As Tomb-Sweeping Day approaches, a piece of news about Suzhou has sparked heated discussion. The source said: People who are not local residents of Suzhou cannot purchase a cemetery in Suzhou. In fact, the news cited news from the city-wide Qingming Festival work meeting held in Suzhou on March 2. The theme of the meeting is "All funeral service units should strengthen funeral management in accordance with laws and regulations, strictly prohibit the sale of commercial cemeteries outside the Suzhou area, and use limited resources to better serve the people of Suzhou." Public opinion believes that this is to "block Shanghainese from buying Suzhou cemeteries."
In fact, a cemetery is not just a cemetery, it can also be a bond and symbol of emotional connection. "Later, nostalgia was like a short grave. I was outside and my mother was inside." No, in Yu Guangzhong's writing, the grave became one of the images representing nostalgia. As we all know, due to geographical and blood ties, many Shanghainese are from Suzhou.
Recently, purchase restrictions have been implemented across the country, but without exception they are aimed at the property market. The scenery here in Suzhou is different. But in essence, the internal logic of the property market purchase restrictions and the cemetery purchase restrictions are actually the same: speculators activate the panic of those in urgent need, amplifying the imbalance between supply and demand. In order to stabilize property prices (grave prices), the government We can only squeeze out the bubble and let it return to its original properties of residence (burial). However, under the one-size-fits-all policy, accidental injuries are inevitable.
A simple truth is that the living and the dead compete for land, and the issues of the living undoubtedly have priority. But it seems that such absolute logic should not be applied so easily to locals and outsiders. Suzhou people in Shanghai return to their hometown to buy cemeteries, which is actually the result of multiple factors. In a ranking of cemetery prices in 30 major cities across the country, Shanghai ranked first. High-end cemeteries cost nearly 300,000 yuan per plot, and the city's average price per square meter exceeded 60,000 yuan. Cemeteries in Suzhou generally cost 30,000 yuan per square meter, and last year the highest price was 120,000 yuan per square meter. The huge price gap, coupled with the cultural mentality of returning fallen leaves to their roots, makes it logical for Shanghainese to go to Suzhou to buy cemeteries. Observations by netizens also support this. Every time I go to visit a grave, 7 out of 10 vehicles have Shanghai license plates and 2 have Zhejiang license plates.
If Suzhou’s cemetery resources were relatively abundant before, now “the landowners have no surplus food.” It is understood that more than 80% of cemeteries in Suzhou have insufficient land stock. Even so, cemetery resources are still being robbed by outsiders. In 2015, the Suzhou Municipal Civil Affairs Department made a calculation that under extreme circumstances, Suzhou's cemeteries will be sold out within five years. In order to cope with this situation, Suzhou introduced a subsidy measure for green funerals as early as 2012, offering a subsidy of 2,000 yuan for tree burials. However, in the three years to 2015, only 300 deceased people chose green burials. Compared with nearly half of German citizens who choose tree burial, it is a huge difference.
It can be seen that Suzhou’s restriction on the purchase of cemeteries is indeed a little selfish. The failure to promote ecological burial is not an isolated phenomenon in Suzhou. Observed in a larger context, the integration of the Yangtze River Delta is accelerating, and this integration should also be simultaneously reflected in various public services. In addition, if relatively Western-style funeral methods such as tree burials are not easily accepted by people, then can we consider reviving traditions such as temple sacrifices to give people an opportunity to bury the souls of their loved ones and rebuild their sanctity, and to worship their ancestors in family temples or ancestral halls? The tablet of the god, a solution with more Eastern tradition and color, may be worth trying everywhere.