife of the highest quality, one made specifically for this purpose.

“My friend,” he said under his breath, “I ask your pardon.”

Despite his attempt to face death without flinching, Qian Xiongfei could not keep his pale lips from quivering, and his irrepressible terror was exactly what Zhao Jia needed to recoup his pride of profession. In that instant, his heart turned as hard as steel and he was as calm as still water. He no longer saw a living human being in front of him. Bound to the execution post was nothing more than blood, flesh, tendons, and bones, assembled in a pattern determined by heavenly forces. Without warning, he drove his fist into Qian Xiongfei’s chest directly above the heart. Qian’s eyes rolled up into his head, and before the effect of that blow had worn off, with a quick circular motion of the hand holding the knife, Zhao snipped a circle of flesh the size of a bronze coin off of the other side of Qian’s chest. He had neatly excised one of Qian’s nipples, leaving a wound that looked like a blind man’s eye.

In accordance with an unwritten practice of the profession, Zhao Jia held the nipple on the tip of his blade in full view of His Excellency Yuan and the officers behind him. Then he displayed the fleshy coin to the five thousand foot soldiers in front of him, as his apprentice announced:

“The first cut!”

The detached nipple seemed to him to jiggle. He heard the rapid, nervous breathing of the officers behind him and a forced little cough from Excellency Yuan. He did not have to look to picture the bloodless faces of the mounted officers. He knew also that their hearts, including Yuan Shikai’s, were pounding at that moment. And that thought instilled in him pleasant feelings of gratification. In recent years, many important men had fallen into the hands of Board of Punishments executioners, and he had grown used to seeing pitiful exhibitions on the execution ground by high-ranking officials who had swaggered through life when they were in power. Not one in a hundred was worthy of the manly Qian Xiongfei, who could suppress his feelings of terror while undergoing cruel torture to the point that they were virtually imperceptible. At that moment, at least, Zhao felt a sense of supremacy. I am not me; I am the agent of the Emperor and the Empress Dowager, the embodiment of the laws of the Great Qing Dynasty!

Sunlight flashed on his blade as, with a flick of his wrist, the piece of human flesh flew from the tip of the knife high into the air, like a pellet, before settling heavily on the head of a swarthy soldier, like a glob of bird shit. The man screeched, as if a brick had landed on his head; he wobbled uncertainly.

Based on an age-old executioner’s custom, the first piece of the victim is a sacrifice to heaven.

Fresh blood oozed from the hole in Qian’s chest like a string of bright red pearls. Some dripped to the ground; some snaked down from the edges of the wound to stain his muscular chest.

The second cut, taken from the left side, was as deftly and neatly accomplished as the first. The remaining nipple was cut away. Qian’s chest was now decorated by matching holes the size of bronze coins. Less blood flowed this time. The blow to his chest had made his heart contract, and that had abated the flow of blood throughout his body, a technique that had evolved out of the experience of generations of executioners in the Bureau of Detentions, perfection based on trial and error.

Qian maintained the noble expression of fearlessness he had worn before the first cut, but a series of moans so soft that only Zhao Jia could hear them emerged, seemingly from his ears, not his mouth. Zhao forced himself to look away from Qian’s face. He was used to hearing wretched shrieks of pain from condemned prisoners as they were being sliced, howls that did nothing to disturb his unfaltering composure. But not hearing a sound from the valiant Qian Xiongfei, who clenched his teeth to keep from crying out, actually rattled him, as if something terrible were about to happen. Forcibly controlling his emotions, he raised the fleshy coin on the tip of his knife, as he knew he must do, displaying it first to His Excellency, then to the officers, and last to the ashen-faced soldiers, who stood before him like clay statues. His apprentice announced:

“The second cut!”

Zhao Jia had figured out that the legal and psychological foundation for the ritual of displaying fleshy parts sliced from the prisoner’s body to the officials in charge of the execution and to the observers was built on three principles: First, it was a display of the harsh rule of law and the unflinching dedication to it by the executioner. Second, it served to instill the fear of retribution in the minds of witnesses, who could be counted on to turn away from evil thoughts and criminal behavior. That was why the Imperial Court had staged public executions and encouraged attendance by the populace throughout the nation’s dynastic history. Third, it satisfied people’s bloodlust. The finest play ever staged cannot compete with the spectacle of a public slicing, and for this more than any other reason, executioners in the capital were contemptuous of actors, who were so highly favored in royal circles.

