Funeral workers look for dignity in death
Universities aim to combat discrimination of industry’s staff by discussing mortality and other subjects deemed taboo
China’s younger generations, who have more liberal ideas about death and are open to trying different jobs, have taken to the funeral profession. But death is still taboo to most of Chinese society.
Although they are not appreciated by the public, as death and anything related to the issue are seen as ominous, the group are conscientious about their work and are calling for more respect and understanding from the public.
Burial clothes model
He Sainan, in her 20s (she was unwilling to give her exact age but she was born after 1995), chose to serve as a model for burial clothes at an online shop when she graduated from a vocational school in 2017.
She said it was not an easy decision because the industry remains taboo to most people.
“I was terrified. But my boyfriend encouraged me to have a try,” she said in an interview with ThePaper.cn in late December. “My duties include burial clothes design, customer services, dispatching the parcels and showing audiences the burial clothes through livestreaming.”
She said that many customers feel hostility to burial clothes, even when they are choosing for family members.
“But my demonstration can help relieve their negative emotions,” she said. “It’s one of the jobs that directly faces death. We can’t change death, why not leave the world in a decent manner wearing beautiful clothes?”
He said that she has experienced some touching moments since beginning the job.
“I remember that once a senior couple, who were around their 60s, consulted about the burial clothes for a young girl at our online shop, saying that their 29-year-old daughter was in critical condition suffering from cancer,” she said. “They told me what they wanted were clothes with fine designs for a younger girl.
“I thought it was over when the order was finished. But, one day, the senior couple sent me a photo in which their daughter was wearing the burial clothes with a beautiful smile, standing in the corridor in the hospital. They said that their daughter liked the clothes and her joy brought them comfort,” she added.
However, moments of being alienated and misunderstood seem to take up a lot of He’s life.
She recalled once joining a class reunion party. Upon hearing He explain her job, a girl sitting next to her expressed disgust by turning around and stopped talking to her.
“I was sad at the beginning, I don’t want friends or people around me to take me as a bane because of my job,” she said.
Labor shortfall
He Sainan is not the only person to suffer misunderstanding from members of the public.
According to a report by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, there are 4,060 agencies offering burial services with 79,000 employees nationwide, among whom 45,000 served for administrative funeral parlors by the end of 2019.
With the aging population increasing and the annual death rate reaching about 10 million, the number of workers for the funeral industry is facing a great shortage.
Zheng Yanru, a graduate from the Changsha Social Work College in Hunan province, said that she has lived a hard life serving the industry because of numerous pressures from society and the people around her.
She said that it’s a profession easy to be discriminated against as death is a subject people are unwilling to speak about.
“Like most of the vocational graduates, we earn about 3,000 or 5,000 yuan ($460-760) after graduation, but we bear more pressure than the others. I often joke that if I had another choice, it’s better to be a restaurant waitress who has an approximate salary but doesn’t need to bear such mental stress,” she said.
But she is optimistic about the industry’s future development as long as society gives more respect to the profession and wages increase.
“From my personal experience, about 80-90 percent of my classmates chose to join the industry after graduation. Their enthusiasm, however, has been worn away due to the lower social status and salaries,” she said.
“It’s a normal job making a living, but it’s also an unusual job bringing respect and comfort to the dead and their family members. So why not give us more respect?”
The pressure on funeral industry workers can be intense. One 29-year-old, Li Li (assumed name), left her job at a funeral parlor as her family members told her it would harm her reputation and bring difficulty in finding her a husband.
She worked at a funeral parlor in Chongqing after graduating from the Chongqing City Management College majoring in funeral technologies and management in 2011, responsible for portrait treatment of the deceased and writing obituaries, she said in an interview with Shenzhen Television.
She then quit the job in 2013 because of family members’ persuasion. But just a year later, she returned to the job, offering storage services for cremated caskets.
Li said that she has encountered many embarrassments in daily life.
“The most common situation is that no one is willing to shake hands with me after I tell them my job. People who had been sitting next to me would change their seat when returning from the restroom,” she said.
After working in the industry for many years, Li said that she would still choose the job if she had the chance to start over.
“I still want to make friends, but it’s not necessary, and find a boyfriend. I always tell friends online that I’m doing a normal job without telling them what it is I exactly do,” she said.
Education on death
He Sainan, the model for burial clothes, said that she was seldom taught anything about death by her parents or in school, which made her afraid of dying from a young age.
“I changed my ideas when I got involved in the industry. I found that, no matter when living life or facing death, it is period that every one of us must go through,” she said.
“Now I can calmly face death and cherish the moments I live.”
Thankfully, some universities have taken the lead in changing public attitudes on death to help win respect for the deceased and those working in the funeral industry.
Back in 2000, Guangzhou University opened the first course concerning death education on the Chinese mainland. It includes the concept of birth, death and controversial topics like hospices and suicide.
Then Peking University opened a death education course in 2017, with a focus on sociological thoughts on death.
Also in 2019, the then-deputy to the National People’s Congress, Gu Jin, a doctor from the Beijing Cancer Hospital, proposed that death education be encouraged nationwide. The aim was to boost the public’s knowledge of death and enhance people’s capabilities of dealing with emergencies.
He said that the nation is still in an early stage of death education and it’s of great importance to get people to know more about death on the basis of respecting life.
Chen Lin, a 35-year-old travel agency employee, said that he will give lessons about death to his son, 1, when he gets older.
“It’s a pity that both my wife and I didn’t receive any course on death in school, which I think is important to help us know ourselves better and our perception of life,” he said.
“I have to admit that death is scary but it’s an inevitable element in our life, so it’s better to know it correctly. Also for the people working for funeral industry, there’s no need for them to feel ashamed of telling people about their jobs. It’s an honorable job, actually, that makes us leave the world decently.”