The smell of corpses, once contaminated, is like a shadow, difficult to clean;This is an imprint that cannot be shaken off, like a lifelong commitment, the Yangtze River corpse collector shoulders this responsibility, although the annual salary is as high as hundreds of thousands, it is difficult to find a suitable ** person. In the past 18 years, they have salvaged more than 200 bodies and witnessed the cycle of life and death.
Life and death play a pivotal role in Chinese culture. Sheng, a symbol of hope and new life;Death represents the demise of life. Attitudes towards the two are very different. Life, people are full of anticipation to welcome the arrival of new life;Death, on the other hand, is often accompanied by fear and insecurity. Not only are we afraid of death, but we are also afraid of witnessing the death of others.
However, there is often an inherent bias towards those professions that work with corpses. They consider these professions to be unlucky and closely linked to death. However, we are all ordinary people with different professions and should not be labeled as unlucky.
The Yangtze River and the Yellow River, the two rivers that gave birth to civilization, also witness the death of countless lives every year. Here, some people are trapped by love, some are overwhelmed, some are about to come to the end of their lives, and some people bravely save people from danger. Among these lost lives, there are young faces, middle-aged figures, and old people.
Chen Feng, a corpse salvage team in Tangjiatuo's "backwater beach" along the Yangtze River, has been dealing with the water from beginning to end. When he first started this job, he didn't think much about it, just because he was old enough to work, and he saw that corpse diggers could make more money. However, he did not foresee that he would be "trapped" in water for most of his life.
In general, many families will object to their children taking up jobs that deal with the deceased. However, Chen Feng's parents were fishermen themselves and sometimes helped recover corpses, so they did not object to their son's pursuit of the industry. They believed that it was a meritorious thing to help the deceased to come ashore safely and let them be buried in peace, so they also supported their son's work.
When he first started working in this job, Chen Feng was also afraid of being in the company of corpses. However, when he saw his family crying and thanking him, he felt that the work was worth it. In this way, in the choice between giving up and persevering, Chen Feng drifted in the water for nearly 20 years.
The upper reaches of the Yangtze River are turbulent, and if the bodies in the upper reaches are not salvaged in time, these bodies will drift with the current to the backwater beach of Tangjiatuo. Therefore, Chen Feng's task of retrieving the corpse is very heavy. For more than a decade, he has developed a habit of waking up at 5 a.m. every morning, regardless of winter or summer, to first use a telescope to inspect the entire river surface to see if there are any floating corpses.
Chen Feng did not dare to leave the river at any time, he witnessed the death of too many drowning people, and lamented the impermanence and fragility of life several times.
In Chen Feng's memory, the maximum number of corpses he salvaged in a day was five. The bodies came from different walks of life and were found in all ages. In winter, people's clothing is thicker and relatively easy to salvage. However, on hot summer days, most people wear only swim trunks, which are as thin as cicada wings, and the hook is barely able to grasp.
They have also encountered bodies that have been soaked and rotten, and they need to be extra careful when salvaging them to avoid accidental falling apart. However, the corpse collectors still wanted to do their best to preserve their dignity and leave them with a whole corpse. All they can do is be careful, and then careful.
We have respect for the deceased, but there is a fear that is real, and that is the phenomenon of the "giant view". When the corpses remain in the water for more than three days and are not found and recovered, they take on the state of giants. Under the action of bacteria in the water, the whole body of these corpses will turn dark green, the eyes will protrude, and the lips will turn out, presenting an extremely terrifying picture. The corpse in this situation is fragile, as if it could burst at any moment.
Every time he encountered such a situation, the corpse collector would act immediately and would not dare to delay. They needed to get the body back as soon as possible, because it also emitted a foul smell that was unbearable from the inside out. It has been said that once this stench is contaminated, it will never be removed.
The fear of the dead makes this profession rarely appreciated, and there have been hot-blooded young people who have tried to devote themselves to it, but they flinched after the first contact with the corpse, and the fear of facing death is too strong.
Chen Feng took this calmly, he never took the initiative to hand out his business card, because he knew the particularity of this profession. He would rather keep ** silent than be disturbed frequently, because his job is not just to collect corpses, but more to protect the peace of life. He wanted everyone to be safe.