In-depth
Luxury funeral services thrive in Haiphong City
  • | LD, dtinews.vn | January 10, 2013 09:42 AM

Public concern has been raised over overly luxurious funerals in Haiphong City with funeral services that even include door-to-door salesmen out on the street every day.

 

A ‘luxury’ funeral in Haiphong 

The HS funeral service company opened its headquarters on Vo Thi Sau Street in Ngo Quyen District. Customers will be given a catalogue including 25 main items and up to 70 sub sections offering all kinds of things from candles to cars.

"We'll take care of everything related to the funeral. Our customers don't have to worry about anything," the owner said.

Currently, Haiphong has dozens of such funeral service providers that offer many other sub services such as cars, dancers or cameramen for hire. Those providers sometimes will collaborate with each other, but mostly they are fiercely competitive in marketing their services in real life and on internet.

They offer various kinds of packages, from VND30 million (USD1,400) to VND200 million (USD9,500). A VND100 million funeral package are considered luxury status symbols, involving staff into the double digits.

Funerals often use traditional instruments, but now they also have a clarinet and drum team of 20 to 30 musicians playing along.

In the 49th day after the funeral, families in Haiphong will hold a ceremony to lead the deceased soul to the pagoda to foster the soul as it approaches Nirvana. But now this ceremony often features luxurious cars with various offerings that cost millions of VND.

Professional mourners have reappeared after they disappeared during the 1940s. These people will come to the funeral and cry or call out for the dead. There are 20 professional mourners for hire in Hoa Nghia Ward alone.

Haiphong authorities said they are determined to contain this kind of services. Le Khac Nam, Deputy Chairman of Haiphong's People's Committee said the city had tried to curb such ‘bad’ practices in funerals since 1997. However management has been lax lately.

He also said, "Farmers and workers lack the financial capability to use these services. Only officials and business people can afford that kind of funerals."

Haiphong authorities are trying to draft a resolution on weddings, funerals and other ceremonies.

Talking about huge funeral, H, an official in Haiphong said, "My wife's family kept telling me that I couldn't hold small funeral for my father-in-law. So I had no choice. The funeral had hundreds of wreaths because my family know a lot of people, so all of our acquaintances sent funeral wreaths."

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