Capital halts building of new tombs, all sites forecast to be filled by 2050
More Beijing residents are seeking final resting places in neighboring Hebei Province, as the capital no longer allows the construction of new tombs and its supply of empty burial sites will be exhausted by 2050.
In late March, the Beijing Municipal Civil Affairs Bureau (BMCAB) issued a funeral industry development plan for 2016-20, which said that the city will no longer build new tombs and that existing tombs with expired rental leases cannot be rented again, the Beijing Times reported on March 27.
An anonymous official with the BMCAB told The Beijing News that Beijing will run out of tombs by 2050. Several Beijing cemeteries contacted by the Global Times on Monday said that they already have no burial sites available for sale.
In recent years, many cemeteries in Beijing have run out of tombs to sell, while those that remain are sold for tens or hundreds of thousands of yuan, the Beijing News reported on Monday.
Meanwhile, tombs in towns in Hebei Province such as Zhuozhou, Huailai and Sanhe have sold well, targeting Beijing purchasers with prices that average under 10,000 yuan ($1,544) for a 1-square-meter tomb.
A female employee of Zhonghua Perpetuity Cemetery in Hebei's Huailai county, about 120 kilometers from Beijing, told a Global Times reporter posing as a client that about 90 percent of their clients are from Beijing.
Lingshan Tower Cemetery in Hebei's Sanhe also claimed that 80 percent of their 2,100 tombs were sold to Beijingers last year, The Beijing News reported on March 4.
A male employee of Futian Cemetery in Shijingshan district in the capital's west said that all 70 tombs set to be made available this year were sold in 2015, and clients can now only book tombs for 2017.
"Due to the limited amount of land, the number of tombs we offer has declined in recent years," the employee said, adding that the cemetery may only offer 50 tombs for 2017, at the price of 200,000 yuan for each 1-square-meter tomb.
Many cemeteries in Hebei Province now offer special services for clients from Beijing, including free shuttle buses, as the limited land resources in the capital have helped increase the popularity of burial sites in Hebei. Some cemeteries have even set up offices in the Guomao area of downtown Beijing to offer consultations.
Beijing residents have been complaining about overpriced cemeteries for years, saying that they cannot afford to die, as tombs are several times more costly than the city's housing.
Urban residents in the city spend an average of 80,000 yuan on funerals, according to a report released by an institution under the Ministry of Civil Affairs in 2015.
The Beijing government plans to ensure that at least half of its deceased citizens have eco-friendly burials by 2020, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
