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55 yuan to store my father's urn in the courier cabinet? Behind the absurd jokes, how many people's sourness is exposed......
Author: Kunik
Two days ago, something particularly outrageous happened.
A netizen posted that his friend's father passed away and decided to put his father's urn in the express cabinet of Fengchao and buy an annual card, so that he would not have to pay the detention fee, and he could keep the urn in the express locker.
The reason for this was that his friend's family could not spare room for an urn and he really couldn't afford to buy a cemetery. And in the express locker, the annual card for one year is only 55 yuan.
This is a made-up joke, after all, even if you don't have the money to buy a cemetery, you can find a place in the countryside and bury it; If you have that effort to spend money on the express cabinet, where can you not put it at home?
The official also quickly came out to refute the rumors. Hive Hive responded, The "Service Agreement" clearly stipulates that bones, ashes, and other items that may cause discomfort cannot be stored or delivered, and Hive Hive will also have a courier every week to clean up the courier strands that have been stored for more than a week, so it is basically impossible to "put the urn for a year" mentioned in the blog post.
This sub-compilation is too absurd, and everyone has said that it is "too outrageous". Some netizens said: "If this is true, it can only be said to be wonderful, you say he doesn't care about this, he knows to find a place to save it." You said he cared about this, he actually put it in the delivery locker. ”
But some netizens sighed: "Why can so many people discuss such a ridiculous joke?" In addition to being spread because it is too outrageous, it has also invisibly touched the pain point of high funeral consumption. ”
One of the reasons why this paragraph is absurd enough is that "the ashes only need to be stored for 55 yuan" is taken out to attract people.
After all, everyone knows that the cost of a real cemetery may be tens of thousands of times that of 55 yuan. In such a heartfelt comparison, the burial money of less than 100 yuan is a bit too exciting for people's nerves.
This reminds me that there was also a discussion about storing ashes a few years ago.
After the death of an elderly man, his son took his ashes away in a shoebox. The staff of the funeral home recorded a video and scolded the son for being "shameless", saying that the old man was sent by his son wrapped in a quilt after his death, and now the ashes are packed in a shoebox again, and traditional Chinese culture has been corrupted by him.
But the comments at the bottom of the video at that time were mostly in support of this son. Some netizens said: "An urn has to be thousands of dollars bigger, and it is better to spend so much money than to put it in a shoebox, after all, everyone is gone, do you still care what box it is used for?" ”
Some netizens humorously said: "When I leave, let my child take a favorite mooncake box and put it in me." ”
Some netizens also said that after his death, he donated directly to the hospital as a general teacher, saving all money.
Although some people say that this son is really unfilial, many people can actually understand: an urn that is thousands of years old is really not cheap.
The two incidents, no matter what the situation is and from what angle they are exposed, in the end, the public's discussion direction is the same, and finally returns to the issue of cost performance.
After all, people nowadays are becoming more and more aware of an unavoidable problem, it is difficult to live, but it is not easy to die.
Because, to "pay" for a person's death, it costs a lot of money.
In recent years, I can always hear an exclamation: I really can't afford to die.
Although it is a bit of a joke, behind the joke, there is always a sigh. Once someone in the family dies, they will know that the funeral expenses that they usually don't know about are not a small amount at all.
The funeral industry is very profitable, which is already a tacit secret in the industry.
And a lot of this windfall profit comes from unreasonable pricing.
Some time ago, the four-year-old anti-cancer angel "Little Apple" passed away.
After Little Apple was diagnosed with advanced neuroblastoma, Little Apple's mother recorded the anti-cancer process with her daughter on video for a year, which attracted the attention of many netizens.
The once bright and beautiful little girl, tormented by illness, gradually became deformable, and although she has been fighting the disease strongly, she has not been able to survive in the end.
After her death, the body was cremated in the Jinan funeral home, and many local netizens and bloggers went to the funeral home to mourn and send this strong little girl on her last journey.
