Men arrested for murdering "ghost" brides

[Behind the Aegis]

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese police have arrested three men for killing two young women to sell their corpses as "ghost brides" for dead single men, a Chinese newspaper reported, warning the dark custom might have claimed many other victims.

Yang Donghai, a 35-year-old farmer in western China's Shaanxi province, confessed to killing a woman bought from a poor family for 12,000 yuan ($1,545) last year.

She thought she was being sold into an arranged marriage, but Yang killed her in a gully and sold her corpse for 16,000 yuan, the Legal Daily reported Thursday. He and two accomplices then killed a prostitute and sold her for 8,000 yuan before police caught them.

"I did it for the money; it was a quick buck," Yang said, according to the paper. "If I hadn't slipped up early, I planned to do a few more."

more...

[iconoclastic cat]

1. Now, THAT is f'ed up. nt

[UnyieldingHierophant]

2. Sick*

NM

[Amused Musings]

3. This is fucking ghastly

[mainer]

4. In a country with a shortage of women?

There are hordes of living single men who would love to marry. You'd think that women in China are far too valuable to be killed for this.

[Giant Robot]

22. Woman are not valued in China

That I think is part of the point of this.

[sofa king]

5. I fear these are just preliminary symptoms.

Historically, when a society found itself with a surplus of men it usually figured out how to have itself a nasty war. They would either engage in conquest and take war brides, or kill themselves off trying.

Taiwan, are you listening?

[NewJeffCT]

24. The marrying part is a tradition that has been around for a while

the killing live women doesn't surprise me with the 'profit above all' mentality over there.

[Ezlivin]

6. Is necrophilia widespread in China?

I've never heard of anything like this before.

[Behind the Aegis]

7. The "brides" aren't for the living.

They are for single men, mostly young, who have died. The "brides" are buried with them in a sort of "afterlife arranged marriage."

[Ezlivin]

10. Thanks for the explanation

While that still sounds weird it is a whole lot less weird than necrophilia.

[Art_from_Ark]

15. I don't know

It's pretty damn weird, if you ask me

[MagickMuffin]

8. Beliefs Systems are Whack

Here's the reason for this insanity....

The women were victims of an old belief, still alive in the yellow-earth highlands of western China, that young men who die unmarried should go to their graves accompanied by deceased women who will be their wives in the afterlife. Often these women die natural deaths.

How come women always suffer at the hands of social injustice?

[superconnected]

9. I wonder if that's a crime china would give him the DP for

"I did it for the money; it was a quick buck," Yang said, according to the paper. "If I hadn't slipped up early, I planned to do a few more."

And this is to be expected. The less women there are, the more they become a commodity - dead or alive. And the less rights they will have. They are just carcases to be sold.

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. Surely - it's straightforward murder

And if they regularly execute people, murder will surely be a capital crime.

[bleedingheart]

11. For anyone interested here is a link to a very informative article on the practice

it is called Minghun...this practice of marrying their dead sons to women.

http://ianshortreed.wordpress.com/2006/10/05/dead-bachelors-in-remote-china-still-find-wives/

In this article it talks about the tradition and does not deal with these murders.

"CHENJIAYUAN, China — For many Chinese, an ancestor is someone to honor, but also someone whose needs must be maintained. Families burn offerings of fake money or paper models of luxury cars in case an ancestor might need pocket change or a stylish ride in the netherworld.
But here in the parched canyons along the Yellow River known as the Loess Plateau, some parents with dead bachelor sons will go a step further. To ensure a son’s contentment in the afterlife, some grieving parents will search for a dead woman to be his bride and, once a corpse is obtained, bury the pair together as a married couple.
“They happen pretty often, especially when teenagers or younger people die,” said Yang Husheng, 48, a traveling funeral director in the region who said he last attended such a funeral in the spring. “It’s quite common. I’ve been in the business for seven or eight years, and I’ve seen all sorts of things.”
The rural folk custom, startling to Western sensibilities, is known as minghun, or afterlife marriage. Scholars who have studied it say it is rooted in the Chinese form of ancestor worship, which holds that people continue to exist after death and that the living are obligated to tend to their wants — or risk the consequences. Traditional Chinese beliefs also hold that an unmarried life is incomplete, which is why some parents worry that an unmarried dead son may be an unhappy one.
In random interviews in different villages across the Loess Plateau, which spreads across parts of Shanxi and Shaanxi Provinces, everyone acknowledged the custom. People say parents of a dead son depend on an informal network of friends or family, or even a well-connected fixer, to locate a family that has recently lost a single daughter. Selling or buying corpses for commercial purposes is illegal in China, but these individual transactions, usually for cash, seem to fall into a fuzzier category and are quietly arranged between families.
In some villages, a son is eligible for such a spouse if he is 12 or older when he dies. None of the people interviewed considered the custom shameful or overly macabre. Instead, it was described as a parental duty to a lost child that reflected Confucian values about loyalty to family.
“Parents have a sense of responsibility for their son,” said one woman, Li Yinlan. She said she had attended ceremonies where the coffins were placed side by side and musicians played a dirge. “They have this custom everywhere,” she said of her region.
"

[Der Blaue Engel]

17. That is fascinating

I'm going to risk being flamed here and suggest that the practice of "ghost-brides" doesn't seem especially horrific or wrong in and of itself. In fact, in a weird way, it sounds kind of romantic. (Although, given the use of fake money and paper cars, I'm not sure why they need actual dead women. Why not a picture?)

What is wrong here is clearly the sociopathic individual that dehumanizes and murders women for money without any remorse, as well as the misogyny apparent in the selling of live women for whatever purpose.

[idgiehkt]

19. "murders women for money without any remorse"

so is it the money and the lack of remorse that makes it wrong in your eyes?

Confused.

[bleedingheart]

21. I understand what you are saying

the concept is quite bittersweet and a bit romantic (more for the relatives of the dead than the dead).
There tradition dictate that people need a partner and that if someone dies without a partner, they will wander through eternity alone. So their families want to make sure that their son and even daughter are matched in death.

When it is done the more traditional way, young men and women who die young are paired together in graves and "married" so that both families can feel good that they are not alone.

The sick part is that there are men who are murdering women to make money and there are people who steal corpses for the purpose.

However I think that may be a rarity and not the norm, it appears that in most cases grieving families manage to find each other and they make these matches.

[Ignacio Upton]

12. As if that didn't fuck up China's sex ratio even further

WTF is wrong with these people? :crazy:

[JVS]

14. HUH? I never heard of ghost-brides before.

[hogwyld]

16. Talk about an F'd up society...

The scary part is they'll be the largest economy by 2020. Combine that with the largest military, and that spells trouble.

[Blue_Tires]

18. WHAT . THE . FUCKING . BLOODY . HELL?!?!

nt!

[YankeyMCC]

20. The Screwfly Solution

by James Tiptree/ Alice Sheldon

Not really exactly the same but just by coincidence (perhaps not really a big coincidence given the widespread atrocities and injustices against women around the world) I just read this short story a couple of days ago and it is what came to my mind when I read this story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwfly_Solution

[ContraBass Black]

23. "If I hadn't slipped up early, I planned to do a few more."

Well, at least he's remorseful.