Male suicide For male members in the
Han, physical mutilation and suicide were among the highest crimes, threats not only to the self but to the lineage.
Ritual suicide was long practiced in
traditional Chinese culture, owing both to the power of the state to enforce
collective punishment against the families of disgraced ministers and to
Confucian values that held that certain failures of virtue were worse than death, making suicide morally permissible or even praiseworthy in some
altruistic contexts.
Confucius wrote, "For gentlemen of purpose and men of
ren while it is inconceivable that they should seek to stay alive at the expense of ren, it may happen that they have to accept death in order to have ren accomplished."
Mencius wrote: Fish is what I want; bear's palm is also what I want. If I cannot have both, I would rather take bear's palm than fish. Life is what I want;
yi is also what I want. If I cannot have both, I would rather take yi than life. On the one hand, though life is what I want, there is something I want more than life. That is why I do not cling to life at all cost. On the other hand, though death is what I loathe, there is something I loathe more than death. That is why there are dangers I do not avoid ... Yet there are ways of remaining alive and ways of avoiding death to which a person will not resort. In other words, there are things a person wants more than life and there are also things he or she loathes more than death. Due to the above-mentioned aversion to physical mutilation (originating from the belief that the body was a gift from one's parents and desecrating it therefore an unfilial act), the preferred methods—as recorded in for instance the Book of Han—appear to have been those that did not leave the corpse significantly disfigured, notably hanging/strangulation. Notable suicides include
Wu Zixu, whose compelled suicide was regretted by
King Fuchai of
Wu when he was proved right about the danger of
Yue, and
Qu Yuan, whose despair over his exile by
King Qingxiang of
Chu and sorrow over the capture of
his capital by
Qin in 278BC is commemorated by China's annual
Dragon Boat Festival.
Female suicide Female suicide became a common practice towards the end of the Ming dynasty and reached a high during the early Qing dynasty. There were many different ideologies and social circumstances which led to this spike. Historians such as Janet Theiss have stated that the Han had a practice of women committing suicide to preserve their chastity, while the Manchus had a practice of wives committing suicide to follow their husbands into death. The loss of a woman's chastity was viewed as shameful to the family so the act of suicide to preserve chastity was seen as a heroic act. Conversely, the Chinese have also historically seen suicide as a great act against filial piety, as bodies are gifts from parents and as such, should not be harmed without their parents' permission. According to Liu Meng, it was decided that the principle of preserving chastity was more important than preserving life and was considered exempt from this criticism. Chastity was greatly valued by widowed women, especially those who had not borne a son—who were very likely to be forced into a new marriage by their in-laws. Scholars have stated that these women were made to choose between losing their chastity and potentially shaming their families or taking their own lives. Eventually, due to this type of ideological thinking, some women felt that their only option to obtain glory was to kill themselves, thus becoming a martyr. The Qing government passed a law attempting to help preserve female chastity by allowing widows to inherit their husbands' wealth and property, which led to families' desire to remarry their widowed daughters-in-law, so that the fortune would be returned to the clan. == Legality ==