Shu-Ching Jean Chen  Shu-Ching Jean Chen, Contributor  I cover
regional corporates and entrepreneurs.  6/15/2007 @ 12:30AM  In
China, A Macabre Trade In Ghost Brides  Chinas one-child policy
has led to an acute shortage of women and an oversupply of
bachelors, both in life and in death.  In a case that has
shocked the nation, 52-year-old farmer Sung Tiantang has
admitted to killing six women in northern Hebei province and
selling their bodies to be used as ghost brides, for a total
profit of less than 20,000 yuan ($2,600).  The story has cast
light on a black market in female corpses that exists in rural
China in the service of a tradition that goes back nearly 2,000
years. It also highlights the stark incongruence between the
fast modernization of urban China and the backwardness of the
countryside, where as many as 60% of the countrys 1.3 billion
population still nominally resides.  When a single man passes
away, custom calls for him to be married posthumously to a
deceased single woman so that he will no