On Grave Relocation in Contemporary China
We are proud to present an excerpt from our newest Stanford Digital Project, The Chinese Deathscape.
In the summer of 2007, I found myself in the backseat of an airport taxi just outside the city of Dunhuang in northwest China. Looking out of the car window at an expanse of desert terrain, I noticed small, chalk-white posts in the distance. “What are those?” I asked the taxi driver. “Those are graves,” he explained, looking out of the driver-side window. Silence resumed. A few moments passed, and he continued. “They used to be over there.” His arm was outstretched, this time gesturing toward the passenger side of the vehicle. The graves, he explained, had been moved from one side of the highway to the other.
Arriving at my destination, I disembarked and set about my day. This passing exchange stayed with me, however, for the remainder of the visit and beyond. Why were these graves moved? What involvement did the families of the deceased have in this process? How did they feel about it? Where else in China was this happening? At what scale? How does one move a grave?
These and many other questions have taken nearly ten years to answer, drawing me into a history that extends far beyond any one locale in China. Indeed, the scale of this history proved shocking to me, in terms of its sheer scope and intensity: With at least ten million graves exhumed over the past decade alone, China’s grave relocation campaign dwarfs in size and scope any known grave relocation effort, past or present, in the rest of the world. In the process, it has touched the lives of millions of families across the country and across the global diaspora.[1]
To grasp the immensity of Chinese grave relocation is no simple feat. At one end of the spectrum, a number of highly visible relocation initiatives account for tens and hundreds of thousands of exhumed graves each. Because of the controversies they engendered, these relocations are relatively well documented in the Chinese press. At the other end of the spectrum, some smaller-scale relocations have sparked major controversies as well, even though they involved the exhumation of sometimes only a single corpse. Between these two, well-documented extremes, however, resides a vast array of sparsely documented relocation initiatives—thousands of county-, township-, and village-level initiatives that, while surfacing only rarely in Chinese media, account for the majority of the millions of corpses that have been relocated in China during the contemporary period.
The Visible Extremes of Chinese Grave Relocation: Controversy in Zhoukou
The largest and most controversial grave relocation in contemporary China took place in 2012 in Henan Province, in the greater municipal area of Zhoukou City. In the span of less than nine months, 2.5 million corpses were exhumed and relocated as part of the “digging graves for farmland” campaign (平坟复耕 pingfen fugeng).[2] This translates into a rate of just under four hundred corpses exhumed and relocated every hour—or one corpse every ten seconds.
Supported by municipal and Chinese Communist Party leadership, as well as the Zhoukou Bureau of Land Resources (周口市国土资源局 Zhoukoushi guotu ziyuanju), the sweeping initiative was first outlined in a document entitled “Opinions Regarding Advancing Funeral Reforms” (关于进一步推进殡葬改革的实施意见 Guanyu jinyibu tuijin binzanggaige de shishiyijian).[3] City and party officials estimated that the greater Zhoukou municipal region encompassed a total of 3.5 million graves, collectively occupying fifty thousand mu of land, or roughly thirteen square miles (thirty-three square kilometers). To help facilitate relocation, the city would pay for the cost of cremation at a level of six hundred RMB per grave, and would oversee the construction of 3,130 “environmentally friendly” cemeteries. All of this would be designed to overcome what was increasingly referred to as “conflicts between the living and the dead over land resources.”[4]
At the earliest stages of the Zhoukou initiative, the epicenter was Shangshui County 商水县, located to the south and west of Zhoukou City.[5] In Zhuji Village 朱集村, Lianji Township 练集镇, 1,043 graves were exhumed and relocated, reportedly without incident.[6] However, in May 2012, Guo Kui 郭岿, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) secretary of Daliu Village 大刘村 in Chengguan Township 城关乡, displayed his loyalty by exhuming eleven of his own family graves in the area. Guo’s actions were designed both to signal the launch of the grave relocation program and to help neutralize growing criticism of the project. In the same village of Daliu, for example, the resident Wang Ling 王玲 was forced to exhume and relocate the body of her late husband Su Fusheng 苏富生, who had passed away but a few weeks earlier, even before she had been able to undertake the traditional practice of “second-week grieving” (二七 erqi).
The initial phase of the Zhoukou campaign involved the relocation of more than twenty thousand graves in twenty-eight separate villages. Scandal soon befell the initiative, however, when in October 2012 the daughter-in-law and son-in-law of seventy-year-old CCP member Zhang Fang 张方 perished when a tombstone collapsed during the family’s hastened efforts to dig up the family’s graves.[7] The village of Hetao 河套村 in Fugou County 扶沟县 of Zhoukou soon found itself in the national media spotlight, with attention growing around the intensity and velocity of the initiative, as well as the steep incentive and punishment structure put in place. Whereas the first fifteen townships to complete the campaign goal would receive rewards ranging thirty to one hundred thousand RMB, townships unable to fulfill their grave relocation quotas by the scheduled deadline would incur penalties of one hundred RMB per grave, along with negative media exposure and punishments for local party cadres—all of which contributed to the fatal haste of Zhang and his family members.[8]
With at least ten million graves exhumed over the past decade alone, China’s grave relocation campaign dwarfs in size and scope any known grave relocation effort, past or present, in the rest of the world.
