WORDS AND PHOTOS BY SARA GARCIA ANDERSSON AND PATRICK GLEN
A disturbed crypt in a village near Xianyang, Shaanxi.Inside there was a distinct odor. It was like a butcher shop on a hot day mixed with earth and with the unavoidable taint that China seems to put on everything.The grave had been excavated from the front with the earthen opening of the crypt exposed, enough for somebody to pull out a corpse and large enough for us to peer inside. There were other graves that had been dug up, leaving holes seven or eight foot deep. Not every grave had been robbed. Some stood undisturbed on the hillside with burnt incense scattered before them on charred patches of ground.Why were we jumping into dug-up graves in Northern China? Well, we were looking for proof of bodysnatching because we’d heard rumours of a black market trade in stolen corpses to meet the demand from the Chinese tradition of “ghost weddings," which are like arranged marriages for the deceased.The afterlife is richly embedded in the Chinese imagination, and a traditional family life remains important after death. The Chinese idea of the afterworld is much more everyday than other conceptions of paradise and damnation. Therefore, finding a spouse for the single and dead is vital.Elements of this can be found as far back as the Han dynasty (the emperors were sometimes buried with live wives and concubines) and although they were abolished during good old Mao’s cultural revolution, ghost weddings are making a comeback. We thought the concept sounded incredibly romantic, so we set off from Beijing West train station to Shaanxi province where, allegedly, body-snatching was taking place in the search for brides for lonely male Chinese corpses.The train was eight hours late due to the catastrophic flooding that had been enveloping much of China during our stay. On board we met some young Chinese guys, so we tried to steer the conversation towards ghost weddings. One, who introduced himself as Marlboro (like his favourite cigarettes), said he had heard of the custom, but insisted that it had not happened in the last 200 years. With their NBA apparel and stilted American-English, they represented to us the new bourgeois China: barely tuned into the masses of Chinese people and inclined to pay little attention to traditional practices. Marlboro’s ignorance was illuminated 12 hours later as we found ourselves jumping into dug-up graves like hyperactive goths.Outside the dead miner’s funeral.For a sum equivalent to £10 we hired a taxi for the day. The driver, named Ma, happily agreed to take us to a graveyard, exclaiming, “Once you’ve seen it you’ll never forget it.” Either something was lost in translation, or he was making a mischievous attempt to keep us on the tourist route. After an hour’s drive, we arrived at the state-sanctioned museum that accompanied the tomb of a Han dynasty emperor. Not until we had dispensed with politeness and demanded to be taken to a “peasant graveyard” did Ma reluctantly set off to the outskirts of his home town.He took us to a small industrial town called Xi’anyuang, turned down a dirt road and ushered us into the graveyard. “You’ve got ten minutes,” Ma said and sat back in the driver’s seat. The graveyard was on a hillside, languishing beneath a chemical works, overgrown and crowded with cracked gravestones. He had said it was disused, but we immediately found graves as recent as 2009. Pressured by time, we ran around looking for signs of bodysnatching. And then Sara found it: by almost falling in a shoddily exhumed grave. Any bodies that had been there were absent, replaced by pioneering shrubs and thorns. We counted eight dug-up graves in total, seemingly recent. It was obvious whoever had done this was in a hurry as it was not a delicately executed task. Before we could explore further, Ma thumped his horn and called us back. He was anxious and adamant that we had to leave straight away. Later, we found out that two men had been caught grave-robbing here in 2006, with the intention of providing brides and grooms for ghost weddings.Up to this point, Ma had been dismissive of ghost weddings, but after bribing him with cigarettes he finally talked. He told us: “If there are no fresh ones, they will dig them up.” We asked who “they” were and he told us it was the Chinese mafia, who had made regular visits, stealing bodies by night to avoid the police. He was anxious not to cross the mafia and had been extremely uncomfortable on the graveside road, exposed as it was to the houses below. Yet, in some ways he sympathised with their work.“It’s a good business, good money, they get 30,000 yuan per body.” But, he was quick to add, ghost weddings had been banned in 2007 and the body snatching had declined ever since. He seemed to think this was a good thing and added that he thought digging up bodies was “sick”.Coffin makers in the Chemical District of Mine Number 4, near Datong, Shanxi.Then, with a glint of ghoulish relish in his eyes, he told us of an enterprising farmer from Shaanxi province who was found guilty of killing women to supply brides for ghost weddings. Kidnapping and trafficking young women for brides is not unheard of in China. However, this farmer found out he could make five times the profit if the brides were dead. While we scratched our heads and tried to work out why, Ma told us to travel north to Shanxi so we could find out for ourselves. And so we did.Two days later we arrived in Datong, the coal-mining capital of Northern China. Near the Loess plateau, it’s surrounded by jagged mountains, but Datong is flat and choked by heavy traffic. It’s suffused with a thick smog that’s a perpetual sulphur-yellow, and suffocated by motes of coal dust suspended in the breeze. We were dubious whether we would find ghost weddings in the modernist concrete blocks and rickety mines, but it seemed that the danger and urban anomie created a crucible for traditions such as ghost weddings. Each year the city has grown by countless millions destined for the coal mines, putting extreme strain on the ability to even provide constant running water.