Coronavirus: Hongkongers’ offerings to ancestors to be centralised and burned in funeral parlour to cut crowds at private columbariums during Ching Ming Festival

Ritual can mean a long wait for people so operators have agreed to centralise offerings and burn them at nearby funeral parlour

Health officials have urged people to pay their tributes online or sweep graves in non-peak periods

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Offerings will be centralised and burned at a funeral parlour. Photo: Felix Wong

Published: 9:13pm, 13 Mar 2020Updated: 12:09am, 14 Mar 2020

In a bid to cut coronavirus risks, about 60 private columbariums in a Hong Kong district will centralise people’s offerings to their ancestors and burn them in a funeral parlour to avoid large crowds gathering during the Ching Ming Festival.

The joint effort by columbarium operators in Hung Hom along with other crowd-control measures by local cemeteries came as Hong Kong health officials urged people to pay their tributes online or sweep graves in non-peak periods.

Unlike mainland Chinese cities such as Nanjing and Jiangsu, which are suspending all tomb-sweeping activities, cemeteries and columbariums in Hong Kong will continue to operate but with measures to reduce crowds around the festival on April 4.

Huge crowds gather at cemeteries across Hong Kong every year on the day of the Ching Ming Festival. Photo: SCMP

In Hung Hom, where the ashes of tens of thousands of the deceased are stored in private columbariums and coffin shops, long queues form every year as people pay their respects in the lead-up to the festival.

Ng Yiu-tong, life chairman of the Hong Kong Funeral Business Association, said shops would still take out ashes from their storage for people to memorialise loved ones but offerings could not be burned on the spot starting from next Saturday until April 18.