The southern Chinese commercial hub of Dongguan is planning a mass "burial at sea" on next year's Tomb Sweeping Day, a traditional festival which falls on April 5.

The proposal met with cool responses from local residents, none of whom has signed up to join the event.

"Scattering one's ashes into the sea? It's not appropriate!" a septuagenarian woman told a reporter from the Guangzhou Daily.

To locals, a sea burial -- in which the decedent's ashes are scattered over an appointed area by family members on board a funeral boat -- is quite a novel approach to a funeral.

The first sea burial in Dongguan occurred in October, when a young man died in an accident. His sister chose the unusual funeral, as he had always been fond of the sea.

Official statistics show that every year about 8,000 people die in Dongguan. Traditional burials, which inter the bodies underground, requires plots of at least three square meters per person.

Facing a land shortage, the local government is pushing for land-saving methods such as sea burial.

The primary scheme for the mass sea burial has been completed, and is awaiting government authorization, according to an official with the municipal civil affairs administration. One decision that has already been passed pins the expense of the sea burial on the government.

Local attitudes toward sea burial have changed in recent years. Nearly nobody approved of it in a survey conducted several years ago. Recently, however, the residents have begun to understand, and are trying to accept the environmentally-friendly funeral.

"It will take ten years for sea burial to become popular in Dongguan," the civil affairs official said.

(CRI December 20, 2007)