Sandalwood Death

In 1900, as Germans build a railway across Shandong and the Boxer movement spreads, the opera singer Sun Bing, whose family has been killed by German soldiers, leads the villagers of Gaomi in revolt. He is caught and condemned to the sandalwood death, a punishment designed to drag out a condemned man's agony for days. The story is told in turn by his daughter, Meiniang, and the men around her: her husband, Zhao Xiaojia, a simple-minded butcher who slaughters pigs and dogs; Xiaojia's father, Zhao Jia, for forty years the chief executioner of the imperial Board of Punishments, who is given the task; and her lover, the county magistrate Qian Ding, who hands her father over. Around them the last years of the dynasty unfold, from the failed reforms of 1898 to the foreign powers' plunder.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

518 pages in the original

Genres

Historical (assigned by AI)

Set in

China, around 1900

First published

2001 by Writers Publishing House

Author's age

46 when first published

ISBN

9787506320511 (original)

9780806143392 (University of Oklahoma Press, United States)