On a recent trip to Hong Kong, I visited the Aberdeen Chinese Permanent Cemetery. The ashes of a friend, who died eight months ago, are interred there. I had not been able to attend his funeral. Our last encounter was a distressing video call from his hospital bed a few days before he passed away.<\/p>\n
Standing before his niche, I recalled the good times we had shared in Hong Kong and on holidays abroad, and how kind he had been to me. He was also a window into a world that I was never privy to \u2013 a mid-century Hong Kong of gentler sensibilities and slower, more deliberate comportment, before much of it was bulldozed by the grating brashness of the 1980s and 90s.<\/p>\n
Like most people in land-scarce Hong Kong today, he was cremated, contrary to the traditional Chinese belief that burial brings the dead peace. Cremation was once even regarded as a form of humiliation or punishment, often reserved as an extreme penalty for heinous crimes. The intention was to obliterate the remains, thereby condemning the soul to eternal oblivion.<\/p>\n
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<\/div>First was the profound influence of Buddhism, which viewed cremation as a sacred act that could guide the soul to the Western Paradise. Economics played a role, too. The Song era saw massive land grabs by the wealthy, leaving many ordinary people without a plot of earth to call their own, let alone the means to afford a costly burial. Funeral expenses \u2013 for burial plots, coffins, ceremonial goods and the hiring of ritual specialists \u2013 were simply beyond the reach of many families.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n