China greets green tomb-sweeping on Qingming Festival

China observes this year's Qingming, or Tomb-Sweeping Day, on Thursday.

As a traditional Chinese festival that pays tribute to the dead and a time for people to worship their ancestors, this Qingming may find more novel and green ritual options favored by Chinese citizens.

ALL THAT MATTERS

At Lianhuashan public cemetery in Nan'an District of southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, many citizens gathered to pay their respects to their deceased relatives.

Hu Defang runs a small shop at the entrance of the public cemetery, selling sacrificial offerings and ritual objects. This year, instead of selling traditional incense sticks and paper money, she places a large selection of electric lotus lanterns and electric candles in her booth.

"This year's Qingming allows no burning of incense and paper money, so some customers would like to buy this new type of sacrificial products to express their grief," Hu explained.

She added that the electric candle can shine continuously for about a week, and the lotus lamp, while priced at 30 yuan (about 4 U.S. dollars), is equipped with a solar charger and can automatically charge itself when it runs out of power.

The civil affairs bureau in Chongqing has issued a proposal calling upon its residents to adopt more civilized and eco-friendly worship and tomb-sweeping practices this Qingming, including abandoning some funeral customs such as burning tinfoil paper, paper money and other paper-made sacrificial offerings, offering their sacrifices online, choosing flowers instead, and reading eulogies to the deceased.

Similarly, the Tianqiao cemetery in Lanzhou, the capital of northwest China's Gansu Province, which can receive up to 6,000 visitors per day on such occasions, sees more bouquets casting mottled shadows on the tombstones, rather than the choking smoke caused by burning paper money as in the past.

"It is a new sacrificial offering way widely accepted by the public. As public cemeteries are often surrounded by forests, bulks of paper-made offerings and their burning are hard to clean up and can easily cause forest fire," said Wang Wei, who has worked at the cemetery for 16 years.

"After all, it is their love and care that matters to the deceased and ancestors, not the form and number of their offerings," Wang added.

Many citizens have gradually adapted to the new way of spending their Qingming, as some youngsters working in other cities turn to offering sacrifices and tomb-sweeping online.

Zhao Qing, 30, a Chongqing resident who works in Shanghai, completed her "cloud tomb-sweeping" on the website designed by a local public cemetery, after realizing she would be unable to return to her hometown this Qingming.

Zhao said that with a few clicks on the screen, a bouquet of flowers can be easily "presented" to her deceased family member, attached with photos of the deceased, their biographical descriptions and tributes written by herself. "You can even share the website link with your relatives and friends far away to express condolences together," Zhao added.

Lanzhou funeral parlor in Gansu has also launched novel services like offering ribbons to the deceased and setting up mailboxes online.

Liu Wansheng, in charge of the Lanzhou funeral parlor, said that those unable to return to the graveyard to pay their respects can use the five public cemeteries administered by the parlor for proxy worship and proxy tomb-sweeping services. Notably, online commemorative services are gaining more traction.

By the end of March, more than 1,200 online memorial services had been carried out by the parlor, with over 300 online memorial halls established for the deceased.

GRIEF IN GREEN

In the run-up to this Qingming, an ecological burial public welfare activity was held in the Longjushan public cemetery of Chongqing. Many families gathered at the cemetery to bury the ashes of their deceased members.

The concept of ecological burials, which is aimed at bringing the deceased back to nature, is gaining more popularity among Chinese people. In 2016, the country's Ministry of Civil Affairs issued guidelines to promote eco-burials, encouraging people to bury ashes or bodies through methods such as tree burials and sea burials.

In the solemn ceremony, the cemetery staff placed the ashes of the deceased in containers made from degradable materials and buried the containers into the flower bed, instead of setting up steles or keeping the ashes on shelves.

"This way of flower bed burial not only conforms to the traditional funeral concept, but also helps achieve the purpose of environmental protection," said Xi Weijun, general manager of the Longjushan cemetery operator.

Eco-burials in China comprise different forms, including lawn burials, flowerbed burials as well as tree burials, all of which require minimal land. Sea burials and biodegradable urn burials that require no land are also popular options.

Ma Jing, a Beijing resident, said that her husband who died many years ago had opted for sea burial himself, because it saves resources and protects the environment, as well as satisfying his desire to return to Mother Nature.

In recent years, the Chinese capital has subsidized sea-burial procedures to encourage more people to embrace the novel but greener way of saying goodbye.