Infrastructure

Home page

Infrastructure

Hong Kong’s virtual graveyard â€Ž

11 June 2010 08:45 (UTC +04:00)

The site enables users to pay tribute to dead relatives and friends by creating an online memorial page with pictures and messages. It allows users to send virtual flowers and offerings to comfort the dead in their afterlife, such as virtual chickens, fruit, roast suckling pig and paper money.

The website, memorial.gov.hk, has been set up the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department to help people pay tribute to their loved ones â€œanytime and anywhere online in a warm, personalized yet solemn manner.â€ However, it will only allow memorials for Hong Kong residents on record of having been cremated at public crematoriums or buried at public cemeteries to guard against pranksters creating bogus pages.

A government spokesman said the free service had been created to meet the needs of modern society and to promote sustainable forms of mourning and burial. â€œThe website is not meant to replace traditional practices of paying tribute to the deceased,â€ the spokesman said.

Traditionally, Hong Kong people burn paper offerings, such as cars, houses and fake money for their dead relatives on anniversaries of their deaths and on special festival days. The site cost 1 million Hong Kong dollars (128,000 US dollars) to set up with yearly operating costs estimated at 800,000 Hong Kong dollars.