Quarterly NEWSLETTER Human Remains Repatriation from/to CHINA www.roseates.com

Dealing with death “too grim and stressful”

Palliative hospices still a rarity in China

No 26, Fourth Quarter 2014

THE ROSEATES NEWSLETTER Your guide to human remains repatriation The Roseates Newsletter aims to update our clients and contacts on various topics related to the death of foreigners in China and Chinese abroad. The target audience includes consulates, foreign funeral directors and insurance companies. We welcome our readers to provide questions, comments and insights.

CONTENTS Introduction: The Roseates Newsletter, your guide to Holding hands, between life and death human remains repatriation Feature: Palliative hospices Hospice care treats the terminally ill by focusing on the still a rarity in China patient, not the disease. Trained staff seek to ensure that the Q&A: Answers to all your last days of life are pain-free, peaceful and dignified. So why questions has such a humane idea had so much trouble finding Policies: Hong Kong acceptance in China, asks the Shanghai Daily. Hospices are government is urged to common in Western countries, but the concept of palliative remediate shortage of burial care has yet to catch on in China. In the past three years, the places Shanghai municipal government has initiated projects to train Culture: Zhejiang's biggest 1,000 professional hospice workers. However, one survey ever tomb-raiding case solved found that many of those trainees didn’t end up working in Woman’s remains dug up for hospices because they thought a job dealing with death on a “ghost wedding” daily basis would be too grim and stressful. Life and death of a funeral singer feature in new novel At the Community Health Care Center in western Shanghai’s Business: U.S. cryonics Songjiang District, doctors and nurses working in a hospice companies looking for ward set up in 2012, spoke to Shanghai Daily about the business in China pressures of delivering pain-free and compassionate care to Memorial diamonds offered to patients in the last days of their lives. “Everything will be substitute ash burials okay. I’m here with you,” head nurse Yao Lanhong whispers The last word to a frail patient as she gently massages his bluish hand. A Roseates introduction & few hours later, the patient dies peacefully. Yao verifies the contact info death, jots down the time in her notebook and arranges the body in a position that suggests a tranquil exit from life. Yao has personally attended to the deaths of more than 40 people in the past two years. (continued on page 2) Roseates Newsletter No 26, Fourth Quarter 2014, Page 1

(continued from page 1) “Many people leave this world filled with pain and resentment,” Yao says. “Their relatives always think it’s best to find a good doctor and good hospital where they will receive treatment even if their condition is incurable. But maybe what these people want is just comfort and a loving hand to help them die with dignity.” The health center’s hospice facility has 12 beds. Since its founding, it has served more than 100 terminally-ill patients. Although the service is available to all in the district in their dying days, few apply. Across town in Zhabei district, the Linfen Community Health Care Center was the first facility in Shanghai to offer hospice care. Since it opened in 1988, only about 15 percent of terminally-ill hospital patients have been sent to the center, and about 70 percent of those patients and their families had no idea what palliative care was at the time of transfer. “We try to help them reach a state of peace, free from anxiety and pain. We want them to be able to say goodbye to their families amid love and tranquility. Everyone has the right to die with respect and dignity,” says Xie Yizhen, who has been working at the center for about 18 years. Huang Weiping’s Hand-in-Hand Life Care and Development Center, established in 2009, is the city’s first non-profit organization offering hospice care to people with terminal illnesses. The most important requirement for volunteers is to have a caring mind.

Q&A How many hospices are there in Shanghai? There are only three hospitals registered as hospice providers in Shanghai, and only a small number of doctors and nurses care for the dying. Only 84 wards and 234 beds for palliative treatment existed in 17 districts of Shanghai up to the end of 2013.

