Xu Yudong thinks his is the most difficult job in the world.

It seems that his job is to "add insult to injury" by taking dead bodies away from the heart-broken bereaved.

"I sometimes have to endure verbal abuse and even threats of violence from bereaved relatives," said the 40-year-old, who is in charge of the Harbin Body Donation Registry, which is affiliated to Harbin Medical University in Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.

According to Xu, since the registry was established four years ago, 800 volunteers have signed the agreement to donate their bodies after death.

So far Only 27 of these donations have gone smoothly.

"It is obviously not because the donors changed their minds at the last moment," said Xu. "It is their relatives' strong opposition that causes us to give up sometimes."

In a recent case, Xu and his colleagues were repulsed when they went to fetch the body of a 74-year-old teacher, who had signed up to the agreement.

Xu and his colleagues were informed by the old man's eldest son, who had previously accompanied him to the registry office, that he had died.

However, the man's sister and brother were so strongly opposed to the donation that Xu had to give up.

This has happened eight times before, as many of the relatives change their minds at the sight of our hearse, said Xu.

"But I understand how the relatives must feel," he sympathetically added.

The Chinese traditionally think a person's soul can only lie in peace when his or her body is buried complete.

"Their strong opposition is understandable," said Zhao Ruizheng, a sociologist from the Heilongjiang Academy of Social Sciences.

"It is hard indeed to define the feeling when one thinks that the body of one's beloved is being sent into a lab for medical use," he said.

Xu said that though it is required that all the direct relatives of the volunteer should be present when the volunteer goes to sign up, it is often impossible to have all the direct relatives in attendance.

"And it is often those absent who are against the donation," Xu said.

At present in China, there is still no definitive law to regulate organ or body donation. "So we are powerless when the relatives change their minds," said Xu.

(China Daily August 24, 2005)