Theft of female corpses on rise in some rural areas

Corpse theft is on the rise in rural Shanxi province as the old custom of "ghost marriage" has resurfaced in the northern province.

Hongtong county has reported at least three dozen thefts of female corpses in the last three years, said Lin Xu, deputy director of the county police department. Several thefts were reported in February and March last year.

In ghost marriage rituals, female skeletons are reinforced with steel wires and clothed before they are buried as "brides" alongside dead bachelors. Rural folk beliefs hold that failure to find a burial partner for an unmarried male relative is bad luck.

Ghost marriage rituals were practiced throughout China's feudal dynasties and were especially popular in the Song Dynasty (960-1279).

The government ordered people to cease the practice after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. However, rural residents, who tend to uphold old customs and rituals, have continued the practice by using pictures or dummies made of paper or dough.

As wealth has increased, the practice of using real corpses has returned to some rural areas of Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces and northern Henan province.

Chang Sixin, deputy director of the China Folk Literature and Art Association, said there are even matchmaking agents to pair dead bachelors with the corpses of women.

Under the criminal law, those who steal or defile a corpse are subject to up to three years in prison, but that has failed to deter corpse traffickers seeking profit, Lin said.

A fresh female corpse can fetch up to 100,000 yuan ($15,300), and even a body that has been buried for decades can be sold for around 5,000 yuan.

Corpse theft is difficult to investigate as it is hard to find evidence, Lin said.

Repeated corpse thefts have raised concerns among families. In Shengou village, for example, families have started to build tombs near their homes rather than at distant mountain sites. Some affluent families have hired people to watch their family tombs or reinforced the tombs with steel and installed cameras over graves.

Guo Qiwen, a resident in Hongtong, is looking for his mother's body, which was stolen in March. "I have spent more than 50,000 yuan looking for her remains. It kills my heart not having her back," he said.