Was burning the clothes of the deceased banned during the APEC summit in Beijing? Yes, as one more measure to reduce pollution during the summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum – which was attended by U.S. president Obama – Beijing authorities temporarily banned the practice of burning the clothes of the deceased – along with paper effigies of Expanding hospice services requires changing public attitudes. other goods – an ancient In Chinese culture, death largely remains a taboo subject. custom to ensure the Even uttering the word is considered by some to be unlucky. deceased will have all they Acknowledging death is something to be avoided. “Many need in the afterlife. patients and their relatives still think that the onset of death should be fought to the dying breath,” says Dr Zeng Peijun at Have prices for ash burials Zhongshan Community Health Care Center. “In the rural increased recently? areas, it would be considered unfilial and disrespectful for Yes, prices of burial sites in children to abandon treatment and send dying parents to a Beijing have doubled or tripled hospice.” “Unlike doctors and nurses in ordinary hospitals, in recent years, with a onewhere the emphasis is on curing patients, we in the hospice square-meter plot costing as know there is no cure and death is inevitable. Here it’s only a much as 400,000 yuan matter of time,” Dr Zeng says. All the patients in the ward are (51,725 euro), double the expected to live no longer than three months. price for an equivalent space in a residential flat. Cremation For care givers in a hospice, seeing their patients die remains services cost 10,000 yuan difficult. “They were my patients, but they were also like my (1,293 euro). friends and family after these months together,” Yao says. Jing Jing, who had an advanced brain tumor, was the first and How many people in Shanghai also the youngest patient treated in the hospice. The staff and are expected to visit her mother celebrated her 30th birthday in the ward before cemeteries during the winter her death. “I saw photos of her before she contracted the solstice on December 22? disease,” Yao says. “She was a really pretty woman. It was The day, locally known as quite sad.” Jing had a 3-year-old son. On the day she died, dongzhi, is a time when her mother was crying at her bedside, while her son was Chinese people pay their playing and laughing nearby. “It was such a heartbreaking, respects to deceased sharp contrast,” Dr Zeng says. For the patients in the hospice relatives. About one million there is only death and no miracles.” people are expected to visit.

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POLICIES

Hong Kong government is urged to remediate shortage of burial places Death is certain; life is not, so the saying goes. In Hong Kong, while death is just as certain, burial is not. The chronic shortage of burial places means families can never be sure when their loved ones will be laid to rest. Investigations by the Hong Kong Ombudsman showed that securing a columbarium niche in public cemeteries is not only a protracted and frustrating experience; there is no guarantee of success, as it all depends on the computer allocation system. The watchdog rightly criticized the government for sitting on thousands of niches while many applicants were left out. Officials said by releasing the 45,250 newly built niches in phases, it could ensure supply for the deceased in coming years. But the Ombudsman argued that the so-called steady supply was just an illusion. Those who have repeatedly failed to secure a niche have no choice but to turn to private

columbariums, whose legality is often in doubt because of stringent restrictions in land use. Like housing and health care, burial should be a basic public service, according to the Ombudsman, who criticized the government for turning a blind eye to the long queues while insisting on releasing the niches in stages. The government has yet to make good on its promise of building more columbariums. As the population of Hong Kong ages, the demand for burial sites also increases. Officials should review the allocation system and give priority to applicants who failed in the computerized lottery. Burial within a reasonable time is a basic right. The government should build more niches, while encouraging people to go for alternatives, such as sea burial or scattering ashes in designated memorial areas, the South China Morning Post argued in a commentary.

CULTURE

Zhejiang's biggest ever tomb-raiding case solved Police in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, have arrested more than 120 people and seized around 1,300 relics in relation to 144 cases of tomb raiding. Authorities described it as the “biggest ever” case of tomb raiding and trafficking of cultural artifacts in the province’s history. There are hundreds of ancient tombs in Shaoxing, some of which are thousands of years old. Archaeologists researching the burial sites first tipped off police to the tomb raiders’ activity, after which a task force was set up to track them down. More than 800 officers from across Zhejiang took part in the investigation, which eventually resulted in the arrest of 124 people and the recovery of 1,335 cultural relics. One such relic was a large bronze mirror, dating back to the Jin dynasty over 1,800 years ago. The majority of the tomb raiders were from the nearby area, police told reporters. “They tend to have a good understanding of the history of Shaoxing, they know where to find

the tombs,” an officer with the Shaoxing municipal public security bureau told the Evening News. Police said thieves used the socalled ‘Luoyang shovel’ to find the graves. Invented in 1923 by a grave digger from Luoyang, Henan province, the shovel allows for its user to extract a long section of earth without disturbing the soil structure or digging a large hole. This allows the grave robber to analyze the soil for any bits of pottery, metal or masonry that might indicate the presence of an underground tomb. Grave robbery is endemic across China, risking the loss of priceless historical artifacts. One researcher estimated in 2012 that as many as 100,000 people across the country were involved in the crime. “We used to say nine out of 10 tombs were empty because of tomb-raiding, but now it has become 9.5 out of 10,” Professor Lei Xingshan, an archaeologist at Peking University, told the Guardian.

