Chinese Woman Asks Friend To Store Father’s Ashes In Locker To Save Money, Internet In Shock

A Chinese woman has inadvertently highlighted the rising costs of funeral services in China via a simple social media post. On July 18, she took to Weibo and wrote that she suggested her broke friend to store his father’s ashes in a parcel locker instead of a cinerarium to save money. Reportedly, her friend lives in a small house and did not have proper space to hold a funeral urn.

In a now deleted post, she added, “He followed my suggestion to leave the cremation urn in a Hive Box parcel locker. You can buy a membership fee for only 55 yuan (US$8) a year. They will not charge any other fees. Isn’t that quite a reasonable price?” Hive Box is a parcel box company where one can rent a locker in their name. Some of these lockers are designed for secure storage of sensitive files or other important things.

The above mentioned Weibo post has attracted much outrage. In response, Hive Box told the media that they do not allow the storage of neither the bones or ashes of humans or animals, nor animals’ bodies to be put in the lockers. The woman has closed her Weibo account after she apologised for its “misleading and vicious impact”.

South China Morning Post quoted one of the many critical comments about the woman’s post on Weibo, which said, “The woman who came up with this idea is so immoral. She did not consider the deceased person’s feelings nor the interests of neighbours living in the same community and using the parcel lockers.”

In China, the majority prefers to cremate the dead. However, the lack of land for graveyards and the subsequent high prices of buying a grave are pushing many people to cremate their loved ones. After the cremation, the ashes are stored in special urns, that are either kept in one’s home or stored in a cremation. According to SCMP, a grave of less than one square metre costs at least 100,000 yuan (approximately Rs 11.5 lakh) on an average in cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.

The government is promoting cremation in an attempt to tackle the problem of land shortage. Authorities are urging people to scatter the ashes into the sea or bury them under trees and flower beds. Other unconventional burial means are having vertical burials, smaller tombs, and encouraging family members to share the same tomb. However, these practices are still rare in comparison to graves and funeral urns.