{"id":54562,"date":"2023-04-24T08:08:41","date_gmt":"2023-04-23T23:08:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/apr\/24\/ashes-to-ocean-sea-burials-become-chinas-solution-to-crowded-cemeteries"},"modified":"2023-04-24T08:08:41","modified_gmt":"2023-04-23T23:08:41","slug":"ashes-to-ocean-sea-burials-become-chinas-solution-to-crowded-cemeteries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=54562","title":{"rendered":"Ashes to ocean: sea burials become China\u2019s solution to crowded cemeteries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Boatloads of relatives carrying biodegradable urns are saying their farewells over water instead of trying to buy expensive and scarce funeral plots<\/p>\n<p>Xiao Hu never expected to make a living from the dead. For years she worked in her family business offering boat tours to tourists visiting Zhoushan, an archipelago off the east coast of China\u2019s mainland. But in recent years her proximity to the sea, and to the temple-dotted hills of Mount Putou \u2013 one of Chinese Buddhism\u2019s four sacred mountains \u2013 started to attract a different type of clientele.<\/p>\n<p>The first time that a customer asked to use one of the boats to scatter their loved one\u2019s remains into the East China Sea, Xiao Hu refused. She felt it was \u201cnot very pleasant\u201d to work with the dead. But one elderly man, a Zen Buddhist, \u201ckept asking if we could do a sea burial for him\u201d. So after some consideration, she decided to \u201cmake his wish come true\u201d.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/apr\/24\/ashes-to-ocean-sea-burials-become-chinas-solution-to-crowded-cemeteries\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Boatloads of relatives carrying biodegradable urns are saying their farewells over water instead of trying to buy expensive and scarce funeral plotsXiao Hu never expected to make a living from the dead. For years she worked in her family business offer&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3580,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,50,1777,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-china","category-death-and-dying","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3580"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54562"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54563,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54562\/revisions\/54563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}