By: Zhu Min (Taizhou Business News)
 
Several hanging coffins are placed in a cavern.

 

It is said that there are hanging coffins in caves in the face of a cliff in Baishuiyang Township of Linhai. Recently, the journalist, under the guidance of Uncle Cai, a local villager from Ruokong Village, went to the said cliff to find out the truth.

 

Having made our way up the mountain for more than one hour, the journalist saw two caverns on the face of a cliff, where several coffins could be faintly seen. When come to the cavern, they found four or five coffins being placed in poor order, some coffin covers having been separated from the coffin body and having few mortuary objects. In the deep of the cavern, a narrow opening came into sight. Uncle Cai said there may be more coffins behind the crevice.

 

A pile of wooden plates in the corner of the cavern attracted the journalist’s attention. These plates, about a dozen, turned out to be the memorial tablets of some of the coffin owners, the words on which were illegible due to their long-standing history. However, the journalist managed to read a tablet bearing words to the effect that the coffin owner died on February 16th Dingchou Year in the reign of Qing Emperor Guangxu, more than 200 years from now. Uncle Cai, who is 59-year-old, said he had heard in his childhood that there were many coffins hanging in the face of the cliff.

 

Then, the journalist interviewed with many elders in the village. Among the interviewees, 82-year-old Cai Fafu and his 75-year-old wife said that the cliff had already been known as a “coffin cliff” in their childhood, but they were ignorant of when the custom of hanging-coffin burial was developed. As what an elder revealed to the journalist, it probably resulted from the local funeral custom in ancient times that dead bodies should be kept for at least three years before being buried, and caverns on the cliff happened to be perfect places to protect corpses against wild animals’ attacks, shelter them from storms and preserve the bodies from decay. 

 

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Cliff burial, also known as hanging-coffin burial, is a type of funeral custom of the ancient Pu Yue people in southern China, which is believed to be a miracle in the history of world culture. Hanging coffins are either placed on beams projecting outward from vertical faces such as mountains and cliffs, or placed in caves in the faces of cliffs. Linhai Geographic Gazetteer compiled by the County Chief of Linhai during the period of the Three Kingdoms revealed that the funeral custom had been prevailed in Ou Yue people in ancient times, which reflects the humid living condition in southern China.