介绍:
Brian: Beijing has announced a plan to promote ecological burials in the city. They want them to make up at least 50% of all burials by 2020. They currently only account for 20% of the total. In addition, 33 commercial cemeteries in Beijing have announced ecological burial plans. Other burials that are ecological include burying under trees, flower beds lawns or in an ossuary niche. Some cemeteries have even allowed the scattering of cremation ashes over the sea, and more and more families are choosing this method there. Obviously, it’s the 21st century, and things are being done differently in many ways, and so instead of having the traditional option of merely burying someone in a coffin or a casket, you know, beneath the ground, there are many other ones. Not that all these are necessarily new, but I guess the rate of adoption, and how common they are, and the multitude of options is certainly quite different than how it was ten or 15 years ago.
WY: Back in 2014, last year, about 2% of families opt to scatter the ashes of their loved ones at sea. In Chinese culture, we call it入土为安（ru tu wei an）, which means the Chinese traditional culture considers that honorable burial in the ground. It reflects filial piety, in order to have a flourishing population.
Brian: Well, actually, I think, I would guess that most traditional cultures in the world did prefer burying people in the ground. I know, in the west, that is traditionally how it’s done – we do see more people doing things that are more creative, in some ways, nowadays, but traditionally, that’s how it’s been, obviously, here in China, and in the west.
WY: And also, in Tibet, there are those kinds of sky burials, which are also like celestial burials. The body was only covered in a piece of white cloth – they put the body on the mountaintop. The vultures are waiting around him, and then they will eat the body. People consider this as a kind of method to return the body back to nature, and they say, “From the nature, to the nature”.
Brian: Mm – from dust to dust, ashes to ashes, there. But certainly a rather unique way of doing it.
Lincoln: Yeah, that’s true, and I know, for example, in certain southern African societies, there’s quite a big premium placed in people being buried where they’re from, near their ancestors, and things like that. So, especially with urbanization increasing in areas like that, as well, you’re seeing the situation where people might live their entire lives, basically, their entire working lives in one part of the country or the city, and they would actually still be buried where their ancestors were from, or where their grandparents were from, so even in that kind of way, we’re also seeing tradition butting up against the grounds of modernization.
WY: And when you talk about near their ancestors, I think there has been a similar tradition in China as well, and we have the ancestors’ tomb, or ancestral grave, when there’s a time during the year, the Qingming festival, which is the tomb sweeping festival, people will come back to their hometown, and then all the family members will be united. They will have those kind of ancestral worship ceremonies, and that is why people just value this kind of tradition so much, because that was the time when all the family members are united, and then people will tell the younger generations about the story of their ancestors, and the family history.
Lincoln: Yeah, I know that in southern Africa there’s also a really big, kind of, market for it – of getting the body from one part of the world to the other, and there’s actually quite a lot of money exchanging hands in trying to get people back to their ancestral homelands.
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