Chinese authorities have banned the storage of cremated human remains in cheap apartments. This practice has recently become very popular in China: survivors are taking advantage of the subdued real estate market to avoid rising funeral costs.
As the AFP agency reported on Tuesday with reference to the local media, writes TASR, such apartments are located in remote and almost uninhabited apartment complexes. They can be less expensive for a family to purchase than a grave site in a cemetery, and they give families more control over where the remains are buried.
Such apartments can be recognized, for example, by permanently closed windows or permanently drawn curtains, added AFP. By purchasing such an apartment, according to Carsten Herrmann-Pillath from the University of Erfurt, Germany, a family “kills two birds with one stone”. “It’s an investment and it will make it easier to perform ceremonies,” he told AFP.
The Legal Daily, published by the Communist Party, quoted an eyewitness, who peered through the door into one of the apartments in his complex and saw two candlesticks next to a black urn containing ashes and a black-and-white portrait of the deceased — a typical arrangement used in China to honor the dead.
However, the regulations that came into effect on Monday expressly prohibit it “the use of residential premises exclusively for the storage of the ashes of the deceased”. This ban comes just days before the Qingming Festival, also known as the grave-sweeping festival, when families traditionally come to the graves of their relatives, clean them and bring sacrificial gifts.
As China’s population ages and deaths outnumber births, interest in burial sites is growing. However, according to a 2020 survey by British insurer SunLife, funeral costs in China they represent almost half of the average annual salary. In response to this situation, China’s market supervision authority announced new rules on Tuesday to combat fraud and the lack of transparency in funeral service prices in order to “to reduce the financial burden of funerals for the population”.