However, in the process of mourning, it was discovered that the charges for the flowers arranged in the wake room were not reasonable. Because Little Apple liked flowers before her death, her mother put a lot of flower baskets at the funeral, more than 20 flower baskets and balloons and other decorations, a total of 18,750 yuan, and the discounted price was 13,800 yuan.
Moreover, the funeral home did not inform the funeral home in advance of this expense, but directly arranged it and handed the bill to Little Apple's family.
Her family could not afford to pay the money, and some bloggers who were present at the scene only lowered the price to 3,000 yuan after communicating with the funeral home staff many times.
There are more than 20 flower baskets, and the initial fee is nearly 20,000 yuan, and the average flower basket costs more than 800 yuan, which is too high no matter how you look at it. Moreover, the funeral home did not communicate with the family about this fee and directly arranged the venue, and after handing over the bill, the flowers were also placed, and there was no way to withdraw it, so the family could only pay for it.
Fighting cancer is not a small expense in itself. In the course of a year, Little Apple had 3 surgeries, 21 chemotherapy treatments, and 25 radiotherapy, and behind each effort to fight the disease, in addition to the little girl's brave and strong perseverance, there were also high treatment expenses.
The unfortunate family has tried their best, but they have not been able to keep their daughter. In the end, he just wanted to send her away decently, but he was still asked for a price by the lion. Although it finally dropped to 3,000 yuan, the cliff-like "price collapse" of 10,000 yuan in the middle is also exposing its inflated price.
After this incident was exposed, the Jinan Civil Affairs Bureau issued a circular, saying that it had felt public opinion and set up an investigation team to investigate.
Little Apple received a lot of attention during her lifetime, which made many people discover this unreasonable arrangement and charges to help her family defend their rights. And more ordinary people, without the support of public opinion, if they encounter this situation, they can basically only eat this dumb loss.
In addition to the unreasonable price of wreaths and flower baskets, other funeral expenses are not a small amount.
For example, an ordinary urn may cost dozens of yuan, but sometimes it can be sold for tens of thousands of yuan.
This year, Xiao Wang, a villager in western Jilin Province, spent 2,000 yuan to buy an urn. When choosing the right urn for his loved ones, Xiao Wang found that many funeral supplies stores sold goods basically have no price, and the same urn, some sell for 1,000 yuan, and some sell for 4,000 yuan.
Funeral supplies are not a necessity of life, and most buyers are not clear about the difference and the cost behind it. Xiao Wang said: "They can't tell what ebony rosewood is, so let me weigh it to see if it sinks." ”
This is "dead man's money" again, and those who have been inquiring about the price and comparing it are easy to be said to "pick the door" and "not willing to let the deceased rest in peace", people are generally a little evasive, and they don't even cut the price much.
Therefore, the specific amount of money sold depends on the store's mouth.
In December 2020, on the China Judgment Online, a judgment of the Yingkou Intermediate Court in Liaoning Province showed that some people wantonly made money through the funeral service industry, and the sales amount of urns excluding tax in Yingkou Funeral Home from 2011 to 2018 was more than 80 million, with an average price increase of 854.68%, and a profit of more than 100 million yuan in ten years, with a maximum price increase of 105 times.
Not to mention the other expenses that need to be spent on funerals, renting venues, inviting relatives and friends, carving tombstones, and in some places, it will cost thousands to invite "masters" to hold funerals. Such a process would have cost a lot of money.
And when random quotation becomes the norm in the industry, it is easy to open "sky-high prices".
According to a survey, the average cost of funerals by Chinese is about 37,375 yuan, accounting for about 45.4% of the average annual salary, ranking second in the world, second only to Japan.
Many families, in order to save their loved ones from the disease, have already exhausted their savings, and simply have no more money to buy these things, let alone be inflated prices.
The end of bankrupting the family is not only to lose relatives, but also to spend another amount of unjust money.
A "little apple" has been seen, and there are thousands of unfortunate "little apples", who can judge them?
图 | pexels-pixabay ©
The cost of the cemetery is even more important.
