Wow, good pic, Sickey.

While we're at branding, last night I saw Chen Kaige's film The Emperor and the Assassin - this magnificent Chinese drama is set at a turning-point in history, the age of Zhi Hwang-Ti, the man who first unified China and who is also credited with setting up the first line of the Great Wall. He has a rep in history - probably deserved - for untiring ruthlessness and dictator's panache; the movie is a great love-and-warriors drama and has stunning visuals. Well, the scene that might have special interest to this kinky crowd: early in the movie, the noblewoman Lady Zhao (played by star actress Gong Li) decides to give her lover Zhi the pretext he needs to start a war with the neighbour, and as part of this, she gets down to the prison and asks the ruthless warden who is branding war prisoners, that he should brand her in the face like them.

He denies of course, but she forces it, and in a factual and poetic scene she is seen with her head fixed in the stocks and actually branded (sorry I can't give any screenshot of this, but do rent the movie). She will have many occasions to regret her decision...