Althouse: "In Jiangxi and some other parts of China, people buy their coffins and store them in their homes."

August 3, 2018

"In Jiangxi and some other parts of China, people buy their coffins and store them in their homes."

"To meet a target of having all dead be cremated starting Sept. 1, officials in some rural parts of Jiangxi confiscated and destroyed coffins that many older people had long saved to buy. Videos posted on social media showed the police raiding houses, excavators crushing piles of empty coffins and workers dismantling elaborate tombs. Such methods shocked many in China and were criticized in national media outlets. 'To crudely implement a 100 percent cremation rate, these methods are inhuman, unlawful and should stop immediately,' The Procuratorate Daily, a state-run legal newspaper, said on Tuesday.... Four years ago, when one city in neighboring Anhui Province began seizing coffins, six older people killed themselves...."

From "Thousands of Confiscated Coffins and an Exhumed Corpse Stoke Fury in China" (NYT).

ADDED: Based on the comments, I think many people are experiencing this story as funny. Is it because China is so far away? Here are these people who have cared so much about burial that they've sacrificed to be able to afford the kind of coffin that meets needs that they must feel very strongly. Now, this valuable property is confiscated and destroyed, and they are also told that their dead bodies cannot be buried at all, but must be disposed of by a method that is completely different from what they have cared so much about and found so meaningful. Maybe you think that human beings are ridiculous to give any mind to what happens to corpses, but have you noticed that your fellow Americans have been dwelling on the story of an orca that has been carrying its dead baby around for days?

51 comments:

Ralph L said...: Dracula hardest hit.; 8/3/18, 7:13 AM
Rob said...: I understand storing a coffin in the house, but when Granny leaves us, where are we going to keep the linens?; 8/3/18, 7:14 AM
rhhardin said...: It prevents zombies.; 8/3/18, 7:16 AM
David Begley said...: Did they receive fair compensation for their property?

No wonder China censors the Internet. The United States Constitution is a revolutionary document.

The Google people need to understand what it means. Google would never have been created and prospered in any country but the United States. Certainly not Russia.; 8/3/18, 7:17 AM
Ralph L said...: Wouldn't it be easier to clamp down on new cemeteries or build high-rise mausoleums?

Speaking of vertical integration, my g-g-gf had a funeral parlor and built coffins (and other cabinetry) for his clients.; 8/3/18, 7:20 AM
I Have Misplaced My Pants said...: Nice place.; 8/3/18, 7:26 AM
Leland said...: I guess, burn it all until none of the history remains? Maybe call it, cultural revolution 2.0?; 8/3/18, 7:28 AM
Ralph L said...: What was the Christian sect that would sleep in their coffins?; 8/3/18, 7:29 AM
Phil 314 said...: My wager: Once this generation passes and the “one child” generation gets old (and no one lives in the country anymore) you’ll see elaborate burial rituals return.; 8/3/18, 7:29 AM
Fernandinande said...: Why are some rural parts of Jiangxi so popular that people are dying to get in?; 8/3/18, 7:33 AM
Sebastian said...: Figures. Totalitarians want to control you in life, and they want to control you in death.; 8/3/18, 7:36 AM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: If you cremate everyone, how will anthropologist from the year 6565 be able to reconstruct the extinct civilization of the people of the year 2525. [song reference]

Nothing will be left for them to speculate on. No clues on how we lived or how we died......out.; 8/3/18, 7:47 AM
MadisonMan said...: No Cash for Clunker Coffins?; 8/3/18, 7:48 AM
tcrosse said...: They're just thinking outside the box.; 8/3/18, 7:55 AM
Wince said...: "More... coffins, warden?"; 8/3/18, 8:03 AM
Wince said...: Ralph L said...
What was the Christian sect that would sleep in their coffins?

The Munsters?; 8/3/18, 8:04 AM
gspencer said...: A communist (you know, a total government control of everything kind of person) is simply a socialist in a hurry. Today's Democrat Party.; 8/3/18, 8:09 AM
buwaya said...: Both the purchase of coffins and the governments despotic policy are ancient Chinese traditions.; 8/3/18, 8:45 AM
tcrosse said...: Both the purchase of coffins and the governments despotic policy are ancient Chinese traditions.

So is the generation of large numbers of corpses.; 8/3/18, 8:48 AM
Oso Negro said...: @ Althouse - I am sorry to say that many of us have malfunctioning “give-a-shitters”.; 8/3/18, 8:53 AM
Etienne said...: All Chinese should have their bodies cremated for electricity.

Plutonium is wasted when good cheap fuel is available.; 8/3/18, 8:58 AM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: Oso Negro I am sorry to say that many of us have malfunctioning “give-a-shitters”.

Then this image would be relevant for many of us BEHOLD!!; 8/3/18, 9:01 AM
reader said...: It seems to me that in their minds they had their stories told. They knew how it was going to end, they had crafted it. Then that ending was abruptly changed. I can see that leading to feelings of anxiety and despair.; 8/3/18, 9:18 AM
Nonapod said...: The goal is to reduce the use of land for graveyards and spending on expensive coffins.

