Xiangxi walking corpses

E boetse e bitswa: 湘西趕屍, gan shi, corpse driving, transporting a corpse over a thousand li

Ditshomo le dinonwaneBafu ba tsohilengE a tlolaBoloi

Corpse driving is the western Hunan tradition of walking the dead home. Because a soul whose body lies in foreign soil was believed to be lost, families of labourers who died far away paid specialists to return the remains, and legend said the specialists made the corpses travel on their own feet. Travellers who met such a procession at night saw a line of figures in tall hats hopping behind a priest with a bell. The practice is widely cited as the origin of the jiangshi's hop and is the closest Chinese parallel to the Haitian idea of a corpse that walks at a sorcerer's command.1 2

Di lwantshe

Tshimoloho

Chinese (western Hunan; attributed to Miao sorcery)

Tjhaena

Se e bakang

Boloi

A Taoist priest is said to raise the bodies with incantations and a talisman so that they can make their own way home for burial.

Kamoo o fetohang e nngwe ya tsona kateng

A person dies far from home, and the family hires a corpse driver to bring the body back to its native place.

Kamoo e tsamayang kateng

E a tlola

The corpses follow the priest in single file by night; stiff with rigor mortis, they can only hop.

Bohlale

Ha e na kelello

Dintlha tse fokolang

they travel only at night and rest by day in 'corpse inns', standing against the wall behind the door

dinoutu tsa patlisiso

Seo mehlodi e se buang

Each corpse has a yellow paper talisman with red writing stuck to its forehead and wears a tall hat1 2

The priest tests each spirit's obedience with a peach-wood sword before setting out1 2

A bell leads the dead and a gong warns the living to keep out of sight1 2

Local legend treats the technique as a form of Miao gu sorcery1 2

One rational account has the bodies lashed upright to bamboo poles carried by two men, so that they bobbed in step; another has a man carrying the corpse on his back under a robe1 2