2010-04-06 07:59

DALIAN, Liaoning - As Li Shunzi was lowering her dead husband's ashes in the Yellow Sea off Dalian in Northeast China's Liaoning province, she knew she was fulfilling his life-long dream.

"Go and fulfill your dream to travel around the world now," Li whispered on Thursday as she was about to let go of the container made of sea mud and clay, which dissolves in the water.

Li, 35, said her husband loved to travel, which is why she chose to bury him at sea.

"Now he is free to go wherever he wants to," she told China Daily. "And whenever I miss him, I'll go near the sea. I'll know he's there, somewhere."

Like Li, there are quite a few Chinese who prefer sea burials to placing the ashes of their deceased relatives in cemeteries or mourning halls.

During this year's Qingming Festival, or Tomb-Sweeping Day, which fell on Monday, at least 10 group sea burials took place in Dalian alone.

Ever since the first sea burial in 1997, Dalian has held 89 ceremonies and scattered the ashes of some 3,500 people in the Yellow Sea, said Liang Jiafeng, an official with the funeral department of the city's civil affairs bureau.

Since the cemeteries are already overcrowded, authorities are encouraging locals to bury the dead at sea and even started offering free sea burial services last year, he said.

"More than 420 ash containers, made of sea mud and clay, were lowered in the sea last year, almost doubling the number in 2008," said Liang.

He added that sea burials account for 1 percent of the total burials in Dalian.

Pan Yuansong, an official with Liaoning provincial bureau of civil affairs, said authorities are considering offering free sea burial services across the province to encourage more people to choose them.

According to Liang, of all the people who choose to bury their dead at sea in Dalian, 20 percent travel from other provinces like Heilongjiang and Jilin.

Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang, has organized three "sea burial trips" to Dalian in the past year.

On March 27, 25 Harbin residents traveled to Dalian to bury their deceased relatives at sea.

Wang Jinxiang was one of them. Together with his wife, Wang, 68, came to Dalian with his parents' ashes, which had previously been kept in a cemetery, to scatter them in the Yellow Sea.

"Sea burial is good. It occupies no land. And people need not travel long distances to pay tribute to the dead," he said.

He said he has already told his only daughter, who lives in Canada, to bury him at sea after his time comes.

Han Jinrui, an official from the Harbin Funeral Administration, said most people who bury the dead at sea are well educated. "They are very accepting of new ideas," he said.

Compared to last year, an increasing number of Harbin residents are becoming interested in the idea of sea burial.

Another 18 people have already registered to attend the next sea burial trip to Dalian, Han said.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs has long been advocating environmental-friendly burials to avoid the waste of social and natural resources.

Green funerals, like sea burials or tree and flower burials, are gradually becoming accepted in society.

In a survey conducted by the funeral service department in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, more than 60 percent of the 1,910 people interviewed said green funerals are acceptable.

Statistics from local funeral service authorities show that the number of sea burials in Tianjin and Shanghai, both forerunners of the practice which started in 1990 and 1991, have exceeded 7,000 and 20,000 respectively.