China: June 1st Coffin Ban Takes Effect; Six Elderly Commit Suicide to Be Buried Traditionally.

news.sky.com... to-coffin-bans

China has a tradition, which dates back thousands of years, of ancestor worship, usually requiring families to bury their relatives and construct a tomb. Now, local governments are urging people to be cremated after death to save what they see as limited land resources. In one city, Anqing in the eastern province of Anhui, all locals who die after June 1 must be cremated according to government regulations, the Beijing News Daily reported. It was there that the six people committed suicide "to avoid the new regulations on funerals", the newspaper said, quoting family members.

Corporate Greed, a tad bit of Communist propaganda, and a dash of being one step closer to Soylent Green is what this entire thing reminds me of.

The Chinese style of burial is different region to region and also based on religion. Traditionally before Communism, buddhists Chinese custom was to bury the deceased with loved ones present and after a period of time, exhume their dead and place the skeletal bones of the body in an urn based on their family's lineage and heritage and then have a second ceremony and rebury everything. I can't remember exactly why the second burial, but they take honoring the dead/ancestors seriously. Typically these types of things are done of a family plot that spans several generations, I mean all the way back to the Dynasty era when Emperors and Empresses ruled (and yes I'm speaking well before Pu-Yi).

I am not just picking on the Chinese either; Europe has an even worse proposal plan that has been floating around last couple of months in the EU, and will be up for a vote as soon as October. Their proposal would make it mandatory for an undertaker or "licensed official" to handle the body, and depending on the region/area force them to dissolve their dead and flush them into a sewage system mandated by the bill. What exactly that is, hasn't been clearly stated yet, but from what has been mentioned, the deceased would be dropped in containers containing a solution made of caustic salts to dissolve then disposed of in the sewage system. No mention is made on whether the bodies will be chopped or not (I'm figuring it may be a possibility due to rigor mortis) but again sounds a lot like Soylent Green to me. Just in case you want to do resarch, check the Flemish Association of Undertakers, who have supported the bill as a measure of cutting down on what they consider wasted amounts of land by burials.

Have we really gotten to the point that we as a people globally are losing the rights to be sovereign enough to bury our own dead, or at least follow the burial wishes of the future dead?

I think in the grand scope of things people forget China is a very restrictive and Communistic state, who is trying to have the cake and eat it too by establishing itself as a capitalistic superpower, but between this and the blatant mistreatment of newborn girls in their society (which is an entirely different discussion altogether) it can't be the heavy and the victim at the same time. Maybe if they slow down a bit and start building a quality of life, quality of products to correct some of the ecological disasters and maybe an agricultural initiative, it wouldn't have to rob people of a final resting place.

But as a side thought, with the Obama ACA mess, this could be coming to America shortly.

And in America, we are not allowed to bury family members in their yard like the pioneers did 200 years ago

Dying/death is now commercialized, costing upwards of thousands of dollars

To buy a plot, costs thousands....for 1 person
To buy a coffin...a cheap one runs about $5,000
Overall funeral...average about $10,000

Unless of course one has burial insurance or lives in a small town where the funeral homes are a little bit more affordable

I hope that by the time I'm dead that I've sucked life out of every bit of my being living life to it's fullest that I fit in a shoe box.


As is often mentioned, it's their country. Actually cremation is probably the way I'll go. Ashes to ashes and all that. I agree with the above poster, having fairly recently a dear one pass I was shocked about funeral costs. It's a scam, $4,500 for a coffin that is nothing more than a prop for a one night show. Then into the dirt it goes.

Being cremated is more affordable [in the US] than being buried

Unless for religious reasons or family traditions , this seems to be an easier route to go for those whose pockets aren't that deep

This does bring up an interesting point though, if humanity is around long
enough we will simply run out of space for this type of burial.... at what
point do living humans take presidence over those who have passed.

This is the very reason I will be cremated when I die. Being buried is a waste of space and graveyards are extremely ugly and depressing. Imagine 100 years in the future when the billions of people alive right now are dead. There will be graveyards extending as far as the eye can see, and it will be an absolutely horrific sight. It may have had a place in ancient times but now it's just a stupid egotistical thing we do because we think we will be remembered forever. I don't need a patch on the ground permanently dedicated to me to be remembered, the work I do whilst alive will achieve that.

Cost for cremation in small town USA: $2,200.00.
Cost for cardboard on 1x wood frame (mandatory) pyre: $200.00.
Fancier pyres start at $500.00
You are requested to bring a paper sack,if you don't plan on buying an urn,when you come to collect the remains.
If your loved one qualifies for county funding, due to low income, you can fill out a few pages of paper work, wait a week, and the county will pick up the tab. In that case, the funeral home is paid less than $700.00.

You HAVE to look at the pyre, just to make sure you can't cough up the extra few hundred for a more elegant on. The pyres are in a back room past all of the beautiful urns, and you have to walk past all of the rows of beautiful coffins to get there.

It's no wonder Americans see death as such a sad, heart-wrenching event.

The one time I met Pete Seeger was in a cemetery, and he said he hated them and wanted to be put on his compost heap when he died.

To me the best thing by far about cemeteries is that they are at least an open space in a city. Free of buildings (for the most part), streets, cement, and somewhere the birds and animals can at least have some room to live. Lots of woodchucks in one cemetery I know of, and lots of trees.

local governments are urging people to be cremated after death to save what they see as limited land resources.

