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interpreter, a Hong Kong Baptist University doctoral graduate, Professor Zhang Meifang, without whose help I wouldn't have got very far. After lengthy negotiation with the bureaucratic hierarchy, officials in the Guangdong Provincial Government were most generous, both in offering me a lengthy interview and also a guided tour of important sites, including the new Funeral Centre, then just approaching completion. Lots of additional fieldwork was necessary too, of course, by bus, taxi and on foot in that dusty, confusing, reconstructing and ancient city.
Teather, E.K. (2001). Seoul's deathscapes: incorporating tradition into modern time-space. Environment and Planning A 33: 1489-1506.
In order to accomplish this piece of work, conceived of as another element in the pattern of deathspace in societies with a Confucian heritage, I asked Professor Hae Un Rii, Head of the Department of Geography at Dongguk University, Seoul, if she would like to collaborate. Her personal contacts and organisational skills were invaluable. I had hit on a hot topical issue, because a big public debate had just emerged in South Korea, reflecting concern in some government quarters about land lost to graves each year in this, the second most densely populated country in the world. Cremation is being strongly promoted but, unlike in Hong Kong in the 1970s, the public is strongly resisting official urges to consider cremation.
We found that the grass dome design of the ancient royal graves was influential on architectural responses to the need for columbaria. A small, space-saving family tomb has been devised to hold the ashes of up to twenty-four family members within a small, grass-covered dome. Although we came across several architect-designed columbaria, we were most impressed with an unusual and extraordinarily beautiful, newly opened, series of open-air niche walls winding gently down a wooded hillside. This serene site reduced my two young research assistants/interpreters to tears.
The public cemeteries that I visited are utterly different from those in Hong Kong. They were spacious and green, and some were incorporated into the system of walking trails around Seoul without, apparently, any fears relating to the spirit world.
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interpreter, a Hong Kong Baptist University doctoral graduate, Professor Zhang Meifang, without whose help I wouldn't have got very far. After lengthy negotiation with the bureaucratic hierarchy, officials in the Guangdong Provincial Government were most generous, both in offering me a lengthy interview and also a guided tour of important sites, including the new Funeral Centre, then just approaching completion. Lots of additional fieldwork was necessary too, of course, by bus, taxi and on foot in that dusty, confusing, reconstructing and ancient city.
Teather, E.K. (2001). Seoul's deathscapes: incorporating tradition into modern time-space. Environment and Planning A 33: 1489-1506.
In order to accomplish this piece of work, conceived of as another element in the pattern of deathspace in societies with a Confucian heritage, I asked Professor Hae Un Rii, Head of the Department of Geography at Dongguk University, Seoul, if she would like to collaborate. Her personal contacts and organisational skills were invaluable. I had hit on a hot topical issue, because a big public debate had just emerged in South Korea, reflecting concern in some government quarters about land lost to graves each year in this, the second most densely populated country in the world. Cremation is being strongly promoted but, unlike in Hong Kong in the 1970s, the public is strongly resisting official urges to consider cremation.
We found that the grass dome design of the ancient royal graves was influential on architectural responses to the need for columbaria. A small, space-saving family tomb has been devised to hold the ashes of up to twenty-four family members within a small, grass-covered dome. Although we came across several architect-designed columbaria, we were most impressed with an unusual and extraordinarily beautiful, newly opened, series of open-air niche walls winding gently down a wooded hillside. This serene site reduced my two young research assistants/interpreters to tears.
The public cemeteries that I visited are utterly different from those in Hong Kong. They were spatious and green, and some were incorporated into the system of walking trails around Seoul without, apparently, any fears relating to the spirit world.
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