Waist chop (腰斬; 腰斩; yāo zhǎn) or waist cutting was a form of execution used in ancient China. As its name implies, it involved the condemned being sliced into two at the waist by an executioner.
History
Waist chop first appeared in the Zhou dynasty. There were three forms of execution used in the Zhou dynasty: chelie (車裂; quartering the prisoner alive), zhan (斬; waist chop), and sha (殺; beheading). Sometimes the chopping was not limited to one slice. Gao Qi, a Ming dynasty poet, was sentenced by the Hongwu Emperor to be sliced into eight parts for his politically satirical writing. An episode not attested in the official histories tells that in 1734, Yu Hongtu (俞鴻圖), the Education Administrator of Henan, was sentenced to waist chop. After being cut in two at the waist, he stayed alive long enough to write the Chinese character cǎn (慘; "terrible/miserable") seven times with his own blood before dying. After hearing this, the Yongzheng Emperor abolished this form of execution.