Controversial

Many migrants who work far from their hometowns don’t have time to get back home to mourn their dead at the tomb-sweeping holiday. That reality has triggered new commercial services, where people can hire strangers to sweep tombs on their behalf and watch the service via live streaming. Gao Wei, a folklore expert at the China Folklore Society, praised the innovation, since the new tomb-sweeping service presses traditional funerary and interment customs to reform, while opponents argued that outsourcing tomb-sweeping does not honor one’s ancestors. But there is no doubt that these commercial tomb-sweeping services do meet the needs of a large number of young people working or living in other cities, said Ran Yu, a media commentator and writer, and at present it is too early to judge this activity because there must be a process before recognizing it as the mainstream.