Ancient Suspended Wooden Coffins

Many ancient coffins have been found suspended halfway up a mountain cliff in the Three Gorges area and on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River.

It was considered a unique funeral and sacrifice manner for the ancient Ba people, who mainly inhabited the Three Gorges region. People put the bodies of their ancestors into wooden coffins, which were then placed in the caves of precipices.

Taking the form of a ship, most coffins were carved out of one whole piece of wood. According to local people, the location of the coffins varied with the change of the social position of the deceased. The higher the coffins were, meant the more honorable the deceased were. Most of the coffins contained respectable seniors or brave soldiers. It was said that hanging the coffins in this manner prevented bodies from being taken by beasts and the souls of the deceased would be blessed for eternity as well.

For centuries, suspended coffin were unknown until 1958 when a farmer found in a cave some bronze swords, black lacquer, wood combs, etc, the secret of the coffins was uncovered. By what means the Ba people placed coffins in the precipices is still a mystery today.

Suspended coffins are mostly found spread around Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hunan, Hubei and Taiwan Provinces.

Ancient Plank Roads

"The road to Shu is harder than climbing to the sky" said Li Bai, a poet during the Tang Dynasty. In ancient times, all the communications in the Three Gorges region depended on the sail on the waterway. When the flood came, sails had to be shopped and communication cut. At some stage in the reign of Emperor Guangxu, during the Qing Dynasty, wide plank roads were constructed and obstructive conditions were improved.

There were two kinds of plank roads:

One was cut out of the cliffs with ravines, which were spanned by flagstones. They ran through the region of Yangtze Three Gorges, 2 to 3 meters wide and dozens of meters above the river. Some sections were cut thousands of years ago and recorded as early as 300 B.C. There was a 10-kilometer plank road at Qutang Gorge from Fengjie to Daixi, which was 3 meters in width.

The other plank roads protruded from the cliffs with the planks supported by piles driven into the cliff. Such plank roads mostly existed in Qutang Gorge, Little Three Gorges and Shennong Stream. Meng Liang Staircase, for instance, is the remains of such a kind of plank road.

Nowadays, almost all the piles and planks are gone. Just holes on the cliffs running along the rivers remain.

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Source: Travel China Guide