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China Earth

Hong Kong Has No Space Left for the Dead (vice.com) 165

Posted by msmash from the what's-happening dept.
Justin Heifetz, writing for Motherboard: When Fung Wai-tsun's family carried their grandfather's ashes across the Hong Kong border to Mainland China in 2013, they worried Customs officers, thinking the urn was full of drugs, would stop them. Fung, like many others in Hong Kong, could not find a space to lay his loved one to rest in his own city and would have to settle for a site across the border and hours away. It's an increasingly common story as demand for spaces to house the dead outpaces supply here in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory of some 7.4 million people. Hong Kong's public, government-run spaces to store ashes -- which are affordable to the public, starting at $360 -- have waiting lists that can last years. But many Chinese, like Fung, strongly believe the ashes must be put in a resting place immediately as to not disrespect their ancestor's spirit. Meanwhile, a private space -- one that is not run by the government -- tends to start at more than $6,000 and can go for as high as $130,000. This is simply not an option for many families like the Fung's. In Hong Kong, most people cremate their loved ones and house the urns in columbariums, or spaces where people can then go to pay their respects. While burying a body is possible, the option is prohibitively expensive -- and besides, Hong Kong has a law that the body must be exhumed after six years, at which point one must be cremated.
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Hong Kong Has No Space Left for the Dead More

Hong Kong Has No Space Left for the Dead

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  • It initially struck my as very odd that there could be a waiting list for space to open up at a place to store the dead...

  • Cement? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Monday October 23, 2017 @12:44PM (#55418515) Journal

    What about mixing cremated ash into cement and concrete? One can then literally become "one with the city". Soylent Cement Co.? Corporations ARE people? Let the jokes roll...

    • Yeah, I'm sure as an alternative to immediately putting the ashes in a resting spot, so as to not dishonor the spirit, turning the departed into a paving brick is completely acceptable to the family of the deceased.

    • What about mixing cremated ash into cement and concrete?

      What about mixing it into the soil of a moderately large pot plant? Long term reminder, regular attention to the deceased ; reasonably compact ; good for the house or apartment's atmosphere. Moves with owner.

  • San Francisco "moved" it's dead a long time ago (Score:5, Informative)

    by spun ( 1352 ) <loverevolutionary&yahoo,com> on Monday October 23, 2017 @12:54PM (#55418575) Journal

    San Francisco voted to stop burying dead folks in the city way back in 1900. Rich folks had their graves moved. Poor folks often didn't get moved at all. http://www.7x7.com/the-dark-hi... [7x7.com]

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yeah. They've been busy burying the living ever since.

    • I'd like to have my body dumped into the Bay for the crabs to eat. Preferably after I die of natural causes.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bsharma ( 577257 )
        Burial at sea is an ancient and respected tradition; especially for those who have served in the navies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        • The Anglican Communion has detailed procedures for burial at sea. The ship has to be stopped, and the body has to be sewn in canvas, suitably weighted. Anglican (and other) chaplains of the Royal Navy bury cremated remains of ex-Naval personnel at sea. Scattering of cremated remains is discouraged, not least for practical reason

          I'm thinking more along the lines of being dumped out of a speed boat as it passes through the Golden Gate. If I need a religious reason I am an ordained minster of the Church of the Subgenius. It's how "Bob" would have wanted me to go.

  • Speaking of dead people, I miss George Carlin. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sootman ( 158191 ) on Monday October 23, 2017 @01:02PM (#55418615) Homepage Journal

    Cemeteries: there's another idea whose time has passed! Saving all the dead people in one part of town? What the hell kind of a superstitious religious medieval bullshit idea is that? Plow these motherfuckers up, plow them into the streams and rivers of America, we need that phosphorus for farming! If we're gonna recycle, let's get serious!

    —George Carlin, Jammin' In New York (1992)

  • Home? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by superdave80 ( 1226592 ) on Monday October 23, 2017 @01:02PM (#55418619)
    Why not just find a nice little spot in your home to store the ashes? In fact, I would start making a picture frame/box combo for families. Ashes in the box on the back, picture of the deceased on the front. Hang it up on the wall or place it on a shelf.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by martinX ( 672498 )

      I seem to recall reading that the ashes one receives from the crematorium to put in, say, an urn are only a small fraction of the ashes generated.

      Makes sense - the average human adult male is approximately 60% water and the average adult female is approximately 50% so an 80 kg male will become quite a few kilos of ashes (I'm assuming some weight besides water is lost up the chimney).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fisted ( 2295862 )

        More likely, every so many cremations they'll just dump the entire ashes of that one person into their ash supply for refilling, and start handing out ashes from that until it's time for the next refill.

