Multicultural Burial Spaces and Cities: Constructing Identity and Memory with Postcolonial Kuala Lumpur Chinese Cemeteries

Abstract

This chapter examines the historical Kuala Lumpur Chinese Cemeteries founded in 1895, consisting of the burial sites of many prominent Chinese pioneers of the city. In the 1990s, these Chinese Cemeteries, which are part of the Malaysian Chinese community and cultural heritage, faced eviction for urban development. Situated in the studies of postcolonial cities, this chapter engages with local and specific material practices and politics of postcolonial spaces. The discussion aims to reinterpret Kuala Lumpur by providing a view from the bottom-up through grass-roots action and to contribute to a conception of the multicultural city by inclusion of decolonization and ethnic minority spaces. Hence, the chapter focuses on how the Chinese community has appropriated the KL Chinese Cemeteries as modern multi-cultural cemeteries and as a Heritage Park, through the reconstruction of ancestral monuments and burials, in order to negotiate their own cultural memories and the state’s nationalism towards a celebration of diversity.