Stories revive Hong Kong's 'forgotten souls'
November 29, 2012 -- Updated 0511 GMT (1311 HKT)
Patricia Lim shows pictures of
Henrietta Shuck, the first U.S. female missionary to China, left, and
her friend, Theodosia Dean, another missionary wife.
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A cemetery of 'old friends'
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Patricia Lim charts 8,500 graves, weaves stories in 624-page book
- She pored through now-defunct newspapers, accounts, old records, histories
- Out of it emerges a social history of Hong Kong and the cemetery
- Doctors were prominent, fever was high; brothels, bars very popular
It's a far cry from the highway overpass outside the gates.
Charting the 8,500 or so
names and weaving their stories together into a 624-page book,
"Forgotten Souls: A Social History of the Hong Kong Cemetery," is
Patricia Lim, who spent about a decade on the project.
The cemetery had only a
record of graves -- which date from 1841 to 2007 -- identifying them by
section but not with precise locations, while the earliest graves had no
information, Lim said.
A "fanatical friend" from
the UK spurred her on to the cemetery project after Lim had dedicated a
chapter of her last book, "Discovering Hong Kong's Cultural Heritage:
Hong Kong and Kowloon" to the Happy Valley cemeteries. The friend was
none other than Susan Farrington who has recorded graves in the
Himalayan foothills of Pakistan. She came to Hong Kong to help. When she
left, Lim couldn't stop.
"Since I was in it, I might as well finish," she explained.
With inscriptions as a
starting point, Lim and a host of volunteers recorded each grave into a
database, assigning it a section, row and number. Then she pored through
now-defunct newspapers -- like The China Mail, the Friend of China, the
Daily Press -- personal and travel accounts, histories and every book
on Hong Kong she could get her hands on.
It seemed such a waste of opportunity -- and stories -- not to link them
Patricia Lim, author of "Forgotten Souls"
Patricia Lim, author of "Forgotten Souls"
"It seemed such a waste
of opportunity -- and stories -- not to link them," Lim said. "If you
just go through the cemetery, plot-by-plot...no one would have taken any
interest. It seemed imperative to link, if people were going to get to
know them."
Out of it emerged a
social history of, if not Hong Kong, then of the cemetery whose names
have included the "Protestant Graveyard" and the "Colonial Cemetery."
Adjacent to it are separate cemeteries for Catholics, Jews, Parsees, and
Muslims, while Hindus were given land for their temple.
The Chinese, on the
other hand, "were always at the bottom of the pile" despite being the
majority, said Lim. "They weren't trusted, and they weren't accorded
respect of other nationalities here." Although some 225 Chinese are
buried in the Hong Kong Cemetery, Chinese didn't get their own permanent
cemetery -- in Aberdeen, on the south of the island -- until 1915,
decades after other groups got theirs.
Hong Kong was "a hard,
unhealthy place to live," Lim said. "It was a gamble. You sacrificed
health for wealth. But that was maybe why they were so wealth-conscious.
It was very important. You knew you were sacrificing, that you'd
probably die."
The cemetery opened at
its current location in 1845 after its former spot -- just east of where
the office tower Pacific Place 3 now stands -- overflowed beyond
capacity. Hong Kong had become a British colony only three years
earlier.
Particularly prominent
at the time were doctors, two of whom -- Dr. William Aurelius Harland
and Dr. William Morrison -- have the cemetery's biggest monuments and
most appreciative epitaphs, according to Lim. They were among four
colonial surgeons who died within a 12-year period of malarial fever in
Hong Kong.
Hong Kong wasn't really
"happy" or a place for European women, Lim said. With a high ratio of
lonely bachelors in a transient population, brothels and bars were in
high demand.
"There were German
taverns, English taverns, American taverns," including Edward Thomas'
Uncle Tom's Cabin, which opened in the 1850s after its namesake novel
was published, said Lim. Thomas, a New Yorker buried in Section 9, died
at age 29, leaving his widow to run the business.
Among the 465 graves
that belong to Japanese are ship crewmen, shop owners, employees of
trading firms as well as prostitutes, according to Lim. One monument to
Kiya Karayuki bears the signatures of 58 girls, suggesting she was
either a much-loved prostitute or a brothel keeper.
The database gives the basic details, but the book adds the stories that bring the people to life
David Bellis, Gwulo
David Bellis, Gwulo
Also buried at the
cemetery are the first to not only make their fortunes in Hong Kong but
also give to it: financier and developer Sir Catchick Paul Chater, who
transformed Hong Kong and Kowloon waterfronts; Sir Kai Ho Kai, founder
of the medical school that would evolve into the University of Hong
Kong; and Robert Ho Tung, who built a commercial empire.
