Cynthia Mull loved her grandmother, a woman raised in the poverty of turn-of-the-century China who made toys and shoes for the grandchildren using rags.
Her grandmother, Keng Chang, died 32 years ago, and her grave lies in Taiwan, where Mull, now in California, can't watch over it as her love and culture demand. With only an elderly uncle left to care for the remains, Mull now wants to move her grandmother to America.
"I feel that she's still with me, even though she's half a world away," Mull says. "I feel much better if I can bring her here."
PHOTO: AP
The request isn't unusual. Funeral directors say a small but increasing number of Asian immigrants are moving the ashes or bones of their loved ones to their new homeland for reburial.
The graves -- sometimes carefully chosen with an eye to feng shui principles of location and design -- are appearing around the country, most often in big cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco or New York.
Families want to adhere to traditions of honoring ancestors by placing flowers, incense and other offerings on the graves during holidays. But for many immigrants it is too costly and time-consuming to travel back to China or Korea.
"Nobody's there to take care of the graves," said Tony Soohoo, a funeral counselor at Wah Wing Sang Mortuary in Los Angeles. "You always take care of your ancestors. You pay your respects."
No nationwide figures on reburials are kept, but Soohoo estimated that his mortuary handles 15 to 20 reburials a year, and the Rose Hills Co in Whittier handled 324 Asian reburials in 2000 and last year and had 91 this year through June.
"It's a pretty major trend," said Tom Poston, general sales manager at Skylawn Memorial Park in San Mateo in the San Francisco Bay area, where 70 percent of clients are of Asian descent. "They're not ever planning on going back, and they want to have their loved ones back."
More than 7 million US residents in 2000 were born in Asia, according the 2000 US census, and the country has nearly 12 million people of Asian descent, or about 4.2 percent of the population.
Mull, who is director of Asian affairs at Skylawn's Sunnyvale branch, said some aging parents are concerned about whether their children will maintain the tradition of care.
"My children are born here, and I can say they don't even think the way I think," Mull said. "Death, burial to them is matter-of-fact ... scatter me somewhere or put me in a jar. They don't have the tradition that I believe."
She said she is planning to bring over her grandmother's remains.
It costs only airplane fare or shipping costs to have cremated remains transferred to the US. They are not considered hazardous by US Customs. Caskets containing other remains must be hermetically sealed, and entry requires the permission of public health or customs officers to guard against the spread of a communicable disease.
Another element involved is feng shui. Some Asians believe that proper placement of their ancestors' remains will bring a better future for posterity, Poston said.
His cemetery uses the services of a feng shui master to suggest positioning of the grave. Clients often spend more to ensure that a grave faces west or southwest and that no pointed object is facing it.
The San Francisco Bay Area cemetery also benefits from having graves situated between both mountains and water, considered a powerful feng shui combination.
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