Other controversies soon broke out over the unequal treatment of elite and non-elite members of local society. Villagers in Chenkou Village 陈口村, located in Shicaoji Township 石槽集乡 of Shenqiu County 沈丘县, reported that the former Zhoukou city councilor and vice-mayor had chosen the sites of their own ancestral graves as the locations of newly constructed public cemeteries—thereby excusing themselves of the responsibility of exhuming and relocating their own ancestors. Villagers in nearby Zhengying 郑营村 reported similar activities involving their own village officials.[9]
Critical voices grew louder when it came to light how such newly “grave-free” lands were being used. Rather than recovering land for agricultural production, as advertised in the slogan of “digging graves for farmland,” the government of Shangshui had reportedly petitioned provincial government authorities for permission to allocate a portion of the recovered land to the expansion of the county’s industrial district (产业聚集区 chanye jujiqu)—a lucrative venture which suggested a profit-seeking motive behind the initiative.[10]
With Zhoukou’s initiative entering its sixth month, municipal leaders released a report that offered local citizens—and the nation at large—perhaps the first glimpse of the sheer scale of the program: 2.46 million bodies relocated in the space of just a few short months, with a cremation rate of a perfect one hundred percent.[11]
Accolades from provincial and even national leaders followed. On November 7, 2012, the vice-governor of Henan Province Wang Tie 王铁 awarded the Zhoukou municipal government three million RMB as an expression of support for the city’s model work in funeral reforms.[12] The following day, the head of the National Bureau of Civic Affairs Yu Jianliang 俞建良 visited Zhoukou and offered further praise for the city’s preparation and execution of the campaign.[13]
Start exploring The Chinese Deathscape »
Notes
[1] The literature on death, burial, and the sociopolitical lives of human remains in other parts of the world is both rich and fascinating. See, for example, Katherine Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); Sarah Tarlow, Bereavement and Commemoration: An Archaeology of Mortality (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 1999); Robert Pogue Harrison, The Dominion of the Dead (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Natacha Aveline-Dubach, ed., Invisible Population: The Place of the Dead in East Asian Megacities (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012); and the award-winning recent work by Thomas M. Laqueur, The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). For groundbreaking work on China, see Andrew B. Kipnis, “Governing the Souls of Chinese Modernity,” Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7, no. 2 (2017): 217-238; Elizabeth Kenworthy Teather, "The Case of the Disorderly Graves: Contemporary Deathscapes in Guangzhou," Social and Cultural Geography 2, no. 2 (2001): 185-202; and Zahra Newby and Ruth Toulson, ed., The Materiality of Mourning: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2018). Readers are also encouraged to keep an eye out for forthcoming work by Ruth Toulson and Rebecca Nedostup.
[2] Fu Xiaowei, “Societal Knowledge Disputes Found in Zhoukou’s Funeral Reform Campaign［周口平坟中的社会知识分歧],” Changjiang ribao, November 27, 2012; “Zhoukou Funeral Reforms Challenge ‘Beautify China’ Political Campaign［周口平坟复耕考验美丽中国],” Qiaobao, November 24, 2012.
[3] Key party and state officials at this time included Kong Xuemei 孔雪梅, a civil servant from the Zhoukou Bureau of Land Resources, who refuted such accusations; Liu Guolian 刘国连, vice-mayor of Zhoukou; and Xu Guang 徐光, party secretary of the Zhoukou City Committee.
[4] “Zhoukou, Henan Initiates Large-Scale Funeral Reform Campaign, Relocates 2 Million+ Graves [河南周口开展大规模平坟复耕 迁坟200多万座],” Tengxun xinwen, November 4, 2012.
[5] “Account of Zhoukou’s Funeral Reforms [周口平坟复耕记],” Shandong kejibao, December 3, 2012.
[6] Ba Fuqiang, “In Zhuji Village, Shangshui County, Officials Solve Funeral Reform Issues with ‘Harmonious’ Solutions [商水县朱集村:和协破解平坟复耕难题],” Henan ribao nongcunban, August 8, 2012.
[7] Meng Xiangchao, “Proof of Grave Digging Required for Officials to Go to Work in Fugou County, Zhoukou [周口扶沟县干部上班凭平坟证明],” Xinjingbao, November 23, 2012. The name of the daughter-in-law was Luo Junli 罗军丽 and the son-in-law He Hongting 何洪庭.
[8] Ibid.
[9] “Zhoukou Funeral Reform Campaign Also Differentiates between Government Officials and Civilians [周口平坟也官民有别],” Jinan shibao, November 27, 2012.
[10] Ye Biao, “Account of Zhoukou’s Funeral Reforms [周口平坟复耕记],” Nanfang zhoumo, November 22, 2012.
[11] “Zhoukou Uses Farmland for Graves after Grave Relocation, Charges Owners Fees for Resettlement [周口平坟后又圈占耕地建公墓 向迁坟户收墓穴费],” Wangyi xinwen, December 5, 2012; Funeral reform progress from the Zhoukou government (周口市殡葬改革工作简报 Zhoukoushi binzanggaige gongzuo jianbao)
[12] Meng Xiangchao, “Proof of Grave Digging Required for Officials to Go to Work in Fugou County, Zhoukou.”
[13] Ibid.
Comments