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are then ritually washed and cremated, or, in the case of New Territories' villagers, re-interred either in horseshoe-shaped masonry graves or in two-foot high, ceramic, funerary urns, called kam taap (金塔). The bones are positioned in these pots, foetus-shaped, ready for reincarnation.
'There is a time to live, a time to die, and
a time to be born again.'
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Spots selected on hillsides should have 'neutral' feng shui; high voltage electricity, too powerful a 'charge' can render living relatives vulnerable. Hong Kong citizens can now occupy grave spaces at Shenzhen Overseas Chinese Mausoleum, just over the Hong Kong border in China, where they can be interred in perpetuity.
Incidentally, bodies were sometimes buried 12-feet under in cemeteries in Happy Valley (a lovely name), in early British Hong Kong, to protect them from grave robbers.
Graves should be sited on hillsides. At the base of a mountain ridge, where the dragon spirit of the mountain stops its run, between spurs to give an 'armchair' effect, is a good position. There should be a commanding view, preferably of water (representing money). The surroundings may take the form of a dragon, a snake, a crab or a prawn, and 'dragon's vapour' (feng shui) needs to be captured or restrained in the correct proportions. The siting of a grave metaphysically influences the lives of descendants. A body decomposes and the 'five Elements', minerals from bones and flesh, remain in the soil. Nothing dies. Everything is transformed. Universal impulses and high vibrational and spiritual frequencies are transferred from graves along electromagnetic ley lines, and resonances and energy are received and inherited from father to son and by other living relatives. Such activities are most effective when one is buried in one's native soil, some believe.38 Today, however, in public cemeteries in Hong Kong, a person is allocated the next vacant grave space. He has little control over feng shui, although some people do try to change their position in a queue in order to obtain a 'good' grave number.
Return Visit
In this study, on the 12th night after death (duration depends upon deceased's date of birth3), all close family members waited in the dead