Tombs to be Removed from Three Gorges Reservoir AreaChinese government is helping the resettled residents to remove the remains of their kinship from the Three Gorges reservoir area to comfort their feelings with the dead.Local governments under Chongqing City have enlisted the remain removal project into the Plan for Resettlement in the Rural Areas and they have allocated special fund for the program. The super dam of the Three Gorges Project will be 1,983 meters long and 185 meters in crest elevation. The normal water storage depth will be 175 meters till 2009 when the construction of the dam is completed. The ascending water of the Yangtze River in the coming years will submerge more than 1,100 villages and townships. The resettlement of residents and removal of the remains of the residents' kinship are concerned with thousands of households in the rural areas where there is a long-existing custom to bury dead under the ground and hold memorial ceremony for the soul of the dead. Zheng Changsheng, a farmer at Dachang Town, recently removed the remains of his mother and elder sister from the area to be inundated. Dachang Town with more than 1,700 years of history is noted for its ancient buildings of the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911) as well as for exquisitely-decorated tombs. The town has been resettled on another hill with ancient buildings and homes of the residents reconstructed. There are about 1.07 million residents to be resettled and there are at least more than 10,000 tombs below the inundate line. According to government official in charge of the resettlement work in Wanzhou City, the government will compensate the resettled residents more than 10 million yuan on their removal of the remains of their kinship. Zheng, who lost his mother at age of 11, said that he could not fall asleep in the evening prior to the day for removal of his mother's remains. "My mother's soul will be at ease if she could know that my life will be greatly improved after the Three Gorges Project completes," Zheng said. Before the removal of remains started, Zheng and his family made a sacrifice rite to the tomb that to be inundated in the next few years. Now Zheng's mother and sister's remains are buried on the back hill of his new house at reconstructed Dachang Town. Gan Yuping, Vice-Mayor of Chongqing City, said removing remains of the dead is a special policy adopted by the state in the resettlement work in the Three Gorges areas. The remains to be removed should be deeply buried in line with the principle of not occupying arable land. Now the Chinese government is advocating cremation all over the country and the policy is winning more and more supports from the villagers in the Three Gorges area. Most of the resettled residents cremated the remains of their kinship or ancestors and then re-buried the ashes. As for those graves that no one claims, the government will arrange people to manage the cremation before the removal. Wanzhou City has more than 80 percent of the resettled population of the Three Gorges area. Ouyang Zuhui, Director of Resettlement Bureau of the city, said some people placed the ash of the remains of their kinship or ancestors in funeral home, some of them deeply buried the remains in the ground near their new houses and some have the remains buried in cemetery. Meanwhile, Wanzhou City Civil Affairs Bureau has allocated a special fund to build a new cemetery to hold 470 martyrs' tombs which will be inundate in the coming years. |
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