Dying large in China

ATOP a hill in the sprawling Donghe Cemetery, on a spot said to have good feng shui, sits a 10,000-square-foot semicircular tomb adorned with a pagoda, stone dragons and a massive upended boulder. Cemetery workers say the plot, bought by a karaoke parlor owner, cost about $110,000.

“He’s only 40 years old, but he bought a five-generation tomb,” said Li Daxi, who has worked at the cemetery in Inner Mongolia for six years. “Now that’s thinking ahead.”

At the cemetery’s main office, two salesmen rouse themselves from a spot near the heater on this chilly winter day, pointing out the facility’s low- and high-rent districts in a lavish brochure titled “The Back Garden of Life.” The memorials and plots run from $600 to more than $125,000.

“Prices are negotiable,” one salesman said, his desk empty except for a cash-counting machine. “You get a 30% break if you move your family over from another graveyard.”

For centuries, Chinese have believed that a large grave site bestows honor on the deceased and earns respect from future generations. And for decades, the Communist Party has tried to snuff out China’s rich funeral tradition, condemning it as superstitious, wasteful and a result of ill-gotten gains.

As Chinese become more wealthy, lavish practices are creeping back, often over the party’s objections. Funeral spending has increased with incomes in recent years, making the industry among China’s 10 most profitable, with many urban Chinese spending several years’ worth of disposable income on funerals, government figures show.

Behind China’s culture of ostentatious funerals and graves is a belief system built around filial piety, ancestor worship and social prestige, anthropologists say.

Confucius’ call for restrained mourning rituals has been drowned out by the likes of 20th century scholar Lin Yutang, who favored celebrations filled with fury and extravagance.

“There is no reason to be solemn,” he wrote. “Even today I can’t tell the difference between the rituals of a funeral and a wedding until I see a coffin or a bridal sedan chair.”

On occasion, the rituals in modern China resemble bachelor parties.

In August, police in Jiangsu province arrested five women who staged the ultimate send-off for a dead farmer: a strip show. Among the services provided by local “dance troupes” were nude performances with snakes and suggestive funeral dances with male migrant workers, the national network CCTV reported.

This titillation can serve a higher purpose, state media hastened to add, namely to swell the crowd.

“Local villagers believe the more people attending a funeral, the more honor is bestowed on the dead person,” the New China News Agency reported.

In a bid to end over-the-top spending of questionable funds, the Communist Party has been cracking down on ostentatious tombs for officials, high-profile party members and their families.

Feng Wenchao, an executive at China’s state tobacco monopoly, died in July of a brain embolism at 63. Some villagers in Qingtang, seven hours over bad roads from Chongqing in south-central China, say Feng may have been the victim of a witch hunt by powerful and well-connected enemies in the government that saw him investigated, fired and jailed on corruption charges, ultimately destroying his health.

“He was no more corrupt than anyone else at his level,” said Zhang Delin, 44, a local business owner, sitting a few hundred feet from the three-story villa Feng allegedly built with government funds in Qingtang.

As he talked, he gestured in the direction of Feng’s $12,000, 700-square-foot tomb on a hill just outside of town. Its two stone lions were knocked over, the electric poles for a dedicated lighting system were buried in the weeds, and a stone wall was in pieces.

The destruction followed numerous reports in state-run media on Feng and the tomb that exaggerated its size and, villagers say, convicted him long before his 10-year sentence was handed down.

“He was very well liked and gave a lot back to the community,” Zhang said. “I think, in the end, the stress over this grave business killed him.”

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ALTHOUGH crooked, self-aggrandizing officials are a focal point of the government’s campaign, the party also has targeted wealthy businesspeople.

Last year, poultry processing entrepreneur Xu Guifen built a 3,000-square-foot tomb of white marble in her native southeastern Jiangxi province, replete with four platforms, a specially built road, stone stairway and flower-adorned stone balusters.

The tomb, erected on national park land, brought her family great honor until government investigators arrived and forced her to tear it down. “After careful reflection, I realize building such a tomb is indeed improper,” the chastised millionaire told state-run media.

New rules promulgated in late December forbid the use of arable land for graveyards, the latest in a series of national and local measures aimed at stemming corruption, illegal land grabs and the growing wealth gap -- all nettlesome issues for China. Regulations are often flouted, however, particularly in areas far from Beijing.