The increasing aging of China's population is one of the important factors that makes cemeteries more and more expensive.
As early as 2000, the proportion of elderly people over 65 years old in China exceeded 7%, and it began to enter an aging society. Just 23 years later, in 2023, this proportion will exceed 14%, which is already completely at the level of deep aging.
Some predict that by 2030, more than 20% of China's people will be over 65 years old. This is the current level of ageing in high-income countries. In another 60 years, the proportion of China's population aged 65 will be close to 50%, and by then, about half of the 800 million people will be over 65 years old.
There are more and more elderly people, but the land is limited, and there is one less piece with one. Everyone is going to come to this point, and the price of cemeteries, therefore, has also risen all the way, and many cities have seen the phenomenon of "yang houses are cheaper than yin houses".
According to a report by Sino-Singapore Jingwei, citing the reference price of a third-party platform, the price of tombs in first-tier cities in mainland China is generally high. Among them, the average starting price of Beijing cemetery is 83,100 yuan, Shanghai is about 99,900 yuan, Guangzhou is 43,300 yuan, and Shenzhen is 64,100 yuan.
For example, the Songhe Cemetery in Shanghai was once exposed to a three-cave tomb with an area of only 0.6 square meters for 457,800 yuan, which is converted to 760,000 yuan per square meter.
The price per square meter of Tomson Yipin, a luxury house in downtown Shanghai, is about 250,000 yuan, which is almost one-third of the price of the cemetery.
▲ From Sohu.com
According to data, the per capita disposable income of first- and second-tier cities in 2022 will be as high as 80,000 yuan.
▲ Data source: National Bureau of Statistics; Mapping: Data Observatory; Image source: NetEase
In other words, migrant workers in first- and second-tier cities have to go without food or drink for a whole year to afford a cemetery.
This data is taken as an average, and it is not excluded that a small number of people with very high annual incomes will pull up this data, and most of the people are just ordinary wage earners, if you take the median value, the per capita disposable income of many first- and second-tier cities is only six or seven thousand yuan.
Buying a cemetery would cost an average person several years of savings.
In many families today and in the future, two people will support four elderly people. If you want both parents to have a good home, you have to double the cost of buying a cemetery.
Because the price of cemeteries in these first- and second-tier cities is too high, some people either go to the third- and fourth-tier cities to buy cemeteries, causing the price of cemeteries in smaller cities to also rise; Some people even choose not to buy a cemetery and buy a house specifically to place their ashes.
CCTV once reported that someone found that his neighbor had sealed the window with red brick cement, and after careful questioning, he found that the house next door "did not live in the living", but a columbarium specially used to store ashes.
My neighbors are full of stored ashes, and I feel so mad when I think about it.
But if it weren't for helplessness, how many people would be willing to buy a house to put their ashes in, instead of letting their relatives be buried in peace?
Although housing prices have fallen now, buying a house is still a lot of pressure for ordinary people.
I already had to work hard to have a place to live, but this was not enough. The house of the living has struggled out, and we have to continue to fight for the house of the deceased.
The lives of ordinary people seem to be trapped in these boxy two compartments.
图 | pexels-nguyendesigner ©
Some people say that funerals are so expensive, it's good not to do it.
But it's also easier said than done. Influenced by the idea of "entering the ground for peace", many families have even been cremated and will be buried again.
Since ancient times, the Chinese have had the concept of respecting the deceased, and they have engraved filial piety in their bones. If the older generation insists on holding a funeral, how can the children refuse?
The original intention of saying goodbye to parents and relatives is of course good, but sometimes it will produce some bad results, that is, to prove that you are filial.
Chinese have always thought that the deceased is the greatest, and it seems that the more money they spend on funerals and aftermaths, and the more expensive things they buy, they are "filial piety" and "respect for ancestors", otherwise they are not filial.
Just like the young man who used a shoebox to hold his father's ashes, the reason for being scolded was "unfilial piety".
This is really a huge hat, and many people are afraid of taking on this crime, and it takes a lot of money to prove that they are "very filial" by slapping their swollen faces and becoming fat.
