00:08It's Tomb Sweeping Festival in Taiwan, and people are heading to the mountains to
00:12tend to their ancestors' graves. And for a growing number of people, that means a trip to an eco-burial
00:17park.
00:32Honouring the dead through preservation or entombment is something that runs deep in Taiwan's culture.
00:37But how and where that happens is changing. This quiet garden high in the mountains above Taipei
00:43is part of Taiwan's push for greener burials. But government is asking people to
00:48forego traditional mountainside tombs in favor of laying their family members' ashes to rest
00:53under trees, in the sea, in gardens, and here in Yangmingshan National Park.
00:59Just over 200,000 people die a year in Taiwan, and the government is pushing
01:04natural or green burials as an affordable, eco-friendly, and forward-looking option.
01:09It's relatively sustainable, because it doesn't have too many people.
01:28But burials like these, where remains are not preserved, aren't yet the norm in Taiwan. Even though,
01:34around 95% of people are cremated. Although Taiwan has largely moved from family hillside tombs
01:40to towering community columbariums in recent decades, physical gravesites, with bones or ashes
01:46inside, remains central to the practice of ancestor worship, serving as spiritual anchors for the
01:52expression of filial piety, and for the channeling of feng shui.
02:15But individual graves require attending beyond the annual observance of tomb sweeping festival. And some people are unwilling to burden
02:23their children with the extra duty.
02:42As Taiwanese society ages, memorials with road links offer better ease of access, and while more families are choosing natural
02:49burials, often they're also still maintaining traditional tombs from generations past.
02:55Still, more people who live in the city down there are choosing to have their remains, their ashes, return to
03:01nature up here.
03:03And while that may be a break with tradition, the location really isn't. With a mountain to my side, in
03:09the ocean, somewhere beyond the clouds over there, you'd be hard-pressed to find a place with better feng shui
03:15or one more beautiful to honour your ancestors.
03:19Taipei's Mortuary Office says about 20% of people are opting for eco-friendly burials. With this park alone, now
03:26the final resting place for some 40,000 individuals.
03:42Taipei's Mortuary Office's
03:42Taipei's Mortuary Office's
03:43Taipei's Mortuary Office's
03:45Taipei's Mortuary Office's
03:50Officials say visitors have been streaming into Yang Ming Shan's eco-burial park ahead of a tomb sweeping festival.
03:56It remains the park's busiest time of the year,
03:59proof that traditions still run deep,
04:01even as the ways people observe them are changing.
04:04Klein Wang, Pichichuang, and Bryn Thomas for Taiwan Plus.
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