Cemetery in China forced to bury controversial mortgages-for-graves plan after media backlash
- Cemetery announced the plan and within days was forced to cancel the scheme after overwhelming negative publicity
- Many were angered by what they saw as greed and profiteering on people’s grief
The Kunming Jinlong Ruyi Park in the southwestern province of Yunnan revealed on Tuesday a plan to partner with a local bank to offer 10-year mortgages for graves that would covers costs up to 200,000 yuan (US$30,000).
The news quickly generated an avalanche of criticism. Several state media outlets published op-eds that decried the practice as “propping up funeral costs” and “indebting offspring”.
Many people ridiculed the bank on the Chinese internet, asking what it would do if a client defaulted on a burial plot.
“Please don’t tell me they are going to dig other families’ graves and then sell them at an auction,” said a commentator on Weibo.
Two days later both the cemetery and the bank, Yunnan Xishan BoB Rural Bank, a subsidiary of the Bank of Beijing, walked back the offering, telling the media that they had cancelled the deal.
Li Houtao, head of marketing for the Yunnan cemetery, told the South China Morning Post over the phone that the cemetery had called off the offering and would issue an official statement on its social media accounts in a few days.
Traditional Chinese culture emphasises respecting one’s elders, which creates social pressure to plan elaborate funerals for one’s elders and pay for high-quality graves as proof of filial piety.
According to a 2015 report on Chinese funerals, the grave plot takes up the lion’s share of funeral costs. The average family pays about 70,000 yuan for a grave, accounting for 87.5 per cent of total funeral expenses.
According to the opinion pages of local Chinese media, the offering reflects a public aversion to rising funeral costs and what many see as greedy, hard-hearted banking practices.
“If a mortgage plan lends someone 200,000 yuan for tombs, wouldn’t tomb prices skyrocket?” asked an opinion piece by state broadcaster CCTV. It said some cemeteries had become too commercialised.
