Do-it-yourself funerals

Jin didn't want friends to organize her funeral. So she has done it herself. She has selected an area at the Shanghai Longhua Funeral Parlor for the ceremony; she wants the song "The Devotion of Love" by Chinese singer Wei Wei to be played instead of traditional funeral music; she wants the mourners to refer to her as "Granny Le" ("Happy Granny"); and she has ordered a suitably inscribed banner to be hung in the parlor.

Jin is the first participant in a project launched by the Shanghai Funeral and Interment Service Center last March to help childless old people arrange their own funerals.

According to the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau, Shanghai has about 190,000 elderly people living on their own. But to date only a fraction of this number has applied for this service - traditional Chinese beliefs and fears are holding many back from making use of the project.

"We have had six applications since we started. There have been a lot of inquiries, but only a few have taken the big step," Wang Hongjie, the director of the Shanghai Funeral and Interment Service Center, told the Global Times.

A constant worry

Jin does not have children. Many years ago she suffered an ectopic pregnancy and could not conceive afterwards. She and her husband were married for 48 years but he passed away six years ago. She buried him in a cemetery near the sea in Fengxian district and bought a plot next to her husband's for herself. But she was constantly worrying about how she would be treated when she dies and how she would be taken to her grave next to her husband.

Jin visited her husband's grave frequently and started keeping a diary, writing down her fears, but she became more stressed as time went on.

"It is painful to know that no one will send me off and arrange things on the day I die," she said. She was ecstatic when she learned of the new service. "Since I signed up, I have felt at peace."

Jin decided to leave her apartment to the graveyard. "I want to help more old people like me with their funerals," she said.

Another senior surnamed Hong has come to the same conclusion and signed a funeral contract. Hong was left alone after his only son died eight years ago. He has made very detailed instructions about the size and shape of his urn.

"I want my funeral to be unique. I want Beethoven's Fifth Symphony played and I want the parlor decorated with white roses and not the usual chrysanthemums," Hong said. He has kept his son's ashes in his apartment and wants both their ashes to be scattered at sea.

Wu Xiaogang, the manager of the interment department of the Shanghai Funeral and Interment Service Center, said that funerals represented the way people felt about the world. People wanted to display all the things they loved at their funerals.

"Hong told me that he loved roses because of their scent. He wanted white roses because he thought white was a pure color that represented a person's state when he came into the world and when he left the world. A person is purest at the beginning and at the end of life," Wu said.