Their heavy wooden coffins extend from the rock face almost 300 feet straight up. Some rest on wooden posts that jut out from the cliffside, others lie in niches cut into the rock or in natural recesses where murals painted in cinnabar red depict scenes from the lives of these curious people, known as the Bo. The Bo, who flourished for some 400 years in the Hemp Pond Valley in Southwest China's Gongxian County, are known in local annals as Ya Ze--"Sons of the Cliffs." They were also called Tu Tian, "Subjugators of the Sky,". In the summer when it was hot, they wore leather coats and warmed themselves by the fire; in the winter, they wore a single sweat garment and carried big fans in their hands. Why the Bo lived this way and interred their dead on the sides of cliffs remain a mystery; only intermittent mention of them exists in Chinese history, and they eventually disappeared without a trace.
2) Madagascar's dance with the dead
The Hanging Coffins of the Bo People is odd but not a very macabre ritual compare with the next one: Dancing with the corpse of a dead loved one, years after their demise. Famadihana, an exhumation or the bones returning ceremony, does not occur outside the central highlands and the attitudes of the Merina and Betsileo. During the ceremony, all family members get together, dance, and sing to celebrate the turning of the dead. Famadihana is a huge familial festivity where people alive can meet the dead. They exhume their dead ancestors to re-pack their bones as well as to give thanks for the blessings they have bestowed from the spirit world with great influences on the living.
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