Local families who have trekked to the Manoa Chinese Cemetery every spring to honor their late relatives during the Ching Ming season don’t often realize that the 170-year-old burial ground is a virtual historical and cultural treasure chest.

But Charles T.Y. Wong, president of the founding organization — the Lin Yee Chung Association — said no one thinks of contributing to the cost of maintenance although it’s a place of longtime sentiment as the oldest and largest Chinese graveyard in the state. The blacktop roadways are narrow and have been reduced to gravel in many places, the cement stairways are crumbling, and the Memorial Hall, built in the 1940s, is in a shocking state of deterioration, he said.

The nonprofit association has been maintaining the grounds since it founded the cemetery in 1851, but it is running out of ways to generate revenue.

“We’re going to run out of money soon and go bankrupt, and that would be a real shame,” said Wong, who fears the cemetery could turn back into an unsafe eyesore like many old community graveyards.

Before a renovation and beautification campaign took place in the 1980s, the Manoa cemetery was a “dilapidated eyesore with grass waist high” that people didn’t want to visit; they couldn’t even find their relatives’ graves among the thorny weeds, he said. It actually became a dumping ground along East Manoa Road, where old cars would be abandoned, and it became unsafe.

Trustee Les Young said the association only has 10%, or about 200, burial plots left to sell to generate revenue and none of them can be presold, according to its by-laws. The plots are sold on an as-needed basis when someone dies, and in keeping with its nonprofit mission, at a price well below market value.

But the cost of maintaining the 27-acre property runs about $150,000 a year, which includes landscaping, patching the roads, carrying liability insurance, and repainting the all-­important Great Ancestor’s Tomb and ceremonial platform for the annual Ching Ming festivities.

The association has initiated a $3.5 million fundraising campaign to renovate the buildings and upgrade the roads. In February 2020, a letter was sent to 30 major Chinese benevolent societies, families and friends, but so far that has raised only $44,000, Young said.

A major part of the funding would be used to replace the Memorial Hall, now used for storage and trustee meetings, with a new wellness/community center. Young said CEO Jerry Correa of St. Francis Healthcare System of Hawaii has expressed interest in operating such a facility for seniors, which Correa confirmed.

Wong acknowledged graveyard maintenance is not really an exciting cause for drawing donations.

“People say they’re more interested in helping the living, not the dead,” he said. But, “Chinese people should feel pride in their own heritage, their culture, their ancestors.”

Wong said he’s received little response from fundraising appeals directed to the prominent Chinese societies that hold Ching Ming ceremonies at the cemetery. They have thousands of members, but their charitable functions have diminished, Wong said. He believes they should be fulfilling the moral duty of the strong to help the poor and weak, a hallmark of Confucianism.

The Lin Yee Chung Association has always shown compassion by providing families, many of them indigent, with a well-kept place for their loved ones to be buried, he said.

“How can we let them down?” Wong asked. “It would be a great shame if our ancestors were buried in a horrible place.”

Auspicious locale

The association, whose name means “united in righteousness,” is the first Chinese benevolent society in Hawaii and has performed Ching Ming rites every year for 170 years.

What makes the cemetery a special, sacred place is its ideal location in terms of feng shui, a Chinese philosophy based on geomancy, Wong said.

The cemetery is located in a valley with mountains on three sides: St. Louis Heights to the east, symbolized in feng shui by a celestial green dragon; Tantalus in the west (white tiger); and the Koolau Mountains and Mt. Olympus to the north (dark warrior: turtle/snake). The cemetery faces the ocean to the south (red phoenix), he said. The animal symbols represent the different characteristics of each direction.

The most auspicious location is the “Dragon’s Pulse,” a concentration of chi, or vital energy, which surrounds the Grand Ancestor’s Tomb, where founder Lum Ching is buried. “It hits the feng shui ideal 100%, which is exceptionally rare,” Wong said.

Robert Wong, the grounds superintendent and historian, said it was Lum Ching who calculated an ideal spot for the cemetery 170 years ago when he was hiking the scenic Akaka Peak near the present-day Waioli Tea Room. From that vantage point he used a compass, mirror and his knowledge of geomancy to determine the most harmonious, vital locations of energy.

Visitors who often sit on the stairs leading to the Grand Ancestor’s tomb have said they feel the energy there, a sense of harmony that’s hard to describe, said Robert Wong (no relation to Charles Wong). He succeeded his father as the main groundskeeper over 20 years ago. He has two dozen relatives buried at the cemetery.

Charles Wong said the cemetery deserves preservation because “it’s a repository of the Chinese people in Hawaii and their history.” As the state’s first plantation laborers, they immigrated from China in the 1850s. The association would include an homage to its heritage in the proposed community center, Charles Wong said. He said the Chinese don’t have a dedicated cultural center to commemorate their significance like other major ethnic groups do. The Chinese Cultural Plaza downtown is more of a retail operation, he said.

Charles Wong said his great grandfather, the renowned Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, was raised and educated in Hawaii, where he learned about American democracy. In some ways, he said, this makes Hawaii the “birthplace of the modern Chinese revolution.” Sun formed the first of his rebel organizations here in 1894, eventually overthrowing the Qing (Manchu) dynasty in 1911.

Important sites on the property include the White Mound of 300 remains, marking unidentified ancestors; the Seven Heroes gravesite, where the remains of six unknown soldiers and a woman from China who died during World War II are buried; and the Bone House, where the remains of about 80 immigrants from the 1940s, who had wished to be buried back in their villages, are stored in large ceramic jars and wooden boxes.

Paying respects

Renovation is planned for the pavilion, which was originally built in the 1970s. It once served as a respite space for visitors and is now the site for Ching Ming ceremonies. Also to be renovated is the Memorial Hall, currently used for trustee meetings and storage. The most valuable item there is a mural painted by Betty Ecke in 1958 that depicts nine parables relating to filial piety. That artwork will be preserved in the new community center.

Young, who has been a trustee since 2017, said filial piety is an old-fashioned concept no longer valued by younger generations. It is a central tenet of Confucianism that involves caring for one’s parents and honoring one’s ancestors for the sacrifices they made so their children could have better lives.

To young people, paying respects at their grandparents’ graves once a year is merely another obligation to be squeezed into a busy life rather than an honor to carry out, he said. He felt the same way decades ago when his father, Daniel H. C. Young, asked him to get involved in perpetuating the Chinese culture.

“But in the early 2000s, something just clicked. I thought, my dad has dedicated a lot of his life to Chinese societies, Manoa cemetery being one of them,” he said. “I began to realize, if it meant something to him, as his oldest son, it has to mean something to me.” Young, the primary caregiver of his parents, eventually took his father’s place as a trustee, following the group’s tradition.

So much of the cultural values of the past is lost as each generation becomes more Westernized, he said.

“It will be sad if it is lost forever.”

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Manoa Chinese ­Cemetery

>> Founded by the Lin Yee Chung Association in 1851

>> 3430 East Manoa Road

>> Info: 808-988-5543 or email rwong778@gmail.com