Digital cemetery in Beijing

A digital cemetery in Beijing, China. Photo: Bloomberg

Zhang Yin, a middle-aged woman in Beijing, chose a very different burial ritual when her grandmother died earlier this year: Her ashes were kept in a compartment in a large room at the capital’s Taiziyu Cemetery, much like a safe deposit box at a bank. An electronic screen on the compartment door displays photos and videos of the deceased in place of a traditional tombstone. The arrangement is seen as a space-saving, affordable option and in line with a growing trend among Chinese families to give their loved ones more personalized funerals.

“Traditional cemeteries are outdoors, exposed to the wind and sun. If you take your children there, they will only see bare graves. For digital cemeteries, family members can look at the images of their deceased loved ones together,” Ms. Zhang said.

A chamber containing the ashes of the deceased at a digital cemetery in Beijing. Photo: Bloomberg

Traditional cemetery in Beijing. Photo: Bloomberg

Local governments and funeral companies in China are experimenting with new ways to conduct burials as the country faces a shortage of urban land and a rapidly aging population. Annual deaths are expected to rise to 10.4 million by 2022, up 6.7 percent from 2016, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Beijing will try to reduce the total land area of public cemeteries to about 70 percent of current size by 2035, the State Council said, and the country has also promoted alternative forms of burial to save space.

The Chinese government sees the change as a necessary step to conserve land and reduce costs. With a population of 1.4 billion, China leads the world in demand for funeral services: the market was worth 258 billion yuan ($35.6 billion) in 2020 and is expected to reach 411 billion yuan by 2026, according to a report by Huaon Ican, a Chinese funeral services consultancy.

Beijing is not the first city in China to promote digital funerals. In August 2022, Shanghai opened a digital cemetery. New services include a life film, or a film containing photos of the deceased for online memorialization.

Jin Leiyi, vice president of digital funeral leader Fu Shou Yuan, said the era of spending money on “buying land and buying stones” for funerals will soon end. Instead, money will be spent on science and technology as well as emotional experiences at cemeteries.

Affordability is one of the most attractive aspects of digital cemeteries. The average digital funeral costs about 56,000 yuan at Beijing’s Taiziyu Cemetery, about a third of the cost of a traditional open-air burial in the same area. Since the beginning of the year, more than 500 digital urns have been sold in Beijing out of about 7,000 available. A 20-square-meter digital cemetery can accommodate more than 150 urns, while the same area would only accommodate six graves in a traditional cemetery.

SERIOUS (According to Bloomberg)

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