Tiying

Also known as Chunyu Tiying

Tiying, of Linzi in the state of Qi under the Western Han, was the youngest of the five daughters of Chunyu Yi, keeper of the Grand Granary. In 167 BCE, when her father was condemned to corporal punishment and taken to Chang'an, he lamented that his daughters were of no help in a crisis; Tiying followed him west and memorialised the throne that the dead cannot live again and the mutilated cannot be made whole, so that even one who wished to reform had no way to do so, offering herself as a government slave to redeem him. Moved, Emperor Wen that year issued the edict abolishing mutilating punishments such as tattooing, cutting off the nose and amputating the feet. The episode is recorded in the Shiji (Annals of Emperor Wen; Biographies of Bian Que and Canggong) and the Hanshu treatise on punishments; the Biography of Canggong dates the case to the fourth year of Emperor Wen, unlike the Annals; the idiom gai guo zi xin, to correct one's faults and start anew, comes from her memorial.