Two hours out of Shanghai's Wusong port, Xu Xilong stood on the top deck of the big tourist ship and opened a red plastic bag that held a handful of flower petals and the grey ashes of his grandmother and his parents.

After mourning for a few minutes, he poured them into a long pipe that opened out into the sea. The colourful petals and ashes flowed into the water and disappeared within seconds.

Xia Hua and her mother Zhao Yanmei scatter the ashes of her grandparents into the sea during a sea burial ceremony held recently in Shanghai. [China Daily]

"It was my late mum's wish to be buried at sea," said Xu, 66, a retired military senior engineer, who was accompanied by his 31-year-old son, Xu Chong, at the ceremony on the ship. "My parents were both open-minded about how their remains were to be handled, and they wanted to return amid the waters, to nature."

Xu's mother, Wu Guiru a native of Wuxi, which is a one-hour train ride from Shanghai died in March 2005 in Beijing, where Xu lives, after suffering from a prolonged stroke and paralysis. She was 91.

In her will, she asked that her ashes be scattered in Taihu Lake in Wuxi. But the lake provides drinking water for local residents, so her wish could not be fulfilled.

Then Xu learnt that starting in March, the Wuxi Civil Affairs Bureau would offer a service to perform burials at sea, and he applied.

On March 24, Xu, carrying his mother's ashes, picked up his father's and grandmother's ashes buried in a public cemetery in Wuxi. He then rode a bus to Shanghai and boarded the ship around 9 am the next day.

Along with him were more than 700 residents from Shanghai and the surrounding area. Xu said most of participants were impressed by how well organized the event was.

"The band dressed in uniforms and played music," Xu said. "Everything on board was in order."

Another notable aspect was that provisions had also been made to ensure environmental protection.

With the permission of the local oceanic and environmental protection departments, participants were asked not to take urns on board and required that the plastic bags carrying the ashes be returned and burnt after the loved ones were back on shore.

This was the 90th organized ashes-scattering event that the Shanghai Feisi Burial at Sea Company had arranged. It is an offshoot organization of the Civil Affairs Bureau and has exclusive rights to provide the service in Shanghai.

In recent years, Feisi has witnessed a rising popularity in business since it was launched in 1991. Last year it handled 1,480 human burials, compared with 287 in 1991.

"People are more open-minded and willing to try new things," said Xu Guoxiang, Feisi's general manager, adding that people who agreed to marine burials are mostly well-educated and city dwellers.

However, he admitted that promoting the service still has a long way to go, as only 1.5 per cent of the deceased in Shanghai are buried that way. And the main reason participation in unconventional burials is so low lies in the Chinese tradition of funeral and burial, experts said.

The Chinese have long believed that remains buried under earth will rest in peace, said Wang Fuzi, director of the funeral department of the civil affairs professional school in Changsha, capital of Central China's Hunan Province.

"Chinese worship their ancestors' graves, which are the foundation of the development of the family," Wang explained of the origin of the feng shui of graves.

But as land is becoming a more precious commodity in such a populous country, non-traditional burials such as burials at sea have taken on practical meaning, Wang said.

About 8.5 million people die in China annually, and about 5 million are interred. It won't be long, then, before a shortage of land exists for the purpose, he added.

According to the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau, about 167 hectares there are set aside as public cemeteries, and 60 per cent of that land is already in use. Eighty per cent of the cemeteries report they either are short of land or will be in the next five years.

Therefore, local governments, especially those along the coast, have encouraged "green burials"; that is, those that are environmentally friendly and conserve space.

Among them are burials at sea; burials next to trees, in which relatives and family members can choose to buy a kind of pine and scatter the ashes around the pine when planting the tree, and grassland burials, which generally are similar to tree burials; and burials at wall-side locations, using a high wall with regular holes for ash boxes, said Xu Guoxiang, Feisi's general manager.

Among them, burial at sea is convenient and less costly to the environment than burials on land. The coastal city of Dalian in Northeast China's Liaoning Province has had 42 group burials at sea since 1997, with more than 1,300 participants.

In Shantou in South China's Guangdong Province, more than 100 sets of remains along with flower petals and small amounts of earth from the hometown were put into the sea at the end of this March.

In the case of Xu Xilong, who followed his mother's wish and scattered her ashes into the sea, the ship tickets for him and his son cost 150 yuan (US$19) each. But Shanghai encourages residents to do marine burials to the extent that it pays a subsidy of 200 yuan (US$25) to anyone who chooses that method for their loved one.

Xu is a full supporter of burials at sea and questions traditional interments.

"What is the meaning of burials on land?" he asked. "What happens to our tombs 50 years from now? My fourth- or fifth-generation descendents won't recognize our graves anyway.

"Chinese want to be buried in graveyards with good feng shui so that their descendents will benefit. But where can so many good feng shui places be found?

"The sea is larger than the land. Being in the water helps the departed find eternity."

Another advantage of being buried at sea is that memorializing in the future will be easy.

"We live in the north, and I am getting old," Xu said. "Burying my family in their hometown in the south doesn't make sense because we won't be able to travel there often.

"But now, whenever I see the waters, I will think of them."

He also mentioned another peace-of-mind issue.

"When I had my grandma and my dad's ashes removed from their tombs, where they were buried decades ago, I found their urns had rotted and their ashes were a little moist," Xu said. To him, burials at sea provide that once the ashes are scattered, there is no returning.

Feisi tries to compensate for the no-return aspect by providing an album with the deceased's photo and postal stamps of burial at sea so that family members have something tangible with which people can memorialize their departed loved ones.

Feisi also offers options to have the deceased's name inscribed on a large memorial stone at a Shanghai public cemetery for free or on the company's website.

So, what about Xu Xilong's own burial when it comes?

Because he is a military engineer, his ashes will be put into an urn and placed on the wall in the Babaoshan public cemetery in Beijing, the largest cemetery for revolutionaries and military officers. But he wants to be with nature later.

"I told my son I don't want to stay long at Babaoshan when I pass away because I don't want to take up space," Xu said. "I want to be at sea or on the Great Wall."

(China Daily 05/05/2006 page1)