Lunar New Year Gathering More Like Attending a Funeral: Beijing Resident

A man hugs his daughter in the international arrivals area of Beijing Capital Airport in Beijing on Jan. 8, 2023. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Despite the Lunar New Year in full play for 15 days, from Jan. 22 to Feb. 5, people in China are not in a celebratory mood.

Beijing residents suffered a surge in COVID cases after the regime suddenly lifted the lockdown and eased up on the COVID restrictions. Instead of celebrating the Lunar New Year, Beijing residents are faced with a massive number of deaths and a backlog in cremation services. The deaths occurring in prisons are another tragedy the regime will never reveal to the outside world.

“There is no new year’s greeting, just funerals to go to,” a Beijing relative told New York resident Cheng.

Cheng, whose wife is from Beijing, has developed extensive contacts there because of his 10-year business in that city. He returned to New York in 2020.

On Jan. 22, Cheng told the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times that his Beijing relative was informed by the Chinese health commission official that at least 10 percent of the Chinese Communist Party members have passed away.

The Epoch Times is unable to verify that statistic.

According to Cheng, three of his wife’s relatives in Beijing died during the surge of the pandemic in December 2022.

Cheng described the pandemic in China as “sweeping.”

Three-Month Backlog for Cremation

Five elderly acquaintances in Fangshan District, including a deputy director of the Public Security Bureau, died but none of them were cremated.

Through connections in the funeral sector, even the deputy director is on a 3-month waiting list. “Obviously, some deceased are more superior than him,” Cheng said.

Where to keep the body for three months? Chang was told that the remains were kept in refrigerated containers used for pig carcasses when the funeral home ran out of cold storage; but now the containers are full, and the families have to keep the bodies in private vehicles, five corpses per vehicle, that are parked somewhere else until the cremation can be done.

Cheng said it’s very common. An official from the Exit and Entry Administration Bureau (under the public security ministry) told him there are at least 200,000 bodies in Beijing waiting to be cremated.

“Ten percent of the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] members are gone,” Cheng’s friend at the National Health Commission in charge of population monitoring and family planning told to him.

The Epoch Times previously reported that since late November, more than 330 Chinese celebrities, officials, and scholars have died when the latest COVID surged around the country.

A patient on oxygen is wheeled on a gurney into a busy emergency room at a hospital in Beijing, China, on Jan. 2, 2023. (Getty Images)

Massive Untold Deaths in Prisons

Cheng also said that an acquaintance who was recently released from prison told him that the outbreak happened in the prison before the lockdown was lifted on Dec. 7, 2022.

According to his friend, who served time in Beijing No. 2 Prison, a police officer was infected first, and within three days, more than 8,000 people in the prison were affected. That happened before the December 2022 White Paper Movement when the students protested against the strict lockdown policy that had caused the deaths of more than 10 in an Urumqi apartment complex fire in November last year.

His friend was released at the end of December 2022. Cheng said his friend also revealed to him a surprising finding in the prison.

Among the prisoners were Falun Gong adherents, but none of them were sick from the outbreak. “He asked me, ‘Do you believe it?’” Cheng said.

His friend said that in the prison, the Falun Gong adherents continued to follow their practice and “cultivate” regardless of the environment. Cheng said, “I believe their immunity is definitely strong, I do believe that.”

Falun Gong is a mind and body practice based on the universal principles of truth, compassion, and tolerance that has benefited millions of adherents worldwide. Since the regime began persecuting Falun Gong in 1999, hundreds of thousands of adherents have been imprisoned and thousands have been reportedly killed by the CCP.

His friend told him that there were many COVID deaths in the prison. Many prisoners were transferred to the cabins built by the armed police. According to his friend, the hospitals won’t take the prisoners, there’s rarely any medical treatment, and he suspected the prisons would only provide fake drugs if there’s any medication at all.

“There’s no way the regime will expose the deaths [occurring] in the prisons,” Cheng said.

Lin Dan contributed to this report.