Eternal peace and harmony, SCI-style

Service Corporation International, the Houston-based funeral-services giant, has found another way to rake in piles of money from the families of the dead honor the cultural heritage of its community: At its Forest Park Westheimer cemetery, SCI has built Houston's first feng shui-designed burial ground.

The feng shui-compliant area of Forest Park Westheimer is arranged in circles centered on a pond, allowing the more than 1,700 plots to face all eight of the compass points — in feng shui, the direction of burial is determined by personal astrology, so choosing the right resting place for your loved one is important in assuring the good luck of generations to come (it's more complicated than that, though; read more about it here to see what we mean). The entrances to the area are marked with pagodas featuring a turtle, phoenix, tiger and dragon, all of which have their own meaning in feng shui as well. For some people, it all adds up to an attractive burial spot: "I have never seen anything like that in Houston and even in Taiwan," Peter Chang, a retiree from Taiwan who bought a $110,000 plot next to one of the pagodas, told the Chronicle. "There is a pond in the garden and a dragon on the pagoda; those are all good luck, not only for me but for generations to come."

Of course, it's not bad for SCI, either: The company charges about $6,000 per burial space in the Garden of Eternal Peace, versus $1,200 in other parts of the cemetery. Developing funeral and burial services based on culture and ethnicity is a relatively new tactic in the general funeral service industry, brought on by a declining mortality rate in the U.S., but it's one that seems to be taking off: Houston-based Carriage Services, the country's fourth-largest funeral operator, started offering the services of feng shui masters to its clients several years ago, and SCI is planning to open two Hispanic-oriented funeral homes in Houston next month. "Wherever we operate, we try to learn the needs of the immigrant population and provide for their cultural traditions," SCI spokesman Greg Bolton said. "There are other places where we have Asian gardens, but nothing like [the one at Forest Park Westheimer]."