Most of Macao’s UNESCO-listed sites tell a Portuguese and Catholic story: the facade of St. Paul’s, the yellow walls of St. Dominic’s, the senate on Senado Square. A ten-minute walk from the Ruins, behind a gate beside Camões Garden, is a site that tells a different one. The Protestant Cemetery is a small, shaded, terraced garden of English, Scottish, American, Dutch and other graves, most of them from the first half of the nineteenth century.

It is also one of the monuments and squares that make up the UNESCO Historic Centre of Macao, listed in 2005. Few visitors find it. Those who do get one of the quietest half-hours in the city and a clear picture of a period that the churches and fortresses leave out: the years when Macao was the place where the British, American and other traders of the China trade lived, worked, fell ill and died.

Why a Catholic city needed a Protestant cemetery

To understand the cemetery you need to know why so many Protestants were in Macao at all. From 1757 the Qing court allowed Western trade with China only through Canton (Guangzhou), under strict rules. Foreign merchants could stay in Canton only during the trading season, and they could not bring their wives or families. For the rest of the year, and for their family life, they went to Macao. The British East India Company, American firms and many others kept houses, offices and staff there. For about eighty years the “foreign community” of Macao was far larger and more varied than the Portuguese city around it suggested.

That community had a problem when someone died. Macao was a Catholic city, and Protestants could not be buried in consecrated Catholic ground. Burial on Chinese land outside the city was also difficult. Contemporary accounts describe Protestant dead being buried on the hillsides or beyond the walls, sometimes quietly and at night.

The change came in 1821. In June of that year Mary Morrison, the wife of the missionary Robert Morrison, died in Macao, and the usual difficulties arose over where to bury her. The East India Company then acquired a plot of land for a Protestant burial ground, and she was among the first to be buried in it. Some headstones in the cemetery carry dates earlier than 1821. These mark remains that were moved here from older graves once the cemetery existed. The cemetery took burials for less than forty years. It is usually said to have closed to new burials in 1858.

Who is buried here

The headstones are worth reading one by one, but a few names explain why historians come here.

Robert Morrison (1782–1834). Morrison was the first Protestant missionary in China. He arrived in Canton in 1807, sent by the London Missionary Society. Because the East India Company would not carry missionaries, he travelled by way of New York on an American ship. In China he could not preach openly, so he spent his life on language. He translated the Bible into Chinese with his colleague William Milne. He also produced a Dictionary of the Chinese Language, published in parts between 1815 and 1823, which is often described as the first major Chinese–English dictionary. To support himself he worked as a translator for the East India Company. He died in Canton in 1834 and was brought to Macao to be buried beside Mary.

Morrison’s work reached well beyond Macao. In 1818 he and Milne founded the Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca, then a British-controlled port on the Straits, where Chinese-language printing was easier. The college later moved to Hong Kong. A Macao grave is therefore part of a story that connects all three port cities.

John Robert Morrison (1814–1843). Robert’s son was born in Macao and grew up speaking Chinese. He became one of the most important British interpreters during the First Opium War and the treaty that ended it. He died in 1843, aged 29, and lies close to his father.

George Chinnery (1774–1852). Chinnery is the best-known painter of the China coast. He trained in London, worked for years in Madras and Calcutta, and arrived in Macao in 1825, by most accounts to get away from his debts and his wife. He never left. For more than a quarter of a century he drew and painted Macao: the curve of the Praia Grande, the temples, the boat people of the harbour, the street barbers and food sellers, and portraits of the merchants who could afford him. Much of what we know about how Macao looked in that period comes from Chinnery and the painters around him. He died here in 1852. The Macao Museum of Art has collected historical paintings of Macao, including works of the Chinnery school. Check what is on display before you go, because the galleries rotate.

Lord Henry John Spencer-Churchill (1797–1840). A Royal Navy captain and a son of the 5th Duke of Marlborough, he commanded HMS Druid and died in Macao in 1840, at the start of the First Opium War. Guides like to point out that he was a relative of Winston Churchill.

Edmund Roberts (1784–1836). An American trader turned diplomat, Roberts negotiated some of the first United States treaties in Asia, with Siam and Muscat. He fell ill on a second mission and died in Macao in 1836.

Everyone else. The famous names are a minority. Most of the roughly 160 graves belong to merchants’ clerks, ships’ officers, young sailors, wives and many small children. Fever, cholera and accidents at sea fill the inscriptions. Some stones were paid for by shipmates. Reading them gives a better sense of the real cost of the China trade than any museum panel.

