The dead must rest in peace.
With the passing of time, those left behind--family, relatives and friends--by the people who passed away may have long moved on from the sadness and grief, but the mortal remains, in this case, of some dead people in China, have yet to see the day where they can, finally, be in an appropriate resting place.
Hundreds of dead bodies remain in morgues because it appears that people are not claiming them to give them proper burial, according to China Daily.
In Guangdong Province, funeral parlors in Guangzhou serve as a temporary resting place for more than 1,300 unclaimed corpses every year.
The same fate befalls funeral homes in Kunming, Yunnan Province, with more than 80 unclaimed bodies; in Jinan, Shandong Province, with more than 70; and in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, estimated at 200.
There is even one corpse in Hohhot that has remained unclaimed for 21 years now.
Articles 1-7 of the Regulations on Funeral and Interment Management of the State Council, issued in 1997 and revised in 2012, mention nothing about the maximum length of time a funeral parlor should keep a dead body and what should be done with unclaimed corpses.
Because there are no clear laws to follow on such a given case, Wang Qingmin, an official from Inner Mongolia’s Civil Affairs Bureau, said that authorities would just decide to preserve unclaimed bodies until someone shows up to get them.
Long-term preservation of dead bodies entails work and, of course, money.
Following the pricing scheme set by the Beijing Municipal Commission of Development and Reform concerning the storage and preservation of dead bodies, funeral parlors spend 1,500 yuan per month, reported China.org.
One funeral parlor in Beijing’s Tongzhou District spends 1.8 million yuan every year for keeping more than 100 unclaimed bodies.
Aside from the high fees that come with preservation, there is still one more important matter to worry about.
Zhang Tao, an official at a funeral parlor in Jinan, Shandong Province, said that sometimes there would be no more enough space to accommodate new corpses, according to China Daily.
Dead bodies should “move on,” too.