Quarterly NEWSLETTER
Human Remains Repatriation from/to CHINA
www.roseates.com
No 31, First Quarter 2016
Burial of unmarried males considered unlucky
Theft of remains for ghost marriages on the
rise
THE ROSEATES
NEWSLETTER
Your guide to human remains
repatriation
The Roseates Newsletter
aims to update our clients
and contacts on various
topics related to the death
of foreigners in China and
Chinese abroad. The target
audience includes
consulates, foreign funeral
directors and insurance
companies. We welcome
our readers to provide
questions, comments and
insights.
Effigies used in a “ghost marriage”
The theft of remains is on the rise in China’s rural Shanxi
province as the old custom of “ghost marriage” has
resurfaced. Hongtong county has reported at least three
dozen thefts of female remains in the last three years, said
Lin Xu, deputy director of the county police department.
Several thefts were reported in February and March last year.
In ghost marriage rituals (called “minghun” in Chinese),
female remains are reinforced with steel wires and clothed
before they are buried as “brides” alongside deceased
bachelors. Rural folk belief that failure to find a burial partner
for an unmarried male relative is bad luck. Ghost marriage
rituals were practiced throughout China's history and were
especially popular in the Song Dynasty (960-1279). The
government ordered people to cease the practice after the
founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. However,
rural residents, who tend to uphold old customs and rituals,
have continued the practice by using pictures or dummies
made of paper or dough. As wealth has increased, the
practice of using real remains has returned to some rural
areas of Shanxi, Shaanxi and Henan provinces. Chang Sixin,
deputy director of the China Folk Literature and Art
(continued on page 2)
Roseates Newsletter No 31, First Quarter 2016, Page 1
CONTENTS
Introduction: The Roseates
Newsletter, your guide to
human remains repatriation
Feature: Theft of remains for
ghost marriages on the rise
Q&A: Answers to all your
questions
Policies: Cremation skills
tested in competition held in
Beijing
Green funeral reforms seek to
save space
Option offered to turn ashes
into jewelry
Culture: ‘Hanging’ coffins
found near Three Gorges Dam
Han dynasty crypt in Jiangxi
saved from tomb robbers
Tibet to protect sky burial
sites
The last word
Roseates introduction &
contact info
(continued from page 1)
Association, said there are even matchmaking agents to pair
deceased bachelors with women’s remains. Under the criminal
law, those who steal or defile human remains are subject to
up to three years in prison, but that has failed to deter
traffickers seeking profit, Lin said. Female remains of the
recently deceased can fetch up to 100,000 yuan (13,750
euro), and even remains that have been buried for decades
can be sold for around 5,000 yuan (690 euro).
Q&A
Theft of remains is difficult to investigate as it is hard to find
evidence, Lin said. Out of concern for the theft of remains,
families in some villages have started to build tombs near
their homes rather than at distant mountain sites. Some
affluent families have hired people to guard their family
tombs, reinforced the tombs with steel or installed cameras.
Guo Qiwen, a resident of Hongtong county, is looking for his
mother's remains, which were stolen in March last year. “I
have spent more than 50,000 yuan (6,900 euro) looking for
her remains. It kills my heart not having her back,” he said.
What is the temperature
during cremation?
The temperature in the
furnace can reach up to 600
degrees Centigrade.
How many people pass away
in China every year?
About 10 million people. The
remains of half of those are
cremated, according to figures
from the European Federation
of Funeral Studies.
Is China’s cremation rate
increasing?
