From: jamesou@ZYGOTE.HSC.USC.EDU (James Ou)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china
Subject: Re: Forwarding - Re: Cannibalism in China - more Info
Date: 18 Aug 92 20:54:57 GMT

Tuya@ccmail.uoregon.edu wrote:

>	   How do you define Canibalism?  If that is defined as eating
>	   human flesh, we have the tradition to do that.

I heard that, in Taiwan, a computer program has been written
which allows people to search history books such as "Zi1 Zhi4
Tong1 Jian4" with key words. I believe that if one search this
phrase "Ren2 Xiang1 Shi2" (people ate people) in ZZTJ with this
program, this phrase will likely pop out hundreds of times. Well,
at least that was the impression I got when I was reading ZZTJ.
Here is an example:

     Shi4 Sui4, Guan1 Zhong1 Da4 Ji1, Mi3 Dou3 Zhi2 Qian1 Jin1,
     Ren2 Xiang1 Shi2.
     (That year, there was a famine in GuanZhong area. A "Dou" of
      rice worthed a thousand "Jin" of gold. People ate people.)

>
>	   1.  Spring and Autumn:  (missing for now)

"Peng1" (steaming) and "Hai3" (making dry meat pieces) were the
two common ways for prcessing human flesh in Spring and Autumn
period of Chinese history. Thus, after Zi3 Lu4 was killed, people
sent a bowl of meat made out from ZiLu's flesh to Confucius.
Confius felt sad and did not eat it.

>	   2.  Qin2: Liu Bang cooked his father (or intended to) and
>	   shared with xiang4 yu3;

XiangYu wanted Liu to surrender and told Liu, "Surrender, or I'll
cook your father." LiuBang replied, "We once swore to the Heaven
that we would be brothers. Therefore, my father is also your
father. If you want to cook our father, make sure that you also
give me a bowl of the meat soup."  Xiang found out that his
threatening did not work and eventually let LiuBang's father go.
Anther famous event during this period of time was "steaming" of
"Li2 Shi2 Qi2". He was sent by Liu2 Bang1 to convince "Zhao4"
state to surrender. While Li2 was in Zhao4, Han2 Xin4 attacked
Zhao state. Therefore, Li2 was steamed (Peng1) in a big wok
(Ding3) by Zhao people.

>	   6.  Tang:  The son cut part of his leg to give to his father
>	   as zhong1 yao4;  This tradition lasted until late Qing1;
>	   Many xiao4 zi3 would do the same when their fathers are ill;

I don't know about this one. However, during the Spring-Autumn
period of time, when "Jin4 Wen2 Gong1" Chong2 Er3 was on the run
and in hunger, his loyal friend "Jie4 Zhi1 Tui1" cut a piece of
meat from his own leg to feed Chong2 Er3. Years later after
ChongEr became the head of Jin4 state, he burned Jie to death by
accident. From that on, ChongEr did not allow people to cook on
that particular day and it was called the "Han2 Shi2 Jie2" (the
cold food festival). ChongEr also made a piece of tree under
which Jie died into a slipper. From that on, the term "Zhu2[foot]
Xia4[beneath]" became a respectful term for calling a person.

>	   9.  Historically when Jian1 chen2 is finaly arrested and put
>	   to death, people would like to eat him piece by piece;

When Yuan2 Chong2 Huan4 was sentenced to death by Ming2 emperor
"Chong2 Zhen1", he was slowly killed by thousands of cuts on his
body (Ling2 Chi2 Chu4 Si3). People gathered around to fight for
meat from his body thrown out by the executer to show their
hatred of a "traitor".

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