Lisa Liu, 29, used to work as a teacher. However, she quit the job in July 2023 due to exhaustion and vocal strain. According to Personage magazine, a woman from Heze, China has made it big after changing professions.
Liu entered the coffin export business, focusing on European buyers, especially Italy. A tour of the factory showed her the entire production process and helped her overcome her cultural fears about caskets. In China, death is often considered taboo. Any association is often considered bad luck.
However, Liu’s workers treated the coffins like ordinary wooden products, sometimes even using urns for storage. Italian coffins differ from traditional Chinese coffins because they are lighter and decorated with religious carvings. Both the body and the coffin are cremated together.
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Heze paulownia wood, known for its light weight and fine grain, is well suited for this market. Local caskets cost about $90 ( ₹8,000) to $150 ( ₹13,500), much cheaper than European models that cost more than $1,000 ( ₹90,700).
Liu’s factory exports around 40,000 coffins a year. Teacher-turned-entrepreneur earns nearly 40 million yuan (approx ₹50 million) in revenue, according to the South China Morning Post.
Despite changing European Union rules and rising shipping costs, Lisa Liu remains confident about the future of Heze’s coffin exports. He believes that stable global demand will continue.
“People die every day, and everyone will eventually need a casket,” Liu said.
According to the SCMP, the wider Chinese funeral industry is also expanding. Mibeizhuang Village in Hebei Province has become a major hub, with streets lined with shops selling funeral clothes, wreaths and body bags.
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In recent years, villagers have introduced eco-friendly items such as biodegradable joss paper and electronic garlands. These products are exported to Southeast Asia, Europe and the United States through e-commerce.
Some young people in western countries even live-stream burning joss paper as a form of prayer. These products are sold abroad at much higher prices than in China, SCMP said.
Reports say that the funeral goods industry in Mibeizhuang has exceeded one billion yuan ( ₹1,313 crore) in annual value in 2020. Meanwhile, Huian City’s tombstone exports to Japan are worth nearly two billion yuan (over ₹2,625 crore) every year.
Funeral Sector in India
According to a June 2025 report by research analyst Indranil Chakraborty, Indians will spend over Rs 26,000 crore on funerals every year. The market includes cremation or burial, transport, ritual objects, ceremonies, documents and memorial practices.
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Costs vary widely, from approx ₹25,000 up to ₹1 lakh in major cities and ₹10,000 up to ₹Reportedly 30,000 in smaller towns.
Despite this scale, services have long depended on informal networks and uneven pricing. New funeral service startups are now trying to change this situation by offering end-to-end support.
According to the report, future growth may include pre-planned funerals, environmentally friendly cremations and digital memory platforms.
Interest from social entrepreneurs and early stage investors suggests the sector has both strong social impact and long-term business potential. Families are looking for simpler and more compassionate support in times of loss, the report adds.