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19-629: Captain Plant, his wife, Alice, and their two adopted Chinese daughters, boarded SS Teiresias in Shanghai for travel to England on February 23, 1921. After only three days at sea, Captain Plant, who had been ailing, died in his cabin from pneumonia, despite ship doctor's efforts to treat his condition. Alice, who was struggling too, died three days later, from heart failure when the ship arrived at its first stop in Hong Kong. Both Plants were interred at

38-662: A monument to perpetuate Plant's memory and service, 2) to install a drinking fountain for trackers and 3), to provide for the Plants’ two Chinese daughters. On March 6, 1922, a pamphlet was printed and issued in English and Chinese outlining the Plant Memorial Fund objectives and the formation of a Plant Memorial Committee, with representatives from Great Britain, America, China, Japan and France. Donations were collected from individuals, ship crews, and shipping firms. Though

57-552: A result, a special Japanese section of the graveyard was designated. Notable burials at Hong Kong Cemetery include: A scene in John le Carré's novel The Honourable Schoolboy takes place in the nearby racetrack as well as the cemetery. The cemetery is a popular place for filming movies and TV shows. The UK folk artist Johnny Flynn released a song in 2008 about the cemetery, found on the album A Larum . Happy Valley Jewish Cemetery Happy Valley Jewish Cemetery, Hong Kong

76-633: Is one of the early Christian cemeteries in Hong Kong dating to its colonial era beginning in 1845. It is located beside the racecourse at Happy Valley , along with the Jewish Cemetery , Hindu Cemetery, Parsee Cemetery, St. Michael's Catholic Cemetery and the Muslim Cemetery. Hong Kong Cemetery is a public cemetery managed by the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department . Hong Kong Cemetery contains 79 scattered Commonwealth burials of

95-707: Is the main Jewish cemetery in Happy Valley , Hong Kong. The cemetery is located on Shan Kwong Road and is managed by Jones Lang Lasalle Management Services. The burial ground was opened in 1855 by Reuben David Sassoon on former farmland acquired by his father David Sassoon of the Anglo-Jewish Sassoon family from the British Crown to serve the Jewish community in Hong Kong . Additional land

114-605: The Hong Kong Cemetery in Happy Valley. Rt. Rev. William Banister conducted the graveside service. The Plants' two adopted Chinese daughters were among the chief mourners. In a letter to the North-China Herald , dated two weeks after the Plants’ deaths, British Consul John Langford Smith of Yichang proposed the creation of a Memorial Fund to Captain Plant. He outlined three goals: 1) to build

133-538: The Royal Artillery in memory of their fallen comrades, which were later moved to the Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defence . The civilian burials in the cemetery are diverse and exemplify the social structure at the early stage of the colonial era . It is widely understood that the cemetery is for the burial of the privileged group of the society , mostly British. Notable people of that era buried in

152-903: The First World War and 62 from the Second World War, which are maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission . The Protestant Cemetery is built as a series of terraces ascending a hillside. The older graves tend to be at the bottom of the hill; those from the 1930s and 1940s are generally at the top. On a number of occasions, remains in the Protestant Cemetery have been disinterred to make way for road developments, and have been placed in niches in an ossuary, which continues to be used for contemporary cremations. The niches provide basic information on each individual. Some sections of

171-563: The Fund was successful in constructing the memorial and providing for Plant's adopted Chinese daughters, there is no evidence the Fund met its objective of installing a drinking fountain. On October 4, 1923, the Plant monument, designed by Lawrence Tweedie-Stodart, was erected in Xintan at the site of Captain Plant's former bungalow. The obelisk was inscribed both in English and in Chinese. Two of

190-572: The Protestant Cemetery tended to be reserved for particular groups of deceased, e.g., army, navy, Hong Kong Police. There are two main categories of graves that can be found in Hong Kong Cemetery: As the name states, this category of graves for British military dead, spanned from the late 19th century until the early 1960s (when the Government of Hong Kong established another cemetery near Sai Wan for military dead in 1965). At

209-740: The beginning of the colonial era, the British garrison force had the same problem as those in India : weather. Some of the members of the force could not adapt to the tropical weather of Hong Kong and died owing to tropical disease, while others fell during the Boxer Rebellion – mainly in 1900. At the time being, it is the major cemetery for military dead along with Stanley Military Cemetery . There are about 100 military graves of World War I – 79 of them are in Hong Kong Cemetery, mainly

