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Laura Zhou

Beijing resident Wang Yu is looking for a tomb for his mother, who died three years ago.
If he doesn't find one, he won't have a site to tend to for the Ching Ming festival today when families traditionally visit and tidy their ancestors' graves.
The ideal place, the 59-year-old driver said, would be a cemetery in Changping district, 20km from his home. But he has abandoned that idea.
The pressure of skyrocketing property prices is now extending to the afterlife, as many Beijingers struggle to find affordable final resting places.
"The lowest-priced tomb was 60,000 yuan [HK$76,000], and a mid-level one cost over 100,000 yuan," he said. "But my budget is no more than 50,000 yuan."
Wang, like others, has been forced look farther afield - such as a cemetery in suburban Huairou district, 90km from his home, where the price of a normal-sized tomb starts at 30,000 yuan.
"Everyone wants a good place to live, everyone wants to show filial piety, but if prices keep rising, the only thing families can do is to move farther away, just as we did when buying a home," Wang said. "Somehow, in China, it's becoming more difficult to [find] a home for this life and the next."

The prohibitive expense of burials is driving city dwellers on ordinary incomes to buy tombs in nearby provinces.
Taicang, a satellite city in Jiangsu province 40km from central Shanghai, has become a popular site to seek graves for residents of China's largest city.
A salesman named Xu at Shuangfeng Cemetery told Xinhua that 90 per cent of his clients were from Shanghai, and that the company provided free shuttle bus services from the city to attract buyers.
Compared with cemeteries in Shanghai, where a tomb costs at least 65,000 yuan, a standard grave site in Taicang costs about 40,000 yuan, a saving of "tens of thousands yuan, even though prices have kept rising in the past few years", a manager at Shuangfeng Cemetery said.
There is clearly money in death. The surging price of tombs has seen the burial business become one of the most profitable sectors on the mainland. Hong Kong-listed Fu Shou Yuan, the mainland's largest funeral service provider, recorded a 37.7 per cent net profit of 230 million yuan last year.
In a recent survey of 425 Beijing residents, 92 per cent said the price for graves at local cemeteries was too high - an average of 70,000 yuan for site between 0.8 square metres and square metres. That's slightly more that the official average yearly income of 69,521 yuan for a Beijing urban resident in 2013.
A Beijing funeral operator who gave only his family name, Li, said the cost had at least tripled at most of the city's cemeteries in the past three years.
"Tomb prices have been rising more rapidly than housing prices in Beijing," Li said.
Li said a tomb site in an ordinary cemetery would now cost at least 30,000 yuan, while those in high-end cemeteries could reach 200,000 yuan or higher.
Last year there were an estimated 10 million deaths on the mainland, with the figure expected to top 20 million sometime between 2025 and 2030.
The 101 Research Institute estimates that Beijing's 34 commercial cemeteries will run out of sites before the end of the next decade.


China’s property boom spreads to the afterlife as tomb prices soar

Graves decorated for the Ching Ming festival in Shenyang City. Urban sites are becoming unaffordable to all but the very rich. Photo: Xinhua

Grave sites in Beijing average some 70,000 yuan for a square-metre plot. In high-end cemeteries they can cost 200,000 yuan or more. Photo: Xinhua

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The prohibitive expense of burials is driving city dwellers on ordinary incomes to buy tombs in nearby provinces.


The mainland property boom is spreading to the afterlife, with many residents of major cities having to look far afield for affordable tombs.


China’s property boom spreads to the afterlife as tomb prices soar

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The prohibitive expense of burials is driving city dwellers on ordinary incomes to buy tombs in nearby provinces.

The prohibitive expense of burials is driving city dwellers on ordinary incomes to buy tombs in nearby provinces.