Boatloads of relatives carrying biodegradable urns are saying their farewells over water instead of trying to buy expensive and scarce funeral plots
Xiao Hu never expected to make a living from the dead. For years she worked in her family business offering boat tours to tourists visiting Zhoushan, an archipelago off the east coast of China’s mainland. But in recent years her proximity to the sea, and to the temple-dotted hills of Mount Putou – one of Chinese Buddhism’s four sacred mountains – started to attract a different type of clientele.
The first time that a customer asked to use one of the boats to scatter their loved one’s remains into the East China Sea, Xiao Hu refused. She felt it was “not very pleasant” to work with the dead. But one elderly man, a Zen Buddhist, “kept asking if we could do a sea burial for him”. So after some consideration, she decided to “make his wish come true”.
