Some brought offerings of roasted pig, chicken, fruit, wine, and flowers to the altar. Others bowed three times before presenting burning incense sticks. All gathered last weekend to mark the conclusion of 20 years' work creating the Chinese Immigrant Memorial at the city's Mount Hope Cemetery.

To a culture that reveres its ancestors, the crumbling, vandalized altar that had previously stood at the Mattapan site was intolerable. So were the broken tombstones of the city's first Chinese immigrants, who arrived in the 1870s.

But when members of the Chinese community celebrate Ching Ming , or Chinese Memorial Day, this Thursday , those who come to Mount Hope to honor their ancestors will find a gateway, plaza, and communal altar, designed with feng shui principles and built to endure the harsh New England winters.

"The smoke from the incense communicates with the spirit world," said Peter Kiang , co president of the Chinese Historical Society of New England, which grew out of the effort. "We want our ancestors to be satisfied, to enjoy the afterlife with good food, wine, and prosperity."

The effort to restore the cemetery's Chinese sections was launched in 1988 by Davis Woo and David S.Y. Wong . The decrepit conditions there were "a poor way of remembering those pioneers," said Woo, 75. "We weren't honoring the people who came to the United States with no language and no funds. They just wanted to work hard and contribute to those left behind in China."

Deborah Dong , who cochaired the project, said she was relieved to see the memorial finished.

"Many times, I thought it wouldn't happen," she said. "Even after we got the permits and the design complete, I never thought it would happen."

Her immigrant grandfather, who is buried in Mount Hope, inspired her to devote years to the memorial, said Dong, who grew up in Allston in the 1970s, when it was heavily Chinese.

"Whenever my family would get together, they'd tell stories about my grandfather, how he got to the United States, how he had to struggle with a Chinese laundry and a restaurant, and how he raised four sons and put them all through college," Dong said. "It's the classic immigrant story."

Joo Kun Lim , a Chinese-Malaysian architect who runs the Somerville-based Twinspine Architects, initially took on the project voluntarily in 1998.

"This was not a business project," Lim said. "This was a project of love."

Lim was later paid after the historical society won a $20,000 grant from the Edward Ingersoll Browne Fund, which also financed the downtown Boston Irish Famine Memorial. Lim's involvement, after a series of MIT classes had worked on the project's design, was a turning point in the long process, said Bik Ng , another cochairwoman and a Chinese immigrant.

"We told him, if we'll get some money we'll pay you, but we didn't have any money," she said. "We needed to work with a professional to have continuity, someone who had a business here and who knew Boston."

Lim also knew Chinese culture. He explained to a group of teens from a Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center weekend class that the memorial was designed to look like a courtyard in a traditional Chinese home.

"The idea of going home is a big concept in Chinese culture," he said. "You are supposed to be buried in your ancestral home. This should evoke sitting in a Chinese pavilion."

At the same time, a modern design was needed to ensure that the memorial would look appropriate in an American cemetery, he said.

"The more modern design has to do with giving [the immigrants] a place in their new home, and that it's almost 100 years after some of them died," he said. "It has to reflect where they are today."

The immigrants' journey and influence are described in Chinese calligraphy etched onto the gateway's posts and the altar. They read: "Remembering those who came before you"; "Long rivers flow from distant origins"; "Abundant leaves flourish from deep roots." They were created by retired Chinatown businessman David Hong Wee Lee , himself an immigrant.

All five natural elements are represented in the memorial: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. The calligraphy is on pink granite cladding, which, along with concrete and red brick, represents earth. The archway's stainless steel is the metal, while the loose gravel along the walkway is the water element. The gate's traditional benches are made of treated purpleheart wood.

The memorial is designed in a feng shui position of strength -- to the north is a knoll, to the south is a field and a water source.

Chinatown's first residents migrated there after building railroads in the West. Many expected to bring wives or return to China, but that became impossible after the restrictive Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, said Kiang, of the historical society. Many of Chinatown's early residents died without descendents to look after their graves, which were donated by Chinese families, Kiang said.

"They were buried here because they were poor and had no family," said Kiang, director of UMass-Boston's Asian American Studies program. As he spoke, a family in another Chinese section of the cemetery set off a string of firecrackers.

Awareness created by the project led some families to fix their ancestors' broken tombs, Kiang said, but legally, tombstones cannot be fixed without descendents' permission. The society and the cemetery are working on cataloguing the names of all the Chinese buried there, about 2,000 graves.

Antonia M. Pollak , Boston parks and recreation commissioner, said that if plots are "thoroughly investigated" and attempts to find descendents fail, "I don't think anyone would object if we did some work trying to help preserve" broken tombstones.

Pollak said the memorial was appropriate for the cemetery.

"This is an important part of Boston history that needs to be preserved and interpreted in ways that have relevance for future generations," she said. "It was a long time in the making and it's wonderful to see it become a reality."

After the design was complete, the society received another grant from the Browne Fund, this one for $100,000, and asked Ng Brothers Construction, a Chinatown-based firm (with no relation to Bik Ng), to build the memorial.

The Ng Brothers agreed to do the project at a discounted rate, Bik Ng said.

Ng and Dong then spent years appealing to the Chinese-American community for donations, making presentations to Chinatown organizations and businesses.

The Wong , Lee, and Gee How Oak Tin family associations made large contributions, as did C.I. Associates (a partner in the One Lincoln Street development).

The project also received grants from the Chinatown Trust Fund and the Boston Parks and Recreation Department's Small Changes Program.

Dong said the memorial made her a familiar face in Chinatown. "Nobody in Chinatown really knows me by name, but they all know about Mount Hope," she said. "The elderly would point at me and say in broken English, 'Mount Hope! Good, good!' They were so happy the project was finally happening."

The article above was found on Google and was published originally on The Boston Globe