Is land really in that short supply in China? I mean, I keep hearing about Chinese ghost cities that've appeared due to excessive overbuilding. I guess this is just another idiotic heavy handed, unecessary, and inhumane thing in a long line of such things that the Chinese government has done.; 8/3/18, 9:20 AM
Sam L. said...: Yes, Chinese rulers are Communists and will do whatever they want to the ruled.; 8/3/18, 9:27 AM
Rick.T. said...: Just be like Willie:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CyBOpsF4ASo; 8/3/18, 9:29 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: “Is land really in that short supply in China? I mean, I keep hearing about Chinese ghost cities that've appeared due to excessive overbuilding. I guess this is just another idiotic heavy handed, unecessary, and inhumane thing in a long line of such things that the Chinese government has done.”

I don’t think that it is so much Chinese, but rather socialism/communism. Though I think that an argument could be made that the Chinese are maybe more susceptible to socialism due maybe to their long historic experience with the bureaucratic state. After all, the government is run by the best and the brightest so what could go wrong? Maybe just in the American mind, but there is something almost innately Chinese about a billion of them marching lemming like over a cliff together. Maybe my idea is that even though socialism inevitably ends up squandering scarce resources and routinely infringing what we think of as fundamental rights, through what look to us as ham handed attempts to solve problems, the Chinese seem to be the most vulnerable to that, possibly due to their millenia of being taught to obey the state because it was run by the best and brightest. And maybe that is the difference here - while Europe historically ran their countries through an inherited elite, China long utilized a trained civil service selected through merit. And, as a result get far less pushback when boneheaded decisions are made by the state.; 8/3/18, 9:47 AM
iowan2 said...: It's just a coffin. Intelligent persons have moved, due to the shear mass of their intellect to ban burial. That burial is not in any persons best interest.

End of story, discussion will be discourged, until it is punished

What's the big deal? You would think they were putting people in jail for dispensing a single plastic straw, one time, for six months. Geez, get a grip; 8/3/18, 9:51 AM
buwaya said...: No, there is no shortage of land in China. Most of China anyway.

Large parts are intensively cultivated, but land use for cemeteries isn't going to take much even for their population.

As for the government being heavy-handed, this is as I mentioned also very Chinese. Communism hasn't much to do with it. Imperial and Republican governments were also habitually despotic, often with such symbolic policies. The Qing dynasty made all Chinese men wear queues, on pain of death. Its just how its always been in China.; 8/3/18, 9:54 AM
buwaya said...: China has been a bureaucratic state run by "the best and brightest" for thousands of years, other than those episodes of bloody chaos every couple of centuries.

The Communists fit right in, even in their adjustment towards realism. The Communist party is just another Chinese dynasty, and these mutated predictably in their character after their founders died.; 8/3/18, 9:59 AM
buwaya said...: Re plastic straws and such, yes a government by "the best and brightest" is always going to be despotic and absurd. The arrogance of a meritocratic class is by nature greater than that of an aristocracy.; 8/3/18, 10:03 AM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: The goal is to reduce the use of land for graveyards and spending on expensive coffins.

The goal is just like that of socialists, communists and liberals in this country. Destroy the family and its traditions. Weaken the ties that bind to family and create dependence on the Government for everything.

In Chinese culture, honoring the dead is a serious tradition. Funeral rites, burial and subsequent visits to the graveside with offerings to honor the ancestors have been traditional for thousands of years.

Ancestor Veneration in China

When you destroy a vital part of a tradition, one that holds the family near and dear, you have succeeded in the goals of the Communist Government and the liberals in this country to weaken the ties to anything other than the all powerful government.

It isn't about land. It is about breaking the family ties and traditions. So far the left has succeeded masterfully within the Black community in totally destroying stable family life. Next they are working on confusing and indoctrinating millennials and young people to prevent stable families.; 8/3/18, 10:22 AM
BarrySanders20 said...: You can have my coffin when you pry it from my cold, dead fing . . . ER, nevermind.; 8/3/18, 10:25 AM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: Also I might add that the elimination of the traditional Chinese burial and mourning practices is also a further assault upon religion, which is also the enemy of Socialists, Communists and the Left.; 8/3/18, 10:28 AM
Balfegor said...: Under some Confucian traditions, cremation of one's parents (destroying their bodies) is considered unfilial. I don't think it's universally viewed as such, but it's a pretty widespread view. Crushing tombs is not new for the Communists -- they did the same sort of thing during the Cultural Revolution, although at that time, they did it for ideological reasons that were more cartoonishly evil, rather than efficiency.

In terms of land being taken up by tombs and graves, I don't know the situation in rural China, but in rural Korea, when you drive down the highway from Seoul to the south, after a certain point you notice that pretty much every hillside you see is dotted with little mounds -- with family burial plots. They really are everywhere. It would not be surprising to hear that China is filled with graves the same way.; 8/3/18, 10:30 AM
Molly said...: (eaglebeak)

The Chinese government continues brutal and inhuman--just as it was for all those years when it dictated one child per family and performed forced abortions on screaming women.

