We noticed, starting a couple of weeks ago that there's a great deal of stuff being burnt out in the street at the moment.
Often it's one or two people, burning what looks like rubbish in the drain channels by the side of the road, poking the charred paper and toxic smelling packaging with a stick. It can also be a whole bunch of people doing this all at once, with incense sticks arrayed around, wedged in the cracks in the pavement.
The detritus is then simply left lying about, getting soggy and sticky in the fairly constant rain, for days until it finally washes away.
We have asked several local friends and colleagues about it, and they quite vaguely explained that it's a month in the religious calendar for commemorating and honouring dead relatives. Of which, the burning of stuff (in ways that to the untrained eye don't look particularly ritualised) is a big part.
So we have got quite used to seeing it now, crossing the road to stay out the way, stepping over soggy ash lumps and zoning out the pungent smoke.
But, just as we got quite nonchalant about it, Hong Kong as always has the ability to surprise. This picture shows the kind of scale this ritual can apparently reach... and perhaps get commercial.
The man pictured seems to have erected a veritable bonfire, hemmed in by (surely flammable?!) big sheets of MDF. O the road. Worryingly close to a sharp blind bend. In about an hour flat. On whose authority we have no idea.
The baskets are full of 'hell money' - fake paper money Hong Kongers burn to send to their dead to help them in the afterlife. It seems this chap keeps the really stinky fire going, and the occasional passerby buys wedges of hell money to cast into the flames and thereby wire it to a dead uncle or similar.
Just when everything can feel so familiar and normal, stuff like this crops up to remind you that Lincolnshire, Bedfordshire and London are all quite far away...
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