Another Ching Ming Festival is over. Luckily it rained so our beautiful flora and fauna, not to mention hiking school children, were not threatened by hill fires caused by flaming incense left behind by relatives paying respects to the dead.
Instead the hillsides of our islands and New Territories are only littered with the aftermath - not only traditional paper money, food and flowers, but pink plastic bags, string and empty drink cans abandoned at the edge of the 'tidied' graves.
While I can understand a culture having a special day to honour its dead by visiting and cleaning graves, it is incomprehensible how anyone, dead or alive, can equate this debris with respect.
The same happens every year. It is time the Regional Council took action to protect our hills from this inconsiderate form of 'respect'. Firstly, posters should be displayed at ferry piers and on paths leading to graves, urging people to not only respect the dead, but also our countryside. They should be asked to put litter in bins and not leave non-perishable offerings and dangerous burning incense at graves.
Secondly, councils could leave clearly marked bins or bags near grave areas to receive rubbish, and quickly clean up what others have not.
Ching Ming is an appropriate time to question policy and attitudes to graves in general. On Lamma, new graves are springing up at random all over the hills. Planning permission for homes for the living is strict, but there seems to be no regulation over homes for the dead, in terms of location, size and design.