Chinese Cemetery, Kingston金斯敦华人公墓

Type

Overseas Daoist Temples

Location

Jamaica · Kingston Parish · Kingston · Founded and administered by the Chinese Benevolent Association (established 1891)

First built

Late 19th to early 20th century · No reliable record of the exact year it opened; the custom of Qingming tomb-sweeping has declined as the community has emigrated

Overview

The Chinese Cemetery in Kingston was founded and is administered by the Chinese Benevolent Association, established in 1891, and belongs alongside the Chinese sanatorium, the Chinese school and the Chinese old people's home to the association's community infrastructure. Chinese cemeteries hold special religious significance in overseas Chinese communities: in immigrant settlements lacking an independent temple, the cemetery often becomes the most important site for collective worship, and Qingming tomb-sweeping — tending graves and making offerings — is the community's largest shared ritual of the year, deriving from the Chinese folk tradition of ancestor veneration, which is connected to the Daoist concepts of chengfu (inherited burden) and of ghosts and spirits. It must be noted honestly that this is a cemetery rather than a temple. Jamaica's Chinese are mostly descendants of Hakka indentured laborers from the Dongguan–Bao'an area, who arrived in batches from 1854 onward; as large numbers of the community emigrated to North America in the late twentieth century, the custom of collective tomb-sweeping has since declined.

Highlights

• Founded and administered by the Chinese Benevolent Association
• Where an immigrant settlement lacks a temple, the cemetery takes on the function of collective worship
• Qingming tomb-sweeping is the community's largest shared ritual
• A community descended from Hakka indentured laborers
• A cemetery, not a temple