Beijing started an online appointment system on Thursday for people to orderly sweep the tombs of their deceased family at cemeteries during the upcoming Qingming Festival. It also launched online tomb-sweeping services for people to convey condolences remotely so as to avoid large gatherings on site.
The Qingming Festival is a Chinese traditional memorial day for Chinese family to visit the tombs of their ancestors and recently departed ones, making ritual offerings to commemorate and honor them at their grave sites. The festival will come on April 4 this year.
To avoid a large inflow of traffic at the cemeteries amid the epidemic outbreak, Beijing announced an online appointment system on Thursday, which will allow no more than three visitors for each tomb every day from March 21 to April 12.
People returning from other places to Beijing who have been quarantined at home for less than 14 days shall not be able to make an appointment.
All 223 cemeteries and grave-sweeping sites in Beijing will still be open for memory services despite the epidemic. Visitors will go through ID checks and temporary inspection before entering and have to wear masks throughout the whole service.
The government also launched remote tomb-sweeping services for residents, allowing people to virtually "sweep the tomb" online or ask the cemetery staff to do the service for them.
As for the online ritual service, people can finish the whole process on the designated website of the district governments - clicking on, instead of handing in, flowers, candles, incense, wine and other memorial things, and writing down the memorial speech on the page of their deceased family.
For those who prefer onsite service but cannot go to the site, they can choose to have cemetery staffers to conduct the ritual service on their behalf. Some cemeteries in Shanghai already started this service, which turned out to be very popular.
In Songhe Mausoleum in Shanghai, the sweeping-tomb services have four packages, with the price ranging from 35 yuan ($7) to 299 yuan ($40). The largest package has a wide variety of services items, including a customized funeral oration which the staffer will read to the tomb of the deceased.
"We will schedule the service at the clients' request, and send them photos of our staffers sweeping the tombs," a staff at Song mausoleum told the Global Times on Saturday."Now we have received more than 50 orders and the calls are still coming in."
Netizens hail the innovative remote tomb-sweeping service, saying it is a thoughtful and convenient way for people to honor their deceased ones at this special time amid the outbreak.
"I totally support this new way for people to convey regards and condolences online during Qingming Festival. Love is always the same no matter how far we are away from each other," wrote one netizen on Sina Weibo, China's Twitter-like social media.
