When is a columbarium not a columbarium? When it's a shrine.
That's the contention of a company - set on expanding its niche business - that has launched an unlikely legal challenge to the government's definition of a columbarium.
The Hong Kong Life Group, which runs The Shrine in a converted historic New Territories house, argues that because people will pay homage to their dead relatives' ashes in niches at the house, it is - as its name says - a shrine and, therefore, allowed under planning rules.
Several columbarium operators are challenging planning rules that the government says they have breached, and have asked town planners to rezone their land to make the storage of funerary urns legal.
Hong Kong faces a severe shortage of public niches for burial urns, and the problem is expected to get worse given the population is ageing. As the government looks for answers, private operators are stepping in to take up the slack.
