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Death by Slicing 凌迟 is, more accurately, dismemberment. In the photo a woman first has her breasts cut off and then it proceeds from there. This is a public punishment as can be seen.
Jung Chang once said to me, "Well of course, Mr. Harris, there is a greater tolerance for cruelty among Chinese." That statement made a big impact on me. It made a big impact on me because at the time, mid-March 2007, I was beginning to have similar thoughts about China, that is China generally, not specific Chinese, and hearing another person say the words one is thinking is different from reading them. And that was before I read about cannibalism in China, a subject Ms. Chang wrote about in Wild Swans. When I did, two months later, I remember pushing back from my desk and pacing in my apartment, needing a break from Jasper Becker's Hungry Ghosts which is about the Great Leap Forward famine and the cannibalism that occurred at the time. I was reading Mr. Becker's chapter on "learned"--as distinguished from "survival"--cannibalism in China at the time.
Westerners, including this one, react viscerally to reading, and especially viewing photographs, of death by slicing and learned cannibalism. May we always. For to want to learn about another people does not mean one takes the position, "I'm okay, you're okay." We Westerners have always reacted viscerally to these subjects. And that reaction has affected the entire Western view of China. Maybe it should, I don't know; I don't know what I think right now, I'm too upset by this.
These subjects are deeply embarrassing to some Chinese too, and I count some Chinese among my friends, and one does not like to embarrass one's friends. There are some--I have heard them--who defend, excuse, or minimize the GLF; maybe there are some who do likewise with death by slicing, or learned cannibalism. But there is, I believe, pretty much a consensus in the academy that these are historical facts and that they cannot be defended, excused, or minimized. There is, in fact, a new book on the GLF coming out in October.
It seems to me that Chinese, today and always, care more about what the rest of the world thinks of them than do some other peoples. Image is very important to Chinese (Exhibit A: Beijing Olympics) because Chinese self-image is so fragile. I believe that this is another manifestation of the deep need for security that is a big part of China's soul.
For those who believe in God, I imagine that the subjects of this post are difficult for some to reconcile with a God such as we were raised to believe exists, in the same way that the Holocaust caused doubt. For us nonbelievers these subjects are no less disturbing. The American philosopher Nelson Goodman offered God as a concept as alternative to the deity and defined God so-considered as "the collective conscience of mankind." China is one-quarter of that collective conscience.