Pagoda Columbarium
"The arbitrary destruction of such burial grounds is totally contrary to 'feng shui' principles."
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At the perimeter of the base of the columbarium, we can also observe the presence of communal containers for joss-sticks, as well as communal structures for burning sacrifices to the deceased. These are traditional Chinese instruments, and serve to enable the practice of the rites of ancestor worship. The reason for these structures, as well as the Chinese elements found in the Pagoda Columbarium, would ostensibly be to appeal to the living relatives of the deceased housed in the columbarium (almost all the deceased, and thus their relatives, are ethnically Chinese). Such pseudo-religious and pseudo-cultural facets would have aimed to appease the Chinese populace, which was being coerced in the 1970s and 1980s to accept cremation in the name of "national progress." It would also have been hoped that the Chinese would be able to view such Chinese elements as replacements for what they were fast losing: their traditional Chinese burial sites and omega-shaped tombs. The Chinese elements could also be seen as attempts to introduce Postmodern elements into the modernist columbarium; they would counter the soullessness and anonymity of the columbarium, and allude to vernacular and Chinese facets, thus bringing a traditional and local "touch" to the columbarium.
However, this attempt to juxtapose vernacular elements into a modern structure leads to an awkwardness and artificiality in the structure, to the point of making it "kitsch." We should remember that pagodas were always built as religious (mostly Buddhist) structures: they were imported from India into China together with Buddhism as structures to protect Buddhist relics ("Chinese Pagodas" paragraph 1). In China many pagodas were built within temple compounds, where they served as centers of worship, and were never meant to be columbaria. The twisting of the original purpose of the pagoda could at best be termed unnatural, and brings a sense of emptiness into the structure: like the amphitheatre at Ang Mo Kio Avenue 4 mentioned in Robbie Goh's essay "Things to a Void," which is "patently unsuited for the theatrical function it seems to have set itself" (57) and thus stages no performances, the pagoda has been stripped of its original function, resulting in an "emptiness," and making it a "peripheral adornment" just like the amphitheatre (Goh 58). In contrast to the "vagueness of purpose and indefiniteness of function" (58) in Robbie Goh's amphitheatre, though, a purpose has been thrust onto this pagoda, a purpose that fits in with the "forward-looking task of constructing a nation" (Kong and Yeoh 52). This purpose, of course, would be the storage of as many cremated remains in as little land as possible. Keeping this in mind, it would seem that the constructors of the Pagoda Columbarium had appropriated the pagoda's traditional tall height (as previously mentioned, meant to bring it splendor) to house the maximum number of niches possible in a small land space: the high-rise property of the pagoda had been twisted to fit into the nation's drive for progress. It becomes obvious that even in the introduction of Chinese elements in the form of a pagoda, the pursuit of progress was not far from the minds of the constructors.
The Pagoda Columbarium's tall height, together with the numbered "blocks" and "units" earlier described, brings to mind the housing of the living in Housing Development Block (HDB) flats after independence: in fact a distinct structural similarity has been observed between columbaria and HDB flats constructed in the same time period (Lee 53). Again we sense awkwardness here: while it would appear to be defensible to subject the living to progress (in the form of housing them in HDB flats), the same logic should not apply to the dead, who by their very definition are the nation's link to its past and should be allowed to "rest in peace" and not be subjected to the "requirements" of progress. When we remember that Chinese cemeteries were being exhumed all over the island in the 1970s and 1980s, and the remains cremated and then stored in the Pagoda Columbarium, we would realise that not only has the essence of the Pagoda Columbarium proven to be disrespectful to the dead, it has also run against the very Chinese-ness that it claims to embody. Chinese cemeteries were always sited according to the principles of "feng shui," or Chinese geomancy, and "once geomantically sited, Chinese burial grounds were considered sacrosanct" (Kong and Yeoh 55). The arbitrary destruction of such burial grounds is totally contrary to "feng shui" principles, and thus the exhuming of graves and the cremation of the remains for storage in the columbarium would be offensive to the traditional Chinese.
The artificiality of the "Chinese-ness" in the columbarium is also demonstrated in the communal containers for the burning of sacrifices to the dead and the communal holders for joss-sticks. On the surface, these would be for the purpose of allowing ancestor worship; however, such communal structures would be unnatural to the traditional Chinese, who would have been used to the individual spaces in front of the graves (in Chinese cemeteries) for performance of these rites. However there are no individual spaces in front of the niches for these rites; indeed very visible signs throughout the columbarium remind the public that burning offerings anywhere other than in the communal containers is not allowed. The introduction and indeed forced usage of the communal containers (in view of the lack of provided alternatives) are foreign and artificial to the Chinese psyche. Thus we see that rather than introducing authentic "Chinese" elements, as the containers' oriental designs would attempt to do, they actually exacerbate artificiality and grotesqueness in the structure.
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