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A report has surfaced along Western media sources of elderly people committing suicide in Anqing city because they the city will no longer allow the "traditional" coffin burial (they committed suicide before the new regulations came in on June 1st). The need for a body is explained as relating to paying respects to your ancestor + the custom of ancestor worship. Now keep in mind a quick search will reveal that most of the cities in Anhui province DO NOT allow coffin burials so this tradition argument seems weird. In fact only one city allows it.

But this got me thinking about the traditional burial customs. Was it considered unacceptable to not have a coffin burial? Was it considered not possible to pay respects if there wasn't a body (as opposed to cremation)?

This seems a little strange to me considering that in the Chinese influenced custom of Singapore, my grandfather's remains was cremated and held in a Buddhist temple with lots of other people and we go there to pay our respects to him.

On a second point, at least in ancient Chinese series I have seen, where the body was not available, eg the characters had to flee, they would simply erect a plaque dedicated to the dead relative and there was never any mention of violating tradition. Now granted some of these series were written in the modern day, but some of them like Tales of a Chinese studio ( Liáozhāi zhìyì) were written in the Qing dynasty where tradition was still strong (I am assuming the adaptations are relatively faithful to the source material).

Speaking of which, I wonder if and when EU is going to pass similar law. Maybe we don't have such high population density and land shortage as China, but we're much closer to this than endless expanses in Russia or USA that can be wasted on low density potentially hazardous storage of human remains.

We rarely need new cementaries - the old plots are re-used quite often.

For once, families are usually buried in the same plot, so it isn't unusual to reopen the same plot every 5-10 years.
And then there is the fact that the lease on a grave is limited. For example, in Austria, a normal grave lease is 10 years, or 20 if it's got a stone cover, and 60 for a tomb.
This can be prolonged for 5 or 10 years as often as you care to.

Usually, it's discontinued after the children die as well, on average about 20-30 years... (I lived next to a cementary and talked to the keeper quite often...)

Interesting. What do they do with any remains when the lease expires? I understand that the modern embalming process tends to result in corpses lasting a long than historically.

Darmalus wrote:Interesting. What do they do with any remains when the lease expires? I understand that the modern embalming process tends to result in corpses lasting a long than historically.

Cremation.

LaCroix wrote:We rarely need new cementaries - the old plots are re-used quite often.

For once, families are usually buried in the same plot, so it isn't unusual to reopen the same plot every 5-10 years.
And then there is the fact that the lease on a grave is limited. For example, in Austria, a normal grave lease is 10 years, or 20 if it's got a stone cover, and 60 for a tomb.
This can be prolonged for 5 or 10 years as often as you care to.

Usually, it's discontinued after the children die as well, on average about 20-30 years... (I lived next to a cementary and talked to the keeper quite often...)

Ah. Must be cultural difference then. In Poland, in quite a few regions graves are considered untouchable* and priests attempting to reuse plots are vilified (though often for a good reason...). I'd need to research how long lease here lasts, but I think it's 50 years, unless if you're rich/famous, then it's pretty much forever.

Fun fact, my family lost farm plot nationalized for new cementary when two old ones ran out, and that one is filling pretty quickly, too.

*to the point that some right wingers actually do protest grave vandalism, even if they don't like the buried.

Darmalus wrote:Interesting. What do they do with any remains when the lease expires? I understand that the modern embalming process tends to result in corpses lasting a long than historically.

I read in one 'unpleasant jobs' article embalming makes corpses last just 2-3 months, instead of 3 weeks. The point is to make good looking corpse on the day of burial, anything above that is paid extra.

Darmalus wrote:Interesting. What do they do with any remains when the lease expires? I understand that the modern embalming process tends to result in corpses lasting a long than historically.

Cremenation, an ossarium or they simply dig the grave deeper and put the remaining bones there, with a foot of earth atop.