At a recent ceremony in a dark, cavernous auditorium, a deep male voice intoned in Mandarin: “I will live on happily in your image and always remember you.” Green and red laser beams shot out from the foreheads of three 10-metre (33-foot) tall gold-plated Buddhas as soothing chants and ambient music played from cinema-quality loudspeakers. Suddenly, a beam of pure white light from above illuminated the main attraction: an urn containing the ashes of a recently cremated person, sitting on a revolving pedestal shaped like a lotus flower.