Cemetery has Chinese-American area

northjersey.com ^ | October 24, 2007 | DENISA R. SUPERVILLE

[Coleus]

A traditional Chinese dinner of rice, meat, seafood, vegetables and a small pig was laid out on the ground at Laurel Grove Cemetery. Nearby, gray smoke curled out of a trash can, in which members of the New York-based Fukien American Association burned fake money, part of a Chinese burial ritual meant to provide for the dead in the afterlife.

The event -- which started on the sidewalks of New York's Chinatown amid pounding drums and a colorful, traditional dragon dance -- consecrated the cemetery's new Chinese American Memorial Gardens section, which will be the future final resting place for more than 3,000 Chinese-Americans. Nineteen concrete sidewalks have been laid down like terraces, but part of the more than 4-acre section is still brown earth. The company that manages Laurel Grove promises that when complete, the cemetery will be the most opulent in New Jersey.

Kenneth Cheng, president of the Chinese American Memorial Gardens, said the cemetery will be modeled on burial sites in China's Fujian Province, where many of the association's members originated. The section cost the Fukien American Association about $7 million, Cheng said. Association members can pay a base price of about $2,000 to be buried there, Cheng said. Cheng said the association chose Laurel Grove because of its proximity to New York City and because it met the size requirement.

The section will include 1,000 mausoleum crypts, which have yet to be erected. There are also plans for a reflection wall of black granite, and the names of the families who are buried in the cemetery will be inscribed in a 23-karat gold leaf, said Bernard E. Stoecklein, Jr., chairman and chief executive officer of CMS Mid-Atlantic Cemetery Management Services, at the dedication Tuesday. "There is nothing like this ever created in the state of New Jersey," Stoecklein said. "For generations to come, members of the Chinese community will come to honor and pay respect to the deceased members of their families here."

Phylis Lan Lin, Director of Asian Programs at the University of Indianapolis, said Tuesday that in the past, Chinese cemeteries tended to be very elaborate. "The Chinese, they respect the deceased highly, so they would go out of their way to prepare a nice burial site," Lin said. For the Chinese, burial sites are very important, Lin said. High ground -- like the one on which the Chinese American Memorial Gardens section sits -- is normally considered a good sign.

"You want to have a good place to live, but you also want to have a nice place to be buried," Lin said. Until they outgrew the space, members of the Fukien American Association, which has about 20,000 members nationwide, used a burial ground in Union, Cheng said. "People like to sleep near their ancestors ... Not necessarily your ancestors, but your community," said Roberta Halporn, director of the Center for Thanatology Research and Education in Brooklyn. "Everybody does. That's part of the reason why we buy plots for our families in advance."