Q&A
What were the five punishments of China?
• SHORT ANSWER
Hundreds of crimes, five brutal penalties… judges had an easy job
• LONG ANSWER
For a long time, ancient China’s legal system operated under a simple philosophy that punishments should leave criminals physically and psychologically marked for life and so suitably deterred from reoffending. With that in mind, a literal fistful of punitive measures was devised: mo (tattooing the face); yi (cutting off the nose); yue (amputating a foot); gong (removing the reproductive organs); and dapi (the classic, death).
Said to have been introduced in that quasi-mythological phase of pre-dynastic China, the five punishments lasted for millennia, although they did get a little softer by the Qing dynasty of the 17th century. Instead of cutting off body parts, the sentences dished out were penal servitude, banishment and flogging with sticks (the more serious the crime, the bigger the stick).