During the three-day Qingming holiday, a total of 66,300 funeral service institutions nationwide provided on-site memorial services, with approximately 1.15 million staff members involved in service support, according to data released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs on Monday.
Qingming Festival, or Tomb-Sweeping Day, falls on April 5 this year. It is a traditional Chinese festival for people to pay tribute to the dead and worship their ancestors.
The public made over 62 million on-site tomb-sweeping visits, and over 14 million vehicles were directed to and from cemeteries.
Among those who visited grave-sites, more than 39 million people, or 63 percent of visitors, chose green and low-carbon memorial methods, such as offering fresh flowers instead of burning incense or paper offerings.
A total of 41,677 sets of cremated remains were interred in various funeral institutions during the holiday.
Among these, 2,184 sets were buried using eco-friendly methods including sea burials, tree burials, and lawn burials; 8,827 sets were placed in columbarium niches; and 23,102 sets were interred in land-saving grave plots.
Eco-friendly and land-saving burials accounted for 81.8 percent of all interments, indicating a significant rise in public acceptance and recognition of such practices.
In recent years, the Ministry of Civil Affairs has guided local authorities to promote changes in funeral and burial customs through measures tailored to local conditions.
To date, all 31 provincial-level regions have issued regulatory norms and advocacy standards for changing funeral customs, and 28 provinces have introduced implementation guidelines for promoting eco-friendly and land-saving burials.
Qingming holiday sees 62 mln tomb sweepers as green burials gain wider acceptance
