On April 4 Chinese everywhere will honor their deceased loved ones by packing up bags of gifts, flowers and fare to take to their graves as part of Qingming festival, or Tomb Sweeping Day, a national holiday of adulation for Chinese ancestors. But the more than 2,500-year-old ancient tradition underscores a crippling theme in much of the now-urbanized China: there's no room.
As Quartz reports, city officials are ramping up efforts to change the perceived importance of grave burials by also offering mass burials at sea for the recently departed on Tomb Sweeping Day. Cities like Shanghai, Guangzhou and Jiaxing in Zhejiang province are covering costs for transportation, the sea burial and even offering subsidies ranging from $60 to an upwards of $800. This year Shanghai increased its sea burial subsidy five times more, subsequently leading government officials to add another ship to its sea burial fleet to meet a growing demand.
The relief is likely welcome for an otherwise pricey undertaking. With more than 9 million residents who are increasingly moving to cities, the densely-populated China has trouble keeping up with a demand for burial plots. As TIME reported in 2009, a permanent plot in Hong Kong can cost more than $30,000 while a temporary plot is priced around $3,000, leading some families to send bodies abroad to be buried.
But limited space is not the only problem that the families of China's departed face. Perhaps spreading remains at sea is the best way to avoid grave robberies, which are also problematic in China. Last month four men were arrested in Shanxi for digging up female bodies to sell for ghost marriages, a ritual of burying recently deceased women alongside dead bachelors so they can be together in the afterlife, TIME reports. Ghost marriages are outlawed in China, but the practice continues in some rural areas where a female body can earn up to $21,000 on the black market, according to state-run Global Times.
Chinese people burn over 1,000 tonnes of paper products on Tomb-Sweeping Day. The so-called "white consumption" of sacrificial offerings amounted to about 10 billion yuan within the 24 hours in 2012, according to the China Consumers' Association.
This year, a surging trend of luxury sacrificial offerings is sweeping the nation, with sky-high prices for everything from paper castles to yachts and Apple products. Their price tags range from several hundreds to dozens of thousands of yuan per piece.
"Fake money for burning, paper gold ingots and cigarettes are out of fashion. On the other hand, there are many modern high-end products which sell well both in my shop and online store," says a Nanning funeral products retailer surnamed Huang.
Huang's store stocks over 50 kinds of offerings, including fake property ownership certificates, famous-brand watches and even large castles -- a 20,000-yuan item which many customers have reserved in advance.
Huang's online consumers are scattered across several provinces and regions.
Wei Jiankang, a 52-year-old high school teacher, paid a similar business about 1,000 yuan for a paper iPhone, car and computer to mourn his deceased parents in the Qinglonggang Cemetery in the suburbs of Nanning.
"They bore hardships to bring us up but passed away quite early. My dad never dreamed of driving a car or using a mobile phone," he says, adding that he now wants to gift them such privileges posthumously.
Being a grandfather himself, Wei took his family on the drive from Guilin City to his hometown village near Nanning, where he will burn the sacrifices.
"I felt so much regret that I could not offer them a better life. Though living frugally myself, I bought these things without hesitation upon the store owner's recommendation," says Wei.
In fact, the cost price of a paper mobile phone is only 0.5 yuan and a paper sports car about 1.5 yuan, according to a funeral products workshop owner surnamed Wei in Xitang District of Nanning.
Wei says, "The retailers get windfall profits by prompting this blind vying based on people's special emotions and experiences in mourning their loved ones."
Insiders say this trend is tantamount to profiteering from dead people. The craze has prompted producers and retailers of sacrificial merchandise to come up with new products, a drive which causes immeasurable waste and environmental pollution.
China is a nation that pays great respect to filial piety. And the Qingming Festival, in particular, encourage people to remember departed family members, notes Zhou Xiaozheng, a sociology professor with Renmin University.
"Qingming" means purity, peace and civilization in Chinese, adds Zhou, while urging people to profoundly rethink the purpose of this holiday by honoring the dead in more tasteful ways.
Wednesday 3 April 2013
http://www.sott.net/article/260460-China-plots-more-sea-burials-Faces-grave-space-limitation
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/culture/2013-04/03/c_132283141.htm
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