Punishments in Ancient China

[Rupert_137]

Xiaobian – Information and Background

The 'Wooden Donkey' as a device of torture and punishment in ancient China

A sequence of images from Feather's "The Female General" shows quite impressively what pain and suffering the convict awaited when she was forced to ride on the wooden donkey with a moving piston (look attachments).

The wooden donkey (Xiaobian) was an ancient Chinese torture device specially designed to cruelly punish women in public. A female offender was placed on the donkey's back, where a movable, wooden, pottery or metal phallus protruded, placed right between her legs. Her own body weight pressed her down painfully, causing the phallus to penetrate first her vulva then her vagina and further deep into the woman’s lap. Her hands and feet were tied to the frame of the wooden donkey in such a way that she could not support herself or hold on and was helpless at the mercy of the cruel mechanism.

In the beginning there was a phallus fixed on the back of a donkey, which was later equipped with a devilish mechanism and perfected in its torture effect. The purpose was to torture a woman's genital organs intensively in a public performance.

Xiaobian provides as a modern translation from Chinese: pissing, urinate. What did that have to do with the torture on the wooden donkey? Did the unfortunate victims piss themselves in pain and fear? More likely it meant the discharge of much fluid from the bladder and the lap of the tortured woman, induced by the extreme and brutal stimulation of the ascending and descending piston inside her vagina...

The wooden donkey was traditionally pulled through the streets so the whole town could witness the pain and shame of the convicted rider woman. As the chariot wheels of the wooden donkey turned, the piston containing the phallus in the victim's lap pumped up and down with each turn of the wheels. It penetrated deep into the female's vagina, brutally thrusting into her cervix and withdrawing. The effect was extremely painful and humiliating at the same time for the rider woman was brutally and cruelly fucked by a piece of wood in public in front of a cheering crowd. Unevenness on the streets of that time also made her body rock and sway, which intensified the woman's pain.

As a rule, riding a wooden donkey caused serious internal injuries, especially at the entrance to the vagina, where the wooden plunger entered, but also at the cervix, which had to absorb the impact of the plunger. It also put a lot of strain on the ligaments that are supposed to hold the uterus in place as the uterus was being jerked back and forth from the deep, hard thrusts in the abdomen.

As the wooden donkey slowly rolled forward, the wooden piston moved up and down. When the phallus as the head of the piston reached its lowest point, it only penetrated a short distance into her vagina and the woman was able to relax a little for a very short moment. In order to securely fix the delinquent, the phallus usually never withdrew completely from her vagina.

As the piston moved further up, it penetrated deeper and deeper into her vagina. When the phallus reached maximum height, the vagina was overstretched and the woman's body was lifted slightly on her seat by the hard thrust into her womb. Her whole abdomen was plagued with excruciating pain from these very often repeated thrusts.

The type and extent of the injuries inflicted depended heavily on the nature of the phallus at the end of the piston and the drive mechanism: How deep did the wood penetrate the woman's abdomen? Was the movable phallus slender or thick; rough or smooth; swamp, rounded or even pointed? Did he move rather slowly or quickly? Were there thickenings, maybe even spines? Did the head of the phallus withdraw completely from the vagina into the vulva at the lowest point and then repeatedly thrust into the entrance of the vagina – that would be particularly painful and very injurious – or did the phallus also remain at the lowest point within the woman's vagina?

With an appropriate construction, the woman could perhaps even be stimulated, but more likely seriously tormented, severely injured, or even slowly tortured to death.

The piston foot, mounted on a rotating wheel, not only pushed the phallus up and down in the woman's lap, but also a little forward when ascending and backward when descending. This increased the stretching and stimulation of the woman's vagina.

