Caution urged over Qingming fire risk 4

▶ Many turn to environmentally friendly ways of mourning loved ones

The forest fire that claimed the lives of 30 people at the weekend in Southwest China’s Sichuan Province has alerted people to the importance of fire safety, particularly in the approach to Qingming Festival in which people commemorate their deceased loved ones by burning paper objects.

The festival, also known as Tomb-sweeping Day, falls on April 5 this year. It is an occasion when people often return to their hometowns to carry out a ceremony to remember the dead by burning incense, fake paper money or paper depictions of other objects to commemorate the dead in the afterlife, like cars and smartphones.

But this year’s Qingming Festival has come with a heavy reminder of the dangers of fire after the loss of 27 firefighters and three officials in the forest fire, which broke out on Saturday in a remote high-altitude forested area in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province.

Although the exact cause of the fire remains unknown, authorities have issued fire warnings due to prolonged dry weather and lack of rain. Some areas have seen an increased incidence of wildfires in recent weeks.

Many local governments, including Southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality and North China’s Shanxi Province, have issued warnings against fire hazards, and have banned people from burning paper objects in certain areas, including wooded areas.

More than 95 percent of forest fires in China are caused by human factors.

When the fire risk is high, a carelessly discarded cigarette butt is enough to start a catastrophic wildfire, the People’s Daily said in December, 2018.

Instead of burning an array of paper offerings, an increasing number of residents nowadays opt to take flowers to grave sites or even do an online commemoration, as environmentally friendly ways to show respect to the deceased have gained popularity.

A cemetery in Hangzhou, capital of East China’s Zhejiang Province, on Monday opened a space to store “crystals” of the deceased as part of the city’s efforts to promote sustainable development.

Cremation crystals take the form of jewelry keepsakes and are made from the ashes of the deceased.

Through pressure and crystallization at high temperature, a person’s ashes can be turned into more than 100 crystals of different sizes and colors.

“The crystals produced take up much less space than ashes, meaning that the issue of space pressure on public cemeteries can be eased,” Zhang Yaozhen, manager of Hangzhou Qianjiang Cemetery, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, a cemetery in Nanjing, capital of East China’s Jiangsu Province launched a digital life and heritage project for people to mourn the deceased, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

The project uses a QR code as the carrier to digitize information and images of the deceased.

Visitors can also collect those memories with the help of cloud technology.