As the Qingming Festival approaches this Sunday, the limited cemetery resources in cities are facing even more pressing demands driven by rapid urbanization. In the face of expensive traditional graves, some families are taking alternative paths, choosing to place the ashes of their deceased loved ones in vacant high-rise buildings, which have thus been named ash apartments. However, China is currently taking active measures to crack down on this phenomenon and has officially enacted a new law this Tuesday to completely prohibit this practice.

The prevalence of this alternative solution is not accidental. Against the backdrop of a rapidly aging population and the collapse of the real estate bubble, residential apartments have shown greater practical value in placing the remains of loved ones compared to traditional graves. A very intuitive comparison is that residential land in China can enjoy government-provided usage rights for up to 70 years, while the rental period for graves is only a short 20 years.

In response to this special social phenomenon, doctoral student Wu Xinyi from the University of California, Irvine, wrote a research report titled 'The Space of the Deceased.' In her report, she profoundly points out that when a space gradually loses its original residential attributes, people naturally assign it a new meaning. For many families, properly storing the ashes of their loved ones has become the best embodiment of this new value.