What’s going on with the mysterious “corpse driving in western Hunan”?

Carving out corpses is a folk custom of the Miao people in western Hunan. It belongs to the shaman culture and is also said to be related to Zhu Youke. In the Qing Dynasty, there were widespread rumors of "corpse chasers" in western Hunan, that is, corpse chasers used "secret techniques" to bring the corpses of people who died in foreign lands back to their hometowns and bury them in peace.

The so-called "driving the corpse" is actually just "carrying the corpse". The exterminator hires someone to cut the body into pieces, and then sprays a special potion on the body parts to prevent them from rotting. A man had a stump on his back, covered in a long and large black robe, and a large straw hat on his head, which completely covered his head. Even the outline of his face was difficult to see clearly. Another person dressed as a "corpse exorcist" threw yellow paper in front and rang a bell to guide the person carrying the corpse. The two also deliberately created a terrifying atmosphere to make people afraid to get close to them. If they were far away, their roles would change every day.

Many scientists are studying how dead bodies can be driven away by living people. Everyone says differently. Some people believe that people will stiffen immediately after death, which is called "rigor mortis". After 48 hours, the body will regain some softness, and then become stiff again.

But at this time, large joints, such as hip joints, can still move in a small range (20 degrees) under the action of external forces. This is one of the physical conditions for the dead to walk. Line up the two corpses, straighten the forearms parallel to the ground, and then use long and thin bamboo poles to fix them with ropes along the arms. The two corpses will be connected into a three-dimensional shelf and will not tip over (this is why The reason for two dead people).

In addition, scholars believe that the Miao people in western Hunan mastered the skill of refining cinnabar earlier. After heating, cinnabar will be reduced to mercury, and mercury is the most common anti-corrosion material. In addition to the ancestral charms, cinnabar is also indispensable for corpse exorcism. Lu Qun, an associate professor at Jishou University, wrote the book "Combating Corpses in Western Hunan" after an investigation. She believes that exorcising corpses does not lie in the reality of technology, but in the reality of profession.

As a profession, corpse exorcism does require the exorcists to master embalming techniques, be courageous and strong, in order to be qualified for the job of transporting corpses over long distances, but there is no magic to make the dead walk. The purpose of demystifying corpse removal is to raise the threshold and income of this profession.

Today, in the ancient city of Fenghuang in western Hunan, whenever night falls, corpse driving as a folk custom is presented to tourists in the form of dance. When the mysterious color was washed away by science, people discovered that the exorcism of corpses in Xiangxi was actually a small extension of the Chu shaman culture under a specific historical and cultural environment. It was a specific group of people (such as shamans) who transferred certain traditional cultural resources to satisfy people's wish to return to their roots. converted into livelihood options.