A Chin Family Gravestone

I've been visiting this gravesite at the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California, for as long as I can remember, well over fifty years, once or twice a year when I was younger for Ching Ming and other occasions, less as I've gotten older. So, I know this tombstone, but I never really read it until my Aunt Millie asked me to help translate the Chinese words.

I know the names of my Uncles and Aunts etched here in granite, in both English and Chinese. If I had bothered, I would have seen the name of our family village in Chinese (Toisan, Luk Chun, Char Jew Village) and that they were members of the 25th generation (to live in Luk Chun). I had completely overlooked the poetic couplet between their English and Chinese names or perhaps ignored them as indecipherable. Yet a poem like this is rare on both Chinese and English gravestones. 

寶骨悲留千古地
家身慘掛萬年墳

Precious bones sadly remain in the earth for eternity
The family tragically hangs over the grave for ten thousand years

Here is the word by word translation with the Hoisanese pronunciation/Mandarin Pinyin in parentheses:

寶 (bo/bao) - treasure, precious 骨 (goot/gu) - bones 悲 (bi/bei) - sorrow, sadness 留 (lau/liu) - to leave behind, remain 千 (tein/qian) - thousand 古 (gu/gu)- ancient times 地 (ee/di) - earth, land

家 (gaa/jia) - family, home 身 (seen/shen) - body 慘 (taam/can) - tragic 掛 (kaa/gua) - to hang, suspend 萬 (maan/wan) - ten thousand 年 (nein/nian) - year 墳 (foon/fen) - grave

This couplet appears in the same register as late imperial gravestones, placing it inside a long-established Chinese memorial tradition.

The first translation hews closely to the literal meaning of the Chinese characters, while this alternative version renders them in more lyrical English and highlights the family’s enduring attachment across time:

Treasured bones sorrowfully rest in the ancient, eternal earth
A family tragically hovers over the grave for ten thousands years 

This couplet was almost certainly written for Jimmy, probably by his father Pak Yick Chin, as the first character of each line are taken from the characters of Jimmy’s name "Bo Gar". Though the twin brothers’ deaths shorty after birth also haunt the family story, the poem’s emotional center is Jimmy’s sudden, violent death. It expresses the sorrow at his untimely deaths with his physical remains staying in the earth, and the family’s grief lingering for an eternity. The contrast of "thousand years" and "ten thousand years" poetically expresses that eternity.

Chin Pak Yick and his son Jimmy Bo-Gar Chin
1950, Oakland, CA (Colorized)

The Rest of the Story

Twins Harry and Hammond both died two weeks after they were born in 1924.

Jimmy was my mother's youngest brother. The baby of the family, the youngest of her father's 17 children, Jimmy died in a tragic car accident in front of their home in Oakland Chinatown. He was 5 1/2 years old. [For more about the family's reaction to Jimmy's death see: A Child's Death, A Family's Grief.]

Edith was the matron of the family. The eldest girl and a mother figure to her younger siblings and her nieces and nephews. She served as a nurse for 50 years first during World War II then at Chinese Hospital in San Francisco Chinatown. She knitted many scarves, hats, and gloves for her younger family members.

Else, as she preferred to be called, was an eccentric member of the family. She worked at the Naval Supply Center in Alameda for 40 years, and was known for her amazing works of pottery.

William is the polymath of the family. He has many talents and interests including languages, history, genealogy, photography, and skiing. Legally blind as a young adult, he was nevertheless an athletic skier well into his sixties. He easily navigated steep, mogul studded terrain with no poles and a hot cup of coffee in one hand. He was equally at home skiing backwards as well as forwards. He currently lives in Thailand with his wife Gift.

For more about Edith, Else, and William see my post about the Chin Family's Greatest Generation. William also wrote about his experience Growing Up in Oakland Chinatown.

*[Translated with assistance from the Hoisanese diaspora in the Hoisan Cooking and Culture group on Facebook and Perplexity.ai. Any mistakes or misinterpretations my own.]