Hong Kong television personalities Si Ho Leung and Shum Po Yee perform a 'ghost wedding' on July 23 to promote their TV program about the supernatural. Photo: IC

When Wei Zhupeng, from Yuncheng, Shanxi Province, visited the tomb of her sister in 2010, she made a shocking discovery.

Her sister, who died of cancer in 2003 while she was in her 30s, had been dug up and sold by her husband to another local family. The family had recently lost their son, and wanted to bury him with a woman for a "ghost marriage."

"This is definitely a violation of our family. How could he do that to his own former wife without telling us?" Wei told the Global Times Thursday, adding that her sister's husband allegedly received 10,800 yuan ($1,763) from the trade, but there may have been other benefits as well. Wei then decided to sue her former brother-in-law.

Ghost marriages are not rare in Wei's hometown and prices vary depending on the condition of the corpses. A corpse for a ghost marriage is normally worth tens of thousands of yuan, but if the corpse is well preserved, the price could be as high as 100,000 yuan, Wei said.

Shanxi Province is far from alone in this ghoulish tradition. Cases of ghost marriages have been reported in recent years in many places in northern China, and chillingly, the high profits have even occasionally resulted in murder to ensure supply.

"Several places in Shanxi and Henan provinces have a long history of ghost marriage. The tradition is planted so deeply in people's minds that even today, many people there, especially those who live in remote areas, still believe in the tradition," Xiao Fang, a folklore professor with Beijing Normal University, told the Global Times Sunday.

An ancient business

Despite its macabre nature this tradition dates back thousands of years. The earliest record of ghost marriages has been traced to the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046-771 BC) and it has remained in place despite successive bans on the practice by emperors.

As cremation rose in popularity, it was thought the tradition would be dealt a heavy blow, but it has persisted in areas where burial is still the dominant form of disposal of bodies.

"In my hometown, few families can accept cremations. Ghost marriages are popular as most local parents with deceased children don't want to see their kids buried out of wedlock. They claim that it is not good for the family's fate according to some traditional ancient sayings that are widely believed by local families," Wei said, adding that most of the trades are for ghost-brides, while purchases of ghost-husbands are extremely rare.

Some ancient traditions in northern China say that unmarried dead children cannot be buried in their clan graves, which is considered unlucky for the family's offspring.

Parents, as long as they can afford the cost of purchasing a ghost-spouse, prefer to accept the trade not only for psychological comfort, but also for their families' sake.

With a flourishing underground market, cremation has simply driven up the prices of the now more-scarce resource, making the business more profitable than ever.

Market for murder

The market has created niches for a variety of secondary industries, including corpse procurement and transport.

Normally, a family, who lost a child or young person and intends to buy a dead spouse, describes their requirements and makes a cash offer to a local matchmaker. The matchmaker then checks with various contacts and purchases a corpse from one of them at a lower price. Typically, these sources have purchased them at an even lower price from another family, thus satisfying all involved.

However, some greedy corpse-sellers break the unspoken rules of this market, and steal corpses and sell them directly to gain more profit.

In 2008, police in Shanxi Province arrested a suspect surnamed Xue who, along with accomplices, had stolen 11 female corpses over the preceding two years. Most of them were sold at a price of more than 20,000 yuan, and the highest at 50,000 yuan.

The different conditions of corpses result in various prices, with fresh corpses being much more expensive than the skeletons. Young female corpses fetch the highest prices. This grim state of affairs can even provide a motive for murder.

Police in Ruicheng county, Shanxi Province, cracked a case on June 26 involving a mentally-disabled 18-year-old woman who was saved as she was being taken to be sold for a posthumous marriage.

"If not for the intervention of police, the girl would have been killed to create a match for the marriage," Hu Zengpeng, a journalist from the Shanxi Evening News who reported on the case, told the Global Times Thursday, adding that the price of the corpse, which the buyer family had promised to offer, was 70,000 yuan. Although that woman was saved, a pregnant woman surnamed Luo in Yan'an, Shaanxi Province was not so lucky. In 2011, a man named Wang Hairong along with two accomplices murdered her and sold the corpse for 22,000 yuan, according to a report in the Legal Daily.

Legal loopholes

Although the crimes caused by posthumous marriages are severe, loopholes in the law have made punishment difficult.

"Three years have passed, but my ex-brother-in-law, who sold my sister's corpse, still hasn't been punished. It is unfair," Wei told the Global Times.

Wei attempted to sue her former brother-in-law, surnamed Xu, according to an article in the Criminal Law that relates to corpse theft, but the claim was rejected on the grounds that Xu was her sister's husband, so the crime of "theft" could not apply. But when there is no "theft" involved, there are no relevant articles to punish those involved in the trade.

"In theory, posthumous marriage should be an understandable tradition that gives the relatives of the dead great comfort. But it is always intertwined with illegal actions, which makes it a violation of social principles," Xiao said, adding that this custom is unlikely to disappear until traditional beliefs change.