Quarterly NEWSLETTER Human Remains Repatriation from/to CHINA www.roseates.com No 16, Second Quarter 2012 A story from a long time ago... An unusual profession: corpse walker The Corpse Walker Author Liao Yiwu Stories of corpse walking were popular in China during several imperial dynasties, but many people believed they were a myth. In his book The Corpse Walker, author Liao Yiwu writes about his conversation with feng shui master Luo Tianwang, who sheds light on the ancient profession. Corpse walking has never been an officially recognized profession, but the practice had been around since ancient times, explains Luo. In the 19 th and early 20 th century, one could sometimes see empty shops along China's roads, with a sign walking corpse across border, meaning human remains crossing provincial or country borders. Transportation was not very advanced in those days. When a traveling businessman died of a sudden illness or accident, it was hard to transport the remains back to his village to be buried. But if a dead person is not returned to his hometown, according to ancient custom, he would be called a lonely soul and a homeless ghost. As buses and trucks were not available, the family hired professional corpse walkers if it could afford it. One man would walk in front of the corpse walker, carrying a basket with fake paper money and a lantern. The fake money was tossed in the air once in a while in a ritual called buying your way into the other world. People believed the fake money could bribe the corpse's guardian ghosts not to block the road to heaven. The lantern was used to light the way to heaven. A second man carried the human remains on his back, covered with a black robe. He wore a white mask and was guided along the way by the first man, who shouted Yo ho, yo ho, and indicated any obstacles ahead such as steps, as the black robe prevented the corpse walker from seeing (continued on page 2) THE ROSEATES NEWSLETTER Your guide to human remains repatriation The Roseates Newsletter aims to update our clients and contacts on various topics related to the death of foreigners in China and Chinese abroad. The target audience includes consulates, foreign funeral directors and insurance companies. We welcome our readers to provide questions, comments and insights. CONTENTS Introduction: The Roseates Newsletter, your guide to human remains repatriation Feature: C Q&A: Answers to all your questions Culture: Urns remain unpopular in Shanghai Villagers clash with police over funeral reforms Old tombstones used to pave a lake's banks in Shanghai 'Alternative' ash burials start to gain ground Business: Illegal Hong Kong columbarium repossessed Memorial ceremonies planned for childless people The last word Roseates introduction & contact info Roseates Newsletter No 16, Second Quarter 2012, Page 1
(continued from page 1) ahead except for the faint light from the lantern. When reaching an inn for the night, the guide would tell the inn keeper: The god of happiness is here. A walking corpse was referred to as the god of happiness because death is the beginning of life in another world. Still, the corpse walkers would stay in a room at the back of the inn, out of sight of other customers. Of course, the inn keeper could charge them three times as much for providing accommodation. The two corpse walkers would carry the body on alternate days for ten to twelve hours without rest. Their journey could sometimes take over a month. They would only travel in winter, because in summer the corpse would decay in the heat. Carrying a corpse is physically very demanding and candidates would go through years of specialized training. The author tells the story of two corpse walkers two brothers from Shaanxi province who were caught by PLA soldiers in the early 50s as the authorities wanted to eradicate superstitious practices and beliefs. The remains they were carrying were those of the rich wife of a Nationalist army officer. During a make-shift trial they were able to escape, but the elder brother died when he fell into a ravine and the younger one was caught. The latter one was allowed to bury the remains of the woman and his brother close to the village where they were arrested. Finally, the relatives of the Nationalist officer's wife found out what happened and begged the county chief to release the remains of the woman. As the corpse walkers had almost completed their trip, the relatives hired professional mourners to carry the remains of the woman home in a procession in the old-fashioned style. The author concludes the story with the observation that for the elder brother, it was really sad that someone who had spent his whole life returning the dead to their ancestral homes should end up getting buried in a place far away from his own home. About the book: Only one chapter in the book tells the story of the corpse walkers. The other 27 chapters tell stories of other Chinese men and women at the bottom of society. Some are also related to the funeral business, including The Professional Mourner, The Mortician, and The Grave Robber. The book is available at Amazon U.S. ($12.98) and Amazon UK ( 7.45). Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/o/asin/0307388379 Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/o/asin/0307388379 About the author: Liao Yiwu won the annual German Book Trade Peace Prize for his portrayal of what the judges called the outcasts of modern China. The book prize, Germany's second-highest after the Georg Büchner Prize, carries an award of 25,000. He was imprisoned in China for four years after publishing poems related to the 1989 Tiananmen incident. He currently lives in Germany. Q&A In rural areas in China, remains are still buried instead of cremated. How is this done? Village tombs are often nothing more than mounds of earth. They are commonly arranged in neat rows, according to generation, with the tomb of the family s common ancestor in the back. Often villagers don t even know this ancestor s name. They simply call him Old Ancestor. Does cremation solve the problem of scarcity of land for burials? Only partly. Some people build elaborate tombs to house the urn with the ashes. Where is the world's largest crematorium located? The world s largest crematorium is the Yishin Crematorium in Shanghai. The facility has 24 incinerators that help dispose of most of the roughly 100,000 people that die in Shanghai each year. The busiest time of the year is before Lunar New Year because more people die in winter and families want to make sure all funeral rites are completed before the new year begins. What happens after a funeral? There is a six day mourning period after the funeral. Observations may include not washing or shaving, avoiding colorful clothes and fancy foods and not taking part in festivities. The period of mourning depends on the closeness to the deceased and may last for two to three years. Roseates Newsletter No 16, Second Quarter 2012, Page 2
CULTURE Urns remain unpopular in Shanghai Cemeteries in Shanghai's Minhang district are trying to encourage more eco-friendly ways of burying loved ones by urging people to forsake interment in the earth in favor of keeping ashes in an urn, but the idea isn t going down well with the public. Zhuanqiao Cemetery, a municipal-owned graveyard, opened spaces for more than 400 wall urns, targeting lower-income families, in December 2010. Today, the ashes of only one person have been placed there. The price for an urn is 2,000 yuan, compared with about 20,000-200,000 yuan for a burial site. Available land is getting increasingly scarce. Many people would rather spend more money and get a proper place in the earth for their deceased relatives, said Wu Shaoqun, manager of the cemetery. One woman said she would never consider putting the ashes of her ancestors at sea or under a tree or in a wall urn, because she wants them to have a spacious final resting place. Grave burials are important in Chinese culture. People believe that burying urns with the ashes renders the souls of the deceased immortal and honor their memory. But Minhang is running out of burial space. Villagers clash with police over funeral reforms A clash between villagers and law enforcement officers over funeral and burial reforms was settled peacefully in Haifeng county, Guangdong province, in May. Several police officers were slightly injured in the rioting and four police cars plus two other government vehicles were turned over and damaged by the villagers. The clash broke out in Haifeng s Chikeng township when the township s burial ceremony supervision team and local Shada village committee jointly issued a notice to ask a villager named Zeng to cremate the remains of his 103-year-old grandmother. The notice said Zeng had Land available for graveyards will disappear in the district in the next 10 years, according to Gu Xinmin, director of the Minhang funeral management division. There are four cemeteries in the district, and together they have less than about 10 hectares left for burial plots, Gu said. Authorities have put a limit of 1.5 square meters for the urn of each deceased person. We have to explore ways to provide more space, said Wu. His Zhuanqiao Cemetery covers more than 4 hectares, and only about two-thirds of a hectare of land remains for burying urns. The cemetery has worked out a 15-year plan for the management of burial sites. It has put a ceiling of 333 square meters on the amount of land it will sell for burial plots every year. The district s funeral authorities are urging people to bury the ashes of their ancestors at sea or under a tree or in wall urns and is offering incentives. Permanent residents of the district are eligible for a subsidy of 400 yuan if they choose a burial method which avoids the use of a plot of cemetery land, the Shanghai Daily reported. violated the county s funeral regulations by burying his grandmother. Zeng refused to comply and carried his 70-year-old ailing father to the village committee to protest. The protest attracted more than 100 onlookers, who later besieged and attacked law enforcement officers and overturned and damaged police cars. The practice of cremation, which is promoted by the authorities, is not accepted by some residents, particularly in the rural areas where many farmers prefer burials, the China Daily reported. Old tombstones used to pave a lake's banks in Shanghai Local residents have been surprised to find that the bank of a lake in Yangpu Park, Shanghai, is paved by some old tombstones on which English, Latin and Chinese memorial words and names can still be seen. On one of the stones, a cross sign can be clearly seen and below it were English words saying someone was born in 1920 and died in 1925, a local resident surnamed Chen said. Another stone lying on the bank said, R.I.P. Lai Rose. Below the name are memorial words which cannot be seen clearly. On another, Chinese words read The Tomb of Ma s Wife and Bless her to rest in peace forever. A resident Roseates Newsletter No 16, Second Quarter 2012, Page 3
