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Jan 25, 2010
Funeral business big in Taiwan
TAIPEI - TURNS out that designing computer chips and marketing flat screen televisions are not the only desirable jobs in Taiwan, one of Asia's high-tech hubs. There's also embalming. When a funeral home advertised 10 openings recently, some 2,000 people applied. The main attraction: the money. A licensed embalmer with a college degree earns up to NT$1.2 million (S$52,600) a year at Lung Yen Life Service, the upscale funeral home that was seeking new workers. That's equal to the pay for a junior engineer in Taiwan and more than twice as much as a hairdresser. It's almost as much as the average pay for an embalmer in the US, where incomes are much higher.
The industry has also run advertising campaigns in recent years to try to change the perception that the business of handling corpses is unpleasant. 'In the past, if you told your parents you wanted to work in the funeral business, they would have passed out,' said Fung Chia Li, a manager at Chin Pao San Group, another Taiwanese funeral home. 'Now it is considered a decent job, though probably not as respected as teachers or engineers.' Funerals are lavish in Taiwan, often involving weeks of ceremonies and elaborate processions with brass bands, dancing girls and hired mourners, who are paid handsomely to weep their hearts out for someone else's deceased relative. Embalming can include massaging the body with perfumed oils or a new hair style - anything from conservative to punk. According to the Interior Ministry, the funeral industry on this island of 23 million people generated about NT$50 billion in revenues last year. That was more than US$12,000 (S$16,800) per corpse - about 75 per cent of the average annual income - an indication of how seriously Taiwanese take their funerals. -- AP
Home > Breaking News > Asia > Story
Jan 25, 2010
Funeral business big in Taiwan
TAIPEI - TURNS out that designing computer chips and marketing flat screen televisions are not the only desirable jobs in Taiwan, one of Asia's high-tech hubs. There's also embalming. When a funeral home advertised 10 openings recently, some 2,000 people applied. The main attraction: the money. A licensed embalmer with a college degree earns up to NT$1.2 million (S$52,600) a year at Lung Yen Life Service, the upscale funeral home that was seeking new workers. That's equal to the pay for a junior engineer in Taiwan and more than twice as much as a hairdresser. It's almost as much as the average pay for an embalmer in the US, where incomes are much higher.
The industry has also run advertising campaigns in recent years to try to change the perception that the business of handling corpses is unpleasant. 'In the past, if you told your parents you wanted to work in the funeral business, they would have passed out,' said Fung Chia Li, a manager at Chin Pao San Group, another Taiwanese funeral home. 'Now it is considered a decent job, though probably not as respected as teachers or engineers.' Funerals are lavish in Taiwan, often involving weeks of ceremonies and elaborate processions with brass bands, dancing girls and hired mourners, who are paid handsomely to weep their hearts out for someone else's deceased relative. Embalming can include massaging the body with perfumed oils or a new hair style - anything from conservative to punk. According to the Interior Ministry, the funeral industry on this island of 23 million people generated about NT$50 billion in revenues last year. That was more than US$12,000 (S$16,800) per corpse - about 75 per cent of the average annual income - an indication of how seriously Taiwanese take their funerals. -- AP