No, the rate declined to 49.5
percent in 2012 from 53
percent in 2005 because of
The practice originated in cases were the male partner of an
resistance from the public.
engaged couple died before the marriage was concluded,
China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs
allowing the widow to go on with the marriage and become
is aiming for a cremation rate
part of the man’s family. Examples of the opposite – where
of close to 100 percent by the
the man marries his fiancée posthumously – are however very end of 2020.
rare. Chinese tradition looked very unfavorably on unmarried
women, in part due to the deceased woman leaving no
When will cemeteries in China
surviving male descendants who could pay tribute to her
run out of space?
memory, and becoming a burden to her family. A son who
It is expected that cemeteries
remained unmarried and unable to carry on the family name, in big cities in China will run
was similarly rejected. Resorting to a “ghost marriage” was
out of burial space in about 10
seen as a convenient solution. In Quting, Jing Gouzi said he
years.
had bought remains to be buried with his older brother, who
was single. “I thought of using a woman made of dough, but How many people registered
the old men in our village insisted only real bodies could
to donate their organs in
prevent bad luck,” he said.
Shanghai last year?
A total of 2,466 people
Physical remains were not required everywhere and in all
registered, and 736 organs
circumstances; sometimes conducting a ceremony was
and corneas were harvested.
sufficient. But in some cases, remains were disinterred or
The 14th “body donation
stolen. Sometimes the services of a broker or matchmaker
memorial day” was held in
were sought to find a suitable spouse with a favorable
Shanghai on March 1. A third
horoscope. The bride and groom at a “ghost wedding” may
of all organ donors in China
also be represented by paper bodies over a bamboo frame
come from Shanghai.
with a papier-mâché head, flanked by their paper servants,
and surrounded by paper effigies of products they could use
Are spas and facial treatments
in the afterlife. After the marriage ceremony is over, all paper offered at Chinese funeral
belongings are burned to be sent to the spirit world.
homes?
The Babaoshan Funeral Home
Outside China, ghost marriages are also practiced in countries in Beijing offers these
such as Sudan, India, and even France.
services, as well as pedicures
for the deceased. Family
members can observe the
whole process through a
window.
Roseates Newsletter No 31, First Quarter 2016, Page 2
POLICIES
Cremation skills tested in competition held in Beijing
China held its first national competition for
undertakers, with dozens of professionals
gathering in Beijing to test their skills.
According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, which
organized the competition, the most
important requisites for the job were to show
respect for the deceased and give comfort to
relatives. The National Cremation Skills
Competition drew 54 industry professionals,
who were assessed on their practical skills
and grasp of theory. Top honors went to Wei
Tong and Wang Yuanyuan from Beijing’s
Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery, and Wei
Zhongshan from Jiangxi province’s Nanchang
Funeral Management office. They are among
the roughly 83,000 people working in China’s
funeral industry in a range of areas, including
transport of the deceased, make up for the
deceased, cremation and graveyard security.
The winner could apply for the National May
1st Labor Medal, presented by the All-China
Federation of Trade Unions.
ashes in as pure a form as possible - “as white
as ivory and without any kind of impurity”.
Participants to the competition spoke of the
long working hours and the difficulties of
working all day in high temperatures. “Usually
we have to work 10 to 12 hour shifts. When
there's a peak in our workload, the number of
remains can reach 250 to 260 a day,” said Liu
Yong, who works in a Shanghai crematorium.
Cao Lianxing from Jiangsu said cremation
workers needed to be highly skilled. “The
bones need to be burnt completely while
maintaining their white purity, there cannot be
any black smoke. Once the day is done, we
have to wait for the furnace to cool down so
we can clean it to prevent the remains from
clogging it up,” he said. He added that his
crematorium, which only has 10 workers,
handles more than 10,000 bodies a year. One
reason for holding the competition was to
boost the profile and morale of crematorium
workers. Due to the low prestige of the
funeral business, there is a shortage of
Contestants had to show “technical
crematorium workers, who have to cope with
operational skills” and take an examination on a strong social stigma, as well as the health
vocational knowledge, such as furnace
risks of handling remains which could be
preparation, receiving and cremating the
infectious. Some crematorium workers hid
body, collecting the ashes, and maintaining
their occupation when filling out school forms
and fixing equipment. A spokesman for the
as they were worried their children would face
Ministry of Civil Affairs told Xinhua news
discrimination. Vocational work and schools
agency that crematorium workers should have are still looked down upon by many parents in
“a diligent attitude, and send off the deceased China, who prefer their children to attend
in a peaceful and holistic manner”. Family
universities instead.
