Coffins commonly found in villages generally weighed only around five hundred to eight hundred kilograms.
Many people who had lived in the countryside had seen coffins placed on the left side of a family's main hall. Such households generally had an elderly person over sixty.
It was a custom. Once rural elders passed sixty—or even in their fifties if they were in poor health—they would begin preparing a coffin for themselves.
In the past, they would save up enough suitable timber, then hire a carpenter to make them a coffin.
Living standards were average back then, and people left birth, aging, illness, and death to fate. Some elderly people did not know when they might suddenly pass away, so they prepared their coffins in advance.
This was especially true for those without children. Worried that they might not even have a coffin after death, they naturally prepared one early, lest someone merely wrap them in a straw mat, lay them on a door panel, and carry them off for burial.
The weight of a coffin was something that required consideration. Coffins made from good materials were naturally heavier, but they could not be made too large or too heavy. After all, there would be a body inside, and when it was carried to burial, it was not just the coffin that needed lifting—the outer carrying frame was also extremely heavy.
In the countryside, coffin bearers were generally able-bodied young and middle-aged men from the village. It took ten or twenty people to carry it from the home to the graveyard, whether it was a few li away or more than a dozen. Even if the deceased was to be buried on the mountain right behind the house, the coffin would usually be carried around the nearby villages first, allowing the