Qingming Festival, which took place on Sunday, is a public holiday for Chinese people to mourn late relatives by sweeping their tombs and burning paper offerings. A few public cemeteries in Shanghai's suburban districts, however, have recently caused a stir by attempting to transform these graveyards into tourist attractions.

Yingxinyuan Cemetery in Chongming county plans to build pavilions, artificial hills and statues of local historical personages to make it "more worth visiting," the Shanghai Morning Post reported Wednesday. Cemetery director Wu Weimin said he hopes the cemetery can become not only a place for burying the dead, but also an educational base of local history and culture.

Wu and his fellow cemetery managers should not be too optimistic about their ambitions. Visiting a public cemetery for fun is grossly contrary to the common Chinese notion of respecting the dead. It doesn't come as a surprise, then, that Wu said few residents from the surrounding area have taken him up on his invitations, even after offering a free shuttle bus and lunch at the cemetery.

As improper and in bad taste as it may first sound, I personally don't see why we shouldn't turn our public cemeteries into tourist attractions.

Many public cemeteries in Western countries have become popular tourist sites, such as the St. Louis Cemetery in New Orleans, Russia's Novodevichy Cemetery, and the Père Lachaise Cemetery in France. The latter, where many French celebrities are buried, attracts millions of visitors every year with its picturesque landscape and numerous statues, tombs and monuments.

Compared to the 200-year-old Père Lachaise, most public cemeteries in Shanghai have only 20 to 30 years of history. But some of them still manage to attract visitors with their unique features.

Haiwan Forest Park in Fengxian district, for example, is where many local zhiqing (educated youth) were buried. Zhiqing were young students required by the government to leave their urban homes for rural areas during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). The students were forced to toil in fields all day for years on end as part of their rehabilitation.

To commemorate the 1-million zhiqing from Shanghai, in 2011 the Haiwan cemetery constructed a museum and a 20,000-square-meter memorial plaza near the graves. Today, it sees hundreds of visitors a week, primarily Shanghainese residents interested in learning more about their local history.

Other public cemeteries in Shanghai have the potential to also become popular tourist attractions, but they'd do well to take the following suggestions into consideration.

First, transform the cemetery into more than just a graveyard by giving it cultural or historical significance, such as by building a park, museum or memorial.

Second is to provide visitor services. For instance, Green-Wood Cemetery in New York is a private cemetery dedicated to "preservation, beautification, educational programs and community outreach." As a result, the cemetery has become a historical landmark well-known for its considerate services such as offering free maps and tour guides and regularly organizing cultural lectures.

The third is to maintain a respectful distance from visitors mourning their late relatives, most who fear that their vigils would be disturbed by tourists' gaiety. These disturbances can be avoided by banning amusement and food from the cemetery grounds, as well as tour megaphones.

Notwithstanding the recent profiteering scandals by China's funeral and interment industry, our cemeteries have the potential to become tourist attractions or historical landmarks, so I don't think the Yingxinyuan Cemetery proposal is without merit. But profit should not be the priority; the deceased and their relatives should always come first.