Burial Benz

In 1957, Chinese archeologists unearthed a tomb filled with treasure in Xian, located in north-central China’s Shaanxi province.

Dating from the Sui dynasty, the tomb held the remains of child aristocrat Li Jingxun, who died at age nine 1,400 years ago.

Li’s grandmother, who loved the girl so much, believed her tomb should be a temple filled with treasures to soothe the soul of the child who had died so young, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported.

A grand multi-story pagoda was built over the tomb that had lotus flowers, dragons, and vermilion birds decorating its doors, windows, and columns. The coffin was adorned with carved attendants and male guardians and contained over 240 burial items, including glassware, gold and silver jewelry, toys, cups, silk textiles, gold bracelets from Persia, and perfume bottles, according to SCMP.

In modern Chinese burial rituals, paper replicas of cars, houses, and appliances are burned during a funeral to ensure the dead have a comfortable afterlife.

In a village in Liaoyang, Liaoning province, a family buried a septuagenarian on 9 April.

The dead man was an avid collector of luxury cars, so his children placed in the grave with him a black Mercedes-Benz S450L valued at 1.1 million yuan ($161,000) for their father’s soul’s peaceful passage, according to SCMP.

An excavator was used to dig up a large grave and lift the Benz into the open pit. The car was then draped in red cloth and red ribbons were tied to its side mirrors before it was covered with soil, local reports say.

Online posts on the Benz burial immediately went viral, garnering over 30 million views and angered netizens who believed that it polluted the environment. Authorities dug up and took away the car on the same day, the Chinese-language China News Weekly reported.

The following day, authorities reprimanded the Jin family for illegal disposal and for damaging the forest where the cemetery is located.

The family issued a public apology and may reportedly face fines, in addition to covering the costs of excavation, site clearance and ecological restoration, according to SCMP.