传统文化
As we know, dead people were held in high esteem in Chinese traditional ethics. So, in order to express the love and devotion to the late ancestors, grave keepers were very common in early china.
In the history, most of the grave keepers were the old who were far from the family blood. Grave keepers were considered insidious and sad and made people fear because they were in black all the time. They earned the money by cleaning tombs, removing the useless grass and planting flowers and trees. At the same time, they had to keep watch at night to fight with the grave robbers or the wild beats which showed up at the tomb uninvited. In return, the employers would pay the grave keepers salaries. In this way, they could support themselves.
But now, with the development of our country and change of people’s thoughts, cities of the dead have been brought into land management category of the government. For the sake of saving cultivated land, people can’t build tombs randomly. Thus, there are less and less grave keepers. Maybe in a decade, the job will disappear.