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Last week we chronicled the rise of Heshen, a Chinese official who became absurdly wealthy in the late 18th century. This week, we bear witness to his fall. Last week ended at Step Two of “Heshen’s guide to amassing inappropriately large stashes of treasure”, and we’ll pick up at Step Three after a brief recap. Heshen was clever, good-looking, and insanely lucky, so found himself securely in the Qianlong Emperor’s favour. Though a large part of Heshen’s obscene wealth came straight from Imperial gifts and appointments, a lot also came from the way he managed said appointments. His was a management style best characterised by the application of…

Step Three: Show a flagrant disregard for common decency. Heshen was unashamedly corrupt. His favour with the emperor was such that he could get away with pretty much anything – a power he made good use of. As controller of both the Boards of Revenue and the Civil Council, Heshen was able to continuously raise taxes. He then stole large sums of money from the resulting revenue. When this failed (or just when he was bored), Heshen was not above blackmail, torture, and other fun forms of extortion. Though these methods served him well for a time (recall: he had 24 solid gold beds), they also led to his ultimate downfall. With a heavy heart, I present the final step of Heshen’s guide.

Step four: don’t get caught. By the time the Qianlong Emperor died in 1799, Heshen’s corruption was obvious to all. People were starving in the streets, the combined result of Heshen’s taxes and severe flooding (though the flooding was also kind of his fault – he stole money intended for the maintenance of dams and flood-banks). So he was promptly prosecuted by the new Emperor and convicted to “death by a thousand cuts” (also known as “slow slicing”). This is pretty much the nastiest way to die ever. First, the victim is tied to a post. Then the executioner slowly slices bits of them off. At this point, various drugs might be administered to prevent the victim from passing out. Eventually, sometimes after three days of slicing, the victim dies. Oh, and parts of their sliced-off flesh are sold for medical use. Fun times. Fortunately for Heshen, he was able to parlay his sentence into the more noble death of suicide, so he hung himself with a rope of golden silk. The people were starving, and he was just like “Na, Ima kill myself using a rope that could feed your village for a week.”