CHINA: No More Headsmen

In Nanking last week, the progressive Nationalist Government passed a decree forbidding decapitation as a method of punishment. The abolishment of decapitation, however, does not even remotely imply the abolishment of capital punishment in China. It is merely the long, bright, classic sword of the headsman that has been abolished—an antiquated relic deemed unworthy of modern, mechanistic Nationalist China. A Chinese execution is always something of a local holiday. The victim is allowed to drink his fill of rice wine until blissfully intoxicated. At the execution grounds, he kneels down, head thrust forward. Under the old regime it was the executioner’s duty to take a two-handed, heavy-bladed sword, and from a comfortable stance remove the prisoner’s head with one well-timed full swing. In the new order of things, prisoners’ brains will be blown out by pressing a revolver barrel firmly against the back of the skull and pulling the trigger.