Woman’s remains dug up for “ghost wedding” The remains of a woman were dug up and sold for a “ghost wedding,” a court in east China’s Shandong province heard at the trial Roseates Newsletter No 26, Fourth Quarter 2014, Page 3

of 11 people involved in the case. When police in the province’s Juye county caught a man in June suspected of stealing a moped, he

confessed he had stolen the remains three months after burial, and sold them for 18,000 yuan (2,325 euro). “Skeletons buried for years are worthless, but the bodies of people who died recently can fetch up to 20,000 yuan,” Wang told police. He added that the “fresher” the remains were, the more they were worth. The buyer, in Handan in north China’s Hebei province, then sold them to another man for 38,000 yuan (4,910 euro). The suspects were accused of stealing corpses, a criminal offense punishable by up to three years in prison. In ancient China, there was a belief that an unmarried person buried alone would bring bad luck to the family so the remains of a person of the opposite sex had to be found and a “ghost wedding” performed before they were buried together. A few people in remote rural areas still cling to the superstition. The custom dates back to the 17th century BC and is mostly practiced today in rural areas of Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Hebei and Guangdong provinces. In 2009, a grieving father from Shaanxi paid a team of grave robbers 33,000 yuan (4,265 euro) to find a

suitable bride for his son, who had recently died in a car crash. They were later arrested for exhuming the remains of a teenage girl who had killed herself not long after failing her college entrance exam. And in 2011, a Shaanxi man murdered a pregnant woman in order to sell her remains for a ritual ghost marriage for 22,000 yuan (2,843 euro). He was later sentenced to death. In a related case, two officials in charge of funeral affairs in Guangdong province and a man from Guangxi have been prosecuted for trading remains to meet cremation quota. One of the officials bought ten remains for 3,000 (388 euro) each. The national cremation rate reached nearly 50 percent in 2012. In large cities, the cremation rate is almost 100 percent, but in rural areas burial remains the preferred choice. For more than a decade, a certain quota of remains were each year assigned to governments at all levels for cremation in Guangdong according to the death rate of the previous year. To complete the quota, the officials bought the remains of people who were buried.

Life and death of a funeral singer feature in new novel The deathbed of a rural funeral singer serves as the stage of Jia Pingwa's newest novel. The protagonist of Lao Sheng — the title has multiple meanings in Chinese, including the elderly male role in Peking Opera, immortality and cliché — recalls the lives of about 100 characters, whose stories come to life as he remembers his travels through villages to sing in honor of the dead. Their stories evoke the past century in the Qingling mountain range in Shaanxi province. Most of the 52-year-old author's 15 books paint portraits of the rural realities that are largely disappearing amid modernization. On his deathbed, “the singer”, as he is known, views the people he has seen

with a detached outlook that enables him to understand life's absurdity, inconsistence and meaninglessness, Jia explains. The singer examines the world with little feeling, but glimmers of sympathy emerge in a few cases. The book reveals both the selfish and selfless sides of humanity. It also shows good people can be driven to evil, and vice-versa. Every chapter is prefaced with an excerpt from Shanhaijing (The Classic of Mountains and Seas), a collection of legends about geography written more than 4,000 years ago. The way Shanhaijing chronicles one mountain after another inspired Jia to write about one village after another.

BUSINESS

U.S. cryonics companies looking for business in China A US-based cryonics company that stores people's bodies at ultra-low temperatures in the hope that one day technology will be able to bring them back to life says it has attracted customers from China. The Alcor Life Extension Foundation from Arizona said it had held discussions about setting up a team in

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China. Another firm, the Cryonics Institute in the state of Michigan, said it had held similar discussions about operating in China. Many wealthy Chinese are worried about bans on burial in favor of cremation. Traditional Chinese culture rules that the body must be intact to prepare for the afterlife. Professor

Huang Wei, a historian at Sichuan University in Chengdu, said: “Chinese people have always been interested in body preservation and life extension. Cryonics is a new option from the West which will certainly interest those who can afford it.” Cryonics involves storing bodies in aluminum containers in super-cold liquid nitrogen. Blood circulation is maintained by life-support equipment immediately after death and then 60 percent of the water in the body's cells is replaced by a chemical preservative to prevent destructive ice forming in the body in subzero temperatures. The service costs at least 160,000 euro for whole body preservation, with extra fees for customers from foreign countries such as China. Marji Klima, an administrator at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, said its door was open to more members from China. There were no definite plans, but it was “technically possible to extend our service to China”, he said. Andy Zawacki, the chief operations officer at the Cryonics Institute, said it too was attempting to woo Chinese customers. A Guangdong businessman said he was considering the service for himself and his family. He said his biggest motivation was not the hope of future technology bringing him back to life, but the central government's policy on forced

cremation. Apart from some ethnic minorities, most Chinese citizens are required by the authorities to be cremated to reduce the size of graveyards and conserve land for food production. “In my hometown almost everyone loathes the cremation policy. In our culture it is very disrespectful to the dead,” the Guangdong businessman said. Xu Shaozhou, a sociology professor at Wuhan University who has studied burial traditions in China, said that if the government did not relax the forced cremation policy more rich Chinese might consider cryonics. Cremation had never been accepted by mainstream Han Chinese culture over thousands of years and forced cremation in recent decades had prompted social conflict, he said. Professor Huang at Sichuan University said there was a long history in China of the rich and powerful becoming preoccupied with the possibility of an afterlife, with emperors building huge tombs to prepare for it. “The richer and more powerful the nation became, the more the elite engaged in the pursuit of immortality,” he said. But Zheng Congyi, a professor of biology at Wuhan University, cautioned against putting too much faith in cryonics. No humans or animals had been brought back to life using the procedure, he said.

