Posted on 12/08/2007 11:52:49 AM PST by SpringheelJack
HONG KONG (Reuters) - China's worst fuel crunch in years has led a crematorium to dump half-burnt corpses to try saving on diesel costs, a Hong Kong newspaper said on Friday.
Villagers in Hengyang county, in the southern province of Hunan, discovered the practice when an "unbearable stench" started coming from the site, and tried to block a road on Wednesday to stop funeral vehicles from delivering more bodies.
The village sent people to investigate the smell and the South China Morning Post said they saw "crematorium workers putting half-burnt human remains and organs in plastic bags and throwing them into a nearby ditch."
"As the price of diesel rose, we saw more and more bags thrown out from the crematorium," the paper quoted Xiao Gaoyi, a village representative and one of the witnesses, as saying.
China was hit by its worst fuel supply crisis in four years from October to November, as a widening gap between low, state-regulated domestic prices and market-driven international prices forced Chinese refiners to cut output.
Fuel in many parts of the country was rationed and there were long queues at petrol stations.
An increase of nearly 10 percent in the prices of domestic diesel and gasoline from November 1, the first in almost a year and a half, failed to lift refining margins back into the black.
Maybe they could make toys out of them and ship them here?
Pour some lead or polyethylene glycol on the corpses to reduce odor.
I have noticed there have a been a lot of cheap chopsticks out of China.
Maybe they already do. Our local ChinaMart smelled badly the last time I was there.
Michael Frazier
So, in theory, this place is now eligible to SELL carbon credits.
Do crematoria use condensers or other heat-recovery mechanisms? I would think that if one could condense out a reasonable amount of water vapor the cremation process shouldn't require much energy once it got going.
What happened to that guy in Georgia (US) that did the same thing?
could’nt restrain....”Who Cares”
Has Al Gore complemented him yet for reducing his carbon footprint?
For crying out loud, this is a country that is still using coal fired locomotives. What do you think they have in the way of cremation technology? I’m surprised they even have diesel fueled incenerators and not hand shoveled coal fired ones.
In times of rising energy prices, the crematoria need to follow the airlines’ lead and add a “fuel charge” to their pricing. Or they can vary their pricing according to whether you want rare, medium, or well done.
If coal is cheaper than diesel, adequate labor is available for fueling stations, and pollution isn't a concern, what's wrong with coal-fired locomotives?
That having been said, I'd be curious whether China has made any efforts toward efficiency in their locomotives in the last half century. I've read that in the U.S. some closed-system coal-fired locomotives were designed and prototyped around the time of the diesel switchover; had they been developed when there were still coal stations around, they might have delayed the advent of diesel. I wonder if China has used any such technology.
You are totally correct. That is why you see thousands of dead Chinese on drying racks before they go into the oven. Crows and other scavengers have also been found to decrease up to 12% of burnable mass from drying bodies.
China is going to *displace* 1.5 million for the Olympics. Wonder what will happen to them?
Supposedly made from cow ivory.
Maybe this is part of an effort to imitate Tibetan traditions - burial by vulture.
They should put one into each wide screen TV they ship out.
Let's see ...
Besides the relatives of the over 300 people whose bodies were left to rot in the open by Mr. Marsh, I'd say there were quite a few large groups of people who might care, including:
2. People who think that Mr. Marsh's sentence of 12 years with credit for time served is too light.
3. Anyone who has ever had a relative cremated, or is contemplating cremation for themselves or a relative.
4. Anyone connected with the funeral industry.
5. Anyone who doesn't want dead bodies left out in the open.
6. Anyone who observes that we are criticizing the Chinese for something that has also happened here.
7. People who are interested in stuff and care about things.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.