As he held up the second piece of Qian’s flesh for all to see, Zhao was reminded of scenes from his youth, when he was learning the trade from his shifu. In order to perfect the fine art of the slicing death, executioners for the Bureau of Detentions worked closely with a butcher shop just outside Chongwen Gate. During the off-season, the shifu took his students to the shop to practice their skills; there they helped turn the meat from countless pigs into filling for dumplings, and in the process developed a dexterity of hand and eye as accurate as a scale. If the call was for a pound of meat, a single cut would produce exactly sixteen ounces. When Grandma Yu was the keeper of the Bureau of Detentions official seal, the execution team opened a butcher shop on Walking Stick Lane in the Xisi, or West Fourth, District, where they slaughtered animals in back and sold the meat up front, enjoying a brisk business until one day someone revealed their identities. People not only stopped coming to buy their meat, they obsessively avoided the area, fearing they might be taken off the street and butchered.

He recalled that his shifu kept a secret book with brittle, yellowing pages and crude drawings, with coded writing. According to Grandma Yu, the book, Secrets of a Penal Office, had been passed down by a Ming Dynasty grandma; it comprised lists of punishments, their concrete applications, matters to take into consideration, and copious illustrations. In a word, it was a classic text for executioners. Shifu pointed out to him and his fellow apprentices an illustration and accompanying text that described in detail the particulars of the slicing death, of which there were three levels. The first level required 3,357 cuts. For the second level it was 2,896, and for the third, 1,585. Regardless of how many cuts there were to be, he recalled hearing Shifu say, the final cut was the one that ended the prisoner’s life. So when the cutting began, the spacing between cuts must be precisely designed to fit the sex and physique of the condemned individual. If the prisoner died before the required number of cuts had been reached or was still alive after, the executioner had not done his job well. His shifu said that the minimum standard for the slicing death was the proportional size of the flesh removed—when placed on a scale, there should be only minimal differences. To that end, during an execution, the man with the knife must have his emotions under complete control. His mind must be clear and focused, his hand ruthless and resolute; he must simultaneously be like a maiden practicing embroidery and a butcher slaughtering a mule. The slightest hesitancy or indecision, even a spur-of-the-moment thought, would affect the hand in unwanted ways. This, the pinnacle of achievement, was exceedingly difficult to attain. The musculature of a human being varies from spot to spot in density and coherence. Knowing where to insert the knife, and with how much pressure, requires a skill that, over time, had become second nature. Gifted executioners, such as Elder Gao Tao and Elder Zhang Tang, sliced not with a knife and not with their hands, but with their minds and their eyes. Among the thousands of slicing deaths carried out down through the ages, none, it seems, had achieved perfection and been worthy of the term “masterpiece.” In virtually every case, what was accomplished was merely the dissection of a living human being. That appeared to explain why fewer cuts were required for slicing deaths in recent years. In the current dynasty, five hundred was the apex. And yet, precious few executions lasted nearly that long. Board of Punishments executioners, in respectful devotion to the sacred nature of this ancient profession, performed their duties in accordance with established practices handed down over time. But at the provincial, prefectural, sub-prefectural, and county levels, dragons and fish were all jumbled together—the good mixed with the bad—and most practitioners were hacks and local riffraff who did shoddy work and exerted minimal effort. If on a prisoner sentenced to five hundred cuts they made it to two or three hundred, that was considered a success. Most of the time, they chopped the victim into several chunks and quickly put him out of his misery.

Zhao Jia flung the second piece of meat cut from Qian’s body to the ground. To an executioner, the second piece of the victim is a sacrifice to the earth.

