Just before his father's body was to be cremated by Baoji Mortuary, Mr. He discovered that the designated corpse was not actually his father's.

According to the registration forms, He's father's corpse was put into the Number 5 storeroom on July 29, and another corpse with the same family name was placed in the same storeroom the next day.

Once He alerted workers in the mortuary to their mistake, they looked through and identified all the corpses one by one, but they still could not find He's father.

"An investigation by the Civil Affairs Bureau tells us that the corpse presented to Mr. He on July 31 was named Li," read one report. He said the bureau told him that Li's family had taken his father's ashes, and that they had already been buried. Workers opened the grave overnight and retrieved the mistaken ashes.

"We hope the mortuary can provide evidence to verify that the ashes are my father's. Otherwise, I hope they can find my father," He said, explaining that identity cannot be confirmed by ashes alone.

According to the mortuary, the workers realized that Li was not He's father before they prepared the corpse for cremation. However, since the correct corpse had already been cremated, they decided to proceed anyway. They explained that, in some circumstances, extremely distraught relatives do not bother to or cannot bring themselves to check the corpse carefully. If that had been the case with Mr. He, no one would ever have noticed the mistake.

An employee from the mortuary explained that they coordinated with Li's family and received permission to dig up the casket allegedly containing He's father's ashes. However, after cremation, even DNA identification techniques cannot verify identity. The mortuary was ultimately unable to verify the identity of the ashes, but they did apologize to the families for their negligence and mistakes.