The graves of the Chiu Yuen Cemetery scale the hillside in the shadow of Mount Davis, near the westernmost edge of Hong Kong Island. On the final day of the Year of the Tiger, a bloodshot afternoon sun shines through the haze onto the granite and marble monuments of the island's only Eurasian cemetery.
Chiu Yuen is a jarring mix of ornate, circular Chinese-style tombs and rectangular, Western-style stone slabs. Many are bright and bedecked with flowers, others have faded with exposure to the elements and languish unattended. A combination bicycle lock hangs on the gate, behind which, no living soul stirs.
Chiu Yuen was founded in 1915 as a private cemetery, leased by the British Crown for 999 years to the late Sir Robert Ho Tung and his brother, Ho Fook - powerful Jardine Matheson compradors who were the children of a naturalised English merchant of Dutch-Jewish ancestry named Charles Henry Maurice Bosman and a local woman most probably from the area of present-day Shenzhen. The cemetery bears testimony to an era when the children of mixed-race couples were accepted by neither the Western nor Chinese communities of Hong Kong - even in death.
Ho Tung reigned for decades as one of Hong Kong's most prominent citizens - forging an unlikely network of relationships that included Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek, the British royal family and Winston Churchill. He owned mansions on The Peak and was the first Chinese to live there. In 1908, he was threatened with deportation from the United States 'on the ground of his belief in and practice of polygamy' after arriving in San Francisco as a tourist and seeking medical treatment; he was allowed onshore but his two wives had to stay on the ship. When Ho Tung died, in 1956, at the age of 93, the entire board of directors of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp stood in the rain and bowed three times as his funeral procession passed by its headquarters. His death led to a multi-year wrangle among his descendants over control of his massive estate.
Ho Tung himself was buried in the Hong Kong Cemetery, in Happy Valley, and the ownership of the Chiu Yuen Cemetery was transferred to a membership company in 1958. Among the seven founding directors of that firm was a Eurasian who, despite being only 34 years old, had amassed a fortune through a growing network of businesses in Hong Kong and Macau. The grandson of Ho Fook and great nephew of Ho Tung - his name was Stanley Ho Hung-sun.
STANLEY HO USED TO say he wanted to retire at 55. He is now a frail 89-year-old, having suffered from a fall at home in July 2009 that required surgery to remove a blood clot from his brain, and remains the chairman of both SJM Holdings and Shun Tak Holdings. Local companies' registry filings list him as a director of more than 150 firms.
Ho's life has come to resemble those of the legendary Eurasian tycoons who precede him on his illustrious family tree. He has long been one of Hong Kong's richest people - a billionaire who presides over a multicontinental corporate empire, with mansions spread around the world and with a fleet of private jets to ferry him between them. And his outsized family, too, mirrors those of his polygamous forebears. Ho has had the energy and resources to become the father of 17 children, borne by four women he calls wives. (Two of the 'marriages' are legal: Hong Kong out- lawed polygamy only in the early 1970s.)