members should also receive their loved ones'
Green funeral reforms seek to save space
Family members will be encouraged to share
the same tombs, and ecologically friendly
funerals will be promoted over the next five
years in China, under a guideline jointly
issued on February 19 by nine departments,
including the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the
National Development and Reform
Commission. Eco-friendly funerals include sea
burials and tree funerals, where ashes are
buried and a tree is planted on the spot.
Burials that take up little or no land will be
promoted in the next five years. In densely
populated areas, authorities will promote the
storage of cremated remains in buildings,
walls or towers. The authorities will also
Roseates Newsletter No 31, First Quarter 2016, Page 3
encourage the use of smaller tombs and
tombstones. Funerals that leave no ashes of
the deceased will also be promoted, according
to the guideline. Families are encouraged to
place the ashes of deceased relatives together
in tombs that can house up to eight urns, the
Shanghai Funeral and Interment Association
said. There are two cemeteries in Shanghai
that sell multi-burial tombs: the Zhuanqiao
Qinyuan Cemetery in Minhang District and the
Guiyuan Cemetery in Qingpu District. Multiurn interment sites at the two cemeteries are
about one square meter in area — the same
as the average single interment space — with
two layers underground, providing room for a
maximum of eight urns. They cost between
100,000 and 200,000 yuan (13,650 and
27,300 euro)and usually house three
generations. A multi-burial trial started about
five years ago, but was not well promoted.
Multiple burials and eco-burials in Shanghai
account for nearly 30 percent of all interments
now compared with just 19 percent five years
ago, according to the Shanghai Civil Affairs
Bureau. Many cities are offering cash awards
of around 800 to 15,000 yuan (110 to 2,000
euro) for families who choose sea burials or
other land-sparing alternatives. Funeral
traditions of ethnic minorities would be
respected, but they would also be encouraged
to choose eco-friendly burials in accordance
with their traditions. Many online commenters
were very critical of the guideline. One joked:
“Please bury people from the nine ministries
together”.
Many have luxury decorations, and in some
cases, a luxurious grave can serve as a bribe,”
Yang Genlai, a funeral management expert
with the Beijing Social Administration
Vocational College, told the Global Times. Ji
Jianye – a former mayor of Nanjing, who was
sentenced to 15 years in prison for corruption
– once bought a 150 square meter grave for
500,000 yuan (68,750 euro), less than the
market price. Another prominent problem is
officials taking advantage of their power to
hold lavish banquets at funerals and collect
large sums of gift money. “Many cemeteries
welcome the profit and celebrity that officials'
purchases of luxury tombs bring, and some
companies will also establish cemeteries for
deceased local officials to gain fame,” funeral
expert Yang Genlai said. The Beijing News
quoted an employee of a cemetery in Taiyuan,
Shanxi province, as saying that some officials
purchased luxury tombs but did not carve
The key to the success of the reforms was
their names on the tombstones for fear of
changing public conceptions, according to an being publicly shamed. Li Bosen, director of
official with the Ministry of Civil Affairs.
the 101 Institute of the Ministry of Civil
Communist Party members, especially
Affairs, a government think tank that
government officials, who choose burial
specializes in funeral affairs research, said last
methods that violate the guideline will be
year that drastic efforts by local authorities to
punished. This includes buying or constructing increase the cremation rate had resulted in
oversized tombs. “Many graves for officials
incidents such as body snatching and elders
are several times larger than the national
committing suicide before funeral reforms
standard of no more than one square meter.
could be carried out.
