Mortuary Plan Spurs Rosemead Neighbors to Action

Some fear spirits in the night, restless souls drifting over fences and lingering under the elms.

Others dread the notion of confronting death every time they back out of the driveway or drop off their children at school. It is a business, protesters say, that will curse the neighborhood.

So they poured into the Rosemead City Hall last week, packing the chambers for the first time in years, a mostly Chinese and Latino crowd confronting a mostly white City Council to denounce a proposal for a funeral home in their neighborhood.

One by one they spoke, some in broken English, some just above a whisper, some in tears.

“I’m mad that they would put a mortuary in our neighborhood!” yelled Hok Yin Leung, an accountant. “I know we can’t escape death. But we don’t have to be continually reminded of it in our neighborhood.”

The proposed Rose Hills funeral home is evoking a timeless fear of the dead and afterlife that spans cultures. From Nanjing to Zacatecas to California, humans feel the ancient urge to confine death to the periphery and to deal with it at a fixed time and place.

In Rosemead, those feelings are so strong they have drawn the city’s traditionally silent ethnic majority into American-style politics.

“We don’t usually care about politics,” said Peter Ko, who owns a business near the proposed mortuary site. “But when we face a crisis, we do. We need your support and we’ll support you.”

The protesters have circulated petitions and gathered more than 1,000 signatures. They have sent faxes to Chinese- and English-language newspapers and radio stations. They have rallied in front of a nearby elementary school.

The disputed property at 3220 Del Mar Ave. is in escrow. Rose Hills, which claims the continent’s largest cemetery--in Whittier--is planning to build a 7,000-square-foot facility that would cater primarily to Asian Americans.

The property is zoned for commercial uses, such as a mortuary. But the city has the power to deny the permission to operate.

The company says that it has been a model neighbor in other communities where it runs funeral homes. Rose Hills officials say that a new facility will spur competition and better service, as well as provide a convenient location for residents needing funeral arrangements.

But the firm has learned that its business is often not welcomed by many Latino and Asian American neighbors.

In 1993, Rose Hills withdrew its application for a conditional use permit in Alhambra after more than 1,000 residents and small-business owners, mostly Chinese Americans, signed petitions against a similar mortuary proposal.

Chinese American residents say they worry that real estate prices will drop and patrons will stop coming to their businesses if they are too close to a mortuary. It is a notion that predates Confucius, scholars say, and it is so powerful that some Chinese avoid anything related to the number four because it sounds like the Chinese word for death.

“This is taboo,” said Laura Hsu, an office manager who works nearby and is leading the effort to stop Rose Hills. “We don’t want this. Every one is very emotional about it.”

Hsu and others worry that children at the elementary school, as well as adults, will be traumatized by the sight of Chinese funerals. During traditional ceremonies, mourners sometimes gather outside the mortuaries dressed in white gowns, chanting, praying and playing drums. They burn paper money and houses, and often stay with the deceased for hours. At Taoist ceremonies, chickens and pigs are sometimes killed as offerings.

“The thought of having to face a funeral procession every day has cost me sleep at night,” said Tim Koo, a businessman in the area.

In China, cemeteries are usually located outside of town. Taoist traditions hold that families will prosper if their relatives are buried in the high mountains.

Buddhism--unlike Christianity, with its distinctions of heaven and hell--teaches that all realms of life and death “interpenetrate,” leaving open the possibility that spirits will haunt graveyards and mortuaries, said Madelon Wheeler-Gibb, of the Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights.

“In Buddhism, there is tremendous flexibility in the afterlife,” she said. “You determine your eternity.”

She said fears surrounding death and the dead are more cultural than religious. And they are not, she said, limited to Chinese culture. At Western-style funerals, for example, mourners allow themselves only a short glimpse of the corpse, which is usually dressed up, made up and injected with chemicals to appear alive.

Of the signatures collected in opposition to the Rose Hills mortuary, many are by Latinos.

Neighbor Jaime Cortes, 31, of Zacatecas, Mexico, said he will move out if the mortuary opens. In his hometown of Florencia, the graveyard is 20 miles out of town, where it should be, he said. He doesn’t want his family to see funerals during the day or to be haunted by spirits at night.

Maria Martinez said that as she drops her daughter at Margaret Duff Elementary, next door to the proposed mortuary, “I don’t want the kids to think, ‘Right behind me is a dead person.’ ”

City Atty. Robert Kress said the City Council might consider adopting an ordinance that would require funeral homes to get a conditional use permit, which could only be issued after a public hearing.

So far, he said, Rose Hills has not filed any building applications.

Not everyone is opposed.

“I think it will look nice,” said Carolina Rodriguez, who works at the school.

Gary Baker, vice president of the company, said the proposed facility would hold a minimal number of funerals and would mostly be used to make arrangements. The staff will speak Mandarin, he said.

“We want to be good neighbors,” he said. “There are Chinese who want this in the neighborhood.”

He said there would be no cremation at the building.

“We are just trying to provide a convenient service,” he said.