Grave Understanding

Zhong’s reputation is high among the local villagers, and he has been getting even more customers since the local government invited feng shui practitioners to help them persuade people to stop interring their loved ones, and to instead choose cremation for funerals. 　

Swayed by ancient Chinese traditions which hold that the soul of the deceased would not rest in peace unless they are buried, most rural Chinese continue to inter deceased family members in tombs pre-chosen by a local geomancer. But given the huge size of the population, too much 　

valuable arable or other rural land is being used for tomb sites. The Chinese government has been trying to promote compulsory cremation for some years. 　

Rural dwellers regard their ancestors’ tombs as sacred and inviolable – digging up one’s ancestor’s tomb is regarded as a deadly sin. So the government’s push for cremation was subject to violent opposition, so violent that many local governments were pressured to loosen or even suspend the reform to avoid extreme hostility. 　

But as land is becoming an increasingly scarce resource – China has around one-fifth of the world’s population, but only around seven percent of the world’s arable land – and it also faces the problem of contaminated and polluted land, many voices claim that it is intolerable that the dead are taking resources that should be used for the living. 　

In 2016, nine Chinese departments jointly issued new guidelines on funeral reform, which required local authorities to encourage people to move toward more environmentally friendly funerals, such as cremation, burial at sea and eco-funerals, where people are buried in a woodland. 　

In March 2018, 16 departments issued another document on funerals, which requires local governments above county level to set up crematories and increase the rate of environmentally friendly funerals to over 50 percent. 　

Many local governments set about 　

implementing the reforms in a more sweeping manner, but Jiangxi, which has higher levels of burials than elsewhere, decided to aid the push by employing local feng shui practitioners in the program. Local officials hoped that their high prestige among the villagers would help them ease people’s natural resistance against the reform. 　

Tomb Relocation 　

Zhong is now involved in assisting the local government to persuade villagers to move their family tombs to the public cemetery, a major part of the reform, and helping those who agreed to choose a good place for the new grave. 　

“In the past two months, 270 households have asked me for help. At my busiest, I had to shuttle between different hills and mountains on the same day. There are 380 more still waiting for a consultation with me,” he told NewsChina. High ground is considered auspicious in feng shui.　

Jiangxi’s funeral reform started two years ago, but it did not come into full swing until this March and April, when villages were covered by slogans and posters exhorting the reform. Some villagers said that they saw government vehicles driving around the villages every day, and Huang Feng, one of the villagers, confirmed that he has received notification from the local government asking him to sign an agreement to relocate his family’s tomb. 　

To impress the villagers, the government also aired a self-made, 25-minute video named Feng Shui, in which an elderly couple invited a geomancer to find a place for their future tomb, only to be opposed by their son who was Party secretary of the village. The son told his parents that feng shui could not help bless their descendents, but it might destroy their lives by over-exploiting natural resources. The video ended with the couple giving up the idea of building the tomb and the geomancer shifting to work for the village Party committee. 　

But back in the real world, villagers were not buying it. Xu Zicai, director of the civil affairs bureau of Dayu County, told NewsChina that it would be almost impossible for the villagers to give up the practice of burying their dead, since it is a practice that has been handed down for generations. Few would be willing to relocate their ancestors’ tombs, as this would be a violation of the traditional Confucian value of filial piety, in which you should always obey and respect your parents and ancestors. 　

Ignoring Tradition?　

In November 2012, the local government of Zhoukou, Henan Province, came under fierce public criticism after it forced villagers to destroy or relocate their family tombs – reportedly a total of three million in all. The government said that more farmland was needed, and ordered local Party members to take the lead. In just a few months, Zhoukou had destroyed or moved some two million tombs, winning loud applause from local officials’ superiors. 　

However, the local government’s iron hand highly provoked the villagers, and the sense of injustice spread all over the country when one of the villagers was reportedly killed by a falling tombstone while it was being dug out. 　

Many netizens and media outlets criticized local authorities for being indifferent to people’s affection for their families and for violating villagers’ human rights. Cao Baoyin, a local writer, even wrote a public letter to the People’s Congress of Henan Province, appealing to them to reply to 13 questions he posed, including whether or not the land made vacant would be truly used for farming, whether there was any corruption in the construction of the public cemetery and how the local government would use the money earned from selling the vacant land. 　

In 2013, after China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs issued a document that officially banned compulsory tomb destruction or relocation, many villagers simply rebuilt their family tombs. Media reports said that soon after the ban, half of the destroyed or relocated tombs in Zhoukou were put back, putting the local government in a bigger dilemma. 　

