Even corrupt Chinese officials are getting the Halloween spirit, but they're doing it all wrong. Two Guangdong bureaucrats are facing charges after they were caught buying dead bodies on the black market in order to reach their local corpse quota, which is apparently a thing.
In an attempt to save valuable land, officials had been told to discourage the burying of bodies and to encourage cremation. It turned out to be easier said than done, however, as Confuscian ancestor-worship essentially hinges on the existance of tombs/graves (see: tomb sweeping day).
Two Guangdong officials, then, were struggling to meet the required number of cremations for their area. Their solution? Buy bodies from a grave robber, of course. The officals bought more than twenty corpses from a local grave robber over the course of several months, for prices ranging from RMB1,500-3,000 per body.
Their entire scheme came unraveled, however, when their grave robber, surnamed Zhong, was caught in the act by local police, and proceeded to tell authorities about his customers. We certainly hope there weren't many more customers other than the officials; as weird as this case is, cremation to fudge some records is probably the least creepy use of an illegally-bought corpse that we can think of.
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