When Zhao was displaying the piece of meat on the tip of his knife for all to see, he was, he felt, the central figure, while the tip of his knife and the flesh stuck on it were the center of that center. The eyes of everyone in attendance, from the supremely prideful Excellency Yuan down to the most junior soldier in the formation, followed the progress of his knife, or, more accurately, the progress of Qian’s flesh impaled on that knife. When Qian’s flesh flew into the air, the observers’ eyes followed its ascent; when Qian’s flesh was flung to the ground, the observers’ eyes followed its descent. According to his shifu, in slicing deaths of old, every piece of flesh cut from the victim was laid out on a specially prepared surface, so that when the execution was completed, the official observer, along with members of the victim’s family, could come forward to count. One piece too many or too few was a serious transgression. According to his master, one slapdash executioner of the Song Dynasty made one too many cuts, and the complaint by the victim’s family cost him his life. Public executioner has always been a precarious profession, since a poor performance can itself be a death sentence. Consider: you must remove pieces of roughly the same size, the last cut must be the fatal one, and you must keep track of every cut you make. Three thousand three hundred and fifty-seven cuts require a full day, and there were times, by order of the sentencing authority, when the process was stretched out to three or as many as five days, making the work that much harder. A staunchly dedicated executioner invariably collapsed from fatigue at the end of a slicing death. As time went on, executioners heeded the travails of their predecessors by flinging away the excised flesh rather than laying it out for others to count. Old execution grounds were known for the wild dogs, crows, and vultures that prowled the area; slicing deaths provided feast days for these visitors.

He dipped a clean chamois into a basin of salty water and wiped the blood from Qian’s chest. The knife holes now resembled the fresh scars of severed tree branches. Then he made his third cut on Qian’s chest. Also about the size of a bronze coin, it was made in the shape of a fish scale. This fresh wound abutted the edge of one of the earlier wounds but retained its distinct shape. His shifu had said that this had a name of its own—the fish-scale cut, for that is exactly what it resembled. The flesh exposed by the third cut was a ghostly white, from which only a few drops of blood poked out, the sign of a good beginning; that augured well for the entire process, to his immense satisfaction. Shifu had said that a successful slicing death was marked by a modest flow of blood. He had told him that the blow to the heart before the first cut constricted the victim’s major arteries. Most of the blood was then concentrated in his abdomen and calves. Only then can you make a series of cuts, like slicing a cucumber, without killing the victim. Absent this technique, blood will flow unchecked, creating a terrible stench and staining the body, which has a powerful effect on the observers and destroys the symmetry of the cuts—a real mess. To be sure, a lifetime of experience had equipped these men with a talent to deal with any unanticipated situation. They were not easily flustered or caught unprepared. For instance, if a heavy flow of blood made cutting difficult or impossible, the immediate recourse was to empty a bucket of cold water on the victim. The shock would constrict his arteries. If that did not work, a bucket of vinegar would. According to the Compendium of Materia Medica, vinegar is an astringent whose properties work to stanch the flow of blood. If that too failed, removing a piece of flesh from each calf served as a bloodletting. This last technique, however, normally led to an early death from a loss of blood. But Qian’s arteries appeared to be well constricted. Zhao Jia could relax, for indications were that today’s affair had a good chance of success, and the bucket of aged Shanxi vinegar on the ground near the post would not be needed. In the unwritten code of the profession, the shop that supplied a bucket of vinegar received no payment for it and was required to give the executioner a “vinegar reclaim fee” if it was not used. The vinegar had to be donated by the merchant, not sold, and a fee for its non-use was an extravagantly unreasonable demand. And yet the Qing Dynasty placed greater value on ancestral precedents than on the law. However outmoded or irrational a practice, so long as there was a historical precedent, it could not and must not be abandoned. To the contrary, it gained increased inviolability over time. In Qing tradition, a criminal who was about to be executed enjoyed the privilege of sampling food and drink at any establishment passed on his way to the execution ground, free of charge. And the executioner enjoyed the privilege of receiving a free bucket of vinegar as well as a fee for not using it. By rights, the vinegar should have been returned to the shop that supplied it, but it was sold to a pharmacy instead, for now that it had soaked up the blood airs of the executed criminal, it was no longer ordinary vinegar, but a cure-all for the sick and dying, and had acquired the name “blessed vinegar.” Naturally, the pharmacy paid for this bucket of “blessed vinegar,” and since executioners were given no fees for the tasks they performed, they were forced to rely upon such earnings to make a living. He flung the third piece of flesh into the air, a sacrifice to the ghosts and gods. His apprentice announced:

“The third cut!”