Xiaobian: The ride on the wooden donkey, on an infernal machine as a particularly cruel, public torture especially for women in ancient China (see sketch)

Although the victim was bent over backwards in pain from the type of bondage and the effect of the piston shocks, and must have moaned in agony, onlookers could get the impression that the woman was even being tormented by her own lust while riding the wooden donkey. The moving piston forced secretions and blood out of her vagina with each thrust. Due to the incessant, mechanical movements, young women in particular could develop a lot of secretion despite the excruciating pain. If this flowed off the saddle of the wooden donkey, the impression could be reinforced for the spectators that the victim was being lustfully fucked by the donkey. This was particularly adopted when the victim was already considered unrestrained and indecent.

Even mounting the donkey was extremely humiliating and very painful (see picture)...

[Rupert_137]

...But what followed was even much worse... (see picture series)

When the woman convulsed her body in pain and tossed her head back, she nevertheless was moving in a very erotic manner for the onlookers, especially if she had well-filled breasts, which she pushed forwards and upwards in agony and yet provocatively with each thrust of the piston … as it was written in the story.


If the chariot wheels of the wooden donkey were 1 meter (3 chi, 尺) in diameter and there was only a simple mechanism, a complete piston stroke (up and down) would take place over a distance of only 3.14 m; over a mile (1609 m) , or 1000 Bu, 步 (1667 m) – as in our story – this resulted in 512 or 530 shocks of the piston rod, which the convicted rider had to catch in her abdomen. Of course this caused terrible pain in the area of the vaginal entrance, vagina canal, cervix and the uterine ligaments.

When the torture device was dragged leisurely through the city at about 3 km/h (2 miles per hour), a distance of 1000 bu (about one mile) took half an hour. The victim then had to endure one piston shock every 3.5 seconds, 17 times every minute!

The punishment riding the wooden donkey developed after a short distance into an indescribable hell ride for every woman... And she had a long way to go... (see pictures with sketches)

[Rupert_137]

...

Beyond extreme, acute pain, severe internal injuries with long-term repercussions may have been the norm - from painful intercourse to infertility — if the ordeal was survived despite heavy bleeding and internal injuries. Depictions where the woman only moans in shame and lust by stimulated, forced "pleasure" while being fucked by the piston rod - instead of suffering extremely - may belong to the realm of fantasy, the reality was much more brutal and indescribably cruel.

The public punishment of women by Xiaobian dates back to the time of the Song dynasties in China (960 to 1279 AD), at that time still with a phallus fixed on the saddle, which 'only' impaled the woman as a victim bluntly and deep inside her lap but without moving. In the later Ming dynasty (1368 – 1644) the mechanism of a piston moving up and down was developed, in the period of the Qing dynasty (1644 – 1911) this mechanism was then further refined and 'improved' – in the sense of a very brutal torture, which, however, mostly did not end fatally. Our story falls into this last epoch with a sophisticated, hellish mechanism when riding on the wooden donkey.

Happy were those who were allowed to pull the donkey and didn't have to ride it, even if it was tedious and humiliating... Because for the rider, bump after bump followed in a cruel beat (see pictures)
In the second picture you can see very well how the victim erotically writhes with every thrust.

Last sketch: A cruel mechanism inside the wooden donkey, which was constantly improved over time, drove the piston up and down and thrusted the phallus on top deep into the woman's vagina. Fine adjustment options became available, thereby avoiding the most serious injuries, which in the beginning were often fatal. By changing the inclination of the piston when ascending and descending, the stimulation of the vagina by the penetrating phallus was even increased at the same time. More secretions flowed out her lap and smeared the phallus, but the terrible pain remained.

Xiaobian thus remained a particularly horrific instrument of physical and mental torture for women in China; which at the same time enjoyed great popularity among the spectators, who could observe the effects of each piston shock by the violent reactions of the poor tormented woman.

End of background information


Addendum

A Chinese speaker points out to me that qí mù lǘ, 騎木驢, means "riding a wooden donkey" in Chinese, but the term xiǎo biàn, 小便 (to urinate, piss, pee) is little known in this context.

[Instyle]

Thank you very much for the story. I saw a sleeze film covering these tortures a while ago. I ditched it, but I still remember I found it on Usenet somewhere.