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The City of the Dead
by Jennifer Hile
Excerpts:
“Welcome to the city of the living dead,” announces my guide, Eddie Salvador. We are standing on Millionaire’s Row, surrounded by multimillion-peso marble tombs in Manila’s Chinese cemetery. Across the street are some of the poorest slums in the world, which stretch all the way to the horizon.
But the cemetery is a world away. The tombs have gates, front doors and clearly marked addresses, and generally resemble a row of condos in a wealthy suburb of Hong Kong. I peek through one frosted glass front door and see a lovely garden and koi pond. There are mausoleums with mail slots, a few with radios playing. Some tombs have television antennas; one has open Coke bottles with straws at the foot of a grave. There are chandeliers, curved stairs leading to second floor balconies and interiors trimmed in gold leaf. One tomb has a swimming pool. Another is made entirely of shiny stainless steel.
Many tombs have two occupants lying side by side beneath their portraits. Or, if a spot is on hold for a not-yet-deceased spouse, a blood red sign emblazoned with a gold Chinese character hangs over the empty casket. I ask Eddie what the character says, guessing it must be a religious symbol or prayer.
“It says reserved,” he replies.
This cemetery has neighborhoods. From Millionaire’s Row, we pass through Little Beverly Hills and continue to The Market, the low-rent district, where locals are interred in long rows of simple concrete caskets . . .
