The Sale Of Stolen Corpses For 'Ghost Marriages' Is A Bad Sign For Chinese Bachelors
Chinese newspaper Xian Evening News reports that the crew made as much as 240,000 yuan ($39,000) for selling 10 corpses to the family of men who had died single.
The gang have been sentenced to between 28 and 32 months for their crimes.
So-called "ghost marriages" have traditionally been arranged by the family of a male when the man dies too young to find a wife. Usually the family of the deceased woman agrees to have the female buried with the man for an agreed-upon fee. According to a heavily-cited Wikipedia page on the subject, females are sometimes "ghost married" in a bid to provide a deceased daughter with a patrilineage.
What's unusual about this case is that the corpses were dug up without permission by criminals with an entrepreneurial bent. Additionally, it appears to have been lucrative — it's worth noting that the average wage in Shaanxi province in 2011 was 39043 yuan a year, less than $6,500.
There's an uncomfortable demographic shift that might be making criminal projects like this economically feasible. While much of China's media might be talking about "leftover women" — that is women over the age of 27 who are still single — a far bigger problem may well be that of the leftover men, aka the "bare branches".
Some reports suggest that due to a combination of China's one child policy and a traditional preference for sons, China may be looking at 12 to 15 percent of its male population being unable to find a wife. That means more and more Chinese men dying bachelors, and perhaps more and more families trying to arrange "ghost marriages".