"Mom! We miss you! Are you okay there? According to the custom, we should go to your spiritual seat today to make offerings for you, but due to special circumstances, the cemetery and cemetery are closed, so we entrust professionals to perform the sacrifices on your behalf, and hope that your mother will understand. We know that you are most worried about your father, you can rest assured, we will take good care of your father, we will do everything in the family well, you don't have to worry..."
In recent years, due to the needs of epidemic prevention and control, the "sacrifice sweeping" service has become the choice of many people. They will first write such a memorial message, and then hand it over to a professional to read aloud in front of the family's grave.
These professionals are known as "ritual masters".
What kind of job is "substitutionary sacrifice"? What else needs to be done besides reading the message? What are the fees? Will the future be the trend?
The reporter interviewed Yang Yongjin, a ceremonial liturgist, and a number of people in the funeral service industry on these issues.
To understand etiquette and customs, but also to have good physical strength
In recent years, during each Qingming period, Yang Yongjin has been very busy.
At 8 a.m., he and his colleagues drove to the cemetery. The reason why the two people are in a group is because one person is responsible for the "substitution" work, and the other person is responsible for taking pictures and recording videos.
After confirming the identity of the tomb owner with the client, they began to wipe the tombstone, clean the tomb area, place offerings, bow and recite the message.
There's a lot of emphasis on that.
"When reading the message, keep your head down and look down. When bowing, be in place at 90 degrees. Yang Yongjin said.
In addition, some customers also have the need to press tomb paper (meaning to repair the house for the ancestors) and worship the land temple (also known as "Xie Tu", for the well-being of the family).
Yang Yongjin (right) is cleaning up the tombstone, and colleagues are taking pictures to record. (Courtesy of the interviewee)
A qualified ritual master must not only receive training in modern funeral etiquette, but also be familiar with local customs. For example, Yang Yongjin was in Xiamen and was trained in the customs of southern Fujian.
When performing "substitutionary sacrifice" services, in addition to the standard of ceremonial movements, they should also dress uniformly, generally wearing a dark blue suit with white gloves.
In addition, the physical strength is also good. Because the car can only drive to the gate of the cemetery under the mountain, the ritual master has to climb up with offerings.
"One person can carry up to one sacrifice at a time, during the Qingming Period, you have to run more than 30 times a day, going back and forth up and down the mountain, there is almost no time for rest in the middle, and the number of WeChat steps will reach 20,000 or 30,000 steps at night."
・Different prices of the package, including the "sacrifice" service is different.
Before entering the funeral industry, Yang Yongjin worked in a large machinery manufacturing company in Xiamen, because of the company's attrition, coupled with his experience of sending off his grandmother, he came up with the idea of doing this line.
In 2016, he began to work on the farewell ceremony of the spiritual hall. In 2020, he was first exposed to the service of "substitutionary sacrifice".
Yang Yongjin admitted that he was resistant to the industry at the beginning, "basically did not sleep much in the first week", and then gradually adapted. With the increasing recognition and affirmation of his family, he also gradually felt the significance of this job.
"I originally thought that the whole mountain had been climbed today, too tired, and then I got feedback from my family: 'You are very hard, you are doing a good job, very in place', I am very happy in my heart." That's why I've always stuck to it and loved the industry. ”
Of course, there are inevitably some discussions, criticizing Yang Yongjin for not offering sweeps to his relatives during the Qingming Festival, but running to help others.
But fortunately, his family is very supportive of his work, thinking that "he is happy to do it". This also makes Yang Yongjin more confident, firmly believing that his work has helped many families and made up for their regret that they cannot come to the scene to worship in person.
"They can't say it directly, I'll help them say it." If my grandfather knew, he would be happy too. ”
Demand has skyrocketed in recent years
The year when Yang Yongjin began to do "substitute sacrifices" was the year when the demand for this line soared.
According to data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs, on the day of the Qingming Festival in 2020, about 8,500 public welfare collective "sacrifice" services were held across the country, and about 220,000 individual "sacrifice" services were completed.
Manager Guo of a funeral service company in Xiamen provided the following set of data in an interview with reporters:
In 2019, there are only about 10 customers who choose the "substitute sacrifice" service, basically overseas Chinese. In 2020, it will increase to more than 1,000, mainly local citizens affected by the epidemic. As of April 2 this year, the number of appointments has reached more than 800.
When it comes to the reasons for the popularity of "substitute sacrifices", Chen Shaoying, manager of the above-mentioned funeral service company, believes that it is largely because of the impact of the epidemic. During the Qingming Festival in 2021, the epidemic situation in Xiamen was controlled, and some parks did not restrict on-site sacrifice sweeping, and only more than 60 people made reservations for "substitute sacrifices" that year.
She believes that if you can go to the scene to perform the ceremony, everyone is still more willing to go by themselves.
"Qingming Festival is actually a day for family reunions. They have too many things in their hearts that they want to say to their ancestors, but because of the epidemic, they can't come back, so they can only entrust us to read these memorial messages to their ancestors to make up for their inner regrets. ”
·“ Substitute Sacrifice" infographic. (Source: Xinhua News Agency)
As a substitute ceremonial master, Yang Yongjin felt this more deeply.
