Taishan municipal authorities claim twenty shuttered columbarium flats are private prayer altars following neighborhood protests
台山当局在业主抗议后声称二十余间涉“骨灰房”住宅仅为私人供奉佛堂
- The Haiyan Town People's Government in Taishan dispatched police after dozens of homeowners protested the clandestine conversion of more than twenty ground-floor commercial and residential units into private columbarium vaults. 台山市海宴镇人民政府在数十名业主抗议二十多间底层商铺和住宅被暗中改建为私人骨灰存放场所后，派出警力介入维稳。
- Township authorities issued a midnight bulletin asserting inspectors found only private household Buddha statues, contradicting neighbor reports of midnight urn evacuations and ceremonial incense burning. 镇政府发布深夜通报称排查仅发现家庭自用佛像，这一结论与邻居反映的深夜转移骨灰盒及烧香祭拜情况严重矛盾。
- The controversy exposes how municipal governments reclassify unregulated mortuary conversions as harmless prayer spaces to shield falling property values and protect lucrative state-run cemetery monopolies. 该争议揭示出地方当局如何通过将违规殡葬改造定性为无害的祈福空间，以掩盖暴跌的房价，并保护利润丰厚的国营公墓垄断体系。
The Haiyan Town People’s Government in Taishan dispatched police squads to contain dozens of protesting homeowners on October 21 after residents uncovered more than twenty ground-floor retail units renovated into illicit commercial columbarium tombs. The discovery sparked immediate panic. In an emergency circular broadcast by CCTV News, town officials claimed a joint task force found no cremation urns or ritual residue, insisting owners merely installed personal Buddha figures inside the permanently shuttered suites.
The midnight circular relies on textbook pretextual cloaking and performative denial: municipal administrators reclassified clandestine mortuary businesses as private devotional spaces to avoid enforcing zoning laws that would crater regional property values. The evasion follows a familiar script. Across Tianjin, Jiangsu, and the Pearl River Delta, soaring cemetery monopolies charging up to three hundred thousand yuan for twenty-year burial plots have driven urban families to purchase cheap coastal flats as permanent family shrines.
Cyberspace authorities immediately throttled social discussion, purging footage of midnight urn removals and locking comment sections across Sina and NetEase into curated mode. The state prioritizes stability over safety. By treating citizen grievances as public order violations, local authorities protect predatory state cemetery profits while forcing ordinary homeowners to share residential corridors with the unacknowledged dead.
台山市海宴镇人民政府于10月21日派出警力弹压数十名聚集抗议的业主。此前，居民发现有二十余间一层临街单元被改建为非法商业“骨灰房”。这一发现迅速引发恐慌。在央视新闻报道的紧急通报中，镇政府官员声称联合工作组未发现骨灰盒或祭祀痕迹，坚称业主仅是在常年紧锁的房间内安放了个人佛像。
这份深夜通报展现了教科书式的“借口掩饰”与“表演式否认”：地方官僚将隐秘的殡葬经营活动重新定性为私人祈福空间，以此规避执行规划法规，防止区域房价进一步崩盘。这一套路早已屡见不鲜。从天津、江苏到珠三角，公墓垄断机构对二十年墓地收取高达三十万元的天价费用，迫使大量城市家庭涌向低价沿海住宅，将其改建为家族长久神龛。
网信部门随即对网络讨论展开“信息遏制”，清理深夜转移骨灰盒的现场视频，并将新浪、网易等平台的评论区悉数锁入精选模式。当局显然将维稳置于公共安全之上。地方当局通过将民众诉求定性为扰乱公共秩序行为，不仅庇护了掠夺性的国营公墓暴利，更迫使普通业主不得不与不可言说的死者共处同一楼道。
On Weibo, Douyin, and NetEase, the township's swift denial was met with sardonic disbelief and dark humor. Commenters questioned how more than twenty ground-floor retail units in a sleepy seaside complex could simultaneously be purchased by outside buyers solely to house 'personal living room Buddha statues' (*家庭自用佛像*). Viral videos showed homeowners shouting 'My neighbors are not alive!' (*我的邻居不是活人*) before police intervened to break up the gathering. Netizens widely mocked the official finding as a pre-arranged whitewash, noting that authorities gave property owners three days after Chongyang Festival complaints to secretly clear the urns under cover of night. Some commenters posted gallows humor about the housing market collapse, observing that 'at least dead neighbors don't blast square-dancing music or stomp overhead' (*起码没有噪音扰民*), while others lamented that soaring cemetery plot prices have made it cheaper to buy a commercial apartment for the dead than a cemetery plot for the living.