Having flung away the third piece, Zhao went immediately to the fourth cut. Qian’s flesh was crisp, easy to cut, a quality he found only in criminals who were in excellent physical shape. Slicing up a criminal as fat as a pig or as skinny as a monkey was exhausting work. But beyond exhaustion, a messy job was inevitable. An apt comparison would be a fine chef forced to work with substandard ingredients. Even the most skillful preparation cannot produce an outstanding banquet without the finest ingredients. Or for a carpenter who lacks the right material for his task, even uncanny workmanship is inadequate to produce high-grade furniture. Shifu told him that during the Daoguang reign he was assigned the task of dispatching a woman who had conspired with her lover to murder her husband. The woman was as blubbery as a sack of starchy noodles, so loose that her flesh quivered whenever the knife touched her. The stuff he cut off her body was like frothy snot, and not even the dogs would eat it. And she shrieked like a banshee, howling and wailing that so upset him, a work of art was out of the question. He said there had been good specimens of her sex, women whose skin and flesh had the texture of congealed fat that cut with ease and precision. It was like cutting through autumn water. The knife moved on its own, without the slightest deviation. He said he had dispatched just such an ideal woman during the Xianfeng reign. She had been condemned, it was said, as a prostitute who had murdered one of her clients for money. According to Shifu, she was a woman of surpassing beauty, the sort of gentle, demure woman who draws people to her at first sight. No one would have believed that she could actually commit murder. He said that the greatest degree of compassion an executioner can bestow upon his victim is to do his job well. If you respect or love her, then it is your duty to see that she becomes a model for execution. If you truly respect her, then you must fearlessly make her body the canvas on which you display the highest standards of your artistry. It is no different from a renowned actor performing onstage. Shifu said that so many Peking citizens thronged to watch the beautiful prostitute suffer the slicing death that more than twenty people were crushed or trampled to death on the marketplace execution ground. He said that in the presence of such a beautiful body, it would have been a sin, a crime, not to put all he had into the task before him, heart and soul. More to the point, if he had made a mess of things, an angry crowd might have torn him to pieces, for Peking crowds at executions were harder to please than any other. He did a fine job that day, with the cooperation of the woman herself. Seen from one angle, it was, from start to finish, a stage performance, acted out by the executioner and his victim. Such performances were spoiled if the criminal overdid the screaming part; but a total lack of sounds was just as bad. The ideal was just the right number of rhythmic wails, producing sham expressions of sympathy among the observers while satisfying their evil aestheticism. Shifu said that he had gained an insight into people only after thousands of individuals had died at his hands over a stretch of decades: All people, he said, are two-faced beasts. One of those faces displays the virtues of humanity, justice, and morality, representing the three cardinal guides and five constant virtues. The other is the face of bloodsucking thieves and whores. The appetite for evil is stimulated in anyone who willingly watches the spectacle of a beautiful woman being dismembered one cut at a time, whether that person be a man of honor, a virtuous wife, or a chaste maiden. Subjecting a beautiful woman to the slicing death is mankind’s most exquisitely cruel exhibition. The people who flock to such exhibitions, Shifu said, are far more malicious than those of us who wield the knife. He said he spent many sleepless nights reliving every detail of that day’s execution, like a chess master replaying each move in a brilliant match that has forged his reputation. That night he mentally dismembered her body, then pictured it all coming back together. Her tearful yet melodic moans and shrieks swirled around his ears from start to finish in an unbroken stream. And the captivating odor that emerged from her body as it was being ravaged by his knife filled his nostrils. An ill wind struck the nape of his neck, a swoosh created by the beating wings of impatient, rapacious birds of prey. His infatuated recollections paused briefly at that juncture, like a pose struck by an actor on the operatic stage. At this point, little skin or flesh remained on her body, but her face was unmarked, and it was time for the coup de grace. His heart lurched as he sliced off a piece of her heart. It was deep red, the color of a fresh date; he held it on the tip of his knife like a precious gem as he looked into her ashen oval face, moved by the sight. He heard a sigh emerge from somewhere deep down in her chest. Sparks—not many, just a few—seemed to glimmer in her eyes, from which two large teardrops slipped down her face. He saw her lips move with difficulty and heard her say, soft as a mosquito’s buzz: “not . . . guilty . . .” The light went out of her eyes; the flame of life was extinguished. Her head, which had rocked back and forth throughout the ordeal, slumped forward, covered by a curtain of hair so black it looked as if it had just been taken out of a dyeing vat.

