JIAN Hongwei, a young Hangzhou local, started his business two years ago during the Qingming Festival, a business that to many Chinese still sounds a little untraditional - a substitute tomb-sweeping service.

As a substitute tomb-sweeper, Jian visits a grave site at a customer's request and sweeps the tomb, prays and makes traditional offerings.

Tomb-sweeping is a customary part of the Qingming Festival held every year in early April.

It provides a chance for people to remember deceased ancestors and friends by praying, sweeping the tombs and offering food, tea, wine, chopsticks, joss paper or libations.

In recent years, in the period leading up to the Qingming Festival, substitute tomb-sweeping services have been available on online marketplaces such as Taobao.com. Surprisingly, the income is considerable, as high as hundreds of thousands of yuan.

"It's a very new concept in China. During the first Qingming Festival when I started to do this business, few people knew about it and I only received around 10 cases," recalls Jian.

However, when Jian began to promote his service on the Internet last year, more customers began to contact him.

This year he is very busy with the service, and has even asked a schoolmate to help. His total income during this week's Qingming Festival was around 100,000 yuan (US$15,278).

"Most of the customers are those people who live abroad or cannot get to the grave sites themselves in time due to all kinds of reasons," notes Jian.

Another Hangzhou local surnamed Wang, in his 20s, started to run a similar business by accident. Last year while working as a flower deliverer, he received an order during the Qingming Festival asking him to send flowers to a grave site.

Since then he started a tomb-sweeping substitution service with some partners.

"We usually charge 500 yuan for each case, but the basic costs are less than 100 yuan," says Wang. Sometimes the profit can be even better with generous customers, reaching 1,000 yuan for one case.

While such services have been criticized by many people who think the custom is a serious matter which should be done personally to show respect to ancestors, many are in favor.

In fact, some grave sites provide this service, such as the Huaqiao Grave Site where staff will sweep a tomb at a customer's request.

"This service is not that new in foreign countries, and it's normal in today's society," says Feng Gang, professor of sociology at Zhejiang University.

"It meets the requirements of saving time, saving social resources, releasing traffic pressures and creating new industry."

In the Song Dynasty (960-1279), there was a custom among Chinese to hire people to participate in funeral processions, including wailing.

Flower festival

The first Hangzhou Xixi Flower Festival will open tomorrow in Xixi Wetland Park. Visitors can see blossoms of all colors and enjoy folk art performances during the festival that runs to May 18.

The flower show stretches along the park's Green Causeway and has 12 sections featuring azaleas, peonies, plum blossoms, wisterias, roses, cherries, cloves, lilies and many more species.

The festival is a revival of a tradition of Hangzhou that dates back to the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) when the city was the Song capital.

Office conference

The global supplier of office products and services Office Depot held its Vendor Conference 2011 last week in Hangzhou, aiming to celebrate the Office Depot Private Brand and Global Sourcing Office teams' past three years of success.

As one of the largest office suppliers and solutions providers and a Fortune 500 company, Office Depot sells three major product categories: office furniture, office supplies and office technology.

The group currently boasts 1,602 worldwide retail stores. In 2007, Office Depot established its first Global Sourcing Office in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province in southern China. In 2010, a Global Sourcing Office branch opened in Hangzhou.

Hometown pavilion

Hangzhou's World Expo 2010 Pavilion reopened this week in its "hometown."

The rebuilt Hangzhou Pavilion has been merged with the first floor of Hangzhou's City God Temple in the city's Wushan area. Expo exhibits, including the Qiantang Chinese calligraphy, mingle with the temple's clay and hardwood figures depicting scenes from Hangzhou during the Southern Song Dynasty.

Admission fees are 30 yuan (US$4.58) for adults, 15 yuan for older children and free for children shorter than 1.2 meters. Visitors with World Expo 2010 passports will be able to buy discounted entry tickets for 10 yuan per person and a stamp of the pavilion will be put on their passports.

The theme of the pavilion is "Harnessing Five Waters." The "five waters" of Hangzhou stands for West Lake, the Qiantang River, the Grand Canal, Xixi Wetland and the East China Sea.

Tastes of China

People in Hangzhou will soon be able to enjoy famous snacks from around the country with the opening of the Chinese Food Park on Zhongshan Road S.

The food street will start a trial operation this weekend, serving traditional delicacies, such as Shanghai steamed dumplings filled with crab roe, Nanjing duck blood soup with gizzards, Yunnan rice noodles in chicken broth and Qinghai beef dishes.

All food stalls in the Chinese Food Park will offer promotional prices today and tomorrow. The food street will officially open on April 28.

Green growth

Hangzhou authorities plan to add at least 5 million square meters of green space to the map this year to make the city more suitable for living.

The plan includes creating 20 more greenery plots in local parks, each more than 4,000 square meters, and rooftop gardens totaling 100,000 square meters. Cherry, gingko and crape myrtle will be the main tree species planted on sidewalks and in the parks this year.

Last year the city added more than 7 million square meters of greenery, expanding its per capita green space to 15.1 square meters from 10.44 square meters in 2005.

The city's green coverage reached 39.3 percent by the end of last year.