It's a long wait for the dead with HK's crematorium crunch

Monopoly of limited services means waiting time of weeks, with situation set to worsen

- Magdalene Fung

Nearly six years after his stepfather died in Hong Kong, Professor Christopher Tang still recalls vividly the weeks of anguish he went through to put the older man to rest.

Just trying to snag a slot for cremation was a "barbaric hunger game", he told The Straits Times, referring to the dystopian book and movie series about participants in televised death matches.

"The wait for cremation at that time was more than a month," said Prof Tang, who had returned from the United States to oversee the arrangements in 2018.

There was a wait list with slots that would open up for booking when a scheduled cremation was cancelled. But to secure a slot, one had to beat all other mourners on the list to be the first person to arrive at the government office to register for it, he said.

"I had an agent stationed at the office to inform me whenever a slot opened up, and I would have to rush down when called.

"I missed the chance a couple of times, but finally got a slot after a few days," recounted the Hong Kong-born Prof Tang, an academic at the University of California, Los Angeles.

"It was such a stressful experience amid my mourning... The duration from my stepdad's passing to the cremation date was three weeks. But locals told me that if I were not from overseas with some financial means to hire an agent, the normal wait for cremation would have been about 1/2 months."

At the crematorium, it was crowded, he recalled.

"I was shocked when staff members rushed me to push the button to send my stepdad's coffin into the incinerator," he said. "It was so thoughtless and cruel; they didn't even give me a choice."

Prof Tang's story is one of many that have played out across Hong Kong over the years due to a monopoly of the city's limited crematorium services.