Public sceptical over choosing 'memorial diamonds' instead of burials

Amid soaring costs for burial plots and scarce land on the mainland, some companies are advocating a slightly less costly albeit controversial alternative: turning loved ones' ashes into memorial diamonds.

The service has been marketed for more than a decade elsewhere, particularly in Switzerland, the United States and Australia, but has yet to gain much traction in the Chinese market due to cultural barriers and a lack of regulation.

Still, memorial-diamond firms are encouraged amid a renewed push by municipal governments to promote cremation instead of traditional burial to ease pressure on land resources.

Xia Tianmin, manager of Chongqing Nian En Cultural Company, a funeral company that in 2011 introduced a life-diamond service, says: "As someone who grew up in the countryside, I know how valuable land is. Carrying a life diamond is intimate and it saves [space]."

Xia says life diamonds have the added benefit of keeping loved ones close. "Now many Chinese migrants go to different cities to work. Who would go home to sweep their families' graves every year?"

Xia says he learned about the technology at a seminar in Australia in 2009 and saw huge business potential in it. Similar to the process of making synthetic diamonds from carbon, the crystals are created by extracting graphite from human ashes and applying intense pressure and heat with a diamond synthesis press.

The process takes weeks and one diamond is made from about 500 grams of ashes. If preferred, the diamonds can be worn as jewellery.