A few days ago, we were having dinner when my husband received a mysterious phone call. A distant cousin from his hometown who lived a long way away asked him to help find someone who could issue a "cremation certificate" for his grandfather who had just passed away.
Cremation certificate? These days, you really need a certificate for everything.
After my husband explained to me how rare and precious a "cremation certificate" was in their remote mountain village on the Qilu Plain, I finally understood that burying the dead intact is a traditional folk custom that has been passed down for thousands of years. According to the rules of our ancestors, when a person dies, he must be buried in the family's ancestral tomb, returning to his roots.
I remember a piece of material a netizen told me about, which was also about promoting cremation policies in old, remote, poor and ethnic minority areas.
Since the country implemented the cremation policy, this folk custom passed down from generation to generation has been greatly impacted. A large number of villagers who are stubborn and stubborn cannot accept cremation. When an elderly person in their family dies, they quickly bury the body in the ancestral tomb overnight. By the time the village civil affairs cadres know the news, the people have already been buried. You government officials can't dig up the graves, open the coffins, and take out the bodies for cremation.
Over time, the cremation policy in that village was not implemented at all. Everyone followed the old tradition of burying their dead in their ancestral graves, which resulted in the cemeteries of each family becoming larger and larger, seriously occupying and wasting land resources. Finally, the higher-level leaders gave up and insisted that the village cadres play their role and strictly prohibit burials.
The village cadres were also in a dilemma. After all, they were all close relatives. It would be embarrassing if they really fell out. At this time, someone offered a plan to the village secretary: A big reward will attract brave men. If anyone was found to have secretly buried someone, once reported to the village committee, the informant would receive a large reward.
At first, no one dared to report the crime because of the friendship between the villagers. But as the rewards promised by the government became higher and higher, some people gradually became restless. After the village committee received a series of reports, the headache came again. Some families had already buried the bodies in the graves in order to complete the burial in a simple manner. Who would dig them out and send them for cremation in accordance with the policy?
Fellow villagers, digging up someone's ancestral grave without any grudges will bring retribution! Seeing that no one was willing to take on this task, the village party secretary learned from the past and made a big announcement: Reward! Whoever helps the village government to promote and implement the cremation policy will be rewarded handsomely by the village committee!
At this time, a man "stepped forward" and started digging up graves and corpses. This man was called Wang Dadan, a farmer from the village. As his name suggests, he was bold and had no taboos. After the village committee received the report, Wang Dadan gathered a group of idle second-rate hooligans in the village and drove to the ancestral graves to cause trouble.
If there is no time to bury the body, they will rush over and grab the body and take it to the crematorium for cremation. Anyone who dares to resist will be beaten by the little hooligans, and they even call it "performing official duties". If the family members do not cooperate, they will be "violently resisting the law", and their children will have no chance of going to school or working in the future.
For those who have already been buried, the village party secretary will be in charge. Wang Dabao will lead his men to dig up the grave and open the coffin in no time. He will put the still-warm body of the deceased in a large snakeskin bag and drive it directly to the crematorium. Then the family members will go to the crematorium to collect the ashes and pay the fine.
Every time he went on a "business trip", Wang Dadan would receive a large sum of labor fees from the village committee. As a result, his work enthusiasm was unprecedentedly high. He stopped doing farm work and became a full-time leader of the "grave digging team". Over the years, relying on this despicable livelihood that brought bad luck and damaged his virtue, Wang Dadan's family renovated a two-story Western-style house, and three generations of his family became one of the richest people in the village.
However, when the villagers saw Wang Dabing roaring towards them in his seven-hand Santana, they all took detours to avoid him from a distance. They looked as if they had seen a ghost in broad daylight.
Time flies like a horse carriage, and three to five years pass in a flash. The villagers saw that Wang Dabao made a lot of money digging graves, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to exploit loopholes in burials, so they simply stopped bothering. When most of the elders of the older generation had passed away, the younger generation followed suit and basically all followed the regulations to cremate the bodies.
