{"id":59830,"date":"2023-11-14T14:00:20","date_gmt":"2023-11-14T05:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/nov\/14\/the-ghosts-haunting-chinas-cities-death-dying-funerals-superstition"},"modified":"2023-11-14T14:00:20","modified_gmt":"2023-11-14T05:00:20","slug":"the-ghosts-haunting-chinas-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=59830","title":{"rendered":"The ghosts haunting China\u2019s cities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the official telling, fears of malevolent spirits are a vestige of old, unenlightened village ways. But today urban China is rife with superstition about death. Why?<\/p>\n<p>On the 11th floor of a suburban Hong Kong tower, an 86-year-old woman lived alone in a tiny, decrepit apartment. Her family rarely visited. Her daughter had married a man in Macau and now lived there with him and their two children. Her son had passed away years earlier, and his only child now attended university in England.<\/p>\n<p>One September evening, the old woman fell and broke her hip while trying to change a lightbulb. She couldn\u2019t move, and no one heard her crying for help. Over the next two days, she slowly died from dehydration. It took an additional three days for the neighbours to call the authorities \u2013 three days for the stench to become truly unbearable. The police removed the body and notified the family. A small funeral was held.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/nov\/14\/the-ghosts-haunting-chinas-cities-death-dying-funerals-superstition\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the official telling, fears of malevolent spirits are a vestige of old, unenlightened village ways. But today urban China is rife with superstition about death. Why?On the 11th floor of a suburban Hong Kong tower, an 86-year-old woman lived alone in&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4035,"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":[50,1777,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-death-and-dying","category-society"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59830","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\/4035"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59830"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59831,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59830\/revisions\/59831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}