Waist chop

Waist chop or waist cutting (simplified Chinese: 腰斩; traditional Chinese: 腰斬; pinyin: Yāo zhǎn), also known as cutting in two at the waist,[1] was a form of execution used in ancient China.

[2] As its name implies, it involved the condemned being sliced in two at the waist by an executioner.

There were three forms of execution used in the Zhou dynasty: chēliè (車裂; tearing apart by tying the arms and legs to carts moving in opposite directions), zhǎn (斬; waist chop), and shā (殺; beheading).

The first Ming dynasty emperor Zhu Yuanzhang sentenced the poet Gao Qi to be sliced into eight parts for his politically satirical writing.

[4] In the modern Chinese language, "waist chop" has evolved to become a metaphor for the cancellation of an ongoing project, especially cancellation of television programs.