A cangue is a device used for public humiliation and corporal punishment in China and some other parts of East Asia and Southeast Asia, up through the early years of the twentieth century. It is somewhat similar to the stocks used for punishment in the West, except that the board of the cangue is not fixed to a base, and must be carried around by the prisoner. Public humiliation was often used by local communities to punish minor and petty criminals before the age of large, modern prisons (imprisonment was long unusual as a punishment, rather a method of coercion). ... Corporal punishment is the deliberate infliction of pain intended as correction or punishment, (corporal means of, relating to, or affecting the body). ... East Asia can be defined in either cultural or geographic terms. ... Location of Southeast Asia Southeast Asia is a subregion of Asia. ... A photomodel in wooden stocks Public Stocks The stocks are a device used for public humiliation, corporal punishment, and torture. ...

Although there are many different forms, a typical cangue would consist of a large, heavy flat board with a hole in the center large enough for a person's neck. The board is cut into two pieces. These pieces are closed around a prisoner's neck, and then are fastened shut along the edges, as by locks or hinges. The opening in the center is large enough for the prisoner to breathe and eat, but not large enough for his head to slip through. The prisoner is confined in the cangue for a period of time as a punishment. The suize and especially weight are varied as a measure of severity of the punishment. Often the cangue was large enough that the prisoner required assistance to eat or drink, because his hands could not reach his own mouth.

The word "cangue" is French, from the Portuguese "canga," which means yoke - that carrying tool has also been used to the same effect, with the hands tied to each arm of the yoke. In contemporary Standard_Mandarin Chinese it is called a jia. (However, it is no longer in use in any contemporary prison system.) Oxes wearing yokes A yoke is a shaped wooden crosspiece bound to the necks of a pair of oxen, occasionally horses. ... Standard Mandarin is the official Chinese spoken language used by the Peoples Republic of China, the Republic of China on Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore. ...

Here is an image of a cangue (copyright protected).