Communist are so awesome, commoners cannot be buried because its a waste of resources but at the same time they waste tons of resources to keep the body of Mao

In many parts of the world, the bodies are placed in a tomb. After a period of time the bones are collected and the tomb is reused. The bones take up relatively little space and gradually disentigrate. A tomb could be used for 100's perhaps 1000's of years. There is no need to make the body disappear completely with chemicals. This is really about respect for the dead.

I liked the burial practices in North Africa where I lived for awhile. The same day they wrapped the
corpse in a sheet, put it on a stretcher, and placed it in a shallow grave. A few prayers were said and that was it. Rocks were placed on the grave to keep it from being dug up by dogs.

In Some places the coffins are too expensive, so they are only used for the funeral. They are reused.

If people only realized it, they would find that funeral homes are largely a criminal enterprise.
For example, when my brother died I called around. The best price was in a small town with
a lot of immigrants. I had him cremated for $700 in the USA. The local chain funeral home wanted
$2800. This goes beyond price gouging into theft territory.a reply to: ArchPlayer

Well I would agree to an extent due to the amount of land it'll take to bury billions of people...
It should still be an option to be buried outside the region of congestion!!!

I looked into Mummification the other day, but there was only one company I could find & it was about 40k!!!

So back to Plan A which is cremation...

The European proposal seems abit overkill though, very dodgy plan!!!
Is that a European Union legislation or just a certain European country???



Peace everybody!!!

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

the work I do whilst alive will achieve that.

I agree my friend!!!
Let our online speeches do the talking for future generations, we don't really need a headstone...
Our ATS personality will be more than enough!!!


Peace Chaotic!!!

a reply to: snarky412

When my 90 year old great aunt died, with only her disability, she wanted to be cremated. It cost the family almost 5K in 2005 to do it, and it took us about two months to collect enough money to get it done. In that time she was held in a major city's county freezer upon which her family who lived in another state altogether, was stuck with a bill for her death, and a tax to declare her dead. Total, her death ran about 11K, and on top of that the IRS wanted to audit her estate no less than a month after she died.

a reply to: UMayBRite!
In the US part of North America, in a lot of places you can't even handle the remains of your family members. But be a licensed mortician.

Funny how 100 or so years ago, if a loved one died, the body was placed in a coffin made by the locals, and the funeral held in the living room and then put into a graveyard either on the family's land/where they worked the land or in a small clearing in the woods that was cared for by all to having it a licensed enterprise mandated by government control. #IJS

a reply to: CharlieSpeirs

Ah mummification, once a time honored tradition in several cultures to now being unattainable without being a millionaire (sarcasm).

If they are worried about land, then stop enshrining all these politicians and political leaders. I love how its a problem for commoners, but the shot up remains of Kennedy have an eternal torch and damn near a park surrounding him; Martin Luther King's tomb with his wife is a Tourist attraction!

Europe has an even worse proposal plan that has been floating around last couple of months in the EU, and will be up for a vote as soon as October. Their proposal would make it mandatory for an undertaker or "licensed official" to handle the body, and depending on the region/area force them to dissolve their dead and flush them into a sewage system mandated by the bill. What exactly that is, hasn't been clearly stated yet, but from what has been mentioned, the deceased would be dropped in containers containing a solution made of caustic salts to dissolve then disposed of in the sewage system. No mention is made on whether the bodies will be chopped or not (I'm figuring it may be a possibility due to rigor mortis) but again sounds a lot like Soylent Green to me.

a reply to: ArchPlayer

That sounds absolutely disgusting. Total lack of respect for the dead, and likely not very good for the sewage system either.
Purification by fire is the best, with all the flooding going on in many areas, I picture coffins floating up. Not resting in peace.

I don't see anything like soylent green unless chopped bodies are turned into sausage, or the ashes are going to be used as seasonings. OMG, what a gross thought....

a reply to: ArchPlayer

Yep back to the peasants grave for me...
To be fair even if I had the money I wouldn't spend 40k...


As for your second paragraph I agree fully...
They're no more special than us common folk...
But in turn that means we know we don't need to be enshrined to be remembered!!!


Peace Arch!!!

i rather be cremated, burying to me seem like keeping materialistic connecting to this world.

each's own.


Cremation has been around for a long time, many religions does it, including original Buddhism.

Buddha was also cremated, probably because Hinduism follows cremation as well.

When my father died about 7 years ago, he had been camping within a couple hundred miles of the CA border but still well within the state of OR and he resided in a small town in middle and western OR. When the police arrived, they called the funeral home in the large town on the CA side to retrieve his body knowing full well he wasn't a CA resident. My siblings and I, as well as other family members, made the trip to the funeral parlor which took us almost 9 hours. Upon arriving at the funeral home, they wanted outrageous amounts of money which we didn't have. So they offered us an application to apply for a loan of $15,000.00 which none of us qualified for. I told the woman who was handling our situation that there was nothing we could do, we couldn't afford to bury our father and she could only apologize. We went back to the town where my father had been living and were recommended to talk to the local funeral director. He let me know that it is illegal in the USA to hold a body hostage for ransom. He gave me a price of $900.00 to handle the retrieval and cremation of my father and I immediately wrote a check for his services.

Everyone has an opinion on how they want their body processed after death and I believe it is every persons right to have their body handled accordingly. I am very concerned about the EU claims in the OP of dissolving bodies in caustic salts and contributing the resulting effects to a sewage system. Do caustic salts become un-caustic? Why would you put this in your sewer system because as I understand it, the liquid is eventually removed and absorbed by the ground? It seems this would poison the surrounding soil and water?