iPhone 5 must-have for Qingming 2013

Ancestors eager for a tech update in the afterlife might have to wait a while, after city law authorities have stopped unlicensed street vendors from selling paper versions of the new iPhone 5 to be burnt as offerings for the upcoming Qingming Festival.

Xicheng district chengguan (urban management officers) confiscated the facsimiles of the iPhones Tuesday. In the past, paper offerings have included high-end cars like BMWs, villas, and even servants and attractive companions. Paper cigarettes and alcohol are also popular.

"The iPhone 5 model is the new thing this year. In the past, we mainly found vendors illegally selling imitation money and rough yellow straw paper," said media officer Zhao Zhizhong from Shijingshan chengguan office.

Shijingshan district chengguan also confiscated hundreds of thousands of imitation paper notes and hundreds of artificial flowers from unlicensed vendors Tuesday, according to a media officer surnamed Zhang at Shijingshan district urban management office.

This is part of a citywide crackdown on the illegal sales of Qingming or Tomb Sweeping Festival offerings, focusing on unlicensed vendors.

Beijing Municipal Urban Administrative and Law Enforcement Bureau issued a press release Wednesday appealing for residents not to buy paper offerings from illegal vendors, but instead use more environmentally friendly methods of remembering their ancestors, such as planting trees or buying flowers. Burning offerings will contribute to air pollution and could be a fire hazard, the bureau said.

Tong Xueying, an intellectual property lawyer, said that making paper copies of an iPhone 5 does not infringe on the brand.

"If they have obvious logos, they will infringe upon the trademark right of an iPhone. But this case doesn't involve intellectual property rights because they are two different types of things with different functions, unlike the cheap copies of phones," Tong said.

Gao Wei, director of the Beijing Society of History and Geography, said the appearance of new types of offerings like smartphones reflects the change of times.

"In Chinese people's minds, death is not the end of life, but means going to another world, where people can still use money. So when people use iPhones now, they might want their ancestors to have a chance to use them and enjoy them, too," he said.

"It's hard to end this concept and tradition, but the government can organize activities such as organizing several concentrated areas for people to burn paper, and reduce the amount of paper people burn," he said.