Option offered to turn ashes into jewelry
A new scheme is scheduled to be launched
that will transform human ashes into jewelry,
a senior official from the Shanghai Civil Affairs
Bureau said. The process, which will be
managed by the Shanghai Funeral and
Interment Service Center, will allow bereaved
relatives to have a permanent reminder of
their lost loved ones on their fingers or around
their necks, said Gao Jianhua, director of the
bureau’s funeral and interment management
department. “The ashes are converted into a
particulate matter that can then be used in
rings or bracelets, or whatever the person
wants,” he said. People who move away from
their hometowns will thereby be able to take a
part of the remains of their loved ones with
them. Transforming ashes into jewelry will
also reduce the space needed to keep urns.
“We don’t know how many people will go for
the new option, but at least it adds to the
range of choices available to them,” Gao said.
“I probably wouldn’t go for being converted
into a piece of jewelry as Chinese believe that
you can only rest in peace if your ashes are
buried,” one woman in Shanghai said. “But I
can accept the idea of being buried under a
tree, which is eco-friendly and cheap,” the
Shanghai Daily reported.
CULTURE
‘Hanging’ coffins found near Three Gorges Dam
A total of 131 “hanging” wooden coffins,
believed to be about 1,200 years old, have
Roseates Newsletter No 31, First Quarter 2016, Page 4
been discovered on the side of a 100 meterhigh mountain cliff in China’s Hubei province.
The coffins had been placed in rectangularshaped holes, carved into an area more than
50 meters high up on the side of a cliff facing
a river in a remote area in Zigui county, close
to the site of the Three Gorges Dam.
Archaeologists said the coffins were built
1,200 years ago during the Tang dynasty
(618-907), and probably belonged to the
ancient ethnic minority Bo people, who lived
in southern China. It is still unclear how the
coffins would have been lifted up the high cliff.
This unique burial custom was used to
prevent the remains from being eaten by wild
animals and was also believed to be a way for
the soul of the deceased to gain an eternal
blessing. Hanging coffins had previously been
discovered in the provinces of Yunnan,
Sichuan, Jiangxi and Fujian. Chinese media
have reported that some government officials
have been seen worshipping at such sites
because the pronunciation of “hanging coffin”
or “xuanguan” in Chinese sounds similar to
“promoting the official”. After construction of
the Three Gorges Dam, about 1,300
archaeological sites were flooded, including
some hanging coffin sites.
Han dynasty crypt in Jiangxi saved from tomb robbers
Thousands of relics dating to the Han dynasty
about 2,000 years ago could have ended up in
the hands of tomb raiders if archaeologists
had arrived at a burial site just one day later.
The team of archaeologists discovered about
10,000 relics at the site of a tomb thought to
belong to the Marquis of Haihun, or Liu He, in
Nanchang in the eastern province of Jiangxi.
Lead archaeologist Yang Jun said they began
to investigate the site, located in a
mountainous area, after a tip-off from local
villagers four years ago. Residents had
reported that grave robbers were digging at
the site, focussing on the middle section. But
according to the practices of the Han era,
tombs were often laid out with the coffins in
the eastern part. The robbers could have
stumbled upon the relics if the team had
arrived just one day later, Yang said. The site
is one of the best-preserved of the Han
dynasty (206BC-AD220) yet unearthed. More
than 100 pieces discovered at the site have
been on display in the Jiangxi Provincial
Museum, which attracted more than 5,000
visitors daily, the South China Morning Post
reports.
Tibet to protect sky burial sites
Tibet will spend 490 million yuan (67 million
euro) over the next five years on the repair
and protection of sky burial sites used in
traditional Tibetan funeral practice. Sky burial
is a Tibetan and Mongolian tradition, whereby
the remains are fed to predatory birds so that
their souls may ascend to heaven. A total 156
sky burial sites will receive funding. The
government will invest 165 million yuan (23
million euro) this year on 47 sites, mostly
close to lamaseries. Each site will be assigned
3 million to 5 million yuan (410,000 to
690,000 euro) to finance repair and protection
work. The funding will cover the construction
of roads, fences, reception rooms, mortuaries
and furnaces.
