The Shanghai Foreigners’ Cemetery

Every year on Tomb-Sweeping Day or Qingming 清明, Chinese honor their ancestors by cleaning their graves and leaving offerings. But the graves in the Shanghai Foreigners’ Cemetery remain quiet. The staff, bless them, meticulously clean and maintain the graves, leaving a single carnation on each one. But there are no families to gather to remember these long ago men and women who died in a faraway land. So we go, to remember them.

It’s become something of an Historic Shanghai Qingming tradition to visit these graves, to remember the lives of the forgotten foreigners who came before us. And as it turns out, you meet such interesting people in the cemetery! Join us this Saturday (April 4, 2pm) – here’s a little preview:

A Fake Cemetery?

But first, a caveat: the Shanghai Foreigners’ Cemetery, is, well, fake. Let me explain.

Old Shanghai was dotted with foreigners’ cemeteries, with the first established on Shandong Road in 1847. As the foreign population grew, so, too, did the spaces of death: there were graveyards for different faiths, different races, military cemeteries, cremation sites, and ossuaries all over the city. But beginning in the 1950s, the foreign cemeteries were cleared: Bubbling Well Cemetery became Jing’an Park; the Pahsienjao Cemetery became Huaihai Park. The graves were initially moved to more remote cemeteries, but in the chaos of the ensuing years, many of those were destroyed.

So the Shanghai Foreigners’ Cemetery is fake in the sense that there are no actual remains beneath the pre-1949 tombstones. The names are real, though: when the old cemeteries were cleared, someone painstakingly transcribed the names on the old tombstones–occasionally with misspellings–and eventually this new cemetery was created within the the expansive grounds of the Soong Ching Ling Memorial Park, which was established as the Wanguo Cemetery in 1909. In addition to the Foreigners’ Cemetery, the memorial park includes a charming ‘Celebrities Cemetery’ and the graves of Soong Ching Ling and her parents.

Here are the stories of a few of the people we’ll meet in the cemetery (there are so many more!)

Marie Barr

American missionary Marie Barr died in childbirth in 1930. Marie was working in Suzhou when she met her British husband, John, who was with the London Missionary Society. He was in Suzhou studying the Wu dialect. The baby, John Richard (Dick) survived.

John Barr remarried another American woman: Ruth Hill, from Dallas, Texas, and in 1933, they had Betty (pictured), who grew up in Shanghai with her half-brother, Marie’s son, and lives here still. (And Betty will be 93 on April 8!).

Henry Morriss, Sr.

Henry Morriss, Sr., proprietor of the North China Daily News, died in 1919 at 76. He’d arrived in 1866 from Bombay, and had enormous success as a bill broker. He began investing in Shanghai land, and his legacy casts a long shadow: the North China Daily News Building still stands on the Bund; his old home on Mohawk Road became the Shanghai Race Club; and part of his son’s estate is today the Ruijin Intercontinental.

David and Hallie Anderson

David Lawrence Anderson was born in Suzhou in 1886, the son and namesake of the founder of Suzhou University. He married Hallie Westbrook in Yokohama in 1910, and they had two sons: David Lawrence III and Roy.

Hallie died in 1933, of peritonitis from a peptic ulcer, and was buried at the Hungjao Cemetery. David drowned, at Half Moon Bay, Shandong, in 1936, at the age of 50. Family speculates that Hallie’s death and the pressures of business had become too much, and his death may not have been accidental. He was buried at Bubbling Well Cemetery.

His sons David III and Roy attended the Shanghai American School, and Roy would go on to become the most famous Anderson—in China, at least.

The Ultimate China Hand, Roy Anderson was fluent in several Chinese dialects and valued government advisor. He worked for Standard Oil for many years, the Nationalist government, was friends with all the warlords, and was critical in negotiations with bandits for the rescue of the “Blue Express” train hostages, as recounted in the book Peking Express by James Zimmerman.

Talitha Gerlach

Talitha Gerlach came to Shanghai in 1926 with the YWCA. In Shanghai, she joined a Marxist study group with several other activist YWCA staffers and was part of Soong Ching Ling’s China Defense League during the war.

She returned to the U.S. in 1940, but when she was caught up in McCarthy witch hunts and put on a China subversives list, Soong Ching Ling invited her back to China, where she lived for the rest of her life–in the beautiful Soong family house on Seymour Road.

Gerlach died in 1995, so her grave is real!

Kanzō and Miki Uchiyama

One of the loveliest graves in the cemetery is the double grave for Kanzō Uchiyama and his wife Miki, proprietors of the Uchiyama Bookstore. Miki, who founded the bookstore, died in 1945 in Shanghai and Kanzō in 1959 in Beijing. It was a Christian bookstore, but is most remembered for being a meeting place for Chinese and Japanese intellectuals and cultural figures of the period, especially the writer Lu Xun.

The bridge symbolizes the couples’ mission of Sino-Japanese bridge-building. Playwright and poet Tian Han composed and read a poem honoring Uchiyama’s life at his funeral, saying in the last line that Uchiyama Kanzō and Lu Xun will keep each other company for all eternity.

Sir Elly and Lady Laura Kadoorie

Elly Kadoorie arrived in Shanghai 1880 with David Sassoon & Sons, looking to make his fortune. He was well on his way when, on a trip to London, he was introduced to Laura Mocatta. As the scion of a very old, very wealthy Sephardic family, Laura already had several fortunes, and was a fiercely independent woman. She was 40 and never married when they met, and had just returned from a trip to India.

In Shanghai, she earned the sobriquet, “Shanghai’s most emancipated woman,” as she drove around town, took up rifle shooting, and agitated men’s clubs to let women in. Tragically, Laura died in a house fire, when she re-entered the house to save the nanny.

Sir Elly’s new house, Marble Hall, is today’s Municipal Children’s Palace. It was there that he died, in an outbuilding, interned by the Japanese. Laura and Elly were both originally buried in the grounds of Marble Hall.

Soong Ching Ling

The cemetery is named for Soong Ching Ling, “the mother of modern China”. She was the wife of Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Republic of China, and part of a wealthy, politically prominent American-educated family who essentially ran China during the Republican period.

Ching Ling was one of the fabled Soong sisters—each one influential in her own right, and each married to a powerful man. Sun died in 1925, but Soong continued to be politically active, holding leadership positions in the Communist hierarchy after 1949, even as her siblings fled China.

She was especially focused on charity work and programs for children. Soong Ching Ling died in Beijing in 1981, and at her request her ashes were buried next to her parents in the then-Wanguo International Cemetery.

Zhang Leping and San Mao

The Celebrities Cemetery features the graves of famous Chinese men and women in a wide range of fields. It’s especially charming, because the celebrities are often depicted with the tools of their trade –a Peking Opera star with a fan, an artist with a brush, and our absolute favorite: cartoon artist Zhang Leping with his beloved cartoon creation, San Mao! We always leave him flowers for putting a smile on our face!

Join us on Saturday (April 4, 2pm), for a visit to Foreigners’ Cemetery where we’ll meet these characters, and more!

To book, click here or scan the QR code below.