Where the Settlement buried its dead: the Council's cemeteries from Shantung Road to Hungjao, 1844–1934

The short answer. The foreign community of Shanghai buried its dead in five places in a century, and each one filled and closed in turn. A company of residents bought the first burial ground behind the Custom House for $500 in 1844 and traded it for fourteen mu on Shantung Road; the two Councils bought Pahsienjao outside the Settlements after 1863 and were burying there by 1869; Bubbling Well opened in the late 1890s and took the crematorium; and in 1925 the Council had spent 184,376 taels on 122 mu at Hungjao because Bubbling Well had 52 first-class spaces left. Three of the five are parks now. The Council’s reports record the fees, the burials year by year, the quarrels with the French Council and the Muslim community over Pahsienjao, the rule of 1929 that permitted only Christian rites, and the thousands of reserved graves that their owners never came back to claim.

1844–1871: Shantung Road

“A Cemetery Company was formed in 1844 which by the sale of shares, raised $500 with which was bought the first burial ground behind the Custom House,” Pott writes. The ground never became a cemetery. “Messrs. Lindsay and Company acquired this plot of ten and a half mow, by giving in exchange for it a piece of fourteen mow on Shantung Road, with a well built wall, a gateway and a mortuary chapel,” and that is the Shantung Road cemetery, which the Council’s later tables date from 1841 to 1871 with 469 burials. The seamen were the first large class of dead: “during the years 1844–1851, 54 seamen died in Shanghai and were buried in the foreign cemetery. Later on a special cemetery was set apart for seamen, in Pootung”, the Pootung cemetery across the river, which took 1,783 burials between 1859 and 1904 and had a mortuary and a jury room where the British consul held inquests. The soldiers were the second: the Soldiers’ Cemetery beside the city wall holds 305 men of 1862 to 1865, and the three mural tablets put up there in 1866 were “renewed in Ningpo stone” by the Council in 1888 for 80 taels, with the Chinese authorities’ consent. By 1893 the Health Officer could write that “the foreign cemetery in the Shantung Road has long been closed”, and in 1922 the Council took a strip of it to widen Kiukiang Road without, it said, disturbing a grave.

1863–1893: the New Cemetery at Pahsienjao

“In September, 1863, it was decided that a new cemetery was necessary and that it should be located outside of the Settlements,” and the two municipalities bought land at Pahsienjao, beyond the French Concession. “In 1866 the Councils undertook the charge of all cemeteries.” The early reports call it simply “the New Cemetery”, lying beside the French one on Cemetery Road; the tables give 1869 as its opening year, and its chapel, “erected in 1864”, was being rebuilt in 1889 because the piling under it had rotted. The Council ran it as it ran a park. In 1880 it paid 237.65 taels for “the Sextoness for all Cemeteries and allowance for chair coolies”, 615.15 for “Gardeners for care of Cemeteries and Cathedral compound”, 580.33 for repairs and 71.06 as “Chinese Government ground rent”, and 26 vaults and 49 graves brought in 371 taels. In 1885 the Public Garden Committee offered to take over the gardening, which had cost an average of 1,191.89 taels a year for five years, and the Council replied that “their contract with A-kew does not terminate until the end of the year”. Two new sections “containing 300 and 270 grave spaces” were laid out in 1887.

The dead the Council would not bury were Chinese. The Land Regulations provided that “no coffins of Chinese are to be placed within the limits of the Settlements, or left above ground”, and the police kept finding them: in August 1890 “68 coffins were found on the 22nd instant lying about above ground” in an old government burial ground north of Seward Road. In 1893 the Mixed Court magistrates asked for a mortuary outside the limits “somewhat similar to the Ningpo Joss House”, toward which the Council would “contribute Tls. 300 a 400”, and the Health Officer reported that the Ningpo Joss House already held over 2,000 coffins awaiting their journey home, and that “the Council should absolutely prohibit the burial of natives within the Municipal limits”. In 1904 the department “removed or buried” 298 exposed coffins.

