As a Happy Valley resident, this is one of my favourite, or at least most frequent, walks.  It takes about an hour and runs from the Happy Valley Riviera (where the trams stop) past the racecourse, up through the Hong Kong (Protestant) cemetery, through Shiu Fai Terrace up to Bowen Rd, along to the Green Lane Reservoir,  down the stairs to Sing Woo Rd and eventually back to the Tram stop.  Of course, you can start anywhere en route.  No dogs, though, I’m afraid.  They are not allowed in the cemetery.

Start at the Happy Valley Tram terminus and pause, before you have even started (this is a gently paced walk), to contemplate the best value transport on the planet.  You can cross the island from East to West for HKD2.30, less if you are well or hardly used.    That even trumps the Star Ferry in my book, though the views aren’t as good.  No wonder they carry 230,000 passengers a day.  As the tram toddles off to Shaukeiwan or Kennedy Town at marginally above walking pace and much shake, rattle and rolling, amble off in hot pursuit.  Pass the Saint-Germain wine bar on your left and file away the knowledge for the end of the walk.    Crossing two roads you will end up on the far side of Wong Nai Chung Rd opposite the racecourse.     Wong Nai Chung (or Yellow Mud Creek to translate) was the village at the head of the valley back at the founding of the colony in 1841.  In those days Happy Valley was the only fertile place on the island, the rest being a blasted, deforested rock by all accounts.  Some think that was why it was named Happy Valley as a nod to its pastoral beauty.   Others are less sanguine, believing the name was used to mask the fact that the Valley was a pestilential swamp, plagued by mosquitoes bred in the rice paddy and grown fat on the blood of the farmers.   By 1845, Happy Valley had long ceased to be a favoured residential or business spot, there was just too much fever around, and had been given over to burial sites and horse racing.   That has been its specialization ever since.  Meanwhile the Wong Nai Chung villagers were driven into poverty and eventually out of the valley by the draining of the swamp and a ban on rice cultivation.     The Europeans did stop dying quite so frequently, though whether the villagers truly appreciated and welcomed this is lost to history.

So continue a slightly noisy and exhaust fume-ridden walk down Wong Nai Chung Rd.   On the right, over the road is the public entrance to the racecourse.   That now leads to a splendid beer garden which for a HKD10 entry fee can be enjoyed on most Wednesday evenings, except during high summer, while supporting the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s good works through improvident betting.  It is quite a sight, the Happy Valley racecourse on race night, and if not yet experienced, should be.   On your left you pass the Parsee cemetery, opened in 1852, reflecting the importance of this group to early Hong Kong.    Unlike amongst the Bombay Parsees the bodies are not left out for the vultures I regret to say.   Then again we probably have enough Black Kites around without that sort of encouragement being needed.

Pass under the road running up to the Aberdeen tunnel and come at last to the entry to the Hong Kong Cemetery, also known at various stages as the Protestant or Colonial Cemetery.   This is a wonderful place and well worth a meander through it rather than a shortest distance dash.  We will work our way up to Stubbs Road in a zig zag.   There is a good map available at http://www.amo.gov.hk/form/hk_cemetery_map(rev3b).pdf should you wish to avoid getting lost.  All roads lead to Stubbs in the end though….more or less.

There are a myriad stories from the 10,000 graves in this cemetery, charting the history of Hong Kong nearly from its founding to the present day.  If interested, you can find much online and there is a wonderful book by Patricia Lim, “Forgotten Souls: A Social History of the Hong Kong Cemetery” for more information.    Much, most actually, of what follows comes from there.

On entering the cemetery you can take a small diversion to see the grave of a revolutionary hero, Yeung Ku-Wan.  An associate of Sun Yat Sen he was involved in a number of failed insurrections around the turn of the century before being assassinated by Qing dynasty agents in Hong Kong in 1901.  His memorial, a truncated pillar, is a poignant reminder of a life cut short, denied the triumph of the 1911 revolution which he worked so hard to bring about.  You will have to go right to the edge of the cemetery and up three flights of steps to find Yeung’s grave, recently marked by a memorial notice (S.4).   Then come back to the entrance again.

Working up through the cemetery, turn left before you get to the little church then first right and approach a classical fountain, now sadly dry.  To your left is a memorial to the 59^th regiment of foot who served in Hong Kong from 1849 to 1858.   This is a magnificent pillar bearing LIX proudly on the pinnacle.  The 59^th were so ravaged by fever during their tour in Hong Kong that of the 650 men who left Cork barracks in 1849 only 62 were left by 1858.  There is also a rather splendid Kassod tree (Senna Siamea) in the same section (S.17B).   No, I had never heard of it either but the Thais make a curry from its leaves and flowers apparently.  Carrying on up, to your right is a Russian Orthodox cross, one of many in this “Protestant” cemetery, marking the grave of a Captain G M Navrotzky 1889-1954.  A white Russian fleeing the 1917 revolution?  I don’t think we know but many buried here were.   If you raise your eyes you will see the spreading branches of a huge West Indian Mahogany tree at the top of the section (S.11).

If you turn right from here you will pass a venerable Lychee tree whose roots have seemingly absorbed a granite headstone or two (S.16) and come eventually to Sir Robert Hotung and his wife’s graves (S.11).  Sir Robert was famous for many things; reputedly the richest man in Hong Kong, the Jardine Matheson head compradore, the first Chinese to live on the Peak (earning a special dispensation from the extraordinarily racist Peak Reservation Ordinance of 1904 which reserved the Peak for Europeans), financier of Sun Yat Sen and the Xinhai revolution of 1911, knight of the realm.   Climbing a series of steps from here brings us to a military section vaguely reminiscent of the war cemeteries of northern France, though much less extensive of course, in that the gravestones bear the coats of arms of the deceased’s regiments .

