The amusement cemetery
Hidden behind Bangkok’s Sathon business district with its fancifully-shaped skyscrapers is the old Teochew cemetery. Founded in 1899 and with an extension of about 16 hectares, in this space for a hundred years thousands of people were buried above all from the Chinese community and from the deaths in road accidents of which no relative had requested the remains. The particularity of this place lies in the transformation that the cemetery has undergone in the last 20 years since the city administration has decided to transform it into an equipped public park. This transformation took place in a way that for us Westerners is quite bizarre and disturbing. In fact the cemetery has not been moved to make room for the park but, on the contrary, the park with its equipment was born and cohabits among the hundreds of pre-existing tombs. In Europe it would be inconceivable to imagine people jogging in the middle of a cemetery and instead that’s exactly what happens to Teo Chew. Now among the graves there are tree-lined avenues with people who come to train, basketball courts, youngsters playing Badminton, spaces with tables for chess and checkers, gyms without forgetting a karaoke area. Everything in our eyes results in a rather strange and somewhat sacrilegious union but the inhabitants of Bangkok, who arrive here in thousands every day, seem to ignore it and continue to run and have fun amidst the hundreds of tombs that fill the park.
