Executioner is a long-standing job. The executioner, as we know it, is generally responsible for the most famous death penalty in the history of the main natural continent , the beheading.
The person who kills the head goes up to heaven and the people, but we may pay little attention to the situation of the person responsible for the head killing himself.
In our impression, this kind of person is generally angry, and if he can avoid it, he will avoid it. But some people will also be curious about the details of the work, such as how the executioner's salary is calculated. Is it performance by head or dead wages?
After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the punishment of beheading was soon banned, and some executioners went into exile. One of them, an executioner named Deng Haishan, was interviewed by the newspaper. Since then, the mysterious executioner and his party have uncovered the tip of its iceberg.
There is also a "low peak season" for head killings.
The off-peak season industry is not uncommon in the mainland, and many hotels and hotels on tourist attractions have this kind of "open for three years, open for three years" situation. But you may not think that executioners also have their own "off-peak season".
However, if you think about it carefully, you can also understand that you often hear a word more or less from various commentaries and cross-talk TV series - autumn queen ask chop. Some friends may feel that this is nothing more than an artistic processing in opera and will not take it seriously.
But in ancient China, the autumn queen not only existed, but also was very strict. Because according to the philosophy of the ancients, in the spring and summer, everything is full of life, and it is not appropriate to kill people.
In autumn and winter, the grass and trees are slaughtered and withered, and the killing is in line with the atmosphere. Therefore, there is no doubt that the spring and summer period is indeed the "off-season" for the executioners, and in the autumn and winter they will begin to take orders in large numbers and send away batches of prisoners.
Hard work of homicide
In the spring and summer, executioners generally have no work, but they are not idle.
Friends who have experience in cooking know that separating bones is not a simple task, it requires a certain amount of skill and strength.
The executioners in the spring and summer need to continue to take things to test the knife, in order to ensure that the prisoner is sent away in the autumn and winter, simply and neatly, and each other is relieved early.
Let's start with the most basic introductory course. Because the executioner was recognized in ancient times as a very detrimental thing, no one would do this if he had a little way to live, so he was quite uninvolved.
The hangman's profession is either family heirloom or private teaching. Therefore, these valuable introductory lessons are not seen from generation to generation, and they appear in the public eye after many years of active disclosure by the executioner himself.
Of course, the so-called master leads into the door and practices in the individual. As an executioner, you are willing to be useless, and your own conditions must also be met.
The executioner must be strong enough, after all, the matter of breaking bones and tendons requires absolute strength. Secondly, the psychological quality is good enough, and the tragic situation of the separation of flesh and blood can still not change color.
During the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty, the only executioner in Shanghai Daotai fell ill and died. The county grand master has not been able to find anyone to fill this vacancy, and even raised his salary to 4 oceans (equivalent to the monthly salary of senior intellectuals in the Republic of China for half a month) and no one came.
Seeing that the death row inmates in the government could not be sent away for a long time, and could not complete the "target" of the punishment department, the county grand master was worried.
Finally, the county grand master had a clever move and found a soldier from the military camp. The eldest brother volunteered to kill people himself, and as a result, he showed cowardice in the first killing.
It turned out that on the day of the execution, this soldier bravely slashed the first knife, and the death row prisoner's eyes were round, and he wailed for a long time before he lost his breath.
This scene gave Bing Yong a great psychological shadow, and when he returned, he retired from the army and never wanted to kill anymore.
I think it is also true that soldiers kill the enemy on the battlefield, and they kill the enemies of the country. The death row inmate did not know himself, and it was really difficult to accept that he would kill him with his own hands.
This is psychological quality. In order to put an end to the tragic phenomenon caused by the above-mentioned splitting, the executioners' headshots are the focus of practice.
Generally, executioners will cut winter melons, and the masters will draw lines for winter melons, require their hands to drop the knife, and split the winter melons in half along that line with a knife before graduating.
After cutting down the winter melon, there are also large trees, meat heads, and even live animals. It is said that a skilled executioner can put a piece of paper under the meat and cut the meat in half with a knife, but the paper is intact.
Income of executioners
As the autumn wind blows, the day has come for the executioners to open their doors and earn money.
Regarding the executioner's salary, it is too long to verify, but according to Master Deng Haishan's statement to reporters, in fact, the executioner's income is quite good.
From the story of the Guangxu years above, we can see that no one really grabbed the executioner's job, and even asked for it.
Therefore, things are rare and expensive, and the high price still has to be given. Moreover, from the perspective of the people at that time, the executioner was also half a person who had dealt with Yan Wangye.
Shanghai is rich, the salary is high, a head of 4 oceans, and some places that are originally poor, although the fixed salary is not as good as Shanghai, but each head of 1-2 oceans is also not a problem.
In addition, the executioner is also a civil servant, even if he does not take orders, he has a fixed monthly salary to support him.
But it doesn't really matter if the fixed salary is given more or less, because most of the executioners' income never comes from these dead wages.
Every year, when the executioner receives a single question, a large number of family members of death row prisoners will come to visit and greet, send silver and food, and only ask the executioner to show mercy, send away with a knife, and give a painful pleasure, so that the prisoner will not be tortured again when he dies.
According to Master Deng Haishan's estimates, on average, for one head cut, the executioners can earn 5 oceans.
According to the purchasing power evaluation theory, 5 oceans is equivalent to the current 2000-3000 yuan, and you can earn so much money after a single order, which shows the high return of this industry.
With generous salaries and red envelopes from their families, the income of most executioners can be said to be quite expensive, and in their leisure time, like Yang Xiong of "Water Margin", they opened a slaughterhouse to invest in side business, which is also considered to be a middle class.
But it has to be said that although the money is earned a lot, the social status of the executioner's profession is really not high.
Painful old age
Because the matter of killing the head is recognized as detrimental to yin morality, not only did the executioner's party not only have no one to do it, but ordinary people on the main road also had to go around the road when they saw it.
Moreover, they also have few families, no filial piety of heirs, and the loneliness in their later years is also a major tragedy.
Although the executioner earns a lot of money, there are limits to killing people. There is an unwritten rule in this line, called to kill to ninety-nine, and then it will be closed.
The so-called murder is not more than a hundred, and if it exceeds a hundred, retribution will be entangled. Therefore, executioners rarely finish their work, most of them earn a lifetime of money in 10 years, and then change their careers to be butchers or small traders.
For example, Master Deng Haishan mentioned above. He did not follow the rules of the executioner, but cut off more than 300 heads, and stopped until the great Qing dynasty killed the head and was abolished.
And he was even told that he couldn't even enter the ancestral hall after he died, the reason was naturally that the killing karma was too heavy. But Deng Haishan was dismissive of this statement. He insisted that he was killing people who should be killed, that they were doing harm to the people, so why did he say that he was hindered?
But even so, Master Deng Haishan's later years were still spent in green lanterns and eating and praying to the Buddha. I wonder if he would have remembered the stormy times of life and death in the past?