The Shanghai Foreigners’ Cemetery

Bringing flowers to the Foreigners’ Cemetery at Soong Ching Ling Memorial Park has become something of an Historic Shanghai Qingming tradition. On the day when Chinese honor their ancestors by cleaning their graves and leaving offerings, we visit the graves of long-ago foreigners who died in a faraway land. Plus, you meet such interesting people! Come on a little cemetery tour…

But first, a caveat: this is a fake cemetery, at least for pre-1949 Shanghailander graves. There are no remains and the uniform rectangular tombstones are not original, some even have misspellings. The names are those of real people, though, taken from graves in the old cemeteries that once dotted Shanghai when those were cleared in the 1950s.

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 she’ll be 92 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, had enormous success as a bill broker, and began investing in Shanghai land. His legacy casts a long shadow: the NCDN still stands on the Bund, his old home became the Shanghai Race Club, and his son’s estate is today the Ruijin Intercontinental.

David Anderson

David Anderson (right).

Roy Anderson (left).

David Anderson, Jr. was born in Suzhou in 1886, the son and namesake of the founder of Suzhou University. He drowned at Half Moon Bay, Shandong in 1936, at the age of 50, and was buried at Bubbling Well Cemetery.

But it was his brother, Roy Anderson, who was the more famous Anderson. The Ultimate China Hand, Anderson was fluent in several Chinese dialects and valued government advisor. He was critical in negotiations with bandits for the rescue of the “Blue Express” train hostages, as recounted in the book by James Zimmerman.

Hallie Westbrook Anderson, a graduate of Baylor College in Texas, married David Anderson, Jr. in 1910. She died of peritonitis from a peptic ulcer in 1933 and was buried at the Hungjao Cemetery.

Talitha Gerlach

Talitha Gerlach came to Shanghai in 1926 with the YWCA. In Shanghai, she joined a Marxist study group 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.

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.

Elly and 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.

Zhang Leping and San Mao

And we can’t leave the cemetery without a special mention for a special grave in the Celebrities Cemetery: artist Zhang Leping and beloved cartoon creation, San Mao! We always leave him flowers for putting a smile on our face!

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. Soong 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 she 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.

Join us on Friday (April 4, 10am), Qingming Day, for a visit to Foreigners’ Cemetery where we’ll meet these characters, and more!

To book, click this link or scan the QR code below.