Wang Dadan's "business" became increasingly bleak, and eventually disappeared. No one in the village asked him to dig graves anymore. Not to mention that his own fields had been barren for a long time, as the old saying goes, it is easy to go from frugality to luxury, but it is difficult to go from luxury to frugality. You want Wang Dadan to face the loess and back to the sky to dig for food in the fields? No way.
While Wang Dadan was in a daze and doing nothing all day, his mother got Alzheimer's disease. She was crazy all day and didn't recognize people. Especially at night, the old woman would bulge out her bloodshot eyes and shout in a hoarse voice: "Why are there so many people wrapped in rags in the house? Dadan, why are they chasing you? I don't think they are good people!" This made Wang Dadan's family tremble with fear and horror, and the whole house was covered with talismans to ward off evil spirits and exorcise ghosts.
Not long after that, Wang Dadan's father was sitting under a porch with some old friends playing cards for fun. Suddenly, in broad daylight, without any wind or rain, a large piece of wood fell down and hit Dadan's father right on the forehead. His father fell to the ground, and the sandy ground beneath him was stained red with blood.
Everyone came forward to take a look. Oh, there was a big iron nail on the wooden board. The tip of the nail was inserted into Wang Dadan's father's head. How could he survive? He died on the spot. Someone who knew something about the scene whispered that the nail was not an ordinary iron nail, but a long nail used to nail the coffin board when the coffin was covered and buried.
The villagers were in an uproar. The rumor that Wang Dabing had been punished for digging up his ancestors' graves spread like wildfire, becoming more and more outrageous.
Wang Dadan's wife saw that he was having a hard time making a living and was already dissatisfied and resentful for staying at home all day and eating for free. When she heard such bizarre and terrifying rumors, she finally couldn't hold back and left her son who was in elementary school. She didn't even bother to go through the divorce procedures with Wang Dadan and never heard from him again.
Wang Dadan had to raise his child and take care of his mother who had Alzheimer's disease. He didn't have a proper job, so you can imagine how hard his life was. One day, Wang Dadan overslept at home and forgot to pick up his son from school. When he rushed to the school and asked the teacher, the child went home an hour ago. Wang Dadan searched all the way and asked the villagers he knew if they had seen his son, but everyone said they hadn't seen him.
Later, Wang Dabing stopped looking for the child, and he didn't go to the police station to report the case. He couldn't afford to raise the child even if he found him anyway. It was his son's good fortune that he was abducted by human traffickers and sold to a wealthy family.
Not long after his son went missing, Wang Dabing's demented mother also died. Wang Dabing said that she fell on the way to the toilet. The villagers who helped to dig out the body came back and said that the old lady fell face down in the pit, with feces and urine all over her head and face, which was very dirty and disgusting, but her body was very clean.
The old woman's eyes were still bulging until her death, her eyes were filled with extreme fear, and her hands were clenched into fists . Death was unaffordable in those days , and her death was horrible and painful.
Wang Dadan, who had become a lonely man, wandered around the village all day long, eating whatever leftovers people had. He was like a lonely ghost, symbolizing dejection and bad luck, and everyone despised him and tried to avoid him. It was unknown when the villagers hadn't seen Wang Dadan for a long time, and no one cared, because no one wanted to see him anyway.
Until one night, a petty thief broke into Wang Dadan's abandoned and dilapidated building, which looked like a ghost castle. He wanted to steal some property, but he ran out screaming after a while. The villagers who were startled by the shouting went in and saw that Wang Dadan, who was half-dressed, had been dead for many days, with his skin festering and falling off like scales, bloody and fleshy, and it was a horrible sight.
The most terrifying thing was Wang Dabing's eyes. Clusters of blisters were overflowing from his eye sockets, making him look like two cauliflowers that had been rotting for days. It was so horrifying and disgusting that one could not afford to die in this day and age .
If someone asks me if there is retribution in this world, I would answer without hesitation: Yes, there is. It is certain that people will experience as much happiness and as much suffering in their lives. If you take what is not yours, you will have to pay it back in other forms sooner or later. The benefits gained by infringing on and harming others will be compensated a thousand times more.
This is the law of nature.
Heaven is fair.