Zhang Yu

JeniZhang13@163.com

IN the warm spring sunshine, ships carrying the ashes of over 100 deceased people braved the winds and waves as they sailed into the Dapeng sea area yesterday to hold Shenzhen’s 49th mass sea burial.

This year’s sea burial will last three days and see the ashes of 442 deceased people, including eight body and organ donors, scattered into the waters off Dapeng Bay with flower petals.

A total of 926 of the deceased people’s family members are expected to attend the sea burial.

As the ships arrived at the designated burial places after a 20-minute voyage, each family took turns standing beside metal funnels that were hung from the sides of the vessels and emptied their urns while bidding farewell to their deceased loved ones.

A girl named Ruirui was aboard for the sea burial. She came all the way to Shenzhen from Shandong Province while her father traveled from Guizhou Province.

Ruirui’s mother, named Li Xiaohong, donated her body to her daughter’s alma mater, Shenzhen University, in 2022, in the hopes of providing learning resources to the school’s medical students and contributing to the country’s medical research.

“My mother had said she wanted a sea burial after she passed away. We came here to fulfill her final wishes,” said Ruirui.

A woman surnamed Yin said her last goodbye to her late mother through the sea burial.

“I hope my mother can find her final resting place in the sea. As she likes traveling, the waves can take her to different places,” Yin told Shenzhen Daily, adding that it was her mother’s wish to have a sea burial.

According to the city’s civil affairs bureau, Shenzhen is among the first cities in China to promote sea burials and has been organizing free sea burials since 1998.

As of yesterday, the ashes of 38,916 deceased people had been dispersed into the sea under the bureau’s organization, sparing a significant portion of the city’s land and easing the financial burden on the general public.