Cemeteries putting festival tributes online
Ahead of Qingming Festival on April 4, cemeteries in Shanghai have launched online platforms to promote new ways to pay tribute and control the number of visitors.
Fushouyuan Cemetery has put family and celebrity memorials online.
The family memorial enables users to create a memorial venue of their own family with photos and memoirs of their ancestors.
Family members are able to light candles, lay flowers, edit biographical details of their relatives, upload photos and videos, and offer virtual sacrifices and commemorative items via the platform.
It allows families to learn about the origins and experiences of their ancestors as well, said Yu Hao who is charge of the platform.
Yu said the cemetery would launch other services such as photo restoration, micro films and mailboxes to record the life and experiences of the deceased for their descendants to commemorate them.
Joey Yang, a Shanghai resident who works in Sydney, said he paid for an online tribute to his grandparents during last year's Qingming Festival and dongzhi, or Winter Solstice.
“COVID-19 makes me unable to be back and the online tribute provides a good option," he said.
"The online memorial will also leave a precious legacy for descendants to learn their families' roots," Yang added.
Based on the New Fourth Army Square at the cemetery, the online celebrity platform features the life experiences, videos and photos of military leaders such as Ye Ting (1896-1946), a military strategist and the first commander of the New Fourth Army, Chen Yi (1901-1972), Shanghai's first mayor and also a commander of the New Fourth Army, and General Su Yu (1907-1984).
The square built in 2005 is a "red" tourism base in Shanghai.
Some other cemeteries including Binhaiguyuan and Songhe have launched similar services.
It is estimated that the city's 54 cemeteries and columbariums will receive almost 4.5 million visits during a 10-day period, bringing an extra 690,000 vehicles onto city streets, according to the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau.
More than 11,200 urns are expected to be interred during the festival.
The five peak days are March 27-28 and April 3-5 when reservation is required.