Chinese dead ‘live’ in luxury

Press, 30 November 1987, Page 6

Chinese dead ‘live’ in luxury

By

DIANE STORMONT

NZPA-Reuter Manila “I’ve never had any trouble from the neighbours,” said Rollie Villanueva, surveying the expensive villas lining the well-swept Manila street “They’re all dead.” The road was very quiet At one end, a workman gathered withered leaves. The doors and windows of the houses were padlocked and a few envelopes, most of them from an electricity company, hung haphazardly out of letterboxes.

Those bills will get paid, but not by the residents.

For this is the Living City of the Dead, a spacious suburb of tree-lined streets that houses the tombs of generations of Chinese Filipinos in a style that millions of Manila slum-dwellers can only dream about

“Come in, take photos,” Mr Villanueva said, unlocking the red gates to the Yu courtyard. "There’s no-one here.”

Safe behind burglarproof gates and window bars, the Yu family mausoleum on "Millionaire’s Row” looks like an ordinary 180 sq m house, lacking only bedrooms. The building, purposebuilt for the dead like the others in the suburb, comes equipped with all mod cons: a spacious kitchen and bathroom complete with running water, electricity and telephone.

The bar is stocked with beer, lemonade and the overseas Chinese community’s favourite tipple — premium cognac.

Dust sheets cover a dining table large enough to seat a dozen living members of the Yu family, who visit on feast days to

observe centuries-old Chinese customs: playing mahjong, a gambling game, and sweeping the graves of their ancestors.

Mr Villanueva commands more than 50 road sweepers, cleaners and janitors to care for the unique cemetery, administered by the PhiiippineChinese Charitable Association. The houses are paid for by the families that use them as mausoleums. Mr Villanueva lives next door to Mr and Mis Yu (deceased), whose tombs lie in their front room. Life-size oil poriaits of the Yu family patriarch, and matriarch, who left southern China in the last century to seek their fortune, frown down at joss sticks, statues of Buddha and Taoist deities. But the photographs of the next Yu generation stare up at a cross nailed to the wall. They were Christians, like most people in their adopted country. “Nearly 40 per cent of those interred here were Christian,” Mr Villanueva said. At the suburb’s main temple, founded nearly 160 years ago, Buddha and the Taoist goddess, Kwan Yin, dominate, but a crucifix hangs from the back wall.

The Tung family across the street built their tomb of marble imported from Italy. The Li family preferred ' more modern materials: smoked glass and bare bricks.

Another family, apparently traditionalists for they did not Romanise their name, erected a Chinese temple, complete with high altar, intertwined roof dragons and red door posts.

Three roads down lie the middle class in a series of smaller oneroom mausoleums.

There is less marble, no pagoda roots and fewer framed eulogies in Chinese calligraphy. But there is a more personal touch. Mr Huang, a grocer, is surrounded by San Miguel beer bottles — “It was bis favourite brand,” Mr Villanueva said. “There you can see hk last pack ot dgarettes.” a balf empty packet of Winston lay next to the bear bottles. Mr 'Leung was*not« lucky. He came from the wrong side of the track* and could barely put Ms children through school, let alone afford a marble mausoleum.

But a charity funded by oveiseas Chinese worldwide made sure he got a headstone, complete with the traditional black-and-white photograph. Huge sums of money are needed to ensure the next generation a resting place in their family mausoleum, for the 54-hectare cemetery is filling up rapidly.

“A 25 to 30 year lease on an average plot of 90 to 180 square metres now costs about 500,000 pesos ($40,000),” Mr Villanueva said, “and that will rise as space gets tighter.” “If (families) don’t renew, their dead win be exhumed and the plot resold to someone else for more money.” The charitable association is trying to buy more land but that is proving a delicate task, says Mr Villanueva.

“When millions of Filipinos are homeless or living in shanty towns, why should the dead lie in such luxury?”