surnamed Li in his sixties said he had seen those tombstones when he was 10 years old. Residents have wondered about why tombstones were used and whether it is disrespectful to the deceased to step on them. A park official said that before it was first opened to the public in 1958, the park used to be a graveyard. Workers building up banks near the lake used some of the gravestones abandoned on the site. Residents said the graveyard was located on land now occupied by the lake, and they wondered if there still were human remains there. Officials said they have no record of what happened to them. No one ever came to claim the tombstones. Park official Wu Qingwen said many Jewish people lived in Yangpu district in the old times who might be buried there. 'Alternative' ash burials start to gain ground Hongkongers are increasingly opting for their ashes to be scattered in a garden of remembrance as opposed to costlier, traditional burial arrangements such as the use of niches, says a funeral services firm. The growing acceptance of the practice comes after the opening of a memorial garden in Tseung Kwan O in December, which provides pools of varying sizes where ashes can be scattered free of charge. Sham Chi-wing, a social worker at St James' Settlement funeral services, sees it as a sign that the elderly are getting more open-minded. The environmentally friendly service may help alleviate the shortage of urn spaces in columbariums. About 90 per cent of the 42,000 people who die every year choose to be cremated, while 12,000 applicants are on the waiting list for niches. The 1,030 square BUSINESS Illegal Hong Kong columbarium repossessed Hong Kong lands officials on April 30 repossessed the site of a columbarium on a Tai Po island after the landowner defied an order to rectify land lease breaches. The seizure of the land on Ma Shi Chau resulted in about two dozen apparently occupied underground niches which officials believe are decoys becoming government property. Two Marshall Islands-registered companies, Splendid Resources and Sky Pacific, are seeking clarification in court over a similar development on another island, Po Toi, where officials are also said to be considering repossession. The site, of at least 3,000 square meters, at Shui Mong Tin at the southern tip of Ma Shi Chau which is part of the recently designated global geopark in Tolo Harbor was enclosed with wire mesh by workers hired by the Lands Department. The Government Rights (Re-entry and Vesting Remedies) Ordinance was cited for the meter Tseung Kwan O facility, run by the board that manages the Junk Bay Chinese Permanent Cemeteries, has 20 pools in which ashes can be scattered in ceremonies. The pools are a metaphor for the flow of eternity, according Lo Mei-wah, executive director of the board of management of the Chinese Permanent Cemeteries. Mourners could also pay HKD1,000 or more to install a memorial plaque at any of 2,961 spots in the memorial garden, Lo said. Acceptance of the practice was growing, says Sham. Our survey in 2009 showed [that] only 25 per cent of respondents were willing to be cremated Yet among the 386 cases I've handled in the past two years, 152 were returned to the earth in a garden of remembrance, making up 40 per cent, the social worker said. repossession. The notice lists breaches of lease requirements including that it should be used only for agriculture, that no buildings should be erected and that any structure should have prior approval. The owner has six months to petition the Chief Executive's Office against the repossession. The move came after Union Lucky Development, with a registered address in Kwong Fuk Road, Tai Po, ignored an order to stop the breaches by the end of February. The company had held talks with the Lands Department on modifying the lease but the application was rejected on December 1. The Lands Department said the developer had told the district lands office that no human ashes had been deposited, although marble tombstones with names, birth and death dates, and photographs covered some niches. About 3,000 niches were said to have been developed at the site, priced from HK$90,000 to HK$200,000 each. Roseates Newsletter No 16, Second Quarter 2012, Page 4
Private niches are valuable because of a serious shortage of public niches, but Funeral Business Association president Ng Yiu-tong said the facility was unpopular because of doubts over its legality. Questionable niche sites have been repossessed before. In 2010, a 300,000 sq ft site at Tei Tong Tsai on Lantau Island, also with underground niches, was taken back. Are there really no urns? Or are the decoys just a sales tactic to lure consumers? If that's the case, it shows us how unscrupulous these operators are and there is a real need for the government to crack down quickly on all other illegal facilities, said Eddie Tse, convenor of a columbarium concern group. The Hong Kong government has listed 74 private columbariums with land lease and planning rules breaches and proposed a licensing system, the South China Morning Post reported. Memorial ceremonies planned for childless people Ordinary memorial ceremonies are being held in Shanghai by funeral home workers for elderly people in the city who are childless. The project aims to help those people and relieve their worries, said Wu Xiaogang, a manager at the Shanghai Funeral and Interment Service Center. Seniors can sign agreements with funeral homes recording arrangements and details