text: NANNING, Nov. 2 -- Two officials in southern Guangdong Province were found purchasing corpses from grave robbers in order to meet government cremation quotas, Chinese media reported last week. 
   
   In late June, a resident surnamed Gu from Shizhai Village of Beiliu City in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region reported his grandfather's body was stolen from the graveyard where it was buried. 
   
   Since body theft cases frequently occur in the region, Gu and other family members were guarding the graveyard in turns. Still, they failed to prevent the theft of his corpse. 
   
   In early July, police from Beiliu City apprehended a grave robber surnamed Zhong based on an investigation. Zhong said he has stolen more than 20 corpses in local villages at night, put them into bag, and transported them by motorcycle to neighboring Guangdong Province. 
   
   Zhong then disclosed a surprising detail about the crime. He said he sold the corpses to two officials from Gaozhou City and Huazhou City in Guangdong. 
   
   With the help of Guangdong police, the two suspects, surnamed He and Dong, were arrested. Both were local officials in charge of funeral management reform. They told police that they bought the corpses to finish government cremation quota. 
   
   China has a long tradition of ancestor worship, which usually requires families bury their relatives and construct a tomb. 
   
   In recent years, the country has forward a campaign encouraging cremation to save on limited land resources. Whether people are in favor of preserving farmland or upholding cultural tradition, the burial reform has aroused great controversy in rural regions. 
   
   In He and Dong's towns, local government has demanded a certain number of the dead should be cremated each month based on the total local population of the previous year. 
   
   Reacting to the news of the quota, people in the area began burying the corpses of their relatives in secrecy. 
   
   Pushed to meet their quota, the two officials sought to purchase the corpses and send them to funeral parlor for cremation. 
   
   Dong was found to have bought 10 corpses for 3000 yuan each, while the number of bodies purchased by He was unavailable. The cost for corpses paid by He was 1500 yuan each. The deal was supposedly "approved" by the government. 
   
   Further investigation is under way. 
   
   Many villagers from Guangxi have reported the graveyards of their family members were excavated and corpses stolen in recent years. 
   
   It is a commonly held belief in China that a good location for ancestors' tombs can bring good luck and happiness to living relatives. Damaging tombs can spell disaster. This theory has made it taboo to dig up the tombs of others' ancestors in traditional Chinese culture. ||||| Image copyright AFP Image caption Many in China believe the body must be intact for a peaceful afterlife 
   
   Two officials in Guangdong province have been arrested after they allegedly bought corpses from grave robbers to have them cremated, Chinese media say. 
   
   They said they were trying to ensure government quotas on the number of cremations every month were met. 
   
   In Chinese tradition, relatives are buried with tombs built so that loved ones can perform ancestor worship. 
   
   However, the Chinese government has encouraged cremations to save land for farming and development. 
   
   In June, a resident of Beiliu city in southern China Guangxi region reported that his grandfather's body had been stolen from the graveyard. 
   
   In July, police in Beiliu arrested a grave robber, surnamed Zhong based on an investigation, official news agency Xinhua said, citing Chinese media. 
   
   Zhong confessed he had stolen more than 20 corpses from graveyards in local villages at night. He said he put then into bags and transported them into neighbouring Guangdong province. 
   
   Zhong also alleged that he had sold the bodies to two officials in Guangdong. 
   
   The two officials, surnamed He and Dong, who were in charge of implementing funeral management reform, were arrested last week. 
   
   They told police they had bought the corpses to meet the government quota on cremations. 
   
   Dong is said to have paid 3,000 yuan ($489, £306) each for 10 corpses. The official surnamed He said he paid 1,500 yuan for each corpse but how many he bought is unknown. 
   
   The government policy has angered many, especially in rural parts of China, because of the traditional belief that the body must be intact for a peaceful afterlife. 
   
   Chinese media have reported cases of people committing suicide before the cremation regulations were put in place so that they may get a burial. 
   
   Other reports have alleged some family members are burying their loved ones in secret to get around the restriction. ||||| Death comes as a surprise to most. We have no idea when or how it'll strike, and we have no time to prepare ourselves. For one elderly woman in Anhui province, however, the timing had to be precise: she had a deadline. 
   
   Once the clock strikes twelve on the night of May 31st, burials are henceforth forbidden in the city of Anqing. After that, teams will be dispatched from house to house, destroying the wooden coffins that old people in Anhui often work on for up to a decade before their deaths. In order to beat the clock and receive a proper burial, 81-year-old Zhang Wenying hanged herself in front of her family home. 
   
   Zhang was not alone in either her concern nor her determination. Her neighbour Wu Xiuli, who starved himself to death earlier this month, and four others have perished alongside her. One threw herself down a well, and another killed herself after authorities sawed her coffin in half before her eyes. Reports of Anqing's senior suicides incited public outrage through China, and as such were promptly deleted by the authorities. Relevant organs claim that the ban is intended to save land, but in a country where local governments rely so heavily on land transfers for their revenue, it's not hard to see why people are cynical about just who they want to save this land for. "As the value of land goes up," one netizen observed, "the value of human lives goes down." 
   
   In China, the idea of "entering the earth and being at peace" (rutu wei'an) has thousands of years of tradition behind it, as a permanent burial spot was necessary for subsequent generations to venerate their ancestors. Yet ironically it is in Hong Kong, where cremation became the norm long ago, that traditional ancestral veneration has, perhaps, survived most intact. There, burials in government-run cemeteries are disinterred after six years, at which point the remains are either collected privately for cremation or reburied in an urn or niche. This is in keeping with the traditional southern Chinese practice of jian'gu or "digging up bones," according to which you were duty-bound by filial piety to open your parents' tombs some years after they had died and meticulously clean the bones, then place them in a much smaller ceramic pot for reburial. 
   
   In typical Hong Kong fashion, however, the shift from burials to cremation was decided by market forces rather than official fiat. Burials were never banned in Hong Kong, and you can still be buried in a privately run cemetery today - if you can afford it. Just like apartments and retail space, squarefootage for grave plots is prohibitively expensive. Over the years, as the population swelled and land prices soared, people simply got used to the new reality and adapted their traditions accordingly. 
   
   Perhaps these heavy-handed Anhui bureaucrats could learn a thing or two from the Hong Kong model of funeral and internment reform. 
   
   [Pic via thegrio.com] 
   
   By Ryan Kilpatrick
target: – Two officials in southern China offered up a pretty bizarre explanation after being arrested for allegedly purchasing dug-up corpses, according to local media: They needed to meet their cremation quotas. The official Xinhua news agency reports that the case had its beginnings in June, when a resident of Beiliu City in south China's Guangxi region reported that his dead grandfather's body was taken from its grave; police investigated and ended up arresting an alleged grave robber surnamed Zhong the next month. Zhong confessed to stealing more than 20 corpses under the cover of night—and then selling them to two officials from neighboring Guangdong province. The suspects, officials surnamed He and Dong, were then arrested. China has been encouraging cremation as a way to preserve more land for farming and development, reports the BBC. Some residents have been burying family members in secret to sidestep the new policy, and in May, Shanghaiist reported that six elderly residents of Anhui, a town that banned burials outright, killed themselves before the change went into effect in order to secure a burial. In Gaozhou City and Huazhou City, the local governments had set cremation quotas based on the previous year's deaths, and He and Dong were charged with implementing the funeral changes. They allegedly told police they bought the bodies in order to hit their quotas; Dong is said to have spent nearly $5,000 on 10 corpses, while He allegedly bought an unspecified number for about $250 each. Elsewhere in China, 11 have been arrested for their alleged connection to a "corpse bride."