Since the Eastern Han Dynasty, people have been divided into three classes, the upper is the noble, the middle is the people, the lower is the poor, the industry is divided into nine classes, one official, two officials, three monks, four Taoists, five doctors, six workers, seven craftsmen, eight prostitutes, nine Confucians.

According to the Eastern Han Dynasty, I don't know where to position myself, because I am just a small person, and the work I do is very lowly in the eyes of others.

The coffin bearer, three simple words, expresses the bitterness and desolation of many fellow travelers, and I am one of the few coffin bearers in China.

The title of the coffin bearer is a title given to us by laymen, and we like to call ourselves the Eight Immortals, the Eight King Kongs, and the coffin as the dragon coffin and the dragon coffin, only in this way can we feel that the industry we do is 'sacred' and indispensable.

The so-called coffin bearer is the person who carries the coffin, and he does not have much advanced knowledge in it, as long as he has the strength. The focus is on the word coffin, this coffin is a technical job, if there is no technology, a coffin can crush people to death, even if they can't die will be crippled for life, if they don't do well, the deceased will find you something, and even get into the trouble of killing.

I am from Hunan, I was born on March 19, 1987 in a poor village, and my parents have little education, so my name is not very good, and it may be a joke to say it. I gave myself a stage name, Chen Jiu, which means old wine, and my peers often ask me, why not call Chen Ba, old Wang Ba.

Usually people who give face will be called Brother Jiu, if they don't give face, they will be called coffin bearers, and those who are cultivated will be called Chen Baxian.

I began to carry the coffin at the age of eighteen, and I am twenty-eight years old this year, and in the past ten years, I have been to Guangdong, Yunnan, Guizhou, Henan, Sichuan and other places, and carried more than 300 coffins before and after, including yin coffins, yang coffins, hanging coffins, secondary coffins, etc., and once even carried a once-in-a-century blunt coffin, which almost killed me.

The story begins when I entered the profession of Eight Immortals, when I was eighteen years old, my mother had a serious illness, and spent the only 3,000 yuan left in the family, and I really couldn't afford to pay for my education, so I had to give up my studies and return to the countryside to be unemployed.

Like all young people nowadays, I always fantasize about one day opening a company and going public again, catching up with Jack Ma and competing with Carlos.

The cruel reality tells me that if you want to start a company in this village where birds don't, it's just a fantasy to set off firecrackers on an airplane.

My father saw that it was not the end for me to stay at home and eat dry, so he looked around for someone to take me south to Guangzhou to make a living.

As the days passed, the family's economy became more and more constrained, and I saw that I had no money to buy medicine for my mother, and finally my father asked me ruthlessly, if I would like to carry the coffin. People are going to be poor and crazy, and the concepts of honesty and morality are not important, let alone carrying the coffin, so I agreed without thinking about it.

My father took the only 30 eggs left in the house, took me to a man named Lao Wang next door, and asked him to take me into the industry.

Speaking of this old Wang, in fact, he is a little close to my family, he is the son-in-law of my grandmother's sister, in his fifties, with a Chinese face, a beard, and his left eye was blinded by blowing stones in the early years, known as the one-eyed dragon.

With the increasing development of the economy, more and more people go out to work, and the rest of the village are lonely, old and young, and there are only a few laborers left, which is the rise of the profession of "eight immortals".

With me, a young and strong new force to join, Lao Wang naturally did not refuse, and the more than 30 eggs sent by his father, he did not want to finish the matter, but sent dozens of eggs to his father, saying that it was to thank his father for his support for the profession of the Eight Immortals.

Some things seem to have been predestined in the dark, and on the second day of me and Lao Wang, an incident happened in our village, that is, carrying double coffins.

In ancient times, this pair of coffins was the treatment enjoyed by the rich and noble, talking about two coffins of a deceased, one large and one small, put the deceased into a small coffin, and then put the small coffin into a large coffin, also known as a coffin, the small one is called a coffin, and the big one is called a coffin.

However, the double coffins in our village are two couples who have just turned 30 years old and sleep together in the same coffin, which is fundamentally different from the double coffins in ancient times.

This couple is the richest man in our village, and they moved their hukou out in the early years, and they heard that they opened a company in the city, but no one knows what company they opened, so they knew that the couple was very rich and had a house and a car in the city.

Some people say that the woman saw the man wrapping up the mistress, put rat poison in the meal to poison the man, and then committed suicide.

Some people also say that the man saw the woman looking for the little white face, put rat poison in the meal to poison the woman, and then the woman's little white face knew about it and killed him again. I'm not interested in how he died, after all, the idea of a rich man is not something that a mortal like me can think of.

After the couple's death, they left behind an elderly man in his seventies and a three-year-old boy, whose bodies were brought back in order to bring the couple back to their roots.

The old man roughly told the elders of our village some reasons, and they were about to bury the couple in our village.

According to the rules of the countryside, people who move out of the household registration are not allowed to be buried in the land in the village, and the villagers consider that the old man is a white-haired person and a black-haired person is more pitiful, and agree to bury the couple in our village, but for fear of destroying the feng shui of the village, it is strictly forbidden for the old man to ask a Taoist priest to overtake the deceased.

The old man built a temporary mourning hall at the entrance of the village, because he came back in a hurry, the old man did not buy a coffin for the couple, so he found a thin-skinned coffin in our village, put the body of the couple into the coffin, and asked someone to dig a grave in a cemetery not far from our village. (Our village only gave him a plot of land to bury the dead.) ）

Immediately afterwards, the old man entrusted the village chief to help find someone to carry the coffin, and he was not stingy in terms of salary, which was twice as high as usual, and opened 200 yuan. One hundred and eighty miles away from our village, all the eight immortals added up to only about twenty people, and when they heard that they were going to carry the coffin of a person who died unjustly, they all said that the coffin was difficult to carry, and they were unwilling to go.

In desperation, the old man mentioned the price of carrying the coffin to five hundred people, the so-called heavy money will be out of the brave man, the facts once again prove that the old words left by the ancestors are very reasonable, at this time, the brave man appeared, that is, the old king who brought me into the industry.

I heard my father say that a child is in high school and a child is in college, and all the tuition fees are earned by Lao Wang as a Eight Immortals.

At about ten o'clock that night, Lao Wang knocked on the door of my house and said, "Nine people, there are still few people in the eight immortals, will you go?" ”

When his father heard this, he hurriedly invited Lao Wang in, poured him a glass of sugar and boiling water, and said, "Lao Wang, I heard that the couple died unjustly, and Jiu Yanzi is a newcomer, will something happen?" ”

Lao Wang took a sip of sugar boiling water, patted his chest and said: "I haven't carried the coffin, I'm still afraid of this, you can rest assured that you will hand over the nine men to me, and bring him back completely tomorrow." ”

After hearing what Lao Wang said, my father agreed to let me follow him to carry the couple's coffin, but when I went out, my father dragged me to burn a lot of paper money at the ancestral tablet, and told me a thousand times before letting me leave.