Three lenses on socioeconomic transformation will be utilized.  The first is economic.  Funerary ritual involves considerable economic expenditure as well as the settling of the economic accounts of the deceased.  At funerals, gifts are exchanged between friends and families, battles emerge over inheritance, government offices make payouts to families of pensioners, stigmatized forms of small businesses provide short-term cash services to grieving families, and large state-capitalist corporations sell long-term forms of memorialization.  The evolution of these forms of economic transaction will be compared and contrasted among the five cities and across class lines.  The second is familial.  On tombstones and in funerary ritual familial relationships are staged for public display.  The evolution of these displays will likewise be compared and contrasted among the five cities and along class lines.  Finally, acts of memorialization are forms of remembrance and memory is a highly political arena in the People’s Republic of China.  What about the deceased is memorialized and how this varies across class lines, among different cities, and over time will be analyzed to illuminate both the politics of memorialization and the cultural dynamics of urbanization in China.