Memorial diamonds offered to substitute ash burials Amid soaring costs for burial plots and scarce land in China, some companies are advocating a slightly less costly albeit controversial alternative: turning loved ones' ashes into memorial diamonds. The service has been marketed for more than a decade elsewhere, particularly in Switzerland, the United States and Australia, but has yet to gain much traction in the Chinese market due to cultural barriers and a lack of regulation. Still, memorial-diamond firms are encouraged amid a renewed push by municipal governments to promote cremation instead of traditional burial. Xia Tianmin, manager of Chongqing Nian En Cultural Company, a funeral company that in 2011 introduced a life-diamond service, says: “As someone who grew up in the countryside, I know how valuable land is. Carrying a life diamond is intimate and it saves space.” He added that “now many Chinese migrants go to different cities to

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work. Who would go home to sweep their families' graves every year?” Xia says he learned about the technology at a seminar in Australia in 2009 and saw huge business potential in it. Similar to the process of making synthetic diamonds from carbon, the crystals are created by extracting graphite from human ashes and applying intense pressure and heat with a diamond synthesis press. The process takes weeks and one diamond is made from about 500 grams of ashes. Working with an American firm's laboratory, Chongqing Nian En sells 0.4-carat diamonds for 20,000 yuan (2,586 euro) each, which is several thousand yuan less than the price charged by overseas companies. But production takes place abroad and there are no regulations governing the sector. The Ministry of Civil Affairs moreover requires a special permit from crematoriums, not the families, to transfer the ashes abroad.

THE LAST WORD ● People in Xuzhou were shocked to see a notice looking for information to identify 19 remains, which were found between 2010 and this year. The city morgue will be moved to another site and the authorities are trying to identify all the bodies stored there. ● In 1980, Chen Jungui was dispatched with a team of soldiers to build roads in the Tianshan Mountains in Xinjiang. The team was snowed in by a blizzard. As their food ran out, team leader Zheng Linshu sent them in different directions to find help. All died except for Chen. For nearly 30 years, Chen, 55, has cared for the tombs of his team members. Chen credited his survival to the team's last small bun, given to him by team leader Zheng. ● A magnitude-6.6 quake that hit Jinggu county, Yunnan province, killed only one person. Some people questioned whether it was worth a mass mobilization of rescue services. But it is also important to look beyond the number of deaths to how it is affecting people's lives, someone said. Houses are no longer habitable, children are unable to go to school, and the trauma that the earthquake leaves with victims can not be so easily dismissed. ● Shanxi Communist Party secretary Wang Rulin has ordered the restoration of an honorable ancient bureaucrat’s tomb to remind cadres not to engage in corruption. Nearly half of the province’s leadership was recently detained on suspicions of corruption. The tomb at Luliang belongs to Yu Chenglong, a senior official from Shanxi during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) who was known for his integrity, resistance to corruption and frugal lifestyle. He was named “the number one honest official under heaven” by the Kangxi Emperor, who ruled from 1661 to 1722. FIXED GUIDELINES IN CASE OF DEATH ● ● ● ●

Provide the complete name, date of birth and nationality of the deceased. Provide the name and telephone number of the person in China who first reported the death (hospital, public security bureau, embassy, travel agent, friend,...) Provide the place of death: district, city, prefecture and/or county and province. Indicate, if known, whether the deceased was covered by an insurance policy.

ROSEATES INTRODUCTION & CONTACT INFO PARTNER OF THE CHINA NATIONAL FUNERAL ASSOCIATION

ROSEATES China Tel 0086 13911075392 Fax 0086 10 87955196 Email [email protected] Web site www.roseates.com

Coordination and management of the entire repatriation process of human remains from/to mainland China: Hospital – Public Security – Consulate – China Funeral Home – Crematory – Airline – Funeral Director at Destination – Insurer – Next of Kin Legal Formalities – Storage – Autopsy – Embalmment – Coffin – Cremation – Urn – Inland Transportation – Quarantine – International Transportation – Daily Update of Progress

THE ROSEATES NEWSLETTER The Roseates Newsletter is edited by Michel Lens, who is based in Beijing and can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected]. Disclaimer: the views expressed in this newsletter are not necessarily those of Linga International or its management. © Linga International, Belgium.

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