Hong Kong is dense: You can't throw a cat without hitting an apartment filled to maximum capacity (looking at you, Chungking Mansions). One thing that can't be crammed into small, high-rent quarters, however, is the city's ever-increasing number of deceased residents... until now!
While a Hong Kong burial used to include a relatively spacious spot on a family plot somewhere on the island, an growing number of the city's less-than-lively residents are finding themselves in weird burial limbo, paying rent for the back shelf of a undertakers' shop or paying through the nose for a standard service.
According to the Financial Times, thousands of bodies each year are kept in limbo (not the olden Catholic kind), where they are held by local coroners until a burial space opens up. How could suck a space "open up," you ask? Well, aside from Hong Kong's sporadic risings of the dead, a number of burial plots can open due to the fact that they were never planning to hold on to the bodies for that long to begin with.
A significant number of deceased Hong Kongers are buried for only six years, before getting exhumed to allow a new body to fill the space. The exhumed bodies are then often cremated.
The HK governent is reportedly considering to double the price of a burial to HKD6,670 - that's quite a bit, considering that even burial isn't a final fix.
Some 43,000 people died in Hong Kong in 2013, and by any reckoning, that number will only increase in years to come. Maybe a graveyard duplex?
H/T: Coconuts HK
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