There are three kinds of banishment: one is liu (流), transportation for a few hundreds of miles; this punishment is frequently inflicted on persons guilty of adultery, manslaughter, or incendiarism. T‘u (徒) or liu t‘u (流徒), is also transportation; but the punishment is often to be confined by night and free by day; this is called tso t‘u (坐徒). The individual thus punished is neither reckoned worthy of death nor of life; a useless wastrel.
Ch‘ung chün (充軍) is banishment beyond the Great Wall, or to the frontier military posts without any hope of a return. This is a heavy military punishment and mostly imposed upon officials and soldiers.
Penal servitude (監禁), chien chin, may be for three, eight or for twenty years, or for life. The life sentence is called lao fan (牢犯) or lao chien, and also yung yüan (永遠) chien chin. Prisoners on entering jail have their heads shaved, the hair afterwards being left to grow long. No barber is allowed in jail except at New Year times when some favored few may have their beards shaved. The only knife allowed in jail is a piece of broken crockery.
Criminals just taken into custody and awaiting trial, whose offences are slight, and who await the payment of fines or a surety to bail them out, are confined in a guardhouse, ch‘ia chin (卡禁). A place of confinement better than the guardhouse, into which gentry and scholars are put while waiting for judgment or bail, is called in some cities tai-chih so (待質所); in others, tzŭ-hsin so (自新所), a penitentiary.
One of the most painful of beatings is termed t‘iao-tzŭ (條子) or niu chin (牛筋), ox sinew stripes. It is inflicted mostly for indecent behaviour. Women are stripped of their upper garments and beaten across the shoulders and back, while men are stripped and suspended by the arms and beaten.
Sometimes a man is kept in custody in the inn, ya pao tien (押保店) till the matter is settled. The prisoner in this case has to feed the yamen underlings and give them sufficient opium; if he does not bribe them his chains will not be taken off at night.
