Xiao Hu never expected to make a living from the dead. For years she worked in her family business offering boat tours to tourists visiting Zhoushan, an archipelago off the east coast of China’s mainland. But in recent years her proximity to the sea, and to the temple-dotted hills of Mount Putou – one of Chinese Buddhism’s four sacred mountains – started to attract a different type of clientele.
The first time that a customer asked to use one of the boats to scatter their loved one’s remains into the East China Sea, Xiao Hu refused. She felt it was “not very pleasant” to work with the dead. But one elderly man, a Zen Buddhist, “kept asking if we could do a sea burial for him”. So after some consideration, she decided to “make his wish come true”.
In March 2022, Xiao Hu left her family business to start her own company, riding the rising tide of interest in sea burials. She normally goes out to sea two or three times a week, but in busy periods she runs up to 30 services a month. After Jiang Zemin, China’s former president, chose to have his ashes scattered into the mouth of the Yangtze river in December, enquiries to Xiao Hu’s company more than tripled, she says.
Most Chinese people are not Buddhists. In a culture that worships ancestors, a land burial with a tombstone is considered an important part of a person’s final rites; the tending of those sites is a fundamental way of showing filial piety to those who have passed away. But in recent years, rapid urbanisation and an ageing population have made grave plots – particularly in cities – increasingly scarce, and price tags can rise to more than 100,000 yuan (£11,700/$14,550). The authorities in Shanghai forecast that based on current burial trends, available cemetery space will run out within 15 years.
Mindful of overcrowded cemeteries, the government has started encouraging people to opt for alternative final resting places. In 2021 the cremation rate reached nearly 59%, up from 47% in 2015, according to the ministry of civil affairs. But urns are often still buried in formal grave sites. So some local authorities have started offering cash rewards to people who choose to scatter their relatives at sea or bury their ashes in an “ecological” manner, such as in small biodegradable containers.
State media has also started to popularise the term houyang bozang, meaning “thick care, thin funerals”, to argue that filial piety is best shown in life. In the words of one recently bereaved son interviewed last year: “One hundred prostrations after death are not worth half a day’s companionship in life.”
April is a particularly important month for honouring the dead. It is the month of Qingming, or tomb-sweeping festival, a national holiday on which people traditionally travel to their ancestors’ graves to clean the tombstones and burn offerings for the afterlife. In Suzhou, a city on China’s east coast, the civil affairs bureau chartered a ship to take 190 recently bereaved people out to sea for a mass burial where they bid farewell to 79 loved ones, according to a report published by local authorities. Each family received a 2,000-yuan subsidy for participating.
For those who opt for private sea burials, such as with Xiao Hu’s company, it can cost up to 10,000 yuan, or nearly double that if several family members want to attend. That is still much cheaper than a land burial. But there are practical difficulties. When Xiao Hu first started hosting the funerals, she discovered that the ashes could end up blowing around all over the place. So she started offering decomposing urns that the bereaved could drop overboard, sending the deceased deep under the waves.
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