The lavish temple that Lin Jian is accused of owning

A low-level government official based in Shenzhen’s Longgang District has been accused by villagers in Guangdong Province’s Shanwei Municipal Region of building family monuments with public money. The villagers claim he built a family tomb with 100,000 RMB and an ancestral temple with 1 million RMB, Liaoning Satellite Television reports.

As the province pilots forcing officials to declare their assets, netizens are eager to know where the official, Lin Jian, got the money. According to residents of Tanxi Village in Lufeng, despite being based in Shenzhen’s Nanwan Street, Lin has used public money to build the family monuments.

The cost of burying the dead has been a controversial issue in China in recent years. Many families are choosing the more affordable and environmentally friendly method of sea burials.

The tomb that allegedly belongs to Lin’s family

The ancestral temple has elements of both Ming and Qing Dynasty architecture and was built with top quality materials, the villagers claim. If their claim is true, then the constructions would be unaffordable to somebody in Lin Jian’s income bracket.

This news comes at a doubly inopprtune time for Lin as China has just announced data on its level of income inequality. It was the first time since 2001 China had officially announced its GINI coefficient, which showed tremendous disparity between China’s wealthy and those less fortunate.