Publication: Telegraph.co.uk
Author: Peter Foster
Date: April 03, 2008
Article Excerpt:
As millions of Chinese pause to honour their ancestors and tidy their graves this weekend at the annual Qingming, or “Tombsweeping” festival, the skyrocketing price of cemetery plots and funeral services has become a focus of national anger.
“Too poor to live, to poor to die” is how one newspaper the northeastern city Harbin headlined a report complaining that cemetery plots were now costing more per square metre than luxury apartments.
The spiralling cost of funerals is doubly sensitive in China where filial piety, including honouring and respecting one’s ancestors, ranks even above love for one’s country among the traditional Confucian hierarchy of virtues.