CHINATOWN : Group Begins Project to Restore Shrine

Moving one step closer to reviving one of the few remaining physical links to the Chinese community’s history in Los Angeles, a Chinatown cultural organization has begun restoring a 19th-Century burial shrine.

Ensconced in the far eastern end of Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights, the shrine consists of twin ceremonial ovens and a stone altar. It was built by newly arrived Chinese immigrants in 1888 to remember their loved ones and send them on to the afterlife with gifts from home.

In a ceremony that dates back centuries, relatives and friends of the deceased would burn incense and offer to the spirits roasted pig, chicken, tea cakes and wine on the shrine’s altar.

In the shrine’s oven, they placed jewelry, money and cars--all made from paper--as well as their loved one’s clothing, and burned them in a ritual meant to symbolically ensure they had these possessions in the afterlife.

On Chinese Memorial Day, families would “stay for a picnic near the shrine. It will be like that again,” said Irvin Lai, president of the Chinese Historical Society.

When a new Chinese cemetery was built in East Los Angeles in the late 1920s, the shrine fell into disuse.

Over the years, it has suffered from neglect and was nearly bulldozed by the cemetery’s owner to make space for additional graves before the society persuaded the city to designate the site a historical landmark in 1990.

In 1992, the society used $14,000--most of the funds in its treasury--to purchase the site along with 42 surrounding graves.

And now, with about $25,000 in its coffers, including an $8,500 grant from the city’s Office of Cultural Affairs and contributions from various Chinatown organizations and private donors, the society is beginning the first phase of restoration.

Within the next six months a retaining wall will be built around the shrine and it will be surrounded by a fence with a gate. Because the soil around the shrine is elevated, steps will be constructed for easy access.

Eventually, the crumbling stone surfaces of the shrine, which have been defaced with graffiti, will be restored. Lai wants visitors to be able to clearly read the inscription, “I am here with you,” written in Chinese on the shrine’s plaque.

The society is still raising funds to complete the restoration, which will cost $35,000 to $50,000.

The Chinese came to Los Angeles from the Bay Area, their primary point of entry into the United States, in the 1860s for jobs as railroad workers and domestic servants. Others opened laundries and herb shops.

By the late 19th Century, there was a Chinese community of about 3,000 in Los Angeles, but most evidence of it was buried or destroyed when old Chinatown was torn down to make way for Union Station in the 1930s, said Sue Ellen Cheng, curator of the Chinese American History museum.

The shrine remains the oldest reference to the early Chinese presence in Los Angeles.

The section of the 80-acre Evergreen Cemetery that contains the shrine was the only place that anyone of Chinese descent was permitted to bury their dead.

It was primarily used to bury indigents for free; Chinese were charged $10.