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Olga Wong

The name of Happy Valley may forever be associated with the racecourse that is  its centrepiece, but the truth about how it originally got its name lies, literally, buried nearby.
Back in 1841 when British naval commander William Brodie became the first person interred in the Hong Kong Cemetery, the popular euphemism for a graveyard was 'happy  valley'.
And the ship's doctor, when he recorded the burial, noted in his journal that 'poor old Brodie' was buried in the new cemetery in 'happy valley'.
Thereafter, the expanse of swamp and rice fields, originally known in Chinese as Wong Nei Chung, after the brown stream that flowed through it, became Happy Valley.
The origin of the name then became lost - particularly after the racecourse opened in 1846 - and the Chinese population dubbed it Pau Ma Tei, or horse-racing place.
This is among numerous snippets of history collected by Joseph Ting Sun-pao,  former chief curator of the Museum of History, in a study published in a booklet about prominent Hong Kong people buried in the cemetery.
Dr Ting said a British Royal Navy ship, the HMS Rattlesnake,  sailed to China to take part in the first opium war in 1839 and stopped in Hong Kong in 1841.
Ship's doctor Edward Cree  said in his journal that half of the troops on the boat  had fallen ill  in June that year, including Brodie.
'Soon afterwards he became comatose and the fine old sailor and good-hearted man breathed his last,'  Cree wrote in his journal on June 18, 1841. 'Poor old Brodie was buried in the afternoon in the new cemetery in 'Happy Valley',' the journal says.
'Happy Valley could have been named after the cemetery - a place for 'eternal happiness',' Dr Ting said. 'It has nothing to do with the  racecourse.'
The Hong Kong Cemetery was set up immediately after Britain occupied Hong Kong in 1841.
'At that time, the British still had to travel to Macau for horse racing,' Dr Ting said.
Apart from William Brodie's grave, there are also 156 Chinese graves and 465 Japanese graves. Among them are revolutionary Yang Quyun,  president of the revolutionary organisation Revive China Society  (also known as Xing Zhong Hui) in the late Qing dynasty,  and Sir Kai Ho Kai,  teacher of  Sun Yat-sen.
Memorials commemorating British soldiers who  died in the first and second opium wars are also erected in the cemetery.
In a study of more recent gravestones, Dr Ting said he had found others  of historic value: Chu Sien-ting, a member of the Revive China Society;  John Chalmers,  a prominent Protestant missionary in the late Qing dynasty; and Lee Kam Amoe,  the first wife of Kwan King-leung  - a classmate of  Sun Yat-sen.
Sun was a witness at their wedding and the wedding certificate is preserved in the Sun Yat-sen  Museum.
'To Chinese people, the cemetery has never been a nice place to visit,' Dr Ting said, 'But it is the place where you can read your own past; you don't have to read history books to learn Hong Kong's modern history.'
Findings of his research on Hong Kong Cemetery were published as a booklet in March, with assistance from Wan Chai District Council and the non-profit making cultural organisation Hong Kong Institute of Contemporary Culture.



Happy Valley cemetery yields lost secrets - and name's origin