China News Service, Lanzhou, April 5th: China’s pet funeral services are gradually becoming an industry
China News Service reporter Yan Jiao
On the eve of Qingming Festival, some young pet owners set out to select personalized pet funeral services to commemorate their deceased "soul mates": designing unique tombstones for their pets, making personalized three-dimensional pet statues, setting pendants with pet hair and ashes, and planting small trees exclusive to their pets. …
"Cat-licking" and "dog-sucking" are increasingly integrated into the daily lives of China's younger generation. The "China Pet Industry White Paper 2023-2024" shows that in 2023, the "post-90s" and "post-80s" will be the main force in pet raising, and their proportion will increase by 2.1 and 10.8 percentage points respectively compared with the previous year. More and more pet owners are willing to pay for their cute pets, giving rise to an industry chain of food, supplies, and services that runs through the lives of pets.
A set of data widely quoted by the media shows that China’s pet funeral service market has grown from 701 million yuan (RMB, the same below) in 2018 to 1.825 billion yuan in 2023, more than doubling in five years. Another survey showed that in terms of burial method preferences, 60.4% of pet owners prefer to say goodbye to the body, and 25% choose to make souvenirs.
The picture shows a pet funeral shop in Lanzhou, Gansu, launching felt products exclusive for deceased pets. (Information map, photo provided by interviewee)
Wu Ting, a pet owner born after 1995 in Lanzhou City, Gansu Province, recently held a funeral ceremony for her pet. "It takes one hour and costs hundreds of yuan. The ceremony includes cleaning the pet's face, candle blessing, eulogy, cremation, and burial." Wu Ting said that among the individual and collective cremation projects, she chose the former.
"It's also a thought to leave some ashes. Bunny has already become my family and has been with me through the most difficult period. In order to make her live more comfortably after her death, I made a special tombstone and small house."
The death of her pet also taught her a "death education" lesson, making her cherish the time spent with family and friends even more.
In the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, Gansu Province, the puppy "Lele King" once "clouded" to accompany many netizens. As the Tomb Sweeping Day approaches, some people made a special trip to visit the tombstone in Dunhuang to see it, while others expressed condolences and thoughts through the Internet.
According to data from the professional version of Tianyancha, as of now, there are more than 40,000 pet funeral-related companies in mainland China. Among them, there will be more than 4,400, more than 26,000, and more than 9,300 newly registered companies from 2021 to 2023 respectively.
A reporter from China News Agency found that many provinces in China have abundant pet funeral services. Zhejiang has launched an "online pet sacrifice" that can "sweep graves in the cloud" and provide digital pet care services such as "baby passports", "prayer cards" and "electronic flowers"; Guangdong provides diversified funerals such as cremation, burial, tree burial and wall burial. Service; Guangxi provides pet owners with "listening and comforting" services, empathizes with their stories of getting along, and provides humanistic care.
Xiao Gao, a pet undertaker at Lanzhou's "Beibei Pet Memorial Hall", entered the industry in 2019 with his love for pets. He said, "Pets relieve people's loneliness and sadness and spend their entire lives following and accompanying their owners. If separation cannot be avoided, then I want every 'furry child' to leave with dignity at the end of his life."
The scale of pet funeral consumption is still small. Multiple research reports show that China's pet consumption market will reach hundreds of billions of yuan in 2023, but pet funeral consumption accounts for less than 1%.
Some practitioners believe that pet funerals have great room for development, but the overall chain is not yet complete and has many loopholes.
He Ruifang, deputy director and chief physician of the Department of Psychology at the Second People's Hospital of Gansu Province, said that the public needs to be guided correctly. On the one hand, pets should be respected and their "posthumous affairs" should be handled reasonably, but too many public resources should not be wasted. In the face of emerging industries, it is recommended that government departments step up the introduction of standards and regulations to protect the rights and interests of other consumers besides pet owners. You can set up "comfort stations" in the community to relieve the pain of pet owners losing their beloved pets, and increase the power of online pet sacrifices. (over)