To meet a growing demand in Minnesota, St. Paul’s mayor and Hmong Americans partnered to design and build the first funeral home for Hmong burial services last year. Last month, Pennsylvania residents honored Chinese American civil war hero Ching Lee with a new headstone. In both cases, the dead from our community were respectfully honored.
However, the public has been gawking in San Francisco at a ghoulish exhibition of preserved Asian corpses in various states of having their inner organs and tissues exposed. If the bodies were American –– even white –– the exhibit would be summarily banned as socially unacceptable. If the corpses were black American, the exhibit would be politically unacceptable. But because these undocumented cadavers are Chinese, somehow it’s okay to be ogled and exploited commercially.
Fortunately, San Francisco Supervisor Fiona Ma has stood up and pushed through legislation to require documentation from the deceased’s will or next of kin before their corpse can be put on display.
Ma’s efforts have uncovered the underworld of “cadaver trafficking,” where a dead body can fetch more than $150,000 apiece. It is, unfortunately, an international trade.
But we want the focus to continue on respecting the cultural tradition of Asians to give their dead a proper burial, and to let our dead rest in peace –– not on display.
Exhibit promoters have continued to try to change the debate: claiming their right to entrepreneurship and pointing out the enormous revenue from ticket sales. They also cite educational benefits of viewing the human anatomy, despite the exhibit’s shoddy work of leaking embalming fluids and misspelled signs.
But Supervisor Ma is having an impact and providing a national model on how to combat the cadaver promoters. Last week, Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist and the state’s Anatomical Board followed Ma’s lead, and ruled a similar display in Tampa was against state regulations.
Promoters of these shows have promised to fight to the end for their right to make money off dead people, so the final word is far from in. But at least these hucksters are getting the message that Asian America is no longer willing to roll over and let them play with our dead.