Digital cemeteries

2023: Digital cemeteries appear in China

In mid-August 2023, it became known that digital cemeteries appeared in China. The idea is to replace traditional graves with small urn bays with ashes and tombstones with screens displaying photos and videos of the deceased.

Traditional funerals in China, according to a 2020 report by Sun Life Financial Inc, cost an average of $5,555, which corresponds to about 45% of the annual salary of ordinary residents. Rapid urbanization and an aging population lead to a shortage of conventional burial sites, which are very expensive. To solve this Beijing problem, it offers a more financially economical alternative - digital graves.

Digital cemeteries appear in China

A room with compartments for storing the ashes of the deceased appeared at the Beijing cemetery of Taijiyu. Such cells are equipped with displays on which any information about the deceased can be displayed. The goal is to bring all of a person's "digital footprints" together in one place, creating an interactive memoir. The materials on display are said to be able to help future generations understand who the deceased was during his lifetime.

On average, digital funerals in Taijiyu Cemetery cost a third of the amount residents spend on organizing traditional funerals. Since the beginning of 2023, more than 500 digital graves have been sold in Beijing from around 7,000 available locations.

Most people dying in China are cremated, but some residents still buy a plot in the cemetery to bury the ashes underground as a mark of respect. At the same time, the burial of bodies is prohibited in most parts of the country for reasons of saving land. China with a population of 1.4 billion people leads the world in demand for ritual services: the size of the corresponding market in 2020 was 258 billion yuan (approximately $35.44 billion at the exchange rate as of August 24, 2023).^[1]

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