        Ain't nobody got time to extract ashes from the oven each time. And it's not like anyone could even notice.

      • "Makes sense - the average human adult male is approximately 60% water and the average adult female is approximately 50% so an 80 kg male will become quite a few kilos of ashes (I'm assuming some weight besides water is lost up the chimney)."

        Make sense... are you sure?

        Apart from water, an organic body is mostly made of four elements: Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen (and traces of a lot others). All C,H,O,N can, and will, under highly enough temperatures and time "gas away", so you end up with very li

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Altrag ( 195300 )

      Just from TFS, it sounds like that would be against their beliefs. Not that beliefs can't be changed when the need arises (they would just have to redefine what it means to "respectfully" put the to dead rest in their cultural context to include an enshrined urn or whatever.) But its probably a more difficult change than just taking the deceased a bit further away and continuing with existing practices.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • What my sister and myself did was a cremation and then a burial at sea. That basically means trowing the urn overboard in a dignified way. To me it was extremely beautiful and nice and serene.

        But to my mind, boring. I have a donor card, but once all the useful bits have been harvested, I think I'd like my burial at see to be part of a shark-watch. Toss my leftovers overboard and let the feeding frenzy begin. Bring your cameras.

    • Some people do this, but there are traditions involved beyond just putting a box on a shelf. It takes some space to build a little shrine, and there are incense involved. HK apartments can be really small.

  • Here in the USA there seems to be a huge emphasis on the "preservation of the body". I remember when some of my family has died and the funeral directors actually used these words. And they use cement lined burial plots with sealed coffins. I simply don't get it.

    The person that died is done with their body, so they don't need it preserved. Us living people will never see the body ever again, so we don't need it preserved. We should just bore a 3 foot wide hole about 12 feet deep, drop the body in head-first

    • Agreed. Most burial rituals were created for religious (another idea whose time has passed!) reasons. Christians don't want to cremate because they are worried there will be no body for god to raise at the end times. All cremation does is speed along the process, but people don't understand that.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        Christians don't want to cremate because they are worried there will be no body for god to raise at the end times.

        Genesis 3:19, Ecclesiastes 3:20.

        The 'end times' believers haven't been reading their Bible. I doubt they are true Christians.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Strider- ( 39683 )

        This is only true in some traditions. Most mainline denominations (Lutheran, Episcopalian/Anglican, UCC, or whatever) are perfectly okay with cremation, burial at sea, or whatever else, as long as it's done with dignity and respect. The funeral rites that are in the hymnals/worship books tend to contain options/appropriate words for all of the above.

        Heck, last year even the Vatican has said that it's acceptable for Catholics to be cremated, as long as the ashes are kept together in a sacred/blessed place.

        So

        • "So yeah, don't paint all Christians with the same brush."

          If you believe in a skygod, then yeah... same brush... different color.

      • Usually It's a cultural rather than religious reason for burial customs. There's nothing in Christian scriptures saying how to deal with the deceased, no prohibitions against cremation and no rules requiring burial. There are some sects or denominations opposed to it however for the reason you give for sort of the reason you gave (though it's more about sending the wrong signal than in believing there is a limit to omnipotence). However early Christian burial practices were borrowed from Jewish culture tha

        • Original Christian belief was in bodily resurrection, not a spiritual one. So you'd need your body intact. Cremation was seen as something pagans did.

          • For suitably small values of intact. Or did they not have germs & worms in those days?

          • Right, but if you had an omnipotent deity, then you could be fixed when resurrected. I don't think many at the time were assuming you'd be literally resurrected missing a leg or that you could not be resurrected if you were cremated. Corinthians talks about resurrection into a new body, not the decayed old one. Instead it seems more likely that they treated cremation as a sign of rejecting the possibility of resurrection. Also it's very much a Jewish belief as well, and the early Church was Jewish. Local cu

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by WallyL ( 4154209 )

        I don't care at all about what happens to my body after I die, and I'm a Christian (lit. "little Christ"). I believe in the resurrection of the saints when the Son of God returns, and what that means exactly about the dust my bones will have turned into/been paved into Oak St./spread across the ocean/sniffed by a druggie, I trust He can take care. I guess I'm not a typical Christian-- I mean, I "read" slashdot. How can I be a typical anything?

