The words are commonly, and quite wrongly, translated as "death by slicing into 10,000 pieces"-- a truly awful description of a punishment whose cruelty has been extraordinarily misrepresented.

It is true that no punishment is more dreaded by the Chinese than the _Ling chi_; but it is dreaded, not because of any torture associated with its performance, but because of the dismemberment practised upon the body which was received whole from its parents.

The mutilation is ghastly and excites our horror as an example of barbarian cruelty: but it is not cruel, and need not excite our horror, since the mutilation is done, not before death, but after.
The method is simply the following, which I give as I received it first-hand from an eye-witness:--The prisoner is tied to a rude cross: he is invariably deeply under the influence of opium.

The executioner, standing before him, with a sharp sword makes two quick incisions above the eyebrows, and draws down the portion of skin over each eye, then he makes two more quick incisions across the breast, and in the next moment he pierces the heart, and death is instantaneous.

Then he cuts the body in pieces; and the degradation consists in the fragmentary shape in which the prisoner has to appear in heaven.