Or when it mowed down unarmed students in Tiananmen Square.

Or when it censors everybody and everything (Google's about to accede to Chinese censorship requirements). Or when a Chinese dissident disappears in the midst of an interview with Voice of America, as just happened.

Or when it sets out to demolish all religions, including very prominently Christianity (helped along by Pope Francis).

The vast masses in the countryside are treated like animals by the CCP and its bureaucracy.

Not as bad as the Cultural Revolution, I guess, but still horrible.; 8/3/18, 11:00 AM
William said...: Medieval monks used to sleep in their coffins. It was done to help them concentrate on the afterlife. The practice has since died out as have its practitioners.......To my way of thinking, there is no sacrifice more futile than saving money for an elaborate burial. Also, keeping your coffin in the apartment takes up a lot of space and would lead to many distressing thoughts every time you had a cold. I think this practice is not congenial with modern mores. Left alone, it would have gone the way of foot binding and died a natural death. The efforts to abolish the practice seem more heavy handed and obsolete than the practice itself.......One of the great comforts of my old age is that I will not have to live through Hillary's funeral. Just an afterthought.; 8/3/18, 11:05 AM
Levi Starks said...: It’s a good start. Next step: decide what age is a good time to begin the cremation proceedings; 8/3/18, 11:07 AM
rehajm said...: My wager: Once this generation passes and the “one child” generation gets old (and no one lives in the country anymore) you’ll see elaborate burial rituals return.

This, yes. The central planners anticipate running low on real estate for the living but fail to foresee the consequences of the one child policy. Did they always expect the one child policy to fail? WTF?

Central planing sucks.; 8/3/18, 11:09 AM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: The Chinese may be ridiculous but no one said Americans are any less so.

I love an old graveyard as much as the next guy, but the tradition of the burial plot really does seem untenable and unnecessary in the age of the modern crematory. Burn ‘em and spread ‘em. Knowing your history doesn’t mean you have to spend your days dwelling in it.; 8/3/18, 11:49 AM
Darrell said...: This is going to fuck up the Ghost Bride business. How will unmarried men who die early be able to have a family in the afterlife if you don't kill living girls today and perform a wedding ceremony?; 8/3/18, 11:51 AM
iowan2 said...: Cracker, I agree with you, and from talking to friends, many of my peers are considering cremation. I really bristle at the thought of $thousands poured down a rat hole (death hole) for little reason. I very much miss my extended family, but we are very transient society, we are spread out. I see nothing in the future that will reverse the trend that has happened in the last 50 years. I rarely visit grave sites, and my children are very close to never visiting.; 8/3/18, 12:10 PM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: @ Cracker and iowan2

You see, the difference is that YOU have a choice, while the Chinese are not given that luxury.

I also could give a rip about my body after death. Cremation seems like the neatest solution. My family also has moved around and I couldn't tell you where exactly my mother is buried or many other relatives. Personally, I would prefer that anyone who is left who gives a shit after I am gone should have a nice BBQ, with good music and lots of booze.

I've already picked out my going away song. Music is a big part of my life. Traveling Wilburys End of the Line as it really encapsulates my attitude to life.

My husband on the other hand, wants to be buried in his family cemetery. His family was early settlers in Oregon (1830's is the earliest) all of his ancestors from those early days are buried there. Quite historical. And actually pretty cool to have your own private cemetery. Plus he is the last in his family carrying the name. I suggested he should choose End of the Line too, because he IS. I also told him, he'd better make arrangements with whoever is managing the private cemetery to get a plot etc......or else he's gonna end up in a coffee can in the back of the closet.

Whatever. I don't judge others for their choices. People should be allowed to use the traditions that they want.; 8/3/18, 12:58 PM
Rick said...: have you noticed that your fellow Americans have been dwelling on the story of an orca that has been carrying its dead baby around for days?

It's just a clump of cells!; 8/3/18, 1:24 PM
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...: Them foreigners is weird!; 8/3/18, 2:36 PM
Howard said...: This story reveals the logical conclusion spawned by gaming standardized tests. They are not going to take over the world anytime soon.; 8/3/18, 2:50 PM
William said...: I have opted for the VA cemetery. The only time in my life when I did not feel alienated from the group I was with was when I was doing close order drill during basic. It's a comfort to me to know that I'll spend eternity as a little white cross among a row of little white crosses. Also when the resurrection occurs, it will likely happen in the VA cemetery first. The VFW have a very strong lobby in heaven.; 8/3/18, 6:51 PM
Be said...: Polish Catholics in the middle of the us still deal with this nonsense.; 8/3/18, 7:53 PM
Phil 314 said...: DBQ

Excellent!; 8/3/18, 8:49 PM
Phil 314 said...: “Medieval monks used to sleep in their coffins... The practice has since died out”

You mean “no new practitioners”, as the old practitioners continue to sleep in their coffins.; 8/3/18, 8:54 PM
whiskey said...: One of the seven Corporal Works of Mercy in the Catholic Church is the burial of the dead. Respect the body that was once the person. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10198d.htm; 8/4/18, 6:40 PM