Introduction

The number of death in Hong Kong escalates in a rapid rate. According to the paper the
local Legislative Council Panel on Food Safety and Environmental Hygiene, the numbers with
the projected numbers in the forthcoming 10 and 20 years are as tabulated below-:

Hong Kong with space scarcity and skyrocketing prices for niches and cemetery plots have
brought the city to rethink how they should remember the deceased. Before the 1980’s, the
predominant approach was land burial of the deceased, with cremation taking up only a
small minority. The merits of cremation gradually dawned upon the community after a few
decades of persistent public education. In 2015, land burial and cremation respectively take
up 7% and 91% of the annual number of deaths”1 Food and Environmental Hygiene
Department (FEHD) is currently managing 11 Gardens of Remembrance (GoRs) in eight
columbaria1. Dedicated walls are erected at each GoR for mounting plaques, from 2001 to
31 March 2016, a total of 15,327 bereaved families have applied for scattering the ashes of
their family members in these GoRs. Currently, about 11,000 memorial plaques have been
mounted.”2

Local authorities actively promote the use of digital plaques for families to pay respect,
thereby reducing pressure on land demands. As a complementary service for green burial,
in June 2010, FEHD launched the Internet Memorial Service (IMS), a free memorial website
(www.memorial.gov.hk) which enables users to create memorial webpages for their loved
ones and to pay tribute to them at any time and from anywhere. Users can design the
memorial webpages, furnish the webpages with stories, photos and videos of the deceased,

1 LC Paper No. CB(2)1419/15-16(03)

2 LC Paper No. CB(2)1419/15-16(03), Annex
to express condolences, give electronic offerings,3 As at 31 March 2016, IMS had about
7,500 users and about 8,400 memorial pages, with about 2.73 million hit counts. Scholars do
not revoke the use of digital memoralization, yet they claim that such acts would eventually
annihilate one’s social identity.

This original interdisciplinary research argues these acts solely focus on pragmatic motives,
and neglect the plurality and symbolic significance of physical monuments and mourning
space.

Objectives
 Explore the existing deathscape issues in Hong Kong and the effects of such
 Dissect why digital momentos wouldn’t be the mere solution for memorizing the
dead in Hong Kong in future

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: Existing geographical culture and location of

columbarium and cemetery may violate basic human rights of the dead
 The concept of “NOT IN MY BACKYARD”- living and the dead must differentiate and
be separated clearly, yet still try to maintain a close ancestral relationship

Chinese traditional ancestor worship culture bonds the ancestors and their
descendants. Customs like Sweeping the Grave Day（”清明節”, or “Tsing Ming”
festival）on every April 5th becomes an annual gathering with the dead and the
living descendants. Teather (1998) paper using cemeteries and columbaria as the
lens to argued about the tensions between the individual and the society, and the
cultural/ religious and the secular perspective. Traditionally, deceased will be buried
underground.

The life-death value is a blend of Confucius, Tao, Mozi, Buddhist religion. The
concept of feng shui, a traditional Chinese system of harmonizing the environment
provides a guide for the living and for the dead. There has to be a designated yet
separate space for the dead, the spiritual, or “yin(陰)” world, in which the bones,
the ashes and the spirits belong (the living world is “yang (陽)”).

Feng shui refers to the geomancy claims that the energy forces are powerful in order
to assist or harm the individuals within their surroundings. Traditionally, it affects
the location and orientation of the family grave, which would impact upon the
fortunes, luck and health of the family’s descendants. Destruction of the grave, or
even absence of a grave, is equivalent to breaking the positive “feng shui,” and even
is considered as declaring hostility to the descendants.

3 LC Paper No. CB(2)1419/15-16(03), Annex

  Building in a vertical direction:
o Cemeteries: every visitor needs to climb up the stairs
o Columbarium: reach the ceiling-high niches with ladder

Hong Kong has undergone substantial change in funerary practices over the years of
its development, and shifting from traditional burial to cremation would be a
significant change. Infrastructures such as niches (i.e. a small space- about A4 sized
space- to house the urn of a deceased, occasionally there are doubled-space for
couples) and columbarium (i.e. a wall of niches) have been built by the colonial
government in order to welcome a change in funerary practices.
Commented [SS1]: Given that you’re also discussing
cremation, which isn’t technically a burial, you should
consider using the more general term of ‘funerary practices’
throughout this paper (thereby only using ‘burial practices’
when specifically talking about primary or secondary burial)
Commented [SS2]: A brief explanation in brackets may
be required for non-specialist audience, or an image if you
have one

During the 19th century, many Chinese people moved to other countries around the
world in search of better opportunities. It therefore became a traditional practice to
return to their ancestral village to die, or to be repatriated after death their death.
As a result, Hong Kong therefore became a transition hub of such. In order to follow
traditional beliefs, the remains would first be buried in a temporary grave before
being exhumed and moved back to the birth place or the ancestral village of the
deceased. Cremation becomes a widely-seen option, families insist on housing the
urns with ashes in traditional graves and cemeteries.

 Smoke gets in your eyes: existing columbaria environment and rites

People need to withstand the smoke, in line, and using a ladder to just spend
seconds/minutes with the dead.
o Burning incense and jossy paper mortuary offerings in closed area -
ventilation is not ideal
o Tightly packed and ceiling-high niches - no privacy
o No resting area
o Dark

Conclusion
Digital memorialization isn’t the mere measure for solving the land scarcity for the dead.
Rather, synthesizing the implementation of technology and the traditional rituals and rites
would be an ideal and creative way to find the mutual ground to satisfy the realistic and
sociocultural needs. Zooming out to Korea and Japan, they both are facing similar situations
as in Hong Kong. Yet, Korea found a creative way to store ashes as well as some personal
items together, which allows the families to personalize the monuments and have privacy
while mourning. On the other hand, Tokyo has successfully blended the LED technology with
ashes storage. Even though in a wall full of small Buddha statues that with the ashes inside,
with LED technology the family can still find privacy and space to remember the loved ones.
Death is an inevitable natural cause. People dead wishes should be fulfilled. Authorities
shouldn’t tackle a cultural and humanistic problem from a pragmatic and economic
perspective.