The site enables users to pay tribute to dead relatives and friends by creating an online memorial page with pictures and messages.<\/p>\n
It allows users to send virtual flowers and offerings to comfort the dead in their afterlife, such as virtual chickens, fruit, roast suckling pig and paper money.<\/p>\n
The website, memorial.gov.hk, has been set up the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department to help people pay tribute to their loved ones “anytime and anywhere online in a warm, personalised yet solemn manner.”<\/p>\n
However, it will only allow memorials for Hong Kong residents on record of having been cremated at public crematoriums or buried at public cemeteries to guard against pranksters creating bogus pages.<\/p>\n
A government spokesman said the free service had been created to meet the needs of modern society and to promote sustainable forms of mourning and burial.<\/p>\n
“The website is not meant to replace traditional practices of paying tribute to the deceased,” the spokesman said.<\/p>\n
Traditionally, Hong Kong people burn paper offerings, such as cars, houses and fake money for their dead relatives on anniversaries of their deaths and on special festival days.<\/p>\n
The site cost 1 million Hong Kong dollars (128,000 US dollars) to set up with yearly operating costs estimated at 800,000 Hong Kong dollars.<\/p>\n