Zhao Jia’s fiftieth cut completed the paring of Qian’s chest muscles. The first tenth of his work was now behind him. After his apprentice handed him a new knife, he took two deep breaths in order to normalize his breathing. Qian’s ribs were exposed, as he could see, connected by thin membranes. The man’s heart was pumping like a jackrabbit wrapped in gauze. He felt good about his progress so far. The flow of blood had been stanched, and the fiftieth cut had removed the chest muscles, just as he had planned. The sole blemish so far was that the valiant man bound to the post had not made a sound, had not yelled in pain. This flaw had turned what should have been a spirited drama into a mime performance that lacked appeal. In the eyes of these people, he was thinking, I am a butcher, a meat merchant. He deeply admired this Qian fellow, who, except for a few barely perceptible moans during the first two cuts, had not made a sound. He looked into the man’s face, and what he saw were: hair standing up straight, eyes wide and round, the dark pupils nearly blue, the whites now red, nostrils flaring, teeth grinding, and taut cheek muscles bulging like a pair of mice. The ferocity of that face secretly astounded him. Soreness crept into the hand holding the knife. If the victim was a man, tradition demanded that once the chest muscles had been pared away, next to be taken from the body were his genitals. For this, three cuts were permitted, and the size of the excised portions need not complement other portions. Decades of experience had shown his shifu that what male subjects feared most was not the loss of skin or tendons, but the treasured object between their legs. Not because it was especially painful—it wasn’t—but because it gave rise to a psychological dread and a sense of shame. Most men would choose to lose their head over losing their maleness. According to the shifu, once you have removed even the bravest man’s genitals, you have taken the fight out of him, the same effect as cutting the mane of a warhorse or the plume of a proud rooster. Zhao Jia turned away from the solemn and tragic face that was putting him on edge and sized up his flaccid organ. It was shriveled pathetically, like a silkworm tucked into its cocoon. I’m truly sorry, young friend, he muttered to himself as he picked it out of its nest with his left hand and, in one lightning-fast motion, sliced it off at its base. His apprentice announced:

“The fifty-first cut!”

He flung the once-treasured object away, and a skinny, mangy dog that had come out of nowhere snatched it up and darted in amid the military formation, where it began to yelp as soldiers kicked it. A forlorn howl of despair tore from the mouth of Qian, who until then had endured the torture by clenching his teeth. Zhao Jia had expected that, and yet it shocked him. He was not aware that he was blinking lightning-fast, but his hands were burning and swelling, as if red-hot needles were pricking his fingers. It was a discomfort he could not possibly describe. Qian’s howl—neither human nor beastly—had a horrifying quality that both unnerved and sent shivers through the ranks of the Right Militant Guard, who were witnessing the execution. Logic demanded that His Excellency ought to have been moved by the sound, but Zhao Jia had no time to turn back and scrutinize the reaction of Yuan and the high-ranking officials around him. He heard snorts of terror from the horses, which were loudly champing the bits in their mouths and agitating the bells hanging from their necks; he saw how the tight leggings arrayed behind the execution post seemed to be straining to break free. Qian’s body squirmed in concert with his repeated howls, while his heart, which could be seen behind exposed ribs, was thumping loudly enough to hear and so violently that Zhao Jia actually worried it might leap out of his chest. If that happened, the execution, a slicing death that had been days in the planning, would end in abject failure. Not only would it be a loss of face for the Board of Punishments, but it would make even His Excellency Yuan look bad. That was the last thing Zhao wanted, but it was made more possible by Qian’s head, which began to rock backward and forward and from side to side, producing loud thumps against the post. His eyes were blood-streaked, his features twisted beyond recognition, a look that would forever haunt the dreams of anyone seeing that face. Zhao Jia had never seen anything like it, nor, he knew, had his shifu. His hands were tingly and so uncomfortably swollen he could barely hold the knife. He glanced up at his apprentice, whose face was the color of clay and whose mouth hung wide open. For him to take over and finish the job was out of the question. So he forced himself to bend down and dig out one of Qian’s testicles, which had shrunk into his body. One swift cut detached it. The fifty-second cut, he coached his apprentice, who stood there transfixed until he was able to announce, barely able to keep from sobbing:

“The . . . fifty-second . . . cut . . .”

