Chinese villagers will pay even $26,000 for female corpses they can bury with dead unmarried male relatives. Corpse brides In China are sold for ghost marriages, where Chinese pay their respects to the deceased with a corpse bride in the afterlife. This practice still exists in rural areas even though the price that has to be paid for the dead bride is very high.

This practice was banned in 1949 by the Chinese Communist Party, but the tradition has returned. UPI reports that there is a surge in related crimes and tomb raids. Criminals can make a fortune when finding and selling corpses, they even kill to get it. 

A man was arrested in Liangcheng County, Inner Mongolia, because he killed a woman and wanted to sell the corpse to a family in search of one. The trade of corpses grows very fast in north China. Selling dead bodies has become a profitable activity for many people and it is causing a lot of crimes.

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Twenty-seven female bodies have been stolen in Hongtong County, Shanxi Province, since 2013. More bodies could be missing but this is not reported. Families who buy corpse brides are not safe either because thieves try to steal the dead bodies. Zhang Gainong had to check his dead son's tomb to see that the body of the dead bride he had bought remained there and had not been stolen. Zhang Gainong paid $26,145 for the body of a young woman.

Many people dislike this practice, there are elders who tell their relatives that this is a bad example for children. Three men were arrested because they killed two women with mental disorders. The police stated that one of the killers wanted to sell the corpses for ghost weddings. This has become a profitable economic activity in China.