Students ignore social attitudes to attend burial studies course
Like most college students, Shen Xinyi works as an intern during the summer and winter vacations. However, her job is a far cry from the usual student work experience; she cleans, dress and applies makeup to corpses, so the deceased person will look good when relatives come to pay their last respects.
"I don't regard bodies as dreadful, because my father was a mortician and I saw many of them when I was younger. For me, it is a career. My former classmates all show respect for, and curiosity about, for my choice," said the 19-year-old, who studies corpse antisepsis and cosmetics at Changsha Social Work College in the central province of Hunan.
In 1995, when the college began provide funeral-related courses - such as how to write obituaries, cemetery design and embalming - there were no other majors of a similar nature anywhere in the country, and only 120 students were recruited, according to Xiong Ying, a professor at the college.