New 'Hope'

How a group of activists, academics and artists have renewed efforts to restore Mount Hope Cemetery

Deborah Dong can trace her family history in Boston back generations. And like a number of her peers, she shares some common history. For one, her Chinese immigrant grandparents and other family worked hard in laundry and restaurant businesses, as her relatives established roots in Boston, gaining access to education for future generations like Dong’s – she is an attorney – and ultimately achieving their version of the American dream.

But Dong has another shared story particular to so many hundreds of Chinese immigrant families in Boston that’s not so fortunate: The story of Mount Hope Cemetery. Dong’s grandparents, Frank and Susan, are both buried at the historic grounds in Mattapan.

For many Chinese, Mount Hope has been an open wound. The public, city-owned cemetery founded in the 1800s has served as the burial grounds for some 1,500 Chinese immigrants who arrived in the U.S. before the 1950s. Those buried at Mount Hope were originally meant to be returned to their hometowns in China. But political tensions following the rise of the Chinese Communist Party, and earlier, the Chinese Exclusion Act in the United States, prevented this return, and many of the dead have been lost to their kin. By the 1990s, Mount Hope Cemetery, in fact, was in a sorrowful state of disrepair. Dong, former president of the Chinese Historical Society of New England, has been active for decades trying to restore the grounds with other community members, such as Bik Ng, another former historical society member, and a University of Massachusetts Boston professor, Peter Kiang.

While that effort made some progress over the years, such as constructing an altar that was completed in the early 2000s, raising funds and trying to clean and catalog tombstones, the process has had its ups and downs.

Now, a group of new and old community members have teamed together to renew the efforts to improve the Chinese section of Mount Hope.

“Ancestors of Chinatown: A Day of Remembering”, hosted by Pao Arts Center on April 11, was part of that initiative. The event, held around Ching Ming, or “tomb sweeping day,” in Chinese culture, remembered the ancestral stories and historical contexts of early Chinese immigrants buried at Mount Hope Cemetery – and highlighted ongoing work of the long-neglected section of the burial grounds. The event showcased filmmaker Kenneth Eng’s new documentary “Mount Hope Cemetery,” which tells the stories of individuals with deep personal ties to the site, including Dong, Terry Guen, Nancy Lo, and Kiang – all of whom are active in the restoration project.

“Some (early Chinese immigrants) were never reunited with their families due to the Chinese Exclusion Act and have no descendants here, but demonstrated the fortitude of the Chinese here and are a key part of the community's history. They have earned our gratitude and respect. They all deserve a proper burial site and markers, and to have their stories told and remembered,” said Dong after the event in an email to Sampan.

Kiang, director of Asian American Studies at UMass-Boston, said this effort has been an extraordinarily long and complicated task. He has been bringing students to Mount Hope Cemetery for decades, cleaning and learning about the graves.

“The (tombstones) are covered with scraps of straw or grass, but as you’re cleaning it, the characters start to emerge. They appear as if the person’s identity is emerging with a little bit of care. I think that’s a really symbolic kind of experience we have year after year. There are real stories here that are hidden, neglected, and ignored; but with a little bit of care, they reemerge,” said Kiang at the event.

Kiang and his students had already started to task of matching tombstone identifiers to death records, looking for answers to the central question: “Who is buried at Mount Hope Cemetery?”

In the mid-2000s, an independent study led to the creation of the Mount Hope Database, a digital archive documenting each gravestone’s inscription, identifying details, historical context, and location.

But for several years, efforts around the restoration project slowed.

“Fast forward to October 2024, when I met Nancy Lo, project manager of the Boston Chinatown Immigrant Heritage Project, at the Asian Community Fund Inaugural Gala,” said Dong after the event in an email to Sampan. Lo, she said, was interested in Mount Hope, and subsequently she and Ken Eng interviewed Dong for the documentary.

“Nancy knew of several others interested in Mount Hope, so discussions to pick up and continue the work for Mount Hope came together. She also contacted the Parks Department, which is now giving permission to move forward with efforts to restore the tombstones.”

NOT FORGOTTEN: Top, an ancestral ceremony was held April 11 to honor those buried at Mount Hope Cemetery. Courtesy photo by Mel Taing.

Members of the current effort include landscape architect Terry Guen and Kiang, Eng, managing director of the Chinese Historical Society of New England Alice Kane, and Tim Correll of MassArt.“So far, the Friends Group has reached out to preservation professionals, conducted further historical research, applied for grants, and has been working with the cemetery office, which has now granted the Friends Group access to Mount Hope's burial records so we can gather more info about those interred there,” said Dong.

The Friends group is also working toward restoring the headstones, augmenting the database, gathering and sharing their stories, and continuing the work on the landscaping and memorial altar.

“I think it’s very important for us to showcase our history so that people know the struggles and also how people build community,” said Lo at the Pao Arts event.

For more information or to volunteer, contact FriendsChineseBurialGrounds@gmail.com.