City gears up for expected Qingming rush

The municipal Civil Affairs Bureau has made plans to benefit residents during the Qingming Festival in April, the Chinese Tomb-sweeping Day, according to the bureau Monday.

Residents, who are entitled to a government subsistence allowance, will be able to choose from five to eight types of urns for free at government-owned funeral parlors, starting April 1, according to the bureau. Urns can cost anything from hundreds of yuan up to thousands.

The service is one of the bureau's measures launched since 2009 to benefit residents. The free urn service for relations' remains will be first offered at municipal cemeteries and later applied citywide, the bureau said.

The Beijing Public Transport Group launched 17 tomb-sweeping bus lines for cemetery visitors on Saturday, which leads to eight cemeteries including the Badaling People's Cemetery, and will last until April 8.

The Babaoshan People's Cemetery in Shijingshan district has set up a "time mailbox" for visitors to drop letters of blessings for the deceased families and friends or stories of their own life as condolences to them, according to a Beijing Morning Post report yesterday. Visitors can get free greeting cards from the cemetery, write what they want to say, and the letters and cards will be incinerated later, the report said.

Qingming Festival, which falls on April 4 this year, is a traditional occasion for Chinese people to visit ancestral graves.

Last weekend saw some 190,000 tomb-sweeping visitors to the 20 government-owned cemeteries, and the first visitor peak is expected March 31, according to the bureau.