    • There are many ways to dispose of the dead. Cremation is ideal because any bacteria, viruses, prions, or other stuff are incinerated and can't infect others. Plus, a columbarium can hold a lot more urns than a cemetery can hold cold ones.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kwoff ( 516741 )
        There's another option apparently becoming more popular recently [nytimes.com]. (Skeptical me thinks it's probably an advertisement.) I can't say I appreciate worrying about the carbon footprint of cremation, though...

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Altrag ( 195300 )

          I would call it a gimmick more than an advertisement, but hey it never hurts to have alternatives I guess.

          Personally I find the thought of being dissolved and then crushed more disturbing than being burned to ash, but maybe its just cause I'm more familiar with the latter. The liquifaction thing just makes me think far too much of movie killers getting rid of bodies in their bathtubs using essentially exactly that method..

    • cement lined burial plots with sealed coffins.

      This is actually only required of the body is preserved with formaldehyde before burial. It prevents groundwater contamination.

    • One old timey Christian belief was in bodily resurrection, not a spiritual one. So you'd need your body intact. Cremation was seen as something pagans did. It is among the reasons that dismemberment is seen as so gruesome.

    • Cremation possibly takes less energy overall than a burial; when you could the digging of the grave, making the headstone, the metal coffins, the cement liners, etc. However there's a company or two that are trying a new process if dissolving the body in a heated alkaline liquid, leaving onlly the skeleton behind. There is some energy involved but overall a lot less than cremation.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Altrag ( 195300 )

        Significantly less energy, less potential environmental contamination and so on. Burial is actually a pretty horrible way to dispose of bodies, but its easier emotionally. Seeing an urn and knowing that's all that's left is somehow more difficult than knowing there's an in-tact body in the coffin and having moved on in life (such as one can) before you really start thinking about decomposition. Basically an out-of-sight, out-of-mind thing.

        But the big savings, especially in countries like Hong Kong and ev

    • I simply don't get it.

      Funeral directors are in the business of making money. A simple wooden box sent to the crematorium doesn't make them as much as a silk-lined coffin with concrete mausoleum. They're also uniquely positioned to hard sell (or flat out guilt-trip) their wares onto grieving relatives.

      This is partly why a lot of older people pre-pay for their funerals and specify exactly how they want their remains to be dealt with. Personally I liked the idea of a tree burial*, until I saw how much they cost (more than a regular

  • A long time ago Slashdot abandoned technology stories in favor of stories about large tech companies like Uber, IBM, Facebook, Google, Apple, Intel, Amazon, Microsoft, Motorola, Asus, AMD, Kaspersky, etc ad nauseum. But now it appears they have completely abandoned the tech angle altogether. I look forward to future stories on the maiting habits of Australian fruit bats.

  • isn't HongKong it's own separate state and independent country with the fastest internet on the planet because it's incredibly small size?

    • Re:hongkong (Score:4, Informative)

      by Lobachevsky ( 465666 ) on Monday October 23, 2017 @01:26PM (#55418795)

      No, the British handed over HK to China in the late 1990s. China promised not to "interfere" with HK until 2047, but are already meddling in massive ways like requiring all elections in HK to only involve candidates China has pre-approved. HK is classified as a SAR (semi-autonomous region) along with places like Macau, part of China's "one-country, two-systems" policy. That means as a HK resident you pay HK taxes and not Chinese taxes. It also means as a HK resident, you follow HK laws and not Chinese laws (an agreement that expires in 2047, and weakened by China's view that anti-secession laws in China still apply to SARs like HK). All that said, HK is not a country, and China's military is stationed in HK. To avoid alarming people, the Chinese military is instructed to dress in a special uniform for HK and not the standard PRC military regalia.

    • Sort of, kind of, not really but yes. If you ask people in mainland China then Hong Kong is part of China like any other Chinese city, but they also think Taiwan as part of China so that's not saying much. Ask people from Hong Kong and you get very different answer. The look and feel of the city is completely different from what you find elsewhere in China, even just across the border in Shenzhen. As for the governance, good luck figuring that out, they themselves don't seem to have a very clear picture of
  • When there's no room left in Hong Kong, the dead will go to mainland China...