Others meanwhile died without a trace except for the inscription on their tombstones, Lim said.
Old graves were
difficult to read, requiring multiple trips under different light
conditions. "Some I never managed to read." she said.
There were also family
members who had the same names. And then there were Chinese who went by
as many as three or four names during the course of a lifetime, whether
it was during school, used for family purposes or attained upon wealth.
In the late 19th
century, the Botanical Garden staff helped the cemetery evolve from a
simple graveyard to a lush cemetery garden inspired by those in Europe,
like Pere Lachaise in Paris and Glasgow's Necropolis, according to one
landscape architect.
The experimentation with
exotic plants helped enrich the cemetery's landscape, turning it into a
habitat for dozens of butterfly and moth species, said Ken Nicolson,
who wrote "The Happy Valley: a History and Tour of the Hong Kong
Cemetery."
For Lim's husband, Po Chye, cemeteries are for ceremonies, not for idle strolls. "You don't go there for recreation."
Lim, who is "over 76,"
has had some close calls -- she once tripped, cutting her knee on a
metal railing with jagged points; another time she got locked in the
cemetery after hours and had to climb out through a government building.
She also once borrowed somebody's grave to rest while suffering what a
doctor later diagnosed as "broken heart syndrome," an incident similar to a minor heart attack.
It solved a mystery no one else seemed terribly concerned about
Craig Bissell, descendant of Miller Robb Dickson
Craig Bissell, descendant of Miller Robb Dickson
"Not everyone is willing
to do all this hard work and then put it out in the open for everyone
to benefit from," wrote David Bellis, who has listed the names, graves
and inscriptions compiled by Lim on his website, Gwulo, which is dedicated to historic Hong Kong.
"The database gives the basic details, but the book adds the stories that bring the people to life," he said.
Stella Loterijman, who's
based in the UK, had been trying to find her grandfather's first wife,
Mary Constance Reilly, since 1979. All she knew was that Reilly was born
in 1869, married Dr. Charles William Reilly and died at age 20 of
dysentery, while he was on a tour of duty with the Royal Army Medical
Corps in Hong Kong.
Then last month, Loterijman was resuming research into her family tree when she found Mary's information on Gwulo: "In loving memory of Mary Constance Reilly, wife of Captain Reilly" in section 18.
In an e-mail to CNN, Loterijman described being "thrilled and elated."
Craig Bissell also
credits Lim and Gwulo for helping solve a years-long mystery over Miller
Robb Dickson, the favorite brother of his Scottish grandmother, who has
always said he went off to Canada to join the Hong Kong Police Force
and died unexpectedly. Even so, Bissell, who lives in Toronto, Canada,
could never find evidence of Dickson's ever being in Hong Kong until it
suddenly appeared on Gwulo one day.
"It was a marvelous breakthrough," Bissell wrote, adding, "It solved a mystery no one else seemed terribly concerned about." Dickson's listing
identifies him as a police sergeant for the Hong Kong Police Force from
Dundee, Scotland, and who died in 1928 at the age of 30.
Nicholas Belanovsky and
his wife, Tatiana, are among 108 Russians buried in the cemetery. All
that was known of him for decades was that he had escaped for China
after the Russian Revolution, said his grandnephew, Dmitry Belanovsky,
in an e-mail from Moscow.
Then in 2004, Dmitry
typed "Belanovsky" into a browser -- and to his "amazement" discovered
that Nicholas' name appeared as an engineer for the Russian Orthodox
Cathedral of the Surety of the Sinners in Shanghai during the 1930s.
With the help of a Russian priest, he found the grave and subsequently
learned that Nicholas' work with the British Cigarette Company had taken
the couple to Hong Kong in 1948. He lived to the ripe old age of 88 on
the second floor of a Kowloon apartment building, surviving Tatiana by
nearly 30 years and leaving his entire estate to his longtime amah, or
maid.
Having been regarded as
"stateless" and the "people's enemy," Nicholas had never gotten in touch
with his family in Russia apparently fearing harm would come to them,
said Dmitry.
He has since posted the info on Gwulo in hopes of learning more about Nicholas Belanovsky's life.
"It's full of stories,
this cemetery," said Lim, who now splits time between Hong Kong and
England. "They are like old friends, yes."
For now, the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department operates the cemetery, which has yet to attain heritage status.
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