The Exhumation of Grandfather's Grave

The gravedigger stands knee deep in the grave whilst the family looks on.

My grandfather's grave is situated in Bukit Brown, apparently the largest Chinese cemetery in the world outside China. There are 100,000 graves there. The government in its wisdom is building a large motorway that will slice through the cemetery. Four thousand graves are affected. Grandfather's grave is about twenty feet from the boundary, so his final resting place is disturbed. Today family members attended the exhumation, and later in the afternoon the scattering of grandfather's ashes at sea.

We learned some of the factors that affected how deep a coffin would have been buried - eg. pre World War II graves were deeper as during WWII gravediggers were pressed for time, also wealthier families had deeper graves as it cost $5 per foot extra, and grave locations also made a difference. Grandfather died in 1937, he was fairly wealthy for the time as he was a manager in a large company, and the gravesite was on an upslope. All this meant that his coffin was buried more than six feet under.

Initially when I heard that a digger would be assigned to exhume the grave this morning, I assumed a mechanical digger would trundle along to do the job. To my surprise, Syed Hussein strolled up with his bag full of changkuls (a tool similar to a spade except the blade is at right angles to the shaft). With a loud shout of "Huat!" he proceeded to dig up the grave. "Huat" means good fortune. It took him 90 minutes, double the original estimate. The photo I blipped shows him halfway through the process.

I took lots of photos and will be putting some on my zenfolio site, principally for the family's benefit, and here is the link.