  • The real reason why Hong Kong has no space (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve ( 949321 ) on Monday October 23, 2017 @01:13PM (#55418695)
    I've been there several times and I have an ex-girlfriend who was born and raised in Guangdong province, which is the part of China just outside Hong Kong and Macau. She and I talked about this. I can't say for all of China, but definitely in Guangdong and Hong Kong and Macau the people there have, by western standards, weird ideas about dead people. There is some real fear of the dead and of ghosts. Of course there is still land in Hong Kong where they could possibly put a cemetery, even if it just was for cremated remains. The real problem is that no Chinese person in Hong Kong wants to live anywhere near a cemetery and they raise holy hell every time any developer tries to put one near where they live. So the upshot is that nobody can ever build a new cemetery anywhere because there isn't any more land that really isn't inhabited by somebody close enough to complain about it. Think of it kind of like trying to build an above ground nuclear waste disposal site and you're really close to the kind of vehement opposition that cemeteries get there. I think it's been well over 10 years, maybe multiple decades, since the last "new" cemetery got opened there and people threw fits about that but it got done anyway. The government simply doesn't want public order disturbed and have the PLA start flexing its muscle so it's just easier to not build new cemeteries so the residents don't complain and if they have to spend many thousands of dollars of money they don't really have to find a place to stash the ashes of Uncle Fong because they are too scared to live near a cemetery that might solve the problem, then that's just how it is. Short of basically having the PLA kill people or throw them in jail if they complain, there's no real solution for this when citizens are convinced that even seeing a cemetery might bring them "bad luck".

  • Organ donor (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    When I die, my organs will be donated to people who need them. I've specified in my driver's license and my will, that I be an organ donor when I die.

    One organ donor can save eight lives. [hrsa.gov] The wait for a kidney can be 5 or 10 years [lkdn.org].

    When I renew my driver's license, I always check the "Yes" box for "Do you want to be an organ donor?"

  • Hong Kong is a coastal city/region; problem solved.

  • "I'm not dead yet! I feel like dancing!"
    "Can't you come back later?!"

  • Because that's how you get Soylent Green. /MaloryArcher

  • There are a number of companies that will take the ashes from cremation and use them to make a diamond. Wouldn't that be respectful for the ancestor? Turn them into a diamond, make a pendant, and they can be remembered daily. Brings an entirely different meaning to the phrase "family jewels".

  • For millennia, we used to recycle the remains of people. We would bury them, and then when we needed more space, we'd move the bones to ossuaries, then we would use the dust from those bones to make walls with.

    Why not accelerate the process and mix the ashes from the cremated remains into Memorial buildings that are used for ceremonies, like convention centers or other buildings not in continual use, and provide access for those interred in the very building to be remembered according to their religious pre

  • Good. (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by hackel ( 10452 )

    Maybe these idiot Chinese people will enter the 21st century and stop worrying about superstitious nonsense like "disrespecting their ancestor's spirit." I only wish there was a way we could convince all the idiot Christians in the west of this, and outlaw cemeteries once and for all. This is one area where China should exert it's authority over stupid people and require that the bodies be converted into fertilizer to serve the greater good of society in the most environmentally friendly way possible. Cr

    • You know, I used to be with you on this. I'm also an opponent to superstition, but I've grown to actually really like cemeteries - they make great neighbours!

      I think it's dumb to bury bodies, but the cemetery a block from me here in Victoria, BC, is actually a really beautiful spot with lots of big trees, and interesting old tombstones (dating back into the 1800's.) IMO it's a very valuable greenspace, and probably will remain that way for a very long time. (Look up the Ross Bay Cemetery.)

      Overall I'd prefer

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Maybe these idiot Chinese people will enter the 21st century and stop worrying about superstitious nonsense like "disrespecting their ancestor's spirit." I only wish there was a way we could convince all the idiot Christians in the west of this, and outlaw cemeteries once and for all. This is one area where China should exert it's authority over stupid people and require that the bodies be converted into fertilizer to serve the greater good of society in the most environmentally friendly way possible. Cremation releases lots of CO2 and other toxic gasses into the air and is unacceptable.

      Christians aren't the only ones who venerate the dead. Most cultures in the world do.

      I belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We believe that at some point our spirits will be reunited with our perfected bodies in the resurrection. For us, resurrection is universal and not limited to just believers. In terms of taking care of our dead, we generally follow whatever society where we live. Chinese Mormons cremate their dead, while most American Mormons are laid to rest in a casket in a ceme

  • ... the ashes into the ocean [youtube.com].

  • Don't they have toilets there?

    It all lands in the sea anyway.

  • In You Only Live Twice, Her Royal Navy buried James Bond at sea, the sea being Hong Kong harbor, and he wasn't actually dead.
  • I suppose the answer is to have more babies somehow.
  • If you harbor a number of superstitions, and you are willing to pay top dollar for their sake - you are thoroughly stupid. But, by all means, pay through the nose.

  • Just cremate people in power plants.

  • Hong kong becomes the first produser of Soylent Green, line up now for you weekly rashon
  • Mandatory cremation after 6 years?

    Now we know why Hong Kong has never had a vampire problem.

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