We are out of space, dead or alive

Our land scarsity problem in HK has officially spreaded from the living to the dead. I understand and am familar with scenes of people queuing up to buy property in HK. But this is a first. People lining up overnight to get urn spaces.

Tsing Chung Koon, a Daoist temple, is "launching" 700 new urn spaces, to be sold to the public over 5 days. But over 1000 people turned up and queued overnight. After seeing too big a crowd, instead of first come first serve, the temple attempted to switch to a ballot approach, which pissed off everyone who's been queuing there for hours.

Apparently there's supply of 15000 urn spaces every year in HK, mostly "old" (instead of new build), but there's demand for 22000.

What wasnt clear from the report and the photo is: whether these people are queuing for their relatives, themselves, or to resell for a profit?

Getting a space to "live", dead or alive, is getting just as difficult and prohibitively expensive in HK. Comical parallels in our worlds:

Original text 1: 青松觀出售新一批七百個骨灰龕位，原定分五日、安排每日派出一百四十個籌，讓市民輪候購買。由於現場人數太多，最多人時有逾千人排隊，人龍尾排至青山醫院，青松觀在派籌第二日下午宣佈改用抽簽方式，引起已排隊人士大表不滿。

Original text 2: 新世界發展與市建局合作的名鑄，昨正式開放現樓示範單位，參觀情況墟冚。市場表示，該盤原定昨向代理派貨，但現時又傳或押後至最快本周三發售，開售時間遲遲未落實。