THE LAST WORD
● A brickyard in Xianyang, Shaanxi province, has been accused of using earth and other
materials from an ancient cemetery of Emperor Yuandi, or Liu Shi (74-33 BC), the 11th
emperor of the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24). The cemetery is listed as a
state-level protected heritage site.
● Nearly 100 doctors and nurses staged a protest in Yongqing county, about 60
kilometers south of Beijing, demanding swift punishment for a family that attacked
hospital staff after a relative died. Three doctors were kept locked in a room for eight
hours, until colleagues freed them.The patient had been admitted for heart disease
and other ailments, but died after emergency treatment. The police arrested 16
people.
● On ’dongzhi', or the winter solstice, in December, about 1.16 million people visited 54
cemeteries in Shanghai, leading to traffic jams as 117,200 extra vehicles — 20 percent
more than usual - were on the roads to the cemeteries. The winter solstice is a time
when people pay their respects to the deceased by visiting cemeteries and sweeping
Roseates Newsletter No 31, First Quarter 2016, Page 5
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tombs.
The parents of an 18-month old boy from Sichuan province donated their son’s organs
after he succumbed to an infection caused by a chopstick piercing his eye. The boy’s
corneas, liver and kidneys were transplanted.
Two men from northern China have been accused of stealing a funeral urn from a
cemetery and demanding 20,000 yuan (2,730 euro) from the deceased’s family to
return their remains. Relatives paid 3,000 yuan (410 euro), but the pair continued to
ask for more money. They were eventually caught by the police at an internet café
three days after the ashes were stolen.
An ancient coffin displayed at the Wushan Museum in Chongqing has been covered in
offerings of cash by visitors wishing for good luck. The coffin was found on the mid
reaches of the Yangtze river and belonged to the Ba people dating back about 2,000
years.
Bulldozers unexpectedly demolished part of a hospital and its adjoining morgue in
Zhengzhou, capital of Henan province, sending doctors, nurses and patients fleeing
and burying six sets of remains being processed at the morgue. The hospital has
accused the local government of ordering the demolition work after failing to get the
hospital to agree to it for a road expansion project.
66-year old Zhang Deyang staged his own funeral in the city of Rizhao in Shandong
province just to see how many people would turn up. He invited about 50 family
members but only 20 showed up. He spent 16,000 yuan (2,180 euro) on the
ceremony, and also pretended to marry a deceased woman because it is considered
bad luck to go to the afterlife without a spouse.
FIXED GUIDELINES IN CASE OF DEATH
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Provide the complete name, date of birth and nationality of the deceased.
Provide the name and telephone number of the person in China who first reported the
death (hospital, public security bureau, embassy, travel agent, friend,...)
Provide the place of death: district, city, prefecture and/or county and province.
Indicate, if known, whether the deceased was covered by an insurance policy.
ROSEATES INTRODUCTION & CONTACT INFO
PARTNER OF THE CHINA NATIONAL FUNERAL
ASSOCIATION
ROSEATES China
Tel 0086 13911075392
Fax 0086 10 87955196
Email
[email protected]
Web site
www.roseates.com
Coordination and management of the entire
repatriation process of human remains from/to
mainland China:
Hospital – Public Security – Consulate – China Funeral Home –
Crematory – Airline – Funeral Director at Destination –
Insurer – Next of Kin
Legal Formalities – Storage – Autopsy – Embalmment – Coffin
– Cremation – Urn – Inland Transportation – Quarantine –
International Transportation – Daily Update of Progress
THE ROSEATES NEWSLETTER
The Roseates Newsletter is edited by Michel Lens, who is based in Beijing and can be
contacted by e-mail at [email protected]. Disclaimer: the views expressed in this
newsletter are not necessarily those of Repat-Assist Ltd. or its management. © Repat-Assist
Ltd. Hong Kong.
Roseates Newsletter No 31, First Quarter 2016, Page 6