He tossed the sac to the ground, where it lay in the dirt looking hideous. For the first time in all his years in the profession, he experienced something unique, for him, at least: disgust.

“F*cking . . . bastard!” In an earthshaking display of loathing, Qian Xiongfei somehow found the strength to curse: “Yuan Shikai, Yuan Shikai, you turncoat, I may not be able to kill you in this life, but I will return as a ghost to take your life!”

Zhao Jia, afraid to turn his head, could only imagine the look on Excellency Yuan’s face at that moment. Desperate to finish the job, he bent down again, dug out the second testicle, and cut it off. But as he was straightening up, Qian Xiongfei leaned over and bit him on the head. Since he was wearing a cap, the bite did not inflict serious damage, but it did break the skin, even through the cloth cap. Well after the incident, Zhao shuddered when he considered the possibility that Qian could have bitten him on the neck and chewed his way into his throat; or if he had bitten him on the ear, he’d have lost that organ for sure. Experiencing a strange pain on his scalp, he jerked his head upward and connected with Qian’s chin. He heard the frightful crunch of Qian’s teeth as they bit through his tongue, which sent blood spurting from his mouth. But that did not keep him from hurling epithets, now less intelligible, though by no means incoherent, and still directed at Yuan Shikai. The fifty-third cut. As Zhao Jia threw down the thing in his hand, he saw flashes of light in front of his eyes, he felt light-headed, and his stomach lurched. He clenched his teeth to keep whatever it was down, telling himself that he mustn’t vomit, not now; for if he did, the power of intimidation enjoyed by Board of Punishments executioners would die in his hands.

“Cut out his tongue!”

Yuan Shikai’s voice thundered behind him in all its fury. Instinctively, he turned to look. Yuan’s face was livid as he smacked his knee with his fist and forcefully repeated his command:

“Cut out his tongue!”

Zhao Jia wanted to tell him that this was not the way of his ancestors, but the look of rage, born of mortification, on His Excellency’s face made him swallow his words. What good would it have done to say anything, when even the Empress Dowager respected almost anything that Excellency Yuan said? So he turned his attention to Qian’s tongue.

Qian’s damaged tongue had turned his face into too bloody a mess to make Zhao’s knife effective. Cutting out the tongue of a crazed condemned individual was a bit like trying to pull the teeth of a tiger. But Zhao was not foolhardy enough to ignore Yuan’s command. Without wasting time, he thought back to his shifu’s teachings and what experience he had gained from them, but nothing helpful came to mind. Qian was still shouting invectives. Excellency Yuan repeated his command yet again:

“I said, cut out his tongue!”

At that critical moment, the spirit of the profession’s founder saved the day with an inspiration. After placing the knife between his teeth, he picked a bucket of water up off the ground and emptied it into Qian’s face, bringing an immediate halt to his curses. Then he wrapped his hands around Qian’s throat and squeezed with all his might. Qian’s face turned the color of pig’s liver as his purple tongue emerged from between his teeth. Squeezing the man’s throat with one hand, Zhao reached up with the other, took the knife from between his teeth, and sliced off the tongue. This spur-of-the-moment change to the ritual brought a roar from the formation of soldiers, like a wave crashing over a sandbar.

Zhao displayed Qian’s defiant tongue in the palm of his hand, feeling it twitch like a dying frog. “The fifty-fourth cut,” he murmured weakly before throwing Qian’s tongue onto the ground in front of Excellency Yuan.

“The fifty . . . fourth cut . . .” his apprentice announced.

Qian Xiongfei’s face had turned the color of gold. Blood gurgled from his lips. A mixture of blood and water slid down his body. He was still cursing, even without a tongue. But now there was no way to tell what he was saying and whom he was cursing.

Zhao Jia’s hands were burning up and seemed in danger of being reduced to ashes. He was on the verge of collapse. Professional pride, however, kept him focused on the job at hand. Yuan’s disruptive order to cut out the man’s tongue had freed him to put his victim out of his misery without delay, but a sense of responsibility and personal ethics would not let him do that. As he saw it, not inflicting the requisite number of cuts was more than a blasphemy against the laws of the Great Qing Dynasty; it was an act of disrespect toward the good man tied to the post before him. Under no circumstances could he allow Qian to die before the five-hundredth cut. If he did, he would give credence to the view that Board of Punishments executioners were little more than common butchers.