1904–1909: the Health Department takes over, and Bubbling Well

“The control of the Municipal Cemeteries and Crematorium was taken over from the Engineer’s Department on the 1st May” 1904, and with it came a tariff: a first-class grave space 20 taels, second-class 10, a reservation 10, “Grave making: Plain grave 5.00 Vault 25.00”, a first-class cremation 50, and “no burial or cremation will be permitted without presentation of a certificate of death approved by the Health Officer”. There were 194 burials and 7 cremations in 1904, 241 and 13 in 1905, “the cost of the fuel for each cremation averaging Tls. 20”. From April 1905 foreign paupers were buried “at an inclusive charge of Tls. 20” that their consulate paid, an arrangement still in force in 1925. The new ground was Bubbling Well, west of the Settlement on the road to the temple, opened in 1896 by one table and 1898 by the rest. The Council bought land round it “at Tls. 1,600 per mow” in 1906 and 1908, fenced in a strip on Siccawei Road before it had bought it and told the owners in December 1905 they could claim, and in 1908 spent 20,000 taels on a mortuary “15’ x 22’”, an “exhumed-body room”, a lime store and quarters. The 1908 report judged that Bubbling Well “will probably not be filled for another twenty years”, while Pahsienjao, “this fine old cemetery, which is rapidly filling up”, had 2,873 burials to Bubbling Well’s 1,385. The same year the Council gave the Soldiers’ Cemetery a wall, a gate house and a resident gardener, having found it used as “a general latrine, piggery and place for dumping the dead bodies of nameless children”.

1910–1911: the Muslim cemetery and the French Council

The one extension of Pahsienjao the Council made was for Shanghai’s Muslims. The trustee of the mosque, E. Pabaney, wrote on 12 October 1910 that “the Boxer Trouble of 1900 is responsible for the present state of the Mahommedan Cemetery as nearly one-third of it has been filled by the corpses from Moslim regimentals among the allied forces”, the Indian soldiers who had died in Shanghai in 1900. The Council bought 4.418 mu at the south-west corner: “Payment of a sum of Tls. 14,700 has accordingly been made for the Mow 4.418 involved, inclusive of Tls. 1,650 compensation for the removal of thirty-two houses, which has been refunded by Mr. Pabaney.” Then the French Council objected, because the land lay in the French Concession. On 27 January 1911 it “regrets being unable to give its assent to any measure whatever having for its object either the enlargement of the existing cemetery or the opening of a new one upon neighbouring land”, and on 24 February explained that “since the extension of the Settlement in 1900 all deposition of coffins has been prohibited, and the French Municipality itself has been obliged to acquire a property beyond limits for new burials.” On 11 April it accepted the two lots already bought and refused any more: “an area of Mow 2.624, fronting upon the Rue Ou Song Kiang, was finally set aside for use as a Mohammedan cemetery, and the remainder, Mow 1.794, is available for incorporation in the old Cemetery.” Pahsienjao had 2,968 burials by then and the 1909 report had already called it “nearly full”.

1913–1922: full

The cemeteries were part of the Settlement’s ceremonial year: on Decoration Day, 30 May, “the three volleys being, as usual, fired by the Company” of American volunteers at Bubbling Well. They were also in the line of fire. “During the attack on the Arsenal in July” 1913 “a 5’ segment shell struck the roof of an outhouse in the S. W. Corner” of Pahsienjao “and also damaged a tombstone. The roof of the Chapel was punctured in several places by rifle bullets.” When the city wall came down in 1914 the British consul-general ceded “a strip of land measuring Mow 0.174” of the Soldiers’ Cemetery for the road that replaced it, in exchange for the same area in a Chinese cemetery. At Bubbling Well 964 first-class spaces were added in 1913 and 990 in 1914, and still “the number of applications from Chinese for burial has greatly increased of late; and, in view of the rapid filling up of the Cemetery, it has been considered inadvisable to meet these.” “There are indications that a Municipal Cemetery for Chinese residents may soon be required,” the Council added; it never built one.

In 1917 Pahsienjao “is now closed for interment except in spaces previously reserved”, and the Health Department did the arithmetic for its successor: “An area of 60 mow would, allowing space for pathways, etc., provide 7,200 burial spaces, say 20 years’ accommodation”, against the 5,500 at Bubbling Well. By 1922 “the total available unreserved space will just suffice for the ensuing year provided demand is normal. Preparation of the new Western Cemetery is now of urgent importance in order that it may be ready for interment purposes by the end of 1923.” Bubbling Well had taken 3,702 burials and 876 cremations by then; Pahsienjao, 3,257, now also took “pauper interments when occasions arise”.