图 | pexels-quang-nguyen-vinh ©
There is a village in the southwest of Jilin Province that once held a very beautiful funeral. When a reporter from Hunan Daily went to interview, he found that the houses here were simple and dilapidated, but the funeral shed was built very luxuriously, the musicians on the stage continued to play mourning music, and the neighbors under the stage came to eat one after another, and the scene can be said to be very lively.
The bereaved family calculated an account for the reporter: each of the 8 musicians was 300 yuan per day, 2,700 yuan for setting up a stage, and the chef was 1,000 yuan a day, plus funeral expenses and banquet expenses, and the corpse that had been parked for 4 days cost more than 50,000 yuan in total.
Their family makes a living from farming, and their economic conditions are very ordinary, but even if they are reluctant to change the common household appliances at home, they still have to hold a beautiful funeral for the deceased, because "every family is like this, and they are afraid of the jokes of neighbors if they spend less" and "if they don't do a lot of things, they will be considered unfilial." ”
Not only this village, but many places have this idea when holding funerals. Even in some poverty alleviation villages, the gift money given for white things is as high as thousands of yuan. According to the data, the per capita disposable income of rural residents in mainland China in 2023 will be 21,691 yuan.
A year of hard farming, facing the loess with his back to the sky, earned 20,000 yuan. If you want to bury your loved ones in a grand way, this expenditure can be said to be far more than the income level.
In the process of buying funerals, because it is to spend money on the dead, people basically do not bargain, otherwise it will be difficult to cut the door. Some profiteers in the funeral industry are also aware of this, so they will ask for a lot of money and make a lot of money.
On the one hand, he was "kidnapped" by various funeral expenses, and on the other hand, in order to show his "filial piety", he had to be decent even if he had no money. "Filial piety" seems to have been exhausted, but in order to make this filial piety, it is common to spend money and borrow money to hold a funeral.
But in fact, no matter how beautiful the funeral was, the dead could not be seen.
In the face of such high funeral expenses, people can't help but think, what is causing the current situation of "not being able to die"?
The funeral industry makes huge profits and cheats in it; Land is limited, the price of cemeteries is getting higher and higher, these objective environments are not things that we ordinary people can change, we can only rely on the government to continuously improve.
Over the years, the No. 1 document of the central government has mentioned funerals, encouraging localities to use comprehensive service venues to reduce the related burden; The State Council has also issued a notice on the "Special Rectification Action Plan for Outstanding Problems in the National Funeral Field" to deal with the relevant problems of the domestic funeral industry.
From the Chinese government website
And for us ordinary people, what we can do is not to define "leaving with dignity" too materially.
Filial piety itself cannot be compared, let alone how much money you have spent to give filial piety a three, six, nine, etc.
Mr. Nan Huaijin, a master of Chinese studies, has such a sentence in "The Analects of Distinction": "Filial piety comes first, the original heart is not the original trace, and the original trace is poor and there is no filial son." ”
It means that among the good deeds in the world, filial piety is the most important moral behavior, but it depends on whether he wants to be filial in his heart, not just to let his parents have food and shelter. If it is filial piety just to let the parents eat and drink well, then there will be no filial sons in the poor families in the world.
When your parents are alive, going back to accompany them more often and paying attention to your parents' needs is much more important than whether you put the ashes in a shoebox or an urn that costs tens of thousands of dollars after death.
Of course, it is right to want to give yourself and your loved ones a decent parting, but "thick care and thin burial" should be something we should advocate.
After all, "I don't know how to live, but how do I know how to die?" "Life is always warm and cold, live your life steadfastly and without regrets, and don't care too much about what happens behind you.
Now there are more and more people who agree: "Don't be so troublesome, if I die, just find a place to bury me, or just scatter the ashes into the sea." ”
People come naked, and they don't have to be too cumbersome when they go. I have slowly tasted the good and bad of my life, even if it lives up to the trip I came to the world.
(Excerpted from the WeChat public account Guoguan)