In China, a company is offering memorial services for the dead via streaming on the day Chinese people visit cemeteries to pay tribute to their ancestors
Frenetic life often doesn't leave us as much free time as we'd like, and it can happen that we can't honor our dead on the day dedicated to them. Here in our country, as well as in China. Only in the Asian country they have found a technological solution that has triggered mixed reactions, mostly negative.
On the day of the Qingming Festival - the equivalent of our All Saints' Day - which this year falls on April 4, people usually go to the cemetery to pray in front of the tomb of their ancestors, to clean it, and offer food, tea, wine, chopsticks and special incense sticks. Yuhuatai Cemetery in Nanjing City has started offering its services on wechat, China's largest social media platform. It is a large cemetery that covers 20 hectares of Shitou Mountain and is also home to a number of celebrities. The offer? For those who can't observe this commemoration in person, the cemetery takes care of it directly by offering a Livestream as proof.
An outraged chorus of naysayers!
Customers register on the site, pay online, and receive a password to watch their ancestors' commemoration - carried out by cemetery staff - via a live video stream. The service has sparked chaos. Some commented on Weibo - a widely used microblogging site in China - that it is "something that cannot be replaced by others. It's about something related to your fathers, your loved ones ... and you let a stranger do it?" Another indignant user says "you are entrusting a stranger with the graves of your loved ones by paying him. But aren't you ashamed?". Another one throws it on the sarcasm "what is the use of taking care of a grave. Just upload a photo on a site that you can visit every year". It must be said that the Qingming Festival is an event deeply rooted in Chinese folk tradition, but also in Malaysia and Singapore, dating back almost a thousand years. Indignation and vitriolic comments were a given.