A similar embarrassment happened in Jiangxi. The city of Shangrao has recently come under fire for its total ban on burials – some officials went so far as to destroy villagers’ coffins in the middle of the ceremony. Such draconian measures sparked violent protests and were criticized by local media for “pursuing quick achievement at the cost of hurting people’s hearts.”　

Using respected local feng shui experts has been a good way to help both ease the minds of villagers and give the perception that the new policies were milder, said observers. Xu Zicai, Dayu’s civil affairs director, revealed that in 2017 alone, they called 136 geomancers to attend a work conference on funeral reform. 　

“I attended that conference last year,” Zhong Xilin said. “The officials asked us to help them find a good place for the public cemetery and to cooperate with them in the relocation of tombs – no matter what the cemetery’s feng shui is actually like, we’re not allowed to tell the villagers that it is a bad place.”　

Zhong does not care about telling such a “lie,” if there is one. He claimed that he personally supports the reform, which he believes is good for environmental protection. More importantly, he has got good business out of it, as people rely on him to pinpoint an auspicious time and place for the tomb relocation. Undoubtedly, they also believe that even in the public cemetery, different grave sites have different feng shui which could also influence a family’s fate. 　

Feudal or Scientific? 　

Zhong is not the only beneficiary of the reform. All the interviewed geomancers told NewsChina that they saw an obvious growth in their recent business. Officials in a village administered by Qinglong Township, Dayu County, even invited Ye Mingxin, locally honored as a master of geomancy who had moved to Guangdong Province to expand his business, to return and help out with the tomb relocations. Although there are already four or five geomancers in the village, officials worried they could not meet demand. 　

It seemed a bit ironic as geomancers were defined as a form of “feudalism” during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) and the practice was shut down, although it quickly revived after the end of the political campaign. Since then, feng shui remains in a gray zone – the government neither supports it nor bans it, while its demand among the people keeps rising, especially as people get wealthier and wish to pass down their good fortune through feng shui. There are rumors that even government officials secretly invite geomancers to check out their private apartments or public buildings. 　

Supporters believe that geomancy is at least partly scientific or explainable by science, since it values nature and geography. If you take the desire for good fortune aspect away, geomancy can help analyze the local geographical environment which is good for the safety of any building. These ideas have made veteran geomancers more convincing and venerable. It is reported, for example, that in the Jiangxi village of Sanliao, population 5,000, there are 400 feng shui practitioners, and it has become the main money-making enterprise in the village. 　

One geomancer named Guan Fenghua showed NewsChina a group photo of 200 geomancers who were attending a world geomancy culture meeting held in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province, several years ago. “It proves that feng shui does prevail in Jiangxi. Until last spring, it was a local custom to invite a geomancer to choose a tomb for village elders and hold an elaborate funeral after they die,” Guan told NewsChina. “But now the local government has banned these elaborate funerals and we have no choice but to cooperate with them,” he added.　

According to Guan, the local government does not actually support feng shui, but they can do their business under another guise, for example, in the name of “helping the villagers.” “The [funeral] reform does not conflict with our business, because the villagers still need us to tell them a good time for the tomb relocation and to preside over funerals... The difference only lies in that we have to put the government’s work as our top priority, for example, when the time we’ve chosen is not proper for the government or the public cemetery’s feng shui is actually not so good,” he added. 　

One villager in Shanxi Province, Yang Xiuli, agreed that it was wise for Dayu’s officials to include geomancers in their reform program. “Our village hasn’t launched the reform yet, but I can imagine the obstacles they’ll meet, since our village still buries all of its dead,” she said. “But things will be totally different if geomancers stand on the side of the government, since people, at least those in our village, have blind faith in geomancers. They fully trust them.” 　

Fan Ling, deputy head of Qinglong Town in Dayu County agreed. “Since geomancy is an old, prevailing tradition, and it can never be abandoned overnight, we have to use geomancers to promote the reforms gradually. In addition, because the villagers all trust the geomancers, they won’t just blame the government if something bad happens during the tomb relocation process,” he said. 　

“Given that geomancy and burying the dead is related to filial piety which Confucianism advocates, it could be deemed as respecting traditional culture for the government to invite geomancers to consult on the funeral reform. It is kind of passing down traditional morality,” said Zeng Xiongsheng, a native of Jiangxi and a researcher of the history of natural science at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. 　

Zeng said that although it was not the government’s original intention to work with geomancers, it is much better than triggering villagers’ hostility. “As ordinary people are generally ignorant of feng shui, geomancers have full say on this issue. The officials can use geomancers’ power among the villagers to push the reform while having their cake and eating it,” he said.　

“As the reform is hugely hindered by the difficulty in changing people’s minds, geomancers’ involvement could be an expedient way to help it along,” he added.