Some Beijing tomb plots "cost more than houses"

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese are getting ready for Tomb-Sweeping Day on Friday, as state media fret that the poor can no longer afford funerals while tombs for the rich cost more than houses.

China this year has reinstated the traditional Qingming Tomb-Sweeping Day as a holiday, along with the Dragon Boat Festival in June and Mid-Autumn Festival in September.

Chinese beliefs and superstitions about the after-life, ingrained filial piety and soaring incomes have fuelled a scramble for burial plots, and prompted authorities to issue rules to regulate the roaring, unregulated funeral trade.

For decades after the 1949 Communist takeover, China banned burials and insisted on cremations, but the patchily enforced rule is now effectively abandoned.

Five of Beijing's major cemeteries now demand between 10,000 yuan ($1,400) and 30,000 yuan per square meter for a standard tomb, the China Daily said on Wednesday, compared with an average of 20,000 yuan per square meter for an apartment in downtown Beijing.

Newspaper editor Liao Yi paid about 70,000 yuan to a funeral home to have his father buried in a two-square-meter plot at a cemetery in Beijing's southern Fangshan district, the paper said.

"I feel sorry that my father's posthumous home is so small and that he has to be left in such a crowded area, but I have done my best," he said. Even basic rates for cremation were proving beyond the means of many residents, the paper said, citing a 4,000 yuan price-tag at a funeral home in the southern city of Shenzhen.

China last year outlawed the trade in tomb futures -- speculating in the business of selling graves -- after it bankrupted many investors.

But traditional ideas have proved resilient and fuelled the construction of luxurious, house-sized tombs encroaching on diminishing land, the paper said in a commentary.