A TOTAL of 535 people from 115 families took a trip to attend the sea burial ceremony for 202 dead relatives. On March 22, they consigned 165 boxes of human ashes to the sea.

　　The city has now become the country's leading sea burial centre, according to the Shanghai Youth Daily.

　　Sea burial is an environment-friendly funeral practice, which emerged in 1991 in Shanghai. Sources with the East China Sea Branch of the State Oceanographic Bureau said sea burials, with around 1.4 kilograms of ashes for each dead person, will do "negligible harm" to the local marine environment.

　　Since sea burial first appeared in the city in 1991, Shanghai has seen 58 sea burials and over 7,900 boxes of ashes have been consigned to the sea.

　　Besides sea burials, Shanghai has also introduced tree burials, grass burials and wall burials.

　　By the end of last December, over 850 boxes of ashes had been buried under trees, 239 boxes in grassland and wall burials accounted for 27,455 cases.

　　The city, with a population of more than 16 million, sees around 100,000 people die every year.

　　"If the dead are buried conventionally, the city will lose at least 150,000 square metres of land every year," said Gu Yuesheng from the Funeral and Interment Department of the Shanghai Bureau of Civil Affairs.

　　But according to the Chinese tradition, the dead would be at ease only after being buried in the ground. So in recent years, the burial business has surged in some rural districts such as Qingpu, Jinshan and Jiading. Some Shanghainese even purchased tombs in the neighbouring city of Suzhou because it was thought to be a good place to be interred.