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Hong Kong Has No Space Left for the Dead (vice.com)
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.
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...
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When there's no more room in columbariums, the dead will walk the earth.
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...
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It's related to tech through science-fiction writing. Many authors based stories on the prospect of the world running out of space and alternative solutions being found (removing health and safety laws to increase death rates), allowing the population to eliminate each other to get birth permits. Star Wars even had an entire planet based on this problem (Coruscant).
Some countries like Bangladesh and Singapore have also run out of space. Bangladesh is begging other countries to take their surplus population. Hong Kong already has "coffin apartments". The next stage for them is to start building over the oceans or reclaiming land.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
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)
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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.
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".
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. The wait for a kidney can be 5 or 10 years.
When I renew my driver's license, I always check the "Yes" box for "Do you want to be an organ donor?"
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.
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.
When I die, I want to be dismembered and parts of my body surgically implanted in other, still living people. Then my tastes and personality traits can slowly, subtly, influence the recipient -- to commit MURDER!
That's why I check the box.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
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 that often forbids cremation. Islam also forbids cremation in general. Some of this is likely due to similarities to pagan rituals.
Also throw in a lot of laws regulations and history as well. Dead get buried in reserved lots of land rather than in back yards. Tombs for kings versus mass graves for paupers meant that rising middle classes wanted something nicer. Cremation could be impractical in certain places or eras. And so forth.