about the memorial ceremony. The pilot program started in March last year after the municipal government required the elderly-care industry to do more for old couples with no offspring. More than one in five Shanghai residents are aged 60 or older, almost double the national average, according to the Shanghai Municipal Population and Family Planning Commission. We ve established a fund of 1 million yuan to assume the additional costs brought about by inflation and provide discounts for people who have little savings, Wu said. Only six people have applied for the service, and all declined interview requests. The elderly usually shun topics related to death, which explains why we ve received hundreds of phone calls for consultation, but very few people signed the agreement, Wu said. Some seniors said it would bring bad luck to think too much about the matter while still in good condition. Some are reluctant to entrust a funeral home to arrange their final ceremony because of Chinese traditions. Chinese people believe it s important to have their sons support them in old age and hold a grand memorial ceremony for them, said Xia Xueluan, a sociology professor at Peking University, adding it might be hard for people to accept the new concept within a short period of time. The Shanghai Funeral and Interment Service Center said it intends to promote the service to people whose children are seriously ill and cannot make arrangements for their parents, the China Daily reported. THE LAST WORD A cemetery in Shanghai was fined for illegally building and selling oversized grave sites, with some priced as high as 3 million yuan. The law does not allow any grave unit, meaning the room to contain the ash box, larger than 1.5 square meters, but the Qingzhuyuan Cemetery in suburban Jiading district was selling graves of about 10 to 20 square meters to boost sales. Officials said they would confiscate all the income from the illegal sales and hand out an extra fine of between 10,000 yuan and 50,000 yuan. It marks the first case in Shanghai for local cemetery operators to be punished for selling graves larger than allowed. Fireworks at weddings and funerals in Shijiazhuang have been banned. City officials said the tradition was a fire hazard that also caused noise and air pollution, which hurt its modern image. A university student in Wuhan was shocked and disturbed to receive a shroud for a child who has died, after posting negative feedback on a retailer on Taobao.com, where she bought a skirt. The shop, whose owner was believed to have sent the package in retaliation, was shut down, the e-commerce website said. A young couple has been detained by police in Yuyao in eastern China s Zhejiang province, accused of burying a 68-year-old woman alive after accidentally knocking Roseates Newsletter No 16, Second Quarter 2012, Page 5
her down on a highway when driving drunk. The couple told witnesses that they would send her to a nearby hospital, but instead they drove to a suburban area and buried the injured woman at a remote construction site, police said. The couple abandoned their car at the site, where construction workers discovered the body. Forensic tests showed the woman died of asphyxiation. The police later arrested the couple. The case has sparked outrage over declining public morality. Yuan Dezhen, a 40-year-old migrant worker from Shenzhen who donated her braindead son s organs to help five strangers has been praised for her selflessness. The son's liver, pancreas, kidneys, corneas and small intestine were given to patients in need of the organs. The transplant operations were carried out in Guangzhou. The remainder of the body was given to the Medical School of Shenzhen University for educational and research purposes. Sixteen bodies wrapped in plastic were scattered across a road between Longchang county and Luzhou in Sichuan province when the truck carrying them overturned on June 2. The accident caused widespread panic and rumors about a mass murder. The Luzhou Medical College attempted to quell the fears, saying it had bought the bodies from Sichuan University for medical purposes. FIXED GUIDELINES IN CASE OF DEATH Provide the complete name, date of birth and nationality of the deceased. Provide the name and telephone number of the person in China who first reported the death (hospital, public security bureau, embassy, travel agent, friend,...) Provide the place of death: district, city, prefecture and/or county and province. Indicate, if known, whether the deceased was covered by an insurance policy. ROSEATES INTRODUCTION & CONTACT INFO PARTNER OF THE CHINA NATIONAL FUNERAL ASSOCIATION ROSEATES China Tel 0086 13911075392 Fax 0086 10 87955196 Email info@roseates.com Web site www.roseates.com Coordination and management of the entire repatriation process of human remains from/to mainland China: Hospital Public Security Consulate China Funeral Home Crematory Airline Funeral Director at Destination Insurer Next of Kin Legal Formalities Storage Autopsy Embalmment Coffin Cremation Urn Inland Transportation Quarantine International Transportation Daily Update of Progress THE ROSEATES NEWSLETTER The Roseates Newsletter is edited by Michel Lens, who is based in Beijing and can be contacted by e-mail michel.jc.lens@gmail.com or mobile phone +86-13901323431. Disclaimer: the views expressed in this newsletter are not necessarily those of Linga International or its management. Linga International, Belgium. Roseates Newsletter No 16, Second Quarter 2012, Page 6