在微博、抖音和网易上，镇政府的迅速否认招致了网民的辛辣讽刺与黑色幽默。评论质疑，一个偏远沿海小区内怎么会有二十余间底层商铺同时被外地买家购入且仅用于安放“家庭自用佛像”。热传视频显示，业主在警方介入驱散人群前高喊“我的邻居不是活人！”网民普遍嘲讽官方调查结果是一场预先排定的洗白，指出当局在重阳节接到投诉后给了业主三天时间在夜色掩护下秘密清空骨灰盒。部分评论借此对楼市崩盘大发地狱笑话，调侃“起码没有噪音扰民，不会跳广场舞或在楼上跺脚”；另有网民感叹公墓价格飞涨，致使“给死人买套商品房竟比给活人买墓地还便宜”。
Following the Haiyan town government's midnight dispatch on October 22, cyberspace monitors clamped down on viral discussion across major platforms. Sina Weibo throttled the trending hashtag 'Taishan Residential Complex Columbarium Flats' (*台山屋苑现多间骨灰房*), dropping it from municipal and provincial search recommendations. Secondary reporting by outlets such as NetEase News was rapidly scrubbed and 404ed, while reposts on Sina Finance and Douyin had their comment sections locked into 'curated comments' (*评论精选*) mode. Cyberspace administrators scrubbed homeowner videos documenting nighttime urn removals and police crowd dispersal, preventing coordinated outrage over unregulated funeral real estate from spreading across Guangdong province.
在海宴镇政府于10月22日发布深夜通报后，网信部门迅速对各大平台上的发酵舆情展开钳制。新浪微博对热门话题“台山屋苑现多间骨灰房”实施限流，将其从市级和省级搜索推荐中撤下。网易新闻等媒体的跟进报道被迅速下架屏蔽（404），而新浪财经和抖音上的转发内容评论区则被开启“评论精选”模式。网络监管部门清理了业主记录深夜转移骨灰盒及警方现场维稳的视频，防止公众对违规殡葬地产的集体愤怒在广东省内进一步蔓延。
Under China's Civil Code and Regulations on Funeral and Interment Control (*殡葬管理条例*), residential properties cannot be legally converted into commercial columbaria or collective mortuary facilities without specialized land-use approval from civil affairs and planning authorities. However, skyrocketing burial costs in megacities like Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong (where cemetery plots often exceed 200,000 to 300,000 RMB for a twenty-year lease with recurring maintenance fees) have created a nationwide boom in 'columbarium flats' (*骨灰房*). Buyers exploit depressed real estate markets in lower-tier coastal towns like Taishan, where 70-year residential properties cost as little as 100,000 RMB, offering cheaper and more permanent storage for ancestral remains. Local authorities routinely look the other way until neighbor protests erupt, fearing that formal crackdowns will exacerbate property market defaults and expose systemic failures in state-run cemetery pricing.
根据中国《民法典》及《殡葬管理条例》，未经民政与规划部门的专门用地审批，住宅物业不得合法改建为商业性骨灰堂或集体殡葬设施。然而，在广州、深圳和香港等特大城市，公墓价格居高不下（二十年使用期限且附带持续维护费的墓穴价格往往高达20万至30万元以上），直接催生了全国性的“骨灰房”热潮。买家利用台山等沿海低线城镇低迷的房地产市场，以低至10万元左右的价格购置70年产权住宅，作为安置先人遗骸更为廉价且长久的存放地。地方当局通常对此睁一只眼闭一只眼，直至邻里抗议爆发，因为官方唯恐正式执法会加剧房地产市场违约风险，并曝光国营公墓定价机制的系统性弊端。