
Can Hong Kong Sell Its Residents on Watery Graves? - Thevet
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/sea-burial-hong-kong
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9712263
I don't think it makes any practical sense. Hong Kong by default is using
cremation, unless some rich person have a land for them to keep their body
inside a coffin because Chinese tradition prefer keeping the whole body after
dead. Even if disposed to sea, they still need to build a grave for them.
Cremation only required to have the space of urn to place, and a gravestone.
The urn does not take many space. If graveyard is still required to build, it
does not save too much space.

The alternative that saving space is just sent them back the urn of ash and
people just put the gravestone at home. But putting dead body, even in ash, is
taboo in Chinese tradition and nobody would accept it.

It is difficult to execute a policy that opposing the local tradition, and it
is not really necessary.

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larrysalibra
Over the last couple days I’ve seen government posters up promoting this.

Not sure it will catch on, but a nice lifehack related to death practices in
Hong Kong is to look for housing in Hong Kong by crematoriums. It is usually a
lot cheaper as “traditional” people won’t want to live there.

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emiliobumachar
Interesting, but, are there any practical reasons for it, beyond status and
psychology? Specifically, air pollution. Where do the fumes go? Are they
negligible, or not?

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emmanuel_1234
This kind of superstition are strong in Hong Kong. Best deal is the combo
cemetary + unit where someone committed suicide (or near).

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a_c
From what I've heard, the root cause is the influx of population. The
population is stressing out every aspect of the city, welfare, property
prices, education, healthcare and here we have, graveyards. Maybe someone with
more insight can chime in

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Foobar8568
You can add the language, mandarin vs Cantonese. Same pattern than Tibet and
other provinces (basically cultural cleansing). Since 97, about 1.5m mainland
Chinese settled in HK. More than 20% of its current population. Officially
about 150 Chinese à day can migrate there.

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yazaddaruvala
I hope they look into recomposition. Recycling the human body into a tree is
the closest thing we have to a second life.

[https://www.recompose.life/](https://www.recompose.life/)

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newguynewguy
This looks really cool, but I'm extremely suspicious of it. "We put you in a
bin with wood chips" is about as detailed as the site gets about their
process. It gets much more detailed about the facility and cultural
implications.

Also, they turn you into soil, not a tree. When my dad dies, why would this be
better than me simply burying his naked body in the forest somewhere?

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vorpalhex
> why would this be better than me simply burying his naked body in the forest
> somewhere

If he's not embalmed? Not much.

If you embalm him first? A whole lot of time.

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tvanantwerp
Does anyone offer the service of turning cremated ashes into diamond in HK? I
can absolutely see Hong Kongers preferring to become a fashionable piece of
jewelry to just being dumped into Victoria Harbour.

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lawlessone
where will all that ash end up?

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pndy
Sadly, I can't read the article without accepting site cookies

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analogmemory
I'm on latest Firefox with it's default tracking blocked and uBlock running.
Didn't see any issues

