Hong Kong Inferno: “Seven-Day Memorial” Shrouds the City in Grief

After burning for two days, the fire at Hong Fook Court left behind several charred, lifeless buildings. (Video screenshot)

[People News] On the day before Thanksgiving (Nov. 26), a serious fire broke out in Hong Kong. It is currently known that 156 people tragically died, and hundreds of families who lost their homes instantly fell into darkness. December 2 marked the “seven-day memorial” for the victims, and the entire city of Hong Kong was enveloped in mourning. The Hong Kong government finally changed its stance and admitted that the fire was caused by problems with the protective net, no longer daring to openly cover for the relatives of CCP leader Xi Jinping.

December 2 was the seventh day after the fire. At the rest area on Kwong Fuk Road, Tai Po, citizens came one after another to lay flowers in mourning. The site was filled with white flowers, and the pavilion was covered with condolence notes. Some folded paper cranes to express remembrance for the deceased.

Ms. Yan, who came to mourn, said frankly she felt angry at how the Hong Kong government responded. She said, “What we want is not money, but the truth. This is the answer all Hong Kong people want.”

According to Deutsche Welle, 80-year-old Mr. Zhao had lived in Hong Tai House for more than 40 years. He and his wife luckily escaped. He said that during the entire escape process “no alarm sounded, and there was no water. If it weren’t for the neighbor who alerted us, we wouldn’t have known it was a fire.” They accused the maintenance company of sealing the entire window with foam board. For more than a year they had no air-conditioning, could not see outside at all, and the home was pitch black—they had to turn on the lights every day. Homeowners lived in extremely harsh conditions.

Sixty-nine-year-old Anna was one of the last residents to escape from Hong Sun House. She said that at around 2 p.m. on November 26, she learned from a relative’s phone call that there was a fire nearby. When the second building caught fire, she escaped with the help of neighbors, but after taking fewer than ten steps, the third building beside her was already on fire.

The eight buildings of Hong Fook Court began undergoing major maintenance in July last year; it has now exceeded one year. The entire project involves 330 million Hong Kong dollars.

Anna said angrily, “This is not a natural disaster, it’s man-made!” If it weren’t man-made, how could it catch fire automatically? The Hong Kong government forced major renovations—if owners refused, they would be liable for compensation should anything happen. She already paid 156,000 Hong Kong dollars in repair fees, now lost entirely; the home she invested 40 years of hard work into is gone. And the two subsidies the government promised—she has not seen them to this day.

Mr. Wong criticized the government for dereliction of duty, tolerating bid-rigging, corruption, and shoddy materials. He questioned why the exterior wall, which could have been partially repaired, had to have all tiles removed to inflate the project size; and suspected the paint color was deliberately chosen to match the old wall, making it easier to cut corners so that residents on higher floors could not detect whether real replacements were made.

According to Newtalk News, on December 1, Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption revealed that in July this year, after a typhoon damaged protective nets at Hong Fook Court, those involved purchased 2,300 rolls of non–fire-resistant protective netting for replacement. At the end of October, they purchased 115 rolls of fire-resistant protective netting to install on the building foundations to pass inspection.

Previously, the Hong Kong government had always blamed the fire on bamboo scaffolding, refusing to admit that the protective nets were faulty, and even detained those allegedly “spreading rumors.” According to online whistleblowers, the Shandong manufacturer of the protective net is connected to the wife’s younger sister of Xi Yuanping, the brother of Xi Jinping.

Pan Zhuohong, chairman of the Hong Kong non-profit “China Inspection Monitor,” told Deutsche Welle that behind this lies a larger systemic issue: “The biggest problem is lax enforcement—laws exist but are not followed, and enforcement is weak. Only then do you get problems with scaffolding nets and foam materials. It absolutely has nothing to do with bamboo scaffolding.”

Current affairs commentator Zhang Xingzi wrote on Renminbao that two days after the Hong Kong fire, People’s Daily Online released a festive, red-themed video titled “Tonight We Eat Char Siu Rice,” and Chinese nationalists (“Little Pink”) commented “Fragrant!” The CCP has a habit of “celebrating tragedies.” In the CCP’s eyes, perhaps a massive fire that took over a hundred lives is a large-scale sacrificial ritual. Mao Zedong once said: “Great disorder under heaven brings great order. After seven or eight years, let it come again.” Every political movement claims countless Chinese lives under the CCP’s tyrannical fist. Their deaths may well be treated by the CCP as sacrifices. For the Chinese people, every disaster is a heart-wrenching tragedy of life and death. But the CCP will later boast of the Party’s “great victory,” praise itself, and demand that the surviving people “thank the Party’s grace”—which is nakedly exploiting people’s lives and misfortunes.

X user “Qiao Zhifei” posted on November 30 that everyone knows this fire was not a natural disaster but the result of a long accumulation of man-made problems. “Aging buildings, subdivided units everywhere, fire exits blocked by illegal structures, homeowners’ associations rendered useless—people were shouting about these issues twenty years ago, still shouting ten years ago, but after the National Security Law, no one dared to shout. Even if they did, they’d be taken away first… Under the logic of high-pressure ‘stability maintenance,’ everything becomes a secondary contradiction—stability overrides all.”

“Hong Kong’s once-proud rule of law, accountability mechanisms, public oversight, press freedom, and civil society—these institutional designs, like fire exits, were meant to eliminate risks before social conflict ignites. Now the channels of democracy have been welded shut, the extinguishers of equality removed, the legal alarm systems unplugged, leaving only an illusion of ‘trust the government.’ In a society where problems can no longer be raised, discussed, or solved, problems do not disappear—they only find an exit in a more tragic way.” △