Memorial Gardens Cemetery. Photo by: Marissa
Price.
Ching Ming was
a cultural event that took place whenever a member of the Chinese
community died. In Olympia, Sam
Fun Locke purchased 76 lots in the Memorial
Gardens Cemetery.
Chinese custom holds that a monk comes
to the cemetery 10 years after the person has died, gathers the
bones of the deceased, and sends the bones back to person's family
burial plot in China.
When Chinatown existed
in Olympia local
newspapers wrote about the Chinese funeral ceremony. The
Chinese started from Chinatown and proceeded down
5th Street
to the cemetery. The mourners dressed all in white, and played
gongs and drums to scare away evil spirits. They believed that
from the moment a person dies to the final stage of "endearment" the
soul is susceptable to attack by evil spirits. White pieces of
paper with holes in the middle were also dropped to
the ground to divert the course of evil spirits. At the burial
site, they would leave offerings and burn incense on the burial
stones.
The Ching Ming ceremony ended in the 1940s because of American
anti-Communist suspicion. Today
there is a burial stone that remains in the Memorial Gardens belonging
to Locke Mai Tuck who died in 1914. It is the last burial stone
extant, and thus, one of the few remaining artifacts that exist
from Olympia's Chinatown.
