After saying his final goodbye to his late wife, Beijing resident Wang Huayi gently pressed a button, and the ashes, wrapped in a water-soluble bag, slowly descended into the sea through a conveyor.
On the eve of the Qingming Festival, during a collective sea burial jointly held in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, Wang Huayi, along with many other citizens, bid farewell to loved ones. He said, “Our family has always loved the ocean. Coming here each year is both remembrance and companionship.”
Paying respects during Qingming has long been a Chinese tradition. In recent years, many regions in China have held collective ecological burial ceremonies and public memorial events. These gatherings combine environmental sustainability with humanistic care, allowing families to return their loved ones to nature while remembering them in meaningful ways.
Behind these stories lies the quiet rise of ecological burials, reflecting how green and sustainable concepts are being integrated into traditional funeral culture.
China has been promoting ecological burials for years. In 2016, the Ministry of Civil Affairs and other departments issued guidelines encouraging eco-friendly burials that occupy little or no land, consume fewer resources, and avoid non-biodegradable materials.
Since then, various policies and initiatives have been introduced across the country to encourage ecological burials. During the “14th Five-Year Plan” period alone, over 30,000 people in Jiangsu Province have chosen ecological burials, while the Shandong Provincial Department of Civil Affairs has established 100 pilot projects under the principle of “a proper resting place for the deceased and an appropriate relocation for remains.”
In practice, ecological burials take many forms. Whether it is land-conserving lawn burials, flowerbed burials, tree burials, or sea burials that occupy no land at all, these methods avoid tomb bases, headstones, or concrete graves, and do not preserve ashes. This offers clear advantages in terms of land conservation and environmental protection.
According to the director of the Tianjin Funeral Service Center, the city began promoting sea burials in 1990 and has since buried over 30,000 sets of ashes at sea. Based on an average grave size of 0.8 square meters, this has saved more than 24,000 square meters of land, freeing up valuable urban space for development.
In Zhangzhou, Fujian Province, local planners integrated the concept of a park into public cemeteries, creating a new model that combines burial grounds with forests and grasslands. They established village-level public funeral facilities known as “Life Parks.”
These parks preserve existing orchards and trees while adding new greenery, creating expansive spaces for ecological burials that can meet local needs for the next two decades. Zhuang Shuying, head of the Social Affairs Division of the Zhangzhou Civil Affairs Bureau, explained: “The Life Park has flowers in spring and summer, and colors in autumn and winter, maintaining a natural ecosystem. Built near villages, residents often visit, feeling as though the departed are never far away.”
Beyond land and environmental benefits, affordability is another key advantage of ecological burials. So far, 28 provinces in China have introduced financial incentives to encourage them.
For example, Tianjin launched a policy in 2014 that waived the costs of sea burials and covered expenses for two accompanying family members. In 2020, the policy was upgraded to include an additional reward of 1,000 yuan per burial for families choosing eco-friendly options. Such measures reduce the financial burden on families and make ecological burials more widely understood and accepted.
From the traditional idea of “resting in peace beneath the soil” to the harmony of life returning to nature, the shift reflects both government-led funeral reforms and a growing public awareness of environmental responsibility, said Yang Genlai, president of the Funeral Governance Research Branch of the China Social Governance Society and a professor at Guangdong Polytechnic of Foreign Studies.
For individuals, ecological burials embody a life philosophy. Wang Huayi recalls that his late wife once told their children that people are like dust in the universe, and eventually all return to nature.
Many families who choose ecological burials share this outlook. Yang noted that handling the affairs of the deceased in a more environmentally conscious way represents a reinterpretation of life’s meaning, reflecting respect for both life and nature.
From a cultural perspective, Yang explained, ecological burials break with the traditional belief in “lavish burials,” promoting the separation of burial from memorial rites. This preserves emotional comfort for families while giving funeral culture new relevance in today’s society.
“Ecological burials transform the final resting place of the deceased into nourishment for ecosystems. At its core, it is about ‘life nurturing life,’” Yang said. “The quiet rise of ecological burials is not only a reform in funeral practices but also a way for society to leave sustainable living space for future generations.”