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228-421: The cemetery include Sir Robert Ho Tung and his first wife, Sir Paul Chater and Sir Kai Ho . Most Christian missionaries to Hong Kong are also buried here, a notable example being Karl Friedrich August Gützlaff , a German missionary who helped to establish Lutheran churches in Hong Kong, who is considered the first Lutheran missionary to China. Another notable missionary interred here is Henrietta Hall Shuck ,

247-646: The first American female missionary to China. There are also a number of Chinese burials, all of them Christians, some of them were involved in the late Qing revolution and uprisings led by Sun Yat-sen, including Yeung Ku-wan , who was assassinated by the Qing Government in Hong Kong. A number of Japanese were buried in the cemetery, mostly those who resided in Hong Kong during the early colonial era. Some of them were Christian, but most were followers of Shinto . The Japanese custom of burning incense during memorial rites led to complaints from some Westerners. As

266-1059: The four sides of the monument faced the Yangtze River diagonally. The English wording faced East because Captain Plant came from the sea and could be seen traveling upriver from the coast. The Chinese wording faced West because the Chinese came from the interior and could be seen traveling downriver Sichuan. The original English inscription read: PLANT MEMORIAL TO PERPETUATE THE NAME OF CAPTAIN SAMUEL CORNELL PLANT UPPER YANGTZE RIVER INSPECTOR OF THE CHINESE MARITIME CUSTOMS AND THE FIRST TO COMMAND A MERCHANT STEAMER PLYING ON THE …UPPER YANGTZE RIVER (1900)… BORN AT FRAMLINGHAM, SUFFOLK, 8TH AUGUST 1866. DIED AT SEA 26TH FEBRUARY 1921 ERECTED BY HIS FRIENDS AND THOSE INTERESTED IN THE IMPROVEMENT OF STEAMER NAVIGATION ON THE UPPER YANGTZE The original Chinese inscription read: 薄藍田君紀念碑 薄藍田君，英國福藍臨岡鎮人，中國海關任以巡江工司之職。 清光緒二十六年，長江上段第一次航行汽船司駕駛者即君焉。 君生於清同治五年六月二十八日，民國十年初春航海返國，一月十九日卒於途次。 君之舊友及有誌振興長江上段航業諸人，感君情愫，思君勤勞，醵金刻石，以誌不忘。 中華民國十一年十二月吉日立。 The Monument

285-632: The inscriptions. Others have reported the defacement came during the Land Reform Movement in the 1950s. In either case, Xintan, a Chinese community of river pilots and junk owners, had been protective of the memorial and of Plant's contributions to them and the Yangtze. During his retirement, Plant lived among the residents of Xintan, outside of the treaty ports and away from the foreign settlements and his fellow expatriates. The local people of Xintan remained loyal to Plant and in 2002, before

304-488: The monument would be fully submerged in water from the Three Gorges Dam , they moved the memorial, 114 blocks, weighing 171 tons, to higher ground. The Chinese restored the inscriptions, in Chinese and English, from memory of what had been written forty years earlier. Hong Kong Cemetery Hong Kong Cemetery , formerly Hong Kong (Happy Valley) Cemetery and before that Hong Kong Colonial Cemetery ,

323-485: The presence of these two battalions. There are in all 62 military graves of World War II Commonwealth service personnel – mainly from the year 1941 – maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission . The British force in Hong Kong used the cemetery as their burial ground until 1965. One notable military burial is Driver Joseph Hughes, a recipient of the George Cross . There are also two monuments erected by

342-688: The soldiers who died in Hong Kong and Kowloon Military Hospital, which received the sick and wounded from the German-leased territory of Qingdao , on the Shandong peninsula in north-east China. Evidence shows that most of them are naval personnel. Before the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong in 1941, Britain had sent two battalions from the Royal Scots and Middlesex Regiments to Hong Kong for garrison duty. This cemetery provides evidence of

361-653: Was formally inaugurated on December 4, 1924. Post-1949, the Plant Memorial was vandalized. There is some debate about the origins of the Plant Memorial defacement. Some say the National Red Guards in the 1960s came in an act of xenophobia to tear down what they considered to be an honor to a foreigner. The solid granite obelisk proved difficult to raze entirely and the Red Guard expressed their sentiments by chiseling out every character and letter in

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