Funeral jobs Hot among Shanghai Graduates
Desperate graduates apply for funeral jobs in Shanghai, via China Daily: It is the one business that is never short of clients, and 366 college graduates will this week find out if the city’s funeral...
View ArticleThe Joys and Sorrows of a Professional Mourner
Danwei translates a Beijing News story about professional wailers who perform songs of mourning at funerals: One can make a decent amount of money being a proxy mourner. The profession recently came to...
View ArticleChina Curbs Fancy Tombs That Irk Poor
In China, a movement towards more austere funerals so as to not alienate the poor. From the New York Times: Ever since Deng Xiaoping signaled in 1978 that it was fine to get rich, much of China has...
View ArticleHospital in China Fends Off Angry Mob
Professional mourners have long been a part of funerals in China. Now, the bereaved can also hire mobs of pitchfork-wielding protesters to add teeth to demands for compensation, while beseiged hospital...
View ArticleHenan Officials Commit a Grave Error
China saw 41 self-immolation protests against forced evictions between 2009 and 2011. One might expect that death would at least be the end of the problem; but not in Zhukou city in Henan province,...
View ArticleMao Portraits Barred from Chinese Leg of Warhol Tour
Speculation that China’s incoming leaders would sweep Mao’s remains from the political stage turned out to be ill-founded, but the Chairman will be missing from a touring Andy Warhol exhibition when it...
View ArticleLandslide Survivors Demand Investigation of Mine’s Role (Updated)
Relief efforts continue in Yunnan, where a remote village was decimated by a landslide last Friday. 46 people died, including 19 children. China Daily reported that 29 of the victims were from a single...
View ArticleBelly Dancing For The Dead
NPR’s Louisa Lim spends a day with one of China’s top professional mourners, Dingding (“Dragonfly”) Mao: As the ceremony starts, the strains of “The Internationale” ring out, and Zhang Tujin’s family...
View ArticleWarren Ellis on Pig Disposal and Chinese Innovation
At the Paris Review, Molly Crabapple and British author Warren Ellis discuss how the thousands-strong armada of dead pigs that descended on Shanghai in March helped inspire his new Kindle Single, Dead...
View ArticleIn Hong Kong, Inflation Spooks the Spirit World
The Wall Street Journal’s Te-Ping Chen reports on rising costs of afterliving and spiralling denominations of “ghost money” burned for dead ancestors: Traditionally, paper money burned in China came in...
View ArticleSocial Customs & Inequality: Two Weddings, No Fridge
Lavish gift-giving among China’s wealthy has attracted considerable attention, particularly where, as in the case of Xu Ming and Bo Xilai, it shades into bribery. The Economist, though, examines the...
View ArticleChina Warns Officials Against Luxury Funerals
China’s campaign against official austerity has reached into the afterlife with a new notice against ostentatious funerals for officials and Party members. From Wayne Ma at China Real Time: The...
View ArticleAfter Autoshow Model Ban, a Funeral Stripper Crackdown
At China Real Time, Te-Ping Chen and Josh Chin report a new crackdown on hiring strippers to appear at funerals alongside other professional tear-leaders. According to a statement from the Ministry of...
View ArticleMinitrue: 21 Rules on Coverage of the Two Sessions
The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. The Central Propaganda Department issued 21 rules for reporting on the...
View ArticleTranslation: Narrative Account by a Wuhan Funeral Worker
Wuhan, the epicenter of the global COVID-19 pandemic, has in recent days lifted its ten-week lockdown, allowing residents to leave their homes and travel outside the city, and some businesses to...
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