Executioner is an ancient profession that was most "popular" during the Qin Dynasty, but was ostracized by society during the Qing Dynasty. The figure of the executioner often appears in film and television dramas, and the most impressive thing is "leave people under the knife!" This sentence, in the imagination of the audience, the executioners are tall and strong, is this actually the case? Before the Qing Dynasty, the executioner was also a "legitimate" profession in people's minds, many executioners were "ancestral", if the father in a family was an executioner, then the father will take over this job when he is old.
In ancient times, executioners had only 3 months of work every year, which was called "execution after autumn". Because in ancient times, only autumn was the season of harvest every year, and the ancients often believed that this was the "mandate of heaven", and in autumn, it was not only fruit, but also sin. So autumn is the season of killing, and in the three months of autumn, it is the time of execution for all death row inmates. The ancients used the name of "Mandate of Heaven" to drive such cruel behaviors in order to make the people feel that this is an irresistible providence, and everything is predestined. This is an act of consolidating rule, and it can be said that it gives a reasonable cloak to the idea of "divine right of kings".
In addition, when the weather turns cold in autumn, the corpses of prisoners are easier to handle, and if the death penalty is carried out in the hot summer, the corpses of many death row inmates may cause the spread of plague. The ancient executioners had 3 months a year to earn money, did they have enough money? In fact, it is completely enough, the ancient executioners are charged per head, about 4 silver dollars.
During the Qin Dynasty, the "wages" of executioners were not high, but in the Han Dynasty, they began to "increase wages". Because the laws were strict during the Qin Dynasty, the executioner did not dare to collect "red packets", and during the Han Dynasty, the policy was relaxed, and the executioner could reasonably collect the "red packets" given by the prisoner's family. The purpose of giving "red envelopes" to executioners in prisoners' homes is to let the executioners "get up and down with their knives" and not let their relatives suffer so much, because not every executioner can pick up and drop the knife, and some executioners need to cut several knives to execute the death row inmates, so many of the family members of death row inmates will earn money to send money to the executioner.
During the Qing Dynasty, due to the influx of Buddhism, most people believed that the profession of executioner would bring misfortune and was very "obscure", so during the Qing Dynasty, the survival of the executioner was very difficult, and even there was no craftsman to help the executioner sharpen the knife, resulting in the executioner during the Qing Dynasty being very "cruel", because the knife was not sharp enough, it was necessary to repeatedly cut the prisoner, so it was very cruel.
Executioner is an not easy profession, people who do this profession will inevitably make people around them afraid, especially during the Qing Dynasty, many Qing Dynasty executioners spent their lives alone. Although the executioner was not feared by people during the Qin and Han dynasties, the influx of various ideas gradually made the executioner gradually cloaked in the cloak of "demon". Therefore, during the Qing Dynasty, if it were not for the "desperate" people, they would not have become executioners. But later, the "shooting" method of execution flowed into China, and gradually replaced the professional executioner and became a new type of execution.