Smaller tombs to bury old customs

With the aim of reducing the number of local residents opting for traditional burials by 10 percent come 2017, the city is no longer supplying tombs that are larger than 1 square meter in size, authorities said Tuesday.

Shanghai Funeral and Interment Management Office said that the move was made this week in an attempt to shift traditional mind-sets on burial practices and preserve the city's limited land space.

"The city only has some 4.5 million square meters set aside for graveyards, of which 70 percent is currently being utilized," Lü Chunling, chief of Shanghai Funeral and Interment Management Office, told the Global Times Tuesday. "We hope more people can adopt burial practices that will be a good fit for the city's urban planning."

While most local residents choose to spend between 40,000 yuan ($6349.2) and 50,000 yuan on a 1.5-square-meter tomb for one or two bodies, he said that a pair of bodies can still fit comfortably in a tomb of 1 square meter.

Lü went on to say that the office is working on other "land-saving" incentives that are intended to allow people to "play a significant role in the future development and sustainability of the city."

To this end, authorities are looking at ways to increase the current 400 yuan-subsidy for sea burials to 2,000 yuan, said Lü, acknowledging that building public interest in the alternative burial practice introduced by the city in 1991, would not be without tough challenges.

Time, is perhaps, the biggest obstacle for authorities, who are hoping to cut the number of traditional burial proponents from 80 percent to 70 percent in the next five years, according to Wang Hongjie, chairman of Shanghai Funeral Industry Association.

"It's hard for people to accept new twists to traditional customs," he told the Global Times Tuesday. "Chinese people have for centuries believed that land burials bring peace to the deceased."

But with virtually zero interest from the public in flower bed burials - launched by the city just three years ago - and as sea burials fail to account for even 1 percent of the city's burials, the target is still a ways off, he said.

"Even people who know that the new methods are better for the city's future and sustainability still need more time to accept the impact of these modern realties," he added.