Is there really a corpse driver in Xiangxi?

corpse-driving in Xiangxi is real.

It's just that it's not as mysterious as the legend. In Qing Dynasty, there was a rumor that "corpse chasers" were widely spread in western Hunan, that is, corpse chasers used "secret techniques" to bring the bodies of people who died in a foreign land back to their hometown and let them be buried in peace. As we all know, in ancient times, the traffic was inconvenient, and people who died in other places had to be transported back if they wanted to return to their roots.

But in ancient times, there were no cars or planes. It was difficult to transport people back from thousands of miles away. Gradually, a person who took corpse driving as a profession appeared. In the middle of the Qing Dynasty, this technique of transporting corpses was widely used to transport the corpses of Hunan immigrants home from Sichuan.

what it takes to be a corpse-driver

There has been a corpse-driver industry in Xiangxi since ancient times. To learn this industry, one must have two conditions: courage and good health. Moreover, you must learn from the teacher. Corpsers never collect apprentices indiscriminately. The apprentice is written by the parents first, and then the corpse driver must interview.

Generally speaking, you must be at least 16 years old and 1.7 meters tall. At the same time, there is a very special condition that you should be ugly. The corpse-driver first asks the examinee to look at the sun in the sky, then rotates, and then suddenly stops, asking you to distinguish between east, west, north and south at once. If you can't tell the difference, you can't be hired. Because you can't tell the difference between east, west, north and south at this time, it means that you can't tell the direction at night and can't drive the body. Then, the corpse driver wants you to find something and carry the burden.

Because the corpse is not alive after all, it is difficult to go up when it meets a steep slope. Corpsers have to carry and carry them on the high slopes one by one. Finally, there is an interview, that is, the corpse driver puts a tung leaf on the grave hill in the deep mountain, and lets you get it back alone in the dark. Only in this way can you show that you have the courage to be a competent corpse driver. After these three passes, you have the possibility of being an apprentice to a corpse driver.