China marks Qingming Festival, eco-friendly tomb sweeping gaining ground

STORY: China marks Qingming Festival, eco-friendly tomb sweeping gaining ground DATELINE: April 5, 2023 LENGTH: 00:01:55 LOCATION: Beijing CATEGORY: SOCIETY SHOTLIST: 1. various of people paying tributes to the deceased in China 2. SOUNDBITE 1 (Chinese): SUN LITAO, Shenyang Bureau of Civil Affairs 3. SOUNDBITE 2 (Chinese): MA PENGJU, Manager of a cemetery in Changchun STORYLINE: Qingming Festival, or Tomb-Sweeping Day, falls on Wednesday this year. It's a traditional Chinese festival that pays tribute to the deceased and is a time for people to worship their ancestors. In recent years, eco-friendly tomb sweeping and green burials have gained popularity in China. Funerals are of great importance in China. The scale of funerals and the size of tombs were once used as standards to evaluate the filial piety of the deceased's descendants. However, lawn burials, tree burials, and sea burials are more common, which involve less land use and fewer non-degradable materials. In north China's coastal city of Dal