1925–1934: Hungjao Road and the reserved graves

The Hungjao Road cemetery was the Council’s largest land purchase for the dead: “Areas totalling Mow 14.005 were purchased during the year for the extension of the Cemetery, at a cost of Tls. 30,817, making the total area acquired Mow 122.875, at a cost of Tls. 184,376.” In 1925 five lots of C section and three of D were turfed, “making in all 900 spaces for First-class burials”, with 400 second-class and a lot for 90 “indigent Foreigners”; “a semi-temporary chapel has been erected at the south-east corner of the site, providing seating accommodation for 60 persons”, approved on 10 September 1925 at 2,200 taels. The same year the Council replaced its coal-fired crematorium at Bubbling Well with a gas chamber: “The first cremation took place on April 1st, 1925. Up to the end of the year twenty-six cremations were carried out.” It was needed, because “only 52 first-class and 117 second-class unreserved spaces remained at the end of the year” at Bubbling Well. Across the river the Pootung ground, “used for the burial of seafaring men who died here during the period 1850–1865”, had no wall, and children played among the graves.

The rules were rewritten for the new ground. From 1 February 1926 a first-class grave space cost 40 taels and a second-class 15, a cremation 50, a pauper funeral 25; from 1 May 1926 H. V. Starling was “Superintendent, Municipal Cemeteries”. The regulations of July 1929 stated that “no ceremonies or rites other than those used in Christian burials are permitted”, and no bands but military, naval or Volunteer ones; the fees of 1 September 1929 nonetheless priced “a reinforced cement concrete vault (Chinese coffin)” at 60 taels and the delivery of a Chinese coffin at 70, because Christian Chinese were being buried at Hungjao. In 1928 “there were 161 burials: 39 First Class, 93 Second and 29 Paupers. Seven of the First Class burials were Christian Chinese, and there were 25 Military and Naval interments.” In 1932 there were 242, 21 of them Christian Chinese, and “the new pauper section was opened on October 16, and provides for 300 burials, covering a period of approximately six years.” The Council bought 2.321 mu more from the Credit Franco-Chinois for 8,123.50 taels.

What the old cemeteries held by then was reservations. At Bubbling Well in 1932, 498 first-class and 43 second-class spaces were still reserved, and “it is probable that more than 50% are at present not resident in China and will not return to claim the spaces reserved by them 20 and 30 years ago.” At Pahsienjao the transactions went back “up to 63 years”, and by 1934 “some of the reservations were made over 65 years ago”; “it is unlikely that many of these spaces will ever be claimed as a large number of the reservers have left China, and are no doubt dead.” Residents “of 10 years standing with close family ties in the cemetery” were given preference for the few spaces that fell free. The 1934 totals were 3,814 burials at Pahsienjao, 5,108 and 834 cremations at Bubbling Well, and 1,638 at Hungjao in eight years.

What the sources disagree on

The opening of Bubbling Well is 1896 in the 1909 table and 1898 in every table from 1913; Darwent’s handbook of about 1904 called it open “about six years”, which fits 1898. Pott says Pahsienjao was decided on in September 1863 and the Councils took charge in 1866; the tables open it in 1869, and the burial registers in the 1885 report begin in 1868 or 1869. The 1880s reports never use the name Pahsienjao; that “the New Cemetery” beside the French cemetery on Cemetery Road is Pahsienjao is an inference from their position, not a statement in the text. The Muslim land is “Tls. 3,000 per mow” in the Council’s September 1910 letter and 14,700 taels for 4.418 mu, about 3,327, in the December settlement, the difference being the house compensation. The cumulative cremation figures do not reconcile between the 1908 and 1909 reports, nor between the 1932 and 1934 texts and their tables, and the Pootung total appears as 1,783, 1,183 and 1,733 in different OCR readings; 1,783 is the figure in six reports. The reports do not record the purchase price of Shantung Road, Pahsienjao or Bubbling Well, and no cemetery committee appears in any of them; the cemeteries belonged to the Engineer until 1904 and to the Health Department after.

What to look for

Huaihai Park on Huaihai Road Middle is the Pahsienjao cemetery: the graves were cleared after 1949 and nothing of the 1864 chapel or its shell-damaged roof stands, but the park’s outline, a block deep between the road and Jinling Road, is the cemetery’s 43 mu. Jing’an Park opposite the temple is Bubbling Well cemetery and crematorium, 61 mu with the mortuary of 1908 and the gas chamber of 1925 all gone; the plane trees along its Nanjing Road front are the only planting that may be older than the park. The Hungjao Road cemetery survives in part as the Foreigners’ Cemetery within the Song Qingling Mausoleum grounds on Hongqiao Road, where a few hundred of the Settlement’s stones, moved and reset, are the only Council gravestones still standing in Shanghai. Shantung Road is built over between Shandong Road Middle and Jiujiang Road; the Soldiers’ Cemetery lay against the north wall of the old city on the line of today’s Renmin Road, and Pott says the graves were moved; the Pootung cemetery is under the Lujiazui towers.