China News Service, Luoyang, April 5th, Question: Funeral innovation is becoming more and more diverse. How to balance emotion and reason in the "end of life"
Author Kan Li
During the Qingming Festival, Xu Yan from Luoyang, Henan took off a small "life spar" on her neck and wiped it gently to express her grief for her father.
"Life spar" is a funeral method that has emerged in recent years. Through technologies such as pressure and high temperature sublimation, the ashes are made into spar, which can be used as accessories and decorations.
What Xu Yan is wearing is the life spar made from the ashes of her deceased father.
In recent years, a new trend of funerals in China has gradually emerged, and the links of funerals, burials, and sacrifices have become increasingly diverse.
Sea burials, tree burials, flower burials, wall burials, lawn burials and other ecological burials, new forms such as "cloud mourning", "cloud guardian spirit" and "cloud sacrificial sweeping", as well as new technologies such as life spar and ashes compression, have attracted attention.
Zhao Xiaohu, director of the Cemetery Working Committee of the China Funeral Association and vice president of Fushouyuan International Group, said in an interview with a reporter from Chinanews.com on the 4th that a survey he conducted in 2019 showed that tree burials, flower bed burials, and lawn burials are the most popular A popular method of ecological burial.
"Trees, flower beds and lawns are the most common and common landscapes in public green spaces. The intimacy of nature makes these burial methods well-recognized by the public." Zhao Xiaohu said.
However, Zhao Xiaohu, who has nearly 30 years of experience in the funeral industry, also pointed out, "From the survey data, ecological burials are not very popular." The main reasons for the low acceptance of ecological burials are ideological concepts, ecological awareness and social public opinion.
In the view of Zhao Xiaohu and some industry experts, "the end of life" can be more widely accepted by taking into account both reason and reason.
Among them, "love" must remain.
Zhao Xiaohu said that the love of blood and faith inherited from ancestors is the "root nature" of Chinese tradition.
"Reason" is to pay attention to the rational use of limited resources at present.
Funerals, burials, and sacrifices should focus on the inside and be more calm. "It is irrational to insist on burial."
Zhao Xiaohu believes that it is necessary to choose according to your liking and to do what you can, but also to abandon the vulgar customs and economize the land.
Taking the life spar as an example, he said that through processing methods, the ashes can exist in a more diverse form, which makes the tombstone "slimming" more possibilities.
"As a memorial and a marker, the life spar can be embedded in every space with different shapes." During the reporter's interview, some people also believed that the life spar is small in size and beautiful in shape, which is economical and portable. Carry, or will be accepted by more and more young people.
Zhao Xiaohu believes that with the continuous emergence of new technologies such as life spar, ashes, diamonds, and ashes compression, and the emergence of a new form of smart cemetery that integrates "Internet + entity", the cemetery in the future may be called Life Memorial Park. Any landscape in the museum is a monument of life, and behind it is a story of life.
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