Talk:Lingchi

External links

Did _anyone_ who voted for deletion even read the references at the external links?

Well I have read some of the external links. They look rubbish to me. There are major problems with this article and I hardly know where to begin. But I will have a try. Lao Wai 09:24, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Got some interesting books here on the subject, most interesting is the picture of a sliced corpse from 1927 in Canton. Once I get my scanner working I will scan it in. I think from what I've read the issue arises from two things - firstly what westerners call China isnt what the Chinese necessarily do. The second is it appears the punishment varied widely depending on where they were. For example in Manchuria there was a cutting of the heart, this wasn't done to the victim in Canton who's torso is uncut. There are also other photographs I have which all match up perfectly with the 'racist' u.s marine statements. As a result we have a lot of differences which are only compounded by the subsequent western urban legends, a bit like hanging/gibbeting if you lump them into one or whipping/flaying you would end up with a situation of complete confusion.--Gothicform 19:03, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Alleged plagiarism

User:12.210.112.76 added the following text to the article:

"I need to bring up some EXTREME plagiarism issues here, which need to be noted somehow. I don't know wiki ettiquette, but this is urgent, so I am posting on the main page. This entry is the same as the one on http://www.answers.com/topic/death-by-a-thousand-cuts. I don't know who is plagiarizing who, but it is clear that someone is plagiarizing here. Although the first two parapraphs differ slightly, the rest is exactly the same. What should be done?"

I removed it and placed it here, where it belongs. dbtfz^talk 03:35, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

For anyone wondering: Answers.com's entire Reference section is an out-of-date copy of Wikipedia. At the bottom of the above-mentioned page, there is a copyright notice saying:

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Death by a thousand cuts".

Such copying is explicitly permitted by Wikipedia, as long as something like the above notice is present in the copy. Rizome 23:00, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Article merge

I happened to notice a duplicate article, so I'ver marked it to be merged into this one. --ElizabethFong 21:28, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

• Since ling che is clearly just another spelling of lingchi, the Chinese name adopted in the other article, there can hardly be any rational objection to a merge, so I attempt one at once. Fastifex 13:34, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually there is an excellent reason not to merge - Lingchi exists. It was a punishment. The death by a thousand cuts is a figment of Western imagination. And now after a lot of work making that distinction clear this article is again full of nonsense. I suggest a wholesale reversion to make is clear this article is about a racist myth and when I get around to it I will fix lingchi. Lao Wai 13:53, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that on this talk page, there are two things which are not debated. One is that there was an officially sanctioned, deliberate policy of punishing people by painful slicing. The other is that this punishment was exaggerated by Western or other sources. Could the solution here be as simple as changing the title of the article to "Lingchi" and noting the connection to the fictitious or exaggerated "death of a thousand cuts?" The only thing people really seem to disagree on is the degree to which the practice has been exaggerated in the sources.

I'm no kind of expert on this, and I'm speaking as somebody who stumbled on this page accidentally and was interested. I agree with Lao Wai that the emphasis seems to be wrong. Starting with the exaggeration and then pointing out that there was an actual background for it makes it unnecessarily confusing to the totally ignorant (i.e. myself).Militiades 22:01, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

chinese bias in this article?

i see someone chinese with a poor grasp of english has rewritten this to make it sound like there is a western conspiracy showing that not a single person died from this after 1905, even as a result of war crimes despite much evidence to show otherwise. we should revert this part of the article back

Actually there is no evidence that anyone ever died of it at all. And certainly once the actual form of execution this myth was based on was abolished in 1905 it is highly unlikely that anyone died of that. What evidence? Lao Wai 18:13, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

It's as impossible to prove that no one was killed by this method after 1905 as it is to prove that anyone actually was. It would be more accurate to say that no case has been reliably documented, and that it certainly wasn't done by any official body as a part of an officially sanctioned policy (since the practice had, as noted, been outlawed).Militiades 22:22, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, you can't prove a negative, so the burden of proof is on those who say that lingchi was used after 1905.--Niohe 22:14, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree that some of the language in this article needs to be examined. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 08:23, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

• It would be good to have some Chinese sources for this. I am no Sinologist, but there are detailed accounts of língchí that took place in Lhasa in 1728, when the Chinese re-established control after a phase of internecine Tibetan strife, and those responsible for the murder of the Tibetan nobleman Kanchenas were publicly executed. Their deaths by slicing are described in the Tibetan chronicle Mi-dbang-rtogs-brjod and by the Capuchins who were living in Lhasa at that time (see p. 149 of L.Petech, China and Tibet in the early XVIIIth century, 1972). Stammer 20:18, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Marine accounts

Re:

As the online Marine history notes, "Apparently these photographs were commercially available, because there are exact duplicates in many scrapbooks with the name of a commercial studio stamped on the backs of the photographs." Clearly, then, these 'curiosities' may have been widely circulating images bearing little relation to frequent practice, nor, indeed, any similarity with the reported practice that had existed prior to the 1905 prohibition of Slicing.

The latter sentence has an interpretive, even apologetic, feel to it. And the "clearly...may..." construction is confusing. It's one thing to say "clearly" the images were widely circulated, and quite another to suggest they "may" have borne little relation to frequent practice (whatever that means). Note that the photo set depicts a mix of various cruel practices (not just purported linchi). A-giau 07:54, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Page move suggested

I suggest that this page be moved to Slow slicing, which the preferred term in academic literature on Chinese law and punishments. In so doing, we can avoid the debate on "death by a thousand cuts" and possibly delete many unnecessary references to exectuions that have noting to do with Lingchi.--Niohe 23:30, 2 December 2006 (UTC) Another alternative, more neutral, name of this article is lingering death, which is also supported by literature on the subject.--Niohe 00:13, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

The only time I've heard this term used is "Death by a thousand cuts," on the Deadwood TV show - JNighthawk 05:53, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

After reading, I would make the two pages seperate. Keep "Death by a thousand cuts" to describe what it's contemporary use is now, and move língchí info to "Língchí," and include a "Main Article" link on "Death by a thousand cuts." - JNighthawk 06:14, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I removed the move tag since it didn't seem to be generating much interest. The move isn't blocked so feel free to continue discussing and move if there is consensus. —Wknight94 (talk) 04:28, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm making the move now, hope noone objects.--Niohe 19:56, 16 December 2006 (UTC)