3. Lingchi – the lingering death – used hundreds of carefully placed tiny cuts to ensure the victim would survive for as long as possible until they eventually were either released or received a coup de grâce.
Lingchi, known colloquially in the West as “death by a thousand cuts”, was a ritualistic form of torture prevalent in Imperial China. Reserved for crimes of an especially heinous nature, notably treason, mass murder, or the killing of close family members, lingchi was designed as a cruel method of causing incrementally unbearable agony for its victims. Tied to a wooden frame in a public place, small pieces of flesh would be slowly cut from the body. This practice, in addition to causing immense suffering, was supposed to represent the spiritual defilement of the individual, with their eternal soul unable to reside in one piece in future lives.
Known to have existed since the earliest days of the Qin dynasty, it became a popular practice during the reign of Emperor Tianzuo of the Liao dynasty and more so under the Song. During the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) 100 cuts were traditional, after which the condemned was dispatched with a strike to the heart; by the time of the Ming, records indicate as many as 3,000 cuts were made over as long as three days. Eventually, under pressure from Western nations undergoing their own liberalizations of violent punishments, in 1905, as part of widespread revisions of the Chinese penal code, lingchi was formally abolished as a criminal sentence.