“I know an expert on Taoism,” our guide Liu said between slurps of Coke. “He is the Master of Mourning.” And so he called his friend Fuguo, a taxi driver and local personality, who he said would take us to meet the Master. Liu was vague in his description of where we were going, but so far we had been lucky with taxi drivers, so we ignored our concerns, eventually stopping in a village called Coal Mine Number 4, a dirty mining town.Fuguo then made a phone call and soon we were being ushered past a goat into a back alley decorated with colourful paper flowers. There a crowd huddled around three musicians in front of a gaudy decorative altar—we had arrived at a wake. But we were uninvited. As an argument broke out in Chinese, we felt unbelievably awkward. However, an offering of cigarettes calmed the tension and we were invited to join in with the ceremony which was being led by the Master of Mourning himself. Liu whispered that the Master was still to find a bride for the young man who had been killed in a mining accident, and so the next day the dead miner was being put in a temporary grave until a suitable match was found.Space was made and we sat down. Musicians struck up a cacophony of eerie mourning sounds that lurched into an intense two-string Chinese violin-led drone. On the altar, an ornate meal had been set down, ringed by offerings of cigarettes, CDs, alcohol and even a toy paper Mercedes. This was a modern version of the sacrificial offerings buried in the imperial tombs. Today, neatly stacked upon the supermarket shelves, paper gifts from kitchenware to Gucci accessories can be bought, then burnt or entombed for use in the afterlife. The brother of the dead guy took out a wad of cash and set it on fire. Liu leaned in to avoid embarrassment and explained it was paper money minted by the non-existent Bank of Hell, and said that, “If you go to hell, or heaven, you need money to bribe the Emperor—just like in life.”Ji, matchmaker and purveyor of caustic cigarettes.We asked our guide if we could talk more with the Master, an angry-looking fellow with a wiry build and a teak-tinged leather complexion. He agreed to meet us after the wake and gave us directions to a street where he had a business meeting and asked us to wait for his call.We got back in our car, drove for a bit, pulled up, and Liu announced cheerfully that, “You have now arrived at Death Street.” Every shop offered either paper flowers, coffins or gravestones and, we were advised, can help you find a corpse for your ghost wedding. We met one shop owner called Ji who told us: “When someone comes to my shop, I take the deceased’s details and then, if necessary, try to find a match. I have had this shop for 22 years and business is good.”He then revealed he had a recently deceased 33-year-old woman chilled in a mortuary and was waiting for a suitable match to come along. He expected to make around 30,000 yuan from her. China’s policy of one child per family makes the price of dead brides high, he said, and then he beckoned the shopkeepers from across the street and they laughed as he explained what we were talking about. They lit cigarettes and joined in on the conversation and we realised that we were with a cartel of matchmakers, well used to trading in the dead. They assured us that they didn’t get much from their dealings but a pleased family would give them a small token of gratitude. How else could 100-odd funeral shops sustain themselves on a single street? We were beginning to feel more creeped-out the more we thought about everything and then the Master finally called Fuguo on his phone. Now he did not want to meet us on Death Street. Instead, he invited us for cigarettes and tea at his house and so we drove to his village.Boxes of paper wedding gifts laid out for the dead, including Gucci sunglasses, BlackBerrys, and razors.As we entered his modest house he beckoned us onto his bed, unbuttoned his shirt and turned on an asthmatic fan. He excused his tiredness—it was the most humid day of his 29 years as a funeral director—and explained that he had been up since before sunrise to tend to the dead miner. We asked him if there was going to be a ghost wedding. “Of course,” he snapped with ironical arrogance. “He was 30 and unmarried. His parents cannot bury him in the family tomb until he is found a suitable [dead] wife, so in the meantime the body is put in a cave. We will do that tomorrow.“Some people stay in the cave for maybe ten to 20 years. It is important that it is a good match and it is not always easy,” he said. In Taoism, he clarified, there are several criteria that contribute to a good match. These include, foremost, the astrological compatibility according to the I’Ching, but also age and cause of death. Death from illness is ideal, whereas accidental death and suicide carry stigmas or bad luck.There are also lots of benefits from a ghost wedding. The bride’s family is usually in a good bargaining position. Poorer families can either get a dowry or maybe even marry into a family of higher social standing. But most people arrange ghost weddings out of duty to their deceased relative to ensure a peaceful afterlife.The wedding ceremony is carried out as normal, apart from the minor caveat that the betrothed are struck not with love or lust, but rigor mortis. After the bride and groom are placed in the groom’s family crypt, the new in-laws exchange gifts and money, paying the master and matchmaker their shares.The organised business and inevitable transactions of money make it hard to tell if today’s ghost weddings are a faithful renewal of ancient traditions or another skewed expression of modern China. Sensing we were slightly disapproving toward the financial aspect, the Master looked up and said gravely, “It helps the family grieve and come to terms with the death of a child.”Lighting another cigarette, he frowned and gestured towards a bale of “hell money” lying in a pile on the floor, then sighed. “Everybody has to make a living.”

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