What to look at

  • The two terraces. The cemetery is laid out on two levels, with paths, old trees and stone steps. Walk both; the famous graves are spread across them rather than grouped together.
  • The inscriptions. Most are in English. A few are in Dutch or other European languages. Many name the ship or company the person served, which turns the headstones into a directory of the trade.
  • The Morrison Chapel. The small white chapel at the entrance is named after Robert Morrison. A chapel has stood here since the cemetery’s early years, and it is often described as the first Protestant chapel in China. The present building dates from the early 1920s. It has continued to be used for services, so step in quietly if it is open.

The neighbours: Casa Garden and Camões Garden

The cemetery sits inside a small cluster of sites that belong to the same story, and it makes sense to see them together.

Casa Garden. Right next to the cemetery gate is a pale colonial villa built in 1770 as the home of a wealthy Portuguese merchant, Manuel Pereira. The East India Company later rented it as the residence of its senior officer in China. It is a UNESCO-listed site in its own right and now belongs to the Orient Foundation, which uses it for offices and exhibitions. The garden and gallery are sometimes open to visitors.

Camões Garden. The large, shaded park behind both buildings was once part of the same estate. It is named for Luís de Camões, the great Portuguese poet. A long-standing legend says he wrote part of his epic Os Lusíadas in a grotto here in the 1550s. Historians doubt the story, since it is not even certain that Camões was in Macao. A bronze bust in the grotto marks it all the same. Today the garden belongs to the city’s older residents: in the morning you will see tai chi, bird owners with their cages and long games of Chinese chess.

How it fits Macao’s bigger story

The cemetery makes the most sense when you connect it with sites elsewhere in the city.

  • Lin Fung Temple. In 1839 the imperial commissioner Lin Zexu came here to press the Portuguese over the opium trade. Several of the men in the cemetery were part of that trade or of the war that followed.
  • Kun Iam Temple. In 1844 the first treaty between the United States and China, the Treaty of Wanghia, was signed at a stone table in this temple’s garden. The American dead in the cemetery belong to the same story.
  • Mount Fortress and the Macau Museum. The museum explains the earlier Portuguese and Jesuit centuries. The cemetery picks up the story where they leave off. Our article on Macao’s fortresses covers the military side.
  • Lou Kau Mansion and the Mandarin’s House. These show how Macao’s Chinese elite lived during the same century as the foreign traders.

A short walking route (about two hours)

  1. Start at the Ruins of St. Paul’s. Behind the facade, look at the tiny Na Tcha Temple and the section of the old city walls.
  2. Walk north and west through the lanes around St. Anthony’s Church to Praça de Luís de Camões, about ten minutes on foot. The square has Casa Garden on one side, the entrance to Camões Garden at the end and the cemetery gate on the right.
  3. Spend 30 to 45 minutes in the cemetery, then visit Casa Garden if it is open.
  4. Climb into Camões Garden to see the grotto and the morning activity.
  5. Walk back downhill to St. Dominic’s and Senado Square, or continue to the Lou Kau Mansion.

For a full day on foot, our self-guided walking tour covers the rest of the Historic Centre, and Macao’s Portuguese heritage gives the Catholic side of the same streets.

Practical notes

  • Opening hours. The cemetery is generally open during daytime hours and entry is free. Hours can change, and it may close during storms. Go in the morning if you can, when the light is soft and the garden next door is busiest.
  • Getting there. It is about ten minutes on foot from the Ruins of St. Paul’s, uphill in places. Several buses stop near St. Anthony’s Church and Camões Garden; check current routes on the day.
  • Mosquitoes. This is a shaded, damp garden. Use repellent, especially from spring to autumn.
  • Respect. It is a cemetery and the chapel is in use. Do not climb on graves or lean on headstones, keep your voice down and avoid posing for photos on the tombs.
  • Finding a name. If you are looking for a particular grave, ask at the chapel or look for published lists of the burials. Without one, the most famous graves are easy to miss among the others.

Why it matters

Macao is usually presented as a meeting of two cultures, Portuguese and Chinese. The Protestant Cemetery is a reminder that for most of the nineteenth century there was a third presence: the traders, translators, painters and sailors of the China trade, who used Macao as their home port and were not always welcome in it. Their story includes some ugly parts, the opium trade above all, as well as remarkable ones, such as Morrison’s dictionary and Chinnery’s sketches. It is all here, in one small garden.

If you want those stories told as you walk, the Macao Heritage Walk audio guide includes the Protestant Cemetery, Camões Garden and the Ruins of St. Paul’s among its 40 stops across the peninsula and the islands.