Still, in this town, a custom-built Chinese-style casket costing a coronary-inducing $800,000 is what constitutes a real Rolls-Royce of a box in which to cruise comfortably into the hereafter. 'But this would be for burial,' clarifies Leung, 'which often means spending more money than you can afford.' Now that cremation has replaced burial as the most favoured method of disposal - 85 per cent of bodies are incinerated rather than interred these days - most families opt for what Leung calls a 'simple model' (linings and pillows are, in any case, considered Western fripperies in local undertaking circles) and a more sedate average outlay of 'less than $20,000'.

Embalming, which was rare a decade ago in Hong Kong, has grown proportionally with the vogue for cremation. 'Sometimes, in peak season, there is a 10- or 12-day wait between collecting the body from the hospital mortuary and the funeral service,' explains Leung. 'So families are advised to have the bodies embalmed. If the person died of, say, cancer, a stroke or hypertension, the body deteriorates rapidly. This is not good for reposing [the local custom of laying the body out for relatives and friends to see the day before the funeral ceremony]. We embalm for two weeks or maybe more than one month in cases of export.

'We buy the materials necessary,' he says. He removes a hefty tome from an adjacent bookshelf. Its thin glossy pages are filled with black-and-white photographs of grisly-looking tools. It looks like a trade catalogue for plumbers but it would be too much to hope that he'd brought something like that in to taunt a squeamish interviewer; Leung may be many things but you get the feeling that a practical joker isn't one of them.

He rifles through the pages: 'We have suppliers of embalming fluid in Australia, New Zealand, the US and Britain. And the medical instruments we use, the trocas, for example' - he stabs at a picture of a metal implement that is half-syringe, half-pump with his forefinger - 'we import from the US. This one is for injecting fluid in the arteries and the veins ... They are not expensive and they last a long time.' Super.

The parlour has an army of contractors and sub-contractors through which it procures services that are considered central to a good send-off. The complexity of these funereal trimmings depends on how much the family of the deceased is willing to pay. Even the rites of death, it seems, are subject to a sliding scale of ostentation. 'If a client wants to give a good performance, a very good service for a deceased mother or father, say, we ask them if they also want Buddhist priests, Taoist priests, monks and nuns to attend. Then we arrange it for them through our contractor.' The cost of hiring celebrants depends on how many are needed - four is the minimum, 21 the maximum - and what they are required to do. Recruiting the services of six monks, say, to walk around the ceremonial hall a bit, saying prayers and chanting sutras, is likely to add as much as $4,000 to funeral costs.

The contractor which supplies religious celebrants to the home also sources paper objects for burning, if they are required. After the coffin, these flimsy, sometimes very elaborate structures can be the second biggest expense facing relatives determined to do the right thing by their dearly departed. As much as $100,000 in the form of ornately sculpted houses, cars, bridges and mountains can go up in a puff of smoke for grieving families who, literally, have money to burn. The home buys the ubiquitous joss-sticks and incense very cheaply through local companies which import them from China.

Although get-ups by Chanel and Giorgio Armani are probably rare sights at the Hong Kong junction of the Pearly Gates, Leung says that the parlour does offer a fine line in post-mortem couture. The more fashionable corpse is likely to be sent off to meet its maker in a fetching ensemble handcrafted from pure silk with a price tag to rival that of upmarket mortal garb. Some death clothes are made in China but the majority are tailor made in the territory. 'Of course, we also offer cheaper ones that are made out of cotton instead of silk,' adds Leung. 'Relatives can choose what best suits their budget.' Interestingly, a male corpse is usually 'forwarded' wearing an even number of garments; a female corpse is considered suitably attired for the hereafter only if she is dressed in an odd number.

The wide, ground-floor corridor of the Universal Funeral Parlour is a heaving sea of white as mourners shuffle desultorily in and out of the five large ceremonial halls which border it. The processes which expedite the disposal of human remains here are devoid of restraining sobriety; they are as brisk and businesslike as the writing on Leung's ringbinders. 'Westerners greet death calmly, privately; for them it is the end of a journey,' says Leung. 'For Chinese, it is a very public affair. Look around you; this is a very busy service industry.' If the lifeless guests-of-honour in these neon-lit halls are ready to begin a new journey, Leung is here to make sure they have everything they need along the way - for a price, of course.