He has been touched by the messages written by his family many times. The most impressive person is a Shanghai aunt, because of the epidemic, coupled with the inconvenience of getting older, she has entrusted him to perform the sacrifice for three consecutive years. Every year, the aunt's message is different, and he can feel the simple friendship from it.
Once, my aunt mentioned that "Mom and Dad like to drink a bowl of hot porridge in the morning with a little dried radish" and asked him if he could help prepare some when he "sacrificed". Although this was not included in the service, he did it anyway.
Yang Yongjin said that if customers have some special requirements, as long as they are within their own capabilities, they will try to complete them for each other.
Sometimes he doesn't even have to wait for the client to say — for example, if you're only asked to record a 15-second video, he usually records it a little longer so that the family can see or hear it better."
Yang Yongjin (right) performs the "substitutionary sacrifice" service. (Courtesy of the interviewee)
Chen Shaoying also said that different customers may have slightly different requirements for the sacrifice sweep.
"Some may ask to read the message in Hokkien dialect, which we will generally satisfy. Some may ask us to send them tributes as a blessing from our elders, and we will do the same. But now the epidemic, this situation is also very rare. ”
Be wary of the chaos of "substitutionary sacrifices"
"Substitutionary sacrifices" are nothing new.
As early as the beginning of 2009, the hit movie "Crazy Racing" brought the line of "substitute sacrifice" to people's eyes. In the film, Xu Zheng plays a tomb salesman and vigorously sells the "Eighteen Phases" substitute sacrifice service to Geng Hao, played by Huang Bo.
In "Crazy Racing", the tomb salesman played by Xu Zheng frantically sells the "substitute sacrifice" service.
In the years that followed, there was a constant debate about "substitutionary" services.
The focus of the controversy is whether the sacrifice sweep can find someone to replace it, and whether it is meaningless not to do it yourself.
In 2012, someone launched an online vote on this, and as a result, 92% of netizens opposed the "substitutionary sacrifice" service, believing that this was a blasphemy against the deceased and a clear price tag for filial piety. "To put it mildly, it's not a fool's errand."
But some people feel that there is no need to be so harsh, and in the case of the increasingly frequent movement of people and more and more people becoming strangers, it should provide a way to mourn for those who cannot return to their hometowns and visit the graves in other places.
However, even those who do not resent "substitutionary sacrifice" will be discouraged by this service due to industry chaos. At that time, as a new thing, "substitution sacrifice" lacked strong market supervision, and the industry threshold was low, and the quality of practitioners was uneven. "Sky-high crying", fraud, and farce-provoking news are endless.
In those years, the development prospects of the "generation sacrifice" industry were worrying.
The Other Shore Flower APP, which once claimed to cover 20 provinces across the country and cooperate with 1520 cemeteries, ended the service in 2018 and removed the APP. The reporter recently contacted the company's current head Wang Yan, who bluntly said that it was "because it is not good to conduct business."
The introduction page of the other side flower APP.
In recent years, affected by the epidemic, the "substitute sacrifice" industry, which has fallen into a cold winter, has gradually picked up.
But the chaos of sacrifice and sweeping still exists.
Some merchants or individuals have launched "sacrifice on behalf of" services in the form of prostrating on the internet platform, crying on behalf of the generation, and the price ranges from a few hundred yuan to thousands of yuan, and can even be broadcast live. Some people have questioned that such a high fee is contrary to public order and good customs.
In this process, there are also false generations of burning, false generations of sweeping phenomenon. After purchasing the "dai burn" service worth 200 yuan online, some consumers received several live videos sent by merchants, but found that the video was taken a month ago.
Near the Qingming Dynasty, many media have issued articles reminding us that we must be vigilant against "sky-high sacrifices" and fake "sacrifices", and we must also be vigilant against new telecommunications network frauds such as luring money transfers in the name of "sacrifices". Relevant institutions should strengthen supervision and regulate the "sacrifice" industry.
Regarding the current chaos of "substitutionary sacrifice", Yang Yongjin said that he did not agree with "reflecting filial piety through the price of substitutionary sacrifice". If a family member asks him to order a lot of offerings, he will also remind him.
At present, the regular "substitutionary" services are priced transparently, and the family members can choose independently. At the same time, Yang Yongjin will also inform customers that many cemeteries now have free "substitute sacrifice" services including cemetery cleaning and collective flower delivery.
As for the service content of "crying on behalf of us and burning paper money on behalf of" that does not meet the requirements of civilized sacrifice, he will not provide it.
Yang Yongjin cleaning up the cemetery area. (Courtesy of the interviewee)
Chen Shaoying said that the "substitute sacrifice" service provided by their company is still of a public welfare nature to a large extent, "although the amount is large now, it only accounts for a small part of the company's business."
When talking about the future development of the "substitute sacrifice" industry, she said, "The 'substitute sacrifice' service will definitely continue to exist in the future, but it will not necessarily have such a large scale as it is now, and it may still be dominated by people who are overseas or cannot come back from other places." ”
Regardless of the size of the industry, the purpose of the truly meaningful "substitutionary sacrifice" is unchanged, that is: to let the deceased rest in peace, to let the living comfort, to ferry thoughts, and to pass on love.
Source: Global People Magazine
Editor of Shandong Business Daily And Leopard News Network Liu Qingying