Caishikou Execution Ground (菜市口)

Peking · China · Execution site

At the Qing dynasty's execution ground, night callers knocked at the Heniantang pharmacy – customers paying in grave money, asking for blade-wound salve.

For centuries under the Qing dynasty, the condemned were beheaded at the Caishikou crossroads in southern Beijing, among them the six reform martyrs of 1898. The vegetable market was washed of blood – but the nights, legend says, never came clean. The venerable Heniantang pharmacy, its signboard said to be brushed by Grand Secretary Yan Song himself, was woken after every execution day by knocking: shadowy figures asking for salve against knife wounds, tossing down copper coins and vanishing without a trace. By dawn the coins had turned into spirit money for the dead. In the end the pharmacists simply set out bundles of wound salve on the doorstep each evening, and were left in peace. To this day, 'go ask Heniantang for blade-wound salve' remains an old Beijing insult – it means you are headed for the block. Headless figures are still said to search the alleys for their lost heads.

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Where is Caishikou Execution Ground (菜市口) located?

Caishikou Execution Ground (菜市口) is in Peking, China.

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