HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- It's a very personal and potentially painful choice, how to commemorate your loved ones after they've passed away. In Hong Kong, where public land is scarce, families are forced to pay a premium for burial space. So some people are turning to less conventional methods of preserving the memories of their nearest and dearest. Now there's a growing popularity of "remembrance diamonds."
Eva Wu has kept her son's room unchanged ever since he died a year a half ago. Cornald passed away from cancer at 17. Divorced and single, his mother recalled his last days. She says, "he always comforted me. He said 'Mummy, I know what's going on'. I'm not afraid of dying. I know where I'm going to. I have Jesus in my heart so don't worry about me."
After he died, Eva did for him what she had wanted done to herself in death. From his ashes, she made him into a diamond. She says, "I feel peace. I feel he's near me. And it's 100 percent him, nothing else but him. And i can recall his smiling face and i can recall his gentle character."
That peace is thanks to Scott Fong. The director of Algordanza says his company is Hong Kong's first, and only, maker of "remembrance diamonds".
He didn't plan to be in this business until a death in his family revealed Hong Kong's burial process to be as he says, "A very disjointed and chaotic affair and it seemed to me you either had to know someone or be very wealthy."
Algordanza was the solution. The company sends ashes from a cremated loved one to a lab at its Swiss headquarters. The carbon is filtered to more than 99 percent purity and exposed to volcanic heat and pressure.
In just about nine hours, a quarter-carat diamond is born. Total cost is around $3000. A two-carat, the biggest they make, costs $37,000.
That means they can cost the same or even less than full-body burials which run from $2,000 to more than $200,000.
And there's something else to consider: land is scarce in Hong Kong. That includes this kind of land...for cemeteries. Because of that, the government only allows a body to stay in the ground for six years. It then has to be exhumed and cremated anyways.
Diamonds as they say are forever. But Chinese traditional culture says the business of death is taboo. Even scott's father discouraged him at first. Scott says, "He told me that all the Chinese cultural society would cut off my head for even proposing an idea like this."
But after a few weeks his father, Bill, came to accept the idea. He'll be made into a diamond soon and split among his four children around the world. He died just a few weeks ago.
For Eva Wu, it was a slow but eventual acceptance from family too. She says, "They know my bonding to my child. They know we are so close and if this is the way that can make me happy and comfortable...just go ahead."
Eva does admit a remembrance diamond may not be the way everyone may want to commemorate their loved ones. But she adds that aside from the love you hold for them, diamonds can last nearly as long.