With China accounting for 20% of the planet’s population but only 6% of its arable terra firma, preserving land has been a cornerstone of funeral policies.

As tomb prices soar, sensationalist headlines raise the specter of the dead competing for space with the living.

In December, a woman and her son were found inhabiting a 150-square-foot tomb. Media in Jiangsu province said the facility was an improvement over their previous residence, a construction shed.

Last year marked the 50th anniversary of a Mao Tse-tung-initiated campaign encouraging cremation. Top officials Deng Xiaoping and Chou En-lai set a good example. Mao, on the other hand, lies in state in a 300,000-square-foot tomb in Tiananmen Square, among China’s best real estate.

Today, 53% of Chinese are cremated, nearly double America’s 30% but well below world leader Japan’s 99.4%.

“There are more and more dead people and less and less land,” said Zhu Huamin, chief of the Shanghai Funeral Culture Institute. “The problem keeps getting worse.”

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WITH MORE than 8 million Chinese dying annually, the squeeze is most pronounced in big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, which labor to cremate 100,000 bodies a year. This can lend a near-assembly-line feel to the cremation process.

Liu Cundi, 57, a retired ministry official, recently braved the snow at Beijing’s Dongjiao Crematorium to bid her 91-year-old father a final farewell.

In a series of glass-walled rooms, the bodies changed even as many of the plastic flowers, paper displays and related decorations remained. Ceremonies lasted no more than 30 minutes, and there was often a line of body-laden gurneys waiting their turn. Basic cremation costs $50. For an extra $27, “deluxe service” lets you watch the flames engulf the body.

“I find cremation very acceptable,” Liu said. “It’s an irresponsible thing for dead people to take up land.”

Cremation is no land-use panacea, however, given how lavish the tombs often are that house the tiny urns. Land-starved cities such as Shanghai are pushing people to scatter their relatives’ ashes at sea or under trees. So far, the response has been underwhelming. Tending your parents’ grave, a cornerstone of Chinese tradition, is difficult without a grave.

In part, cremation has not advanced faster because by tradition burying a body intact is considered a prerequisite for peace in the afterlife. This is based on a Confucian precept that every hair your parents gave you deserves respect.

Thus, eunuchs serving ancient Chinese emperors insisted on burial with their preserved genitalia, known as “treasures,” to ensure happiness in the beyond. One historical account details the use of a wooden stand-in for someone who mislaid his.

“Since they did not take care of their ‘treasures’ in this life, they were supposed to safeguard them in the hereafter,” said Li Yangquan, author of “Secret Files of Chinese Civilization.”

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DESPITE the explosion of personal choice in China over the last two decades, the Communist Party continues to fight funeral traditions in the name of science and to end such feudal superstition.

Last month, the government banned officials from inviting all but their closest relatives to funerals in a bid to keep it a family affair rather than a means of personal enrichment. Few expect this to halt a centuries-old practice, however, where officials spread word of a relative’s death in a signal for subordinates to prepare cash-filled envelopes to “ease their loss.”

For a fee, mourners in China can hire professional criers to wail at funerals, another practice the Communist Party has tried to squelch. “We can’t exactly stop it,” said Qiao Kuanyuan, a professor at the Shanghai University of Science and Technology. “But we encourage people to work through their pain some other way.”

In April, Beijing banned the burning of paper likenesses of condoms, karaoke hostesses, Viagra and other off-color items, part of a tradition of sending the deceased off with everything they’ll need in the next life.

“Burning these messy things, not only is it mired in feudal superstition but it just appears low and vulgar,” Dou Yupei, deputy party secretary of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, told state-run media.

But the ban hasn’t hurt business at the Funeral Service Administration of the Civil Affairs Bureau in Baotou, a privately run company despite the official name, whose motto is “Our profession is to satisfy people in this world and the next.”

“People are spending more and more on this stuff,” said Liu Dao, 47, a feng shui expert, funeral master and the shop’s chain-smoking proprietor.

“The paper Audis and luxury villas are sold out,” he added, his pot belly peeking out from his long underwear. “We’ll make cows for cow lovers, ATMs. Whatever you enjoy in this world, we’ll arrange for that world.”

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mark.magnier@latimes.com

Gu Bo of The Times’ Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.