Anita Mui's Ashes Have Been Missing From a Hong Kong Monastery Since July
The Cantopop star's ashes, placed at Po Lin Monastery on Lantau Island after her 2003 death, were discovered missing on July 18 when visiting fans found her niche's plaque unscrewed and the urn gone. Her family's appeal, published on her 63rd birthday, has now made the loss public — and revived the memory of Hong Kong's blackmail wave built on stolen celebrity ashes.
On October 10, what would have been Anita Mui's 63rd birthday, her international fan club published an urgent appeal confirming what the family had kept quiet for nearly three months: the ashes of the Cantopop star, who died in 2003, are missing. Fans paying respects at the Hoi Wui Pagoda at Po Lin Monastery on Lantau Island — the resting place her family arranged in line with her wishes — found the plaque at her niche hanging loose, its screws unscrewed, and the urn inside gone. That was July 18. The family reported it to Hong Kong police the same day; the ashes have not been recovered, and no ransom demand has been reported.
The family's appeal asks anyone who visited the pagoda or the surrounding monastery area, especially between early January and mid-July, to come forward with sightings or dashcam footage, and gives a police hotline and a WhatsApp number for tips. On Weibo, entertainment accounts carried it to the top of the day's conversation; one post alone drew more than 20,000 likes. "Why here — how could even a place this devout be hit? And to what end?" one fan wrote under the trending topic, noting the pagoda sits in a working monastery, the kind of place visitors cross the sea to reach quietly.
Mui's protégé Andy Hui learned of it as he came off stage at the Hong Kong Coliseum, having just finished the third of three concert nights. Asked backstage whether he was shocked and angry, he said, "Of course" ("咁梗係"). Asked about helping appeal for information: "The whole world knows already — let me get up to speed first." That evening he added Mui's classic "Intimate Lover" (親密愛人) to the setlist — a song he had not sung the previous two nights. "Especially tonight," he said. "The other two nights, no. I did it for her."
Strange as it sounds, this is Hong Kong's second round of celebrity-ashes crime. At Po Fook Hill, a private columbarium in Sha Tin, thieves pried open niches with professional tools between May and August 2025, removed urns and restored the niches' appearance so routine inspections noticed nothing; the ashes were then hidden on nearby hillsides and used as leverage. Among the victims was Lau Kar-leung, the legendary action choreographer who died in 2013: his widow said in November 2025 that thieves had sent her photographs of his urn and demanded an initial HK$60 million. She refused to pay — "I wouldn't give a cent" — and in February 2026 his ashes were recovered, together with those of the late film producer Xiang Huasheng. The ashes of Po Fook Hill's own founder, Fung Shing, were also confirmed taken; the blackmailers, the widow said, had demanded a million US dollars from each family whose relative's ashes were stolen, and whether his were ever recovered remains unknown. Police classified the cases as blackmail; at least one man has been arrested and charged with conspiracy to blackmail, with suspected accomplices still at large. Leslie Cheung, Lydia Shum and Roman Tam also rest at Po Fook Hill — none of their niches confirmed touched.
The logic of the crime is the scarcity around it. Hong Kong's chronic shortage of columbarium space has long made a permanent niche costly and contested; the thefts turned that scarcity into leverage, since an urn's value is only what it means to the living. "Even the peace of the dead has become a bargaining chip," as one Weibo user put it, summarizing the wave. The story has crossed platforms too, landing on Baidu's hot-search board the same weekend.
The Po Fook Hill cases ended, for some families, in recovery and a charge. The Mui theft has, so far, neither: no demand, no arrest, no public lead — only an appeal posted on her birthday, asking anyone who drove past a monastery in the spring to check their dashcam.