Thursday, 26 November 2015

One, Three, Ten, Twelve...Fourteen

Sometimes we just get out of the wrong side of the bed...The day after a Turkish jet shot down a Russian warplane I had my own - much smaller - international incident.

Waiting at a bus stop in Wan Chai for our bus to Stanley Mrs R was engaged in conversation by a tall middle-aged American. 'You going to Stanley Market? Going to shop?'

Since he was not content with just talking to Mrs R and since I had ignored his overtures so far, he decided to try and goad me. ' Don't be so uptight. Are you going to Stanley for your honeymoon?'

I turned and looked at him. We were at least several decades overdue for a honeymoon. With a crisp 'Give me a break!' I deliberately turned my back on him and gazed in the other direction.

American lip meets British reserve. He got the message and there was no further conversation. On the other hand Mrs R was shocked at the rudeness – mine. In fact I was a bit shocked myself as I'm not naturally grouchy but just wasn't up for a conversation at that time, particularly with a pushy stranger...


After the 25 minute bus ride to Stanley, as ill-fortune would have it, for the next hour we kept bumping into that American couple; they were just ahead of us as we strolled through the market, they were already seated at a table in the restaurant that I planned to lunch at (so we ate at the yellow-painted Boathouse Restaurant; tepid scallop starter, decent beef ragout - and a couple of glasses of cabernet sauvignon; weather and mood improved together!).



Stanley, on the south side of Hong Kong Island, is a tourist Mecca for several reasons, attracting hoards of organised groups, huge crocodiles following flag-bearing guides, threading their way through the narrow lanes, looking for cheap clothing and souvenirs. It is also quite beautiful, arranged around a horseshoe bay, restaurants and pubs lining the wide promenade, the blue panorama of the South China Sea open before it, sprinkled with small green islands.

I had visited Stanley half a dozen times before, most recently four or five years ago, and was surprised (shocked) at the amount of new building. Dozens of new houses - most of them costing a few million pounds each according to estate agents' windows - had sprung up. Vast tower blocks, twenty or more storeys, stuck out from the green shrubbery like concrete toadstools. There were even housing blocks on the top of surrounding hills.


Murray House, the British colonial officers' quarters built in 1844 in Central 17 kilometres away was dismantled stone by stone in to make way for the new Bank of China Tower – and then reassembled in 2001 at Stanley waterfront. Some feat! Now it holds the H&M fashion store and some up-market restaurants – which were quite empty as we passed by. Similarly, Stanley Market was rather quiet, the fall in the number of mainland tourists has had quite an impact.


Another relic of colonial times, the oldest remaining police station in Hong Kong, Stanley Police Station, built in 1859, is now a Wellcome supermarket.


One place I had never visited before and was keen to see was the Stanley Military Cemetery, final resting place for hundreds of Commonwealth armed forces and civilians killed during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong from 1941 to 1945. Out-thought and out-fought, the defenders of Hong Kong suffered a couple of thousand deaths and an estimated 11,000 were sent to prisoner of war camps where they endured almost four years of privation, many dying.

The cemetery is set high on a hillside amid green shrubbery overlooking popular St Stephen's Beach and the South China Sea. Entering via several sets of steps, past a large white memorial cross, the beautifully tended cemetery stretches for several hundred yards in every direction, following the gentle slope of the hillside.



Ranks of white gravestones stand in neat lines. Most are standard stones erected by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission after the war. Some were erected by prisoners of war 70 or more years ago, the lettering crudely etched. Quite a few are unusual, strangely shaped, looking like small white half-cylindrical concrete Nissen huts; it took me a few minutes before I realised that each of these graves held the remains of a child or infant.

Then there were gravestones simply marked 'a soldier of the 1939-1945 War.' There were individual graves holding the bodies of one...of three nameless dead...or ten unknown bodies...or twelve...and in one case, fourteen unnamed soldiers.


There can hardly be a more beautiful place for the fallen to rest in peace.

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