When a 59-year-old woman surnamed Wang saw her name inscribed on a black tombstone at her village's cemetery, she was so frightened she felt like sinking in the ground.
Wang, who lives in Mayu village in Beijing's Changping district, recently filed a lawsuit against the local government and the village committee, demanding an apology and compensation for the infringement of her reputation and misuse of her name.
Wang said that the staff in charge of the cemetery told her that the purpose behind "inscribing local villagers' names on the tombstone was to avoid official inspection," the Beijing Times reported.
According to the report, a non-profit cemetery has been planned on the land where "Wang's tomb" lies but has not been approved. However, tombs at the cemetery have been sold secretly, which is against China's regulations on funeral management that a non-profit cemetery cannot be used by people other than local villagers.
Therefore, staff members at the cemetery found a way to avoid inspection by local civil affairs department: write villages' names on the tombstone and wipe them and carve new names after the tombs were sold.
"We cannot afford to die" has become a bizarre refrain among the Chinese public during every Qingming Festival, or Tomb Sweeping Day. Especially in metropolises like Beijing, the cost of a cemetery burial, ranging from 40,000 yuan ($6,500) to hundreds of thousands of yuan per square meter, is far from affordable, according to the recently released annual Green Book of Funeral: Report on Funeral Development in China, by an institute affiliated with the Ministry of Civil Affairs.
Meanwhile, media reports about more cases of non-profit village cemeteries being utilized for commercial purposes have surfaced recently, prompting experts to call for reform of the funeral system.
Empty tombs
According to Wang, her grandparents' and husband's names were also written on at least three tombstones and staff members explained it to be "duplication of the name."
"It was possible that staff members at the cemetery did not notice that I am still alive and wrote my name on the tombstone to establish an empty graveyard," said Wang, adding that these empty tombs could serve as advertisement to attract more people to purchase a tomb at the cemetery.
The Beijing Times reported that over 200 of 600 tombs at the cemetery are fake and two tombstones even have the names of "Yao Ming" [Chinese basketball player and NBA superstar], and "Lin Zhixuan and Deng Liwen" [famous Taiwan singer and his wife]. People who established the tombstones failed to be found, according to the report.
A warning board hangs at the cemetery's gate which reads, "Illegal non-profit cemetery." It was placed by Changping district authorities.
However, a staff member at the cemetery told the newspaper that the tombs have been sold to outside people secretly at the price ranging from 30,000 to 50,000 yuan per square meter.
"A non-profit cemetery could easily get approval from local civil affairs department. Procurement of the land will receive government subsidy, but it is banned from being sold to people outside the village," said the staff member, adding that the price in Mayu village is half that of a nearby cemetery.
Official indifference
The Global Times contacted a person surnamed Zhang at a Beijing-based company which sells graveyards at the Ming Tombs region.
According to the company's website, 33 legal commercial tombs are being sold in Beijing, in which 11 are located in Haidian district while five in Changping district. The lowest price for a tomb in Haidian is 100,000 yuan per square meter while those in Changping district cost around 50,000 yuan on average.
"If you think it is too expensive, we could offer you tomb in the village that only costs several thousand yuan," said Zhang, suggesting people buy it as soon as possible since the price has been rising by around 20 percent annually.
Zhang admitted that selling tombs in non-profit cemeteries is illegal. However, when being asked if there are any risks, he assured that "I have been selling graveyards for seven years and have never run into any trouble."
"Civil affairs authorities usually turn a blind eye as we have already established large numbers of graveyards in village cemeteries. What's done is done, and they could not remove the graveyards," he said.
Zhang added that civil affairs authorities are unable to keep a vigil on the cemeteries all the time. Even if they uncovered the illegal business, they would usually solve the problem by imposing fines.
Call for reform
Commercial cemetery is a scarce and non-renewable resource and is too expensive for ordinary people; therefore, most people tend to purchase cheap tombs in villages. Driven by huge profits, some people began to sell tombs in non-profit cemeteries to citizens, although they knew it was illegal, Yang Genlai, a funeral management expert with the Beijing Social Administration Vocational College, told the Global Times.
According to a report in the Legal Weekly, insiders said that 15,000 tombs could be established in a 20-hectare non-profit cemetery and one could earn around 200 million yuan by selling each at 15,000 yuan.
Insiders added that the problem is hard to solve as the industrial and commercial administration, civil affairs department and local government all part of the profit chain.
Yang said that slack supervision and weak law enforcement has led to a rise in the illegal trade, while insufficient punishment emboldens people to reenter the business after being caught for the first time. He suggested that the government advocate new ways of burial such as sea-burial or cremation.
It is estimated that China's funeral market will surge in the next two years to over 100 billion yuan. According to the Economic Observer newspaper, the overall gross margin of China's cemetery company Fu Shou Yuan has been over 80 percent for two years in a row.