Turning left at the Mahogany and working our way up hill we come to two rather interesting naval memorials (S.21A) on the right opposite the Ossuary.   Nearest the path is a memorial to the dead of HMS Rattler and the USS Powhatan.  In 1855, the two navies combined operations to “attack a fleet of piratical junks” in the Battle of Ty-Ho Bay.  Is it just me or is that phrasing rather quaint?  I see junks festooned with eye patches and parrots.    As the two warships sank 20 of 38 junks arrayed against them, perhaps the junk fleet was so festooned.  Maybe their Captains wore two eye patches.  Interestingly, the Americans were much in evidence around this period.  Indeed, of the sailors buried in the cemetery between1845 and 1860 38 were from the Royal Navy and 24 from the American.   Much of the American squadron was part of Commodore Perry’s mission to Japan in the mid 1850’s, which opened up that country to trade and investment with the West.   Behind the Rattler/Powhatan memorial is a rough hewn granite pillar, looking rather like an ancient French menhir as carved by Obelix the Gaul.  It marks the sinking of the French destroyer La Fronde in the Typhoon of 1906.   The memorial was erected by the “British Community” of Hong Kong, presumably flushed with fraternité following the Entente Cordiale of 1904.  But why is it in the “Protestant” cemetery not the Catholic?   More space, I suspect, having visited both.

Following the path up and swinging right we link up with the right hand branch described earlier and then turn left past S.16J.  On the corner as the path hairpins is a rare Nazi memorial.  Paul Kurt Brohman, who died in 1934, lies under a headstone proudly bearing a swastika rather than a cross.  The Hong Kong cemetery is indeed a broad church.

Now we need to find our way out. Always aiming up hill and bearing right you will reach a stand of trees and rushes that are often home to a flock of red-whiskered bulbuls.   Passing that cauldron of avian excitement, unless you take advantage of one of the few benches in the cemetery, which appears to your left, you arrive at the Stubbs Rd exit.

From here you can pick up a no.15 bus to the Peak or a no.6 to Repulse Bay and Stanley if you are so minded.  If not, cross the road and walk up the entrance to Shiu Fai Terrace.  Continue along the terrace almost to the end and take the stairs that appear to your left.   This flight takes you to Bowen Road.  There is a branching of the path about a quarter of the way up but both arms lead to Bowen Road.

Bowen Road is one of the most favoured jogging tracks in Hong Kong.  It is about 4 kilometers long and runs from Magazine Gap Road in Mid Levels to Stubbs Road.   It is very leafy in parts, with some sections built out over the hillside so you are in the canopy of the trees below.   It was one of the first roads in Hong Kong, known originally as the 3^rd Road, the 1^st being Queen’s Road and the 2^nd Kennedy Road.  If you have brought your dog, take care here.  Bowen Road, along with Black’s Link, has been the scene of many dog poisonings over a number of years.  Our walk turns left at the top of the stairs and almost immediately there is a flight of steps to your right leading up to Lovers’ Rock. This is worth a diversion, though you may have had enough of steps after the climb from Shiu Fai Terrace. The stairway winds up to the rock through a series of shrines and occasional clouds of incense.  Eventually you arrive at the 9 metre monolith and can marvel at its Priapic magnificence, while also enjoying a view of the harbour and Fei Ngo Shan looming over Kowloon.   Lovers’ Rock apparently grants happy marriages to those who worship there.  It clearly has quite a following.

Continue along Bowen Road, taking advantage of the various items of equipment on the Fitness Trail if you wish.  There are bars to do pull ups, benches to do sit ups and beams to walk along, accompanied by helpful instructions.   All around you is evidence of the Hong Kong Government’s constant battle against landslides.  The combination of steep slopes, widespread development and heavy rain has resulted in Hong Kong being plagued by landslides.   Over 550 people have died in them since 1948, mainly in the 1960’s and 1970’s before the slope registration and protection programme really took off.  This now costs over HKD600m per year.  They are trying harder to make the protection more scenic these days, using wire mesh through which plants can grow rather than a flood of concrete coating the hillside like grey snow.  Not a good look.

Towards the end of the road you will see one of the original boundary markers delineating the edge of the city of Victoria in 1903 and arrive at the roundabout linking Wong Nai Chung Gap Rd, Stubbs Rd and Tai Hang Road.  Cross over Stubbs Road, towards the harbour, and turn right along Tai Hang Rd.   To your left is a series of steps that take you down to the Green Lane Service Reservoir Sitting Out area.  This has a 300 metre jogging track around the outside of it and a grassy expanse on which the Philippine Sluggers ladies play baseball of a Sunday.  Continue through the park and onto Green Lane, a series of steps and then a steepish road that will take you down to Sing Woo Road and the built up part of Happy Valley.  Eventually you will reach the tram stop again.

If refreshment is needed there are many options.  A short diversion to the left along Village Rd will bring you to the Emperor Hotel, whose Szechuan restaurant has two Michelin stars.  By way of context, there are only 17 restaurants in the whole USA with 2 Michelin stars.   Or there is a great Dim Sum restaurant, helpfully marked “Dim Sum” in English on Sing Woo Road, the Saint-Germain if you prefer French, on Wong Nai Chung Road, or the Happy Valley Bar and Grill if you need a great Hamburger.   There are lots of options and you may even have earned a refuelling if you climbed those various flights of stairs on the walk at pace.