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Sherry Lee

It's noon and at the Cape Collinson Crematorium in Chai Wan, a group of schoolchildren, who moments ago were giggling and sharing jokes, have been shocked into silence. Christy Lam Cho-yin and 32 classmates are looking at social worker Gary Sham Chi-wing, who is holding a bag of human ashes: the remains of an elderly welfare recipient.
'This person was five feet, four inches tall and weighed 120 pounds [55kg]  to 130 pounds but, after being cremated, his whole body is reduced to two pounds of ashes,' says Sham, of the  St James' Settlement charity, holding the white cloth bag.
Lam and her classmates are on a field trip but the subject they are studying is neither history nor geography, but suicide.
In 2008, there were five suicides in Hong Kong among those aged 15 or younger, up from one in 2004, according to the Jockey Club's Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention at the University of Hong Kong. Last year, there were 52 suicides among males aged 15 to 24, up from 45 in 2008.
According to the  World Health Organisation's latest statistics, 970 Hongkongers committed suicide last year. That's  13.8 per 100,000 people and is higher than the rate in Britain (eight), the United States (11) and Australia (12).
The visit to the crematorium is part of a programme, organised by St James' Settlement,  to help secondary-school students understand death and, in the process, the value of life. Social workers also take students to cemeteries and  funeral homes, and even have them imagine their own  passing as they lay in closed coffins.
The elderly man, who lived alone, appointed St James' to scatter his  ashes in the government's  Garden of Remembrance at the crematorium. At Sham's request, the  Form Four students hold a silent vigil before he tips the ashes onto the small grassy field.
'I hope that by experiencing death, the youngsters can learn to treasure life,' says Sham, a co-founder of the project,  My Life: Understanding Death - A Life Exploration Tour. 
Paul Wong, a clinical psychologist at  HKU's suicide-research centre, says, 'Death education  is helpful for youths from a suicide-prevention perspective.  We found from our studies of suicide notes that a lot of youths showed inadequate understanding of death - its irreversibility.' 
 Wong says young people write farewells such  as, 'I hope I can see you all somewhere after I  have died.' 
'But the St James' tour puts them in a situation  where they have to face the issue of death,' he says.
 Sheng Kung Hui Lam Woo Memorial Secondary School  (SKHLW) in Kwai Chung  was the first to participate in the programme, which requires parental consent. The school's vice-principal,  Susie Liu, admits she worried that the tour might trigger suicidal thoughts in her students. Social workers and counsellors observe the teenagers during the tour and if they spot any signs of depression, they provide immediate counselling. Back at school, affected students  will be closely monitored.
On the morning of their tour, 33 SKHLW students gather outside the  Man Mo Temple in Sheung Wan. They are taken around the corner to a place few outsiders dare visit - Square Street,  home to several coffin shops. Parked on the street is a long black Mercedes Benz hearse. 
'Western-style funeral cars are beautiful and comfortable,' says the shop owner's daughter, Leslie Lok.  
Inside the small shop, the students look tense as they listen to Lok.
'The air is chilly here,' one jokes quietly. 
The students stand next to yellow and brown wood coffins, some with the lids open, revealing the cushioned white-linen interior. 
'We tailor make coffins for bigger bodies,' says Lok, dressed in a long black organza dress. 
Squeezed  into the shop, the teens begin to  relax. Some girls crack jokes among themselves and soon many   are taking pictures of the coffins.
The mood changes when they arrive at Cape Collinson Crematorium,   run by the  Food and Environmental Hygiene Department. The students are taken to a funeral hall, where, after services,  bodies are lowered  into the basement  for cremation. 
After a staff member shows them a video about sea  and garden burials, the students are  shown funeral niches.
 'Look at their year of birth,' Sham says.  'Also look at the date they died ... how long  ago was it?' 
One woman was born during the Qing dynasty and died in 1967. Some pictures of  the  deceased are blurred, others are missing. Many of the engravings have faded.
'Are they young or old in their pictures?' Sham asks. 'At this moment, what are you feeling? Keep that feeling.'
The students stare at the rows of black and  white  pictures. 
Next, they visit the Garden of Remembrance, commissioned in 2007 to provide small grassy plots over which ashes can be scattered. Sham takes them to a wall mounted with plaques commemorating those whose ashes have been scattered here.    
On one plaque is a picture of a man  aged about  40. It bears a Christian cross and is inscribed with  loving sentiments from his wife and children.
