China prohibits converting apartments into small cemeteries

BeijingThe rapid urbanization of China has limited cemetery space. This, along with the country's aging population, has caused the price of burying the deceased in cemeteries to skyrocket and be one of the highest in the world. All of this has led many Chinese people to use apartments as an alternative for storing the ashes of their deceased. However, the Chinese government has recently approved a law prohibiting the use of housing for this purpose. The new regulation coincides with Qing Ming, which is celebrated these days and would be equivalent to the Catalan All Saints' Day.

In Beijing, when Qing Ming arrives, families go to clean the graves in cemeteries, and it is common to receive mobile alerts reminding them of the need to book an appointment to visit. The population density – the Chinese capital has more than 21 million inhabitants – causes access collapses and limits capacity. The alerts also encourage the population to overcome traditions and remember their ancestors through online tributes where the whole family can meet remotely, thus avoiding crowds. There are companies and applications specialized in this service.

The municipal government also reminds that incense or traditional fake money cannot be burned in public places in tribute to the deceased. However, this is a prohibition that is often not respected. During these days, it is common to find Chinese people in the street making small bonfires with incense and gold-colored papers on the corners to remember their deceased relatives.

This year, Qing Ming was celebrated on Sunday, but the official holidays extend until today. It is also common for cemetery visits to take place a week before the celebration and throughout the following week. This year, in addition, this new national law has been added to the municipal regulations, which prohibits the use of apartments in residential buildings "for the deposit of ashes".

Candles, lights, and urns

These apartments are known in Chinese as guhui fang, which means "apartment for keeping the ashes of the deceased". In fact, families buy them specifically for this purpose, that is, to turn them into mausoleums. On social media, you can see photographs of some of these apartments: they are decorated to create a space for contemplation, with candles and red lights, and the urns of ancestors are kept aligned by generations. The curtains are always drawn and the windows sealed so that light does not enter.

The Chinese resort to this option due to the high cost of depositing urns in a cemetery. Cemeteries have little land and high demand, and the population is increasingly aging. Last year in China, a total of 11.3 million people died, and in the future, the number of deaths is expected to increase further.

Currently in Beijing, the price of a plot in a cemetery to place two urns and a tombstone ranges from 13,000 to 37,834 euros, while the price of housing in the country fell by 40% between 2021 and 2025. Furthermore, while cemetery plots can only be rented for 20 years, property ownership of apartments in China is for 70 years.

Although apartments for ashes are not a solution in large cities like Beijing and Shanghai, where housing prices remain prohibitive, they are in smaller cities considered to be third or fourth tier. These are areas where the real estate bubble has left neighborhoods half-built and prices have fallen.

The guhui fang were a solution for the Chinese middle class, especially in the suburbs of large cities and in rural areas. According to social media, they are abundant in the south of the country. Be that as it may, the phenomenon has grown so much that the government has been forced to legislate on the matter and prohibit the practice.

Incineration, almost mandatory

In China, with a superpopulation of 1.405 billion inhabitants, land burials are limited and cremation is almost mandatory. According to article 4 of the funeral regulations, in densely populated areas or where arable land is scarce, cremation must always be resorted to. Each region, however, adapts the regulations depending on the characteristics of its territory. Furthermore, minorities, such as Muslims, are exempted from cremation.

Unlike Spain and other countries, in China scattering ashes at sea is not a crime, on the contrary, it is encouraged. In 2025, Shanghai boasted of having closed the year by exceeding for the first time in its history 10,000 cremated deceased, whose ashes were cast into the sea. It is considered an ecological option.