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发帖数: 4825 | 1 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/23/world/asia/23tombs.html?_r=1&
China Curbs Fancy Tombs That Irk Poor
Sim Chi Yin for The New York Times
A large and ostentatious tomb in the Chinese city of Chengdu includes three
split levels and two flights of stairs. More Photos »
By SHARON LaFRANIERE
Published: April 22, 2011
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CHENGDU, China — Ever since Deng Xiaoping signaled in 1978 that it was fine
to get rich, much of China has seemed hell-bent on that goal. But some
local governments would like those who succeed not to lord it over others,
at least when it comes to paying final respects.
Multimedia
Slide Show
In Chengdu, Burial Is Also an Economic Rite
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Enlarge This Image
Sim Chi Yin for The New York Times
A geomancer scattered rice in a prayer ritual at The Pine Tree of Longevity
cemetery in Chengdu. More Photos »
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As of last month, in the cemeteries of this hilly megalopolis in south
central China, modest burial sites are in. Fancy tombs are out. And in some
places, so are fancy funerals.
Plots for ashes are limited to 1.5 square meters, about 4 feet by 4 feet.
Tombstones are supposed to be no higher than 100 centimeters, or 39 inches,
although it is not clear that limit will be enforced. Sellers of oversize
plots have been warned of severe fines, as much as 300 times the plot’s
price.
“Ordinary people who walk by and see these lavish tombs might not be able
to keep their emotions in balance,” said Zheng Wenzhong, as he visited the
relatively modest resting place of a relative at The Temple of the Lighted
Lamp cemetery. That is apparently exactly what many officials fear. After a
quarter of a century in which the gap between rich and poor has steadily
widened, the wretched excesses of the affluent are increasingly a Chinese
government concern.
China’s income inequality, as measured by a standard called the Gini
coefficient, is now on a par with some Latin American and African countries,
according to the World Bank. Justin Yifu Lin, the bank’s chief economist,
last year identified the growing disparity as one of China’s biggest
economic problems.
Li Shi, an economics professor at Beijing Normal University, said that in
1988 the average income of the top 10 percent of Chinese was about 12 times
that of the bottom 10 percent. By 2007, he said, those at the top earned 23
times more.
China’s long-term solutions to the divide include more market reforms,
stronger social security programs, lower taxes on low-income families and
tighter controls on illicit income. But while waiting for Beijing for all
that, some local officials are looking for ways to gloss over the gap.
A regulation posted last month on the Web site of the Beijing Administration
for Industry and Commerce banned outdoor advertisements promoting “
unhealthy” tendencies, including “hedonism, feudalism and royalty,
worshiping of and groveling before foreign things, supreme aristocracy and
vulgar tastes.”
Mr. Li said that measures governing luxury advertisements or tombs might “
to a certain extent alleviate the general hatred toward rich people” but
were essentially stopgaps. Still, Chen Changwen, director of the sociology
department at Sichuan University, said he saw their merit in averting social
conflict.
“Of course, if we cannot change the fact of the disparity between the rich
and poor, the least we can do is lessen the impact of it on society and
lessen the advertising of it,” he said. “A lot of people cannot handle the
extravagant ways of this first generation of the wealthy. It really grates
on the public.”
Ostentatious tombs are particularly irksome, he said, because many Chinese
find even a simple grave marker beyond their means. In a coinage that
captures the widespread frustration, someone struggling to afford burial
costs is called a “grave slave.”
“There are many examples of how the rich can afford to bury the dead, but
not the common people,” said Zheng Fengtian, a professor of rural
development at Beijing’s Renmin University. “This makes many people very
angry.”
One spectacular example took place last month in Wenling, a coastal city
south of Shanghai. Five brothers commandeered the grounds of a high school
to bid their mother goodbye with pomp befitting a state funeral.
Thousands of onlookers watched a ceremony that featured nine flower-decked
limousines, a uniformed band and a 16-gun salute. One brother told reporters
that his mother wanted to be buried with “face.”
Just last August, though, Wenling passed a regulation against funeral “
extravagance and waste.” It limited the number of cars and wreaths and
prohibited processions past schools and hospitals. The high school principal
, the assistant principal and the government’s head of funeral practices
were all fired, according to media reports, and the family was fined about $
450.
In southern Hunan Province, the authorities last year began investigating a
private cemetery with 67 steps leading to a pagoda built by the family of a
former government official after the news media likened it to an imperial
tomb. And in 2009, officials ordered the razing of a tomb in a village
outside Chongqing in central China, after a local newspaper compared its
size to that of a basketball court.
Enlarge This Image
Sim Chi Yin for The New York Times
Despite size limits imposed by the city of Chengdu, the largest tomb yet is
being built in The Pine Tree of Longevity cemetery. More Photos »
Multimedia
Slide Show
In Chengdu, Burial Is Also an Economic Rite
Related
*
Tension Precedes U.S.-China Meeting on Human Rights (April 23, 2011)
*
Truckers Protest, Adding to Chinese Fears of Unrest (April 23, 2011)
*
Confucius Statue Vanishes Near Tiananmen Square (April 23, 2011)
*
Prosecutors in China Drop Charges Against Lawyer (April 23, 2011)
The New York Times
Chengdu is limiting the size of burial plots and headstones. More Photos &#
187;
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¶ Rising prices have cast China’s whole funeral industry in an
unflattering light. Mr. Zheng, the Renmin University professor, said local
governments were partly to blame for the inflation because they limited
competition.
¶ Most cemeteries are directly government-controlled, he said; the rest
depend on permits from the government, which owns the land. The state
Ministry of Civil Affairs said last year that the government was managing 1,
209 cemeteries, 853 funeral management “work units” and about 7,000
workers. “They control all of it, either by rejecting new projects or
approving very, very few of them,” Mr. Zheng said.
¶ On paper, low-cost burials have been national policy since at least
1997, when State Decree 225 ordered cemetery land conserved and “thrifty
funeral arrangements” promoted.
¶ The Pine Tree of Longevity, Chengdu’s largest cemetery, apparently
did not get that memo.
¶ In the “artistic section,” overlooking hills of flowering peace
trees, row after row of huge tombstones are decked out with rearing stone
stallions, giant open books and granite tables and stools. One recent
morning, Zhou Dongmei, the head of sales, carefully steered two visitors
away from that section toward lines of smaller, plainer markers that sell
for a fraction of the cost. “This is the only kind of plot we sell now,”
she said, adding, “it is a process for people to accept this.”
¶ Most Chengdu mourners interviewed expressed skepticism about the tomb
limits. At Temple of the Lighted Lamp cemetery, Kuang Lan, 42, said: “My
personal opinion is if you have the money to make a bigger tomb, make a
bigger one. If not, make a smaller one.”
¶ But Yang Bin, 48, who earns roughly $150 a month chiseling tombstones
at Zhenwu Shan cemetery, quietly criticized the excesses of “capitalists”
who “are everywhere now.”
¶ “This is how the Chinese are,” he said, after trudging down the
cemetery’s steep hill in his thin cloth shoes. “If they have money, they
want to show off their face. If you don’t have money, you have to work.” |
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