The teenagers line up to witness the scattering  of the  ashes. 
Stephen Ng Tsz-fung, 16, prays for the man: 'I hope he is in heaven and happy.' Ng says he is  not afraid of death because he has been raised  a Christian and believes  that 'believers in God will have eternal life and live in heaven'. But the tour has shocked him. 
'It hit me the moment the ashes were scattered on the field,' Ng says with a sigh. 'I feel that life is  a cycle and  a person cannot avoid death.'
The students are given 15 minutes to write about their feelings and walk around the garden. Later they are  taken by a bus around the  Tseung Kwan  O Chinese Permanent Cemetery and its hillside  full of graves.  They witness human bones being  dug up from graves on which burial land leases have expired. The remains will be ground into powder and placed in niches, they are told. 
In the afternoon, the students are driven to  Noah's Ark at Ma Wan, a non-profit theme park  that focuses on 'family, nature and moral values'. Here, they are  led into a darkened room containing three coffins. They are asked to get in and lie down. Then the coffin lids are put in place. 
Lam sits on the floor, looking at a screen on which questions are being projected: 'Are you prepared to face death?'; 'Will death come before you are ready?'; 'Who would you want to see most at the last moment of your life?'
Tears well up in Lam's eyes as she sees her friends leave  to go and lie in the coffins. Soon  it will be her turn.
Fixed to the inside of each lid is a monitor on which  is shown a video of a beautician leaning over, as if to brush make-up on the face of the person in the coffin. They hear the voices of people at a funeral and see people carrying their coffin into a graveyard as money is scattered on the ground. They are asked questions through the monitor, such as: 'What kind of funeral do you want?' and 'Who  will attend your funeral?'
'When I was in the coffin, I felt  my parents were outside but I couldn't answer them,' says Lam.  
Many of the students appear shaken and pale  as they emerge from their  coffin ordeal. They are silent as they go to the next room, where they are asked to  answer   a series of written questions: 'If,  one day, you are to leave the world, who would  you want to say your last words to and what  would they be?'; 'Would they be apologies,  wishes or farewells?'; and, 'Do you have any important possessions and who would you want  to give them to?'
'I hope my mother will continue to live joyfully,' writes Ng. 'I have a football that I would like to give  to my good friend.'
Lawrence Hui Sung-lai writes a long letter of thanks to his parents for taking care of him and  another to his brother, thanking him for his help. Sandy Wong Tsz-kei bequeaths all of her belongings to her mother and apologises to her  for not having had the chance to care for her.  
One student talks about being sorry for having ignored her parents. It strikes a chord with Lam and a couple of the other girls, who all begin sobbing. The youngest  of three children, Lam says she does not like communicating with her labourer parents, even though they work hard to support the family. 
'Often, when my parents call me, I am wearing headphones and pretend  to not hear them,' she says. 'I regretted doing that so much when they closed the coffin. If I really died, I could not answer my parents any more. I have a lot of things I have not said to them.'
Next to her, Lau Siu-po, 16, writes to his parents: 'Thank you for raising me and giving me a good education. Do not feel sad and live a good life.'
'After I said goodbye to my classmates and went into the coffin, I felt  lonely and helpless,' Lau says. 'I realised that if we love our parents, we must  tell them now. If we are dead, it will be  [too late].   
'The music made everyone more depressed and they couldn't hold back their tears,' he says  of the Taoist music played at the 'funerals'. 'When I heard the music and the prayers, I cried.'
Lau says the tour has helped him  understand what is important in life, including how to deal  with the pressure of attending an elite school, as he prepares for the 2012 public exams.
'When we die, we cannot take our academic performance or our wealth with us, no matter how rich we are,' he says. 'But what we can leave in the world is the love we give to our families and others.
'I did not expect [the programme to cause]  such a big change. I realised my parents' love and that they are most important to me.'
Ng says he learned death can come calling at any time: 'We never know what will happen to us in the next second. We should do meaningful things while we are  alive.'
Josephine Lee Yuk-chi, St James' Settlement's senior manager,  says: 'They are still young and [it's like] we are  planting a seed. It will be useful their whole life.' 
She says the tour may be adapted for other  age groups.
 The day of death is over and Lam is  waving goodbye to her friends with a broad smile. She  says she is hurrying home. 
'I want to go home to hug my mum. I will tell her I  love her very much.'



Good grief