AFFAIRS IN CHINA.

Motueka Star, Volume I, Issue 11, 17 September 1901, Page 4

AFFAIRS IN CHINA .

HOW THE HIGH OFFICIALS COMMITTED SUICIDE. A Chinese paper published in Peking has obtained the following details relative to the dealits of the high officials Cbau-cbu-chain, Yung-nien, and Prince Cliuang, who committed suicide on command of the Emperor. It is impossible t > give the full report, as the details of the actual suicides are given with true Chinese barbarity and unadorned lucidity. The whole account, however, bears tbe stamp of truth, and the statement of the Chinese Court that the three officials had paid the penalty fox- their crimes, hitherto unproved, may hereby he considered as confirmed. Tbe report runs :—“Chau-chu-cliiau, ate gold leaf which is the distinguished method of taking one’s life among well-to-do Chinese. Death is caused, not by poisoning, as is generally assumed, but by asphyxia, as the thin gold leaves stick in the air passages. Hoping against hope, however, that the Empress would have mercy on him, he took too little, and he still lived when the time prescribed had elapsed he took opium and other means to effectuate bis death. His religion

forbade him to do this by injuring his body in any way. Prince Chuang, who received the news of his sentence m Pu-chou-fu, a lax-ge town in the south-west of Shansio, immediately banged himgelf in a temple of tbe local mandarin with whom lie was living, in the presence of the Imperial Commissioner, Kcpau-hwo. He used a white silk cord sent him by the Emperor, as a significant sign of the mitigated punishment. Yung-nien, the President of the Court of Censors, was the most cowardly. He was in prison at Si-ngan-fu, and continually upbraided Prince Ching “ lor- leaving him in the lurch.” He suffocated himself with earth before the Imperial Decree, so bus death was hidden some days til] the Decree was published. Prince Tuan anticipated his banishment, and on receiving the sentence at Ningsia, a, town on the Alongolia frontier, whitherhe had fled, proceeded at once to Turkestan lest the Allies might still demand his death.