PIERCING the ear with various sharp instruments is among the punishments
of the Chinese. A man who had been insolent to one of the suite of Lord
Macartney’s embassy, was sentenced to receive fifty strokes from the
pant-zee or bamboo, in addition to having his hand pinned to his ear by
an iron wire, which was said to have been inflicted immediately after
the bastinade.
The middle figure is an inferior officer of the police, who holds a
painted board on which the crime is exhibited to spectators; the other
personage is a mandarin reproving the culprit.
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[Illustration:
CHINA—PLATE 49
]
Plate XLIX.