Zhao Jia wiped the bloody water from Qian Xiongfei’s skin with a chamois dipped in saltwater; then, while rinsing it in a bucket of clean water, he cooled his overheated hands and dried them. Qian’s tongue-less mouth was still vigorously opening and closing, but the sounds coming out of it were growing weak. Zhao knew he needed to speed up the process, remove smaller pieces of flesh, and avoid spots with heavy concentrations of blood vessels. It had become necessary to make a practical adjustment in the cutting scheme he’d begun with. Rather than call into question the skills of a Board of Punishments executioner, this change was a direct result of Yuan’s disruptive command. In a move that went unnoticed by the witnesses, he jabbed the tip of his knife into his own thigh to produce a sharp pain that drove away his sluggishness and at the same time took his mind off his burning hands. With renewed energy, he stopped worrying about Yuan Shikai and the ranking officials behind him and gave no more thought to the five thousand soldiers arrayed in front. His knife began swirling like the wind, removing pieces of Qian’s flesh that rained down like hailstones or a swarm of beetles. The next two hundred cuts removed all the flesh and muscles from Qian’s thighs, followed by fifty cuts to do the same to his upper arms. Fifty cuts in the abdomen preceded seventy-five on each side of his buttocks. By that time, Qian’s life was hanging by a thread, though light still burned in his eyes. Bloody foam oozed from his mouth, while his viscera, now bereft of constraint by muscles and skin, strained to exit his body. That was particularly true of his intestines, which were writhing like a nest of vipers beneath a thin membrane cover. Zhao Jia straightened up and exhaled. He was sweating profusely; his crotch had gotten sticky, from either blood or sweat, it was hard to tell which. He was paying for his desire to honor the life of Qian Xiongfei and uphold the prestige of the Board of Punishments executioners with his own blood and sweat.

Six cuts remained. With the knowledge that success was within his grasp, Zhao Jia could bring an end to the performance at a more comfortable pace. With the four hundred ninety-fifth cut, he sliced off Qian’s left ear. It had felt like a chunk of ice in his hand. Then came the right ear, and when he threw it to the ground, the formerly emaciated dog whose full belly now scraped the ground ambled up to sniff the latest offering before turning and walking off in a show of contempt, leaving behind a foul-smelling discharge from beneath its tail. Qian’s ears lay untouched and unwanted in the dirt, like a matching pair of gray seashells. Zhao Jia was reminded of something his shifu had told him. When he was carrying out the slicing death on that exquisite prostitute on the marketplace execution ground, he had sliced off her delicate left ear, from which a pearl-studded gold earring dangled. The ear had held a powerful attraction for him; forbidden, however, from taking anything away from the execution ground, he had no choice but to reluctantly throw it to the ground. A mob of transfixed observers broke through the cordon of guards and swarmed to the spot like a tidal wave; their crazed, terrifying behavior drove away the birds of prey and wild animals prowling the execution site, all in pursuit of the detached ear. It may have been the gold earring they were after, but the shifu, knowing that this interruption could ruin everything, sprang into action by immediately slicing off the prostitute’s other ear and flinging it as far as he could. His quick action saved the day by diverting the onrushing crowd. His reputation as a man of superior intelligence was well earned.

Qian Xiongfei now presented a ghastly sight. Zhao readied himself for the four hundred ninety-seventh cut. By tradition, he had two options. He could cut out the condemned man’s eyes or cut off his lips. Since Qian’s lips were already such an awful mess, to do more seemed a shame, so he decided to cut out his eyes. Zhao knew that Qian was going to die with an unresolved grievance, but in the end, what did that matter? Young brother, he muttered to himself, you have no voice in this decision, but by removing your eyes, I will let you become a ghost that is content with its lot. The heart cannot grieve over what the eyes cannot see. This will cause you less suffering down in the bowels of Hell. No suffering in either this world or the next.

Qian closed his eyes just as Zhao held his knife up to them, catching him by surprise. This cooperation brought Zhao feelings of immense gratitude, since removing the organs of sight was an unpleasant task, even for someone who killed for a living. Taking advantage of the opportunity granted him, he inserted the tip of his knife into a socket and, with an almost imperceptible flick of his wrist, out popped a clearly defined eyeball. “The four hundred ninety-seventh cut,” he said weakly.

