Chongqing Hanging Coffins

Chongqing Hanging Coffins

Chongqing Hanging Coffins is a cultural tourism attraction.

Hanging Coffins

On a yellowish-brown cliff face on the eastern bank of Bashan Gorge, about four to five hundred meters above the ground, there is a rectangular cave containing a pitch-black coffin—this is what is known as a “hanging coffin.” Hanging coffin burials were a customary funerary practice of the Pu people who lived in the Daning River area over 2,000 years ago. According to research, during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, when the Pu people lost their parents, they would “spend all their possessions on the coffin, and carve niches halfway up the high cliffs along the river to bury them. They would suspend coffins from ropes lowered down from the mountain cliffs—the higher the suspension, the more filial it was considered.

Hanging coffin burials were a customary funerary practice of the Pu people who lived in the Daning River area over 2,000 years ago

.