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'Can't afford to die': China embraces eco burials as plot prices outstrip housing

Desire to honour ancestors sees some families buy an apartment to house cremated remains
Tombs are prepared in Fuzhou, Fujian province, ahead of China’s qingming jie, or tomb-sweeping festival, on Friday. Photograph: China News Service/VCG via Getty Images

This week, seven families laid the remains of their loved ones to rest in the Tianshou cemetery on the outskirts of Beijing. But these were burials with a difference. The families rode in golf carts made to look like hearses and scattered flower petals over a small plot of grass where biodegradable jars containing the ashes of their relatives were buried.

The area reserved for the green burials can fit more 2,000 of the jars, buried in layers in the

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