“The four hundred ninety-seventh cut . . .” His apprentice’s announcement was barely audible.

But when Zhao held his knife up to the right eye, it opened unexpectedly; at the same time, Qian released the last howl of his life. Even Zhao shuddered at the sound, and dozens of soldiers fell to the ground like bricks in a collapsing wall. Zhao had no choice but to apply his knife to Qian Xiongfei’s remaining eye, which was blazing. What emerged from that eye was not so much a ray of light as a red-hot gas. Zhao Jia’s hand was burning as he fought to hold on to the slippery handle. Young brother, he said prayerfully, close your eye. But this time Qian would not cooperate, and Zhao knew he mustn’t delay, not even for a moment. He forced himself to act, slipping the tip of his knife into the right eye, and as he circled the socket, he heard a barely audible hissing sound. Yuan Shikai could not hear it; the ranking officials standing in front of their horses, looks of utter terror on their faces, perhaps like foxes grieving over the death of the hare, could not hear it; and the five thousand soldiers who had been reduced to wooden statues with bowed heads could not hear it. What they all heard was the flaming, toxic howl that exploded out of the ruined mouth of Qian Xiongfei, a sound that had the power to drive an ordinary man insane. But it had no effect on Zhao Jia. What had affected him, nearly rocked him to his soul, was the hissing sound the tip of his knife made as it circled the eye socket. For a brief moment, he went blind and deaf as the hiss entered his body, encircled his viscera, and took root in the marrow of his bones. It would not leave easily, not then and not later. “The four hundred ninety-eighth cut,” he said.

His apprentice lay passed out in the dirt.

Dozens more soldiers fell headlong to the ground.

Qian’s eyes lay brightly on the ground, sending gloomy, deathly blue-white rays through the mud that all but covered them, as if staring at something. Zhao Jia knew exactly what they were staring at—it was Yuan Shikai—and the thought that crowded his mind was: would Yuan recall the gaze from those two eyes in his memories of that day?

Zhao Jia was beyond exhaustion. Not long before this, he had beheaded the Six Gentlemen of the failed Hundred Days Reform movement, an event that had caused a national, even an international, sensation. In appreciation of the great Liu Guangdi’s talents in front of his apprentices, he had sharpened the sword named “Generalissimo,” which had become rusty and saw-toothed, until it could cut a hair that fell on it in half. The other five gentlemen owed their swift, painless deaths to their association with Liu Guangdi. When he lopped off their heads with Generalissimo, it was lightning quick, and he was sure that all they felt when their heads were separated from their bodies was a momentary breath of cool air on their necks. Owing to the speed of decapitation, some of the headless bodies flopped forward, and others jerked upward. The faces all had the appearance of being alive, and he believed that long after the heads were rolling in the dirt, clear thoughts continued to swirl inside. After the Six Gentlemen had been dispatched, talk of miracles created by a Board of Punishments executioner swept through the capital. All sorts of fanciful tales relating to the six executions passed from mouth to ear. One story, for instance, related how the headless body of Tan Sitong, of Hunan’s Liuyang County, ran up to Excellency Gang Yi, the official in charge of the executions, and slapped him across the face. In another, as it rolled along the ground, the head of Liu Guangdi, known also as Liu Peicun, intoned a poem in such a loud voice that thousands of witnesses heard it. Even an event of this magnitude had failed to tire Grandma Zhao, and yet on this day, in the city of Tianjin, the responsibility of carrying out the slicing death on an insignificant captain of a mounted bodyguard unit had so enervated the preeminent executioner of the land that he could barely stand. Even stranger was the fact that he could not keep his hands from feeling as if they were burning up.

The nose fell at the four hundred ninety-ninth cut. By then, nothing emerged from Qian’s mouth but bloody froth—no more sounds. His head, once supported by a strong, rigid neck, now hung limply to his chest.

The final cut—the coup de grace—entered Qian’s heart, from which black blood the color and consistency of melted malt sugar slid down the knife blade. The strong smell of that blood once again made Zhao nauseous. He cut out a piece of the heart with the tip of his knife and, with his head slumped, announced to his feet:

“May it please Your Excellency, the five hundredth cut.”