Inside the Manila Chinese Cemetery—a Necropolis Turned Time Capsule

(SPOT.ph) Rows of roofs stretch as far as the eye can see. People drift in and out of doors. A towering gate stands guard, separating the grounds from the nearby community. Vendors line the streets, peddling snacks and candles along the road. From a distance, the Manila Chinese Cemetery could pass for an old gated village—except here, the residents have long moved on.

The Manila Chinese Cemetery, situated in the middle of Manila's Santa Cruz district, is home to massive mausoleums, humble headstones, and quiet corners that hold centuries of memory. It holds the story of the Filipino-Chinese community that helped shape the city. Yet despite its importance, this necropolis is teetering on the edge of neglect. 

The Manila Chinese Cemetery spans more than 54 hectares, sitting right beside the Manila North Cemetery and La Loma Cemetery. They sit side by side, but these three burial grounds were created for very different communities. La Loma, established in 1864, served as an exclusive Catholic cemetery. The Chinese Cemetery followed in 1879, built to serve those of Chinese descent who were barred from Catholic burial grounds—welcoming all faiths from the start. By the time Manila North Cemetery opened in 1904, it too adopted that openness, becoming a public, non-sectarian resting place.

The Manila Chinese Cemetery is the final home of many who helped shape the city’s trade, culture, and civic life. Resting here are early Chinese-Filipino leaders—factory owners, entrepreneurs like Ma Mon Luk of the iconic noodle house, physicians such as Chinese General Hospital founder Jose Tee Han Kee, nationalists, and bankers like Chinabank founder Dee C. Chuan—figures who once powered Manila’s economy and helped elevate the standing of the Chinese community.

Armed with only a surface-level understanding of its significance, we joined a five-hour heritage walk through the grounds organized by The Heritage Collective and Manila Girls—part of their ongoing series exploring Santa Cruz’s layered past.

From the outset, guide and culture advocate Stephen Pamorada of The Heritage Collective made one thing clear: this wasn’t a ghost tour. We weren’t here to chase chills or trade urban legends. We were here to look closer. To treat the cemetery not as a spectacle, but as a classroom—an archive of architecture, culture, and memory.

For Pamorada and his partners in the tour—Kenny Tai of Manila Girls and Axl Guinto of Manila By Night—the cemetery isn’t merely a final resting place. To them, it’s a map of Manila’s evolution, a profile of a community, a reflection of who we honor and how we remember. This walk, they say, is their way of keeping those stories from slipping away.

"Ginagawa namin 'to na parang paalala na 'wag sana makalimot. Kasi kapag nakalimutan, anong mangyayari sa mga lugar na ito? Magiging mall na lang or resort? Mawawala yung essence ng lugar, ng Maynila, lalong lalo na 'yong history and story ng community," says Kenny Tai.

A walk through its winding roads and overgrown paths reveals stories of prosperity and craftsmanship: Art Deco façades, Gothic details, Chinese-style roofs, glass mosaics, ceramic-printed tombstones, carved stone lions, and a temple where Catholic and Taoist symbols sit side by side. Each structure is a glimpse into the hybrid identity that defines Manila itself — a melting pot of cultures that has never been just one thing.

Our tour began at the Chong Hock Tong Temple, the oldest pre-War Chinese memorial temple in Manila, which was refurbished in 2015 after termite damage left the original structure unfit. The temple stands not only as a place of worship for Buddhists and Taoists, but also for Catholics, with statues of Mary, Jesus, and other Catholic iconography present on the altar. It's a fitting heart for a cemetery that's religiously agnostic, allowing every Fil-Chi community member a place to finally lay to rest.

Although the area surrounding the temple looked spick and span, Pamorada warned us that the rest of the cemetery is hardly as manicured. Soon, we were stepping through narrow walkways, muddy (at times slippery) paths, and even encountering decrepit mausoleums. Yet, this didn’t deter us; touring the cemetery suddenly felt like a scavenger hunt with knowledge on heritage as the prize.

According to Pamorada, a plot in the Manila Chinese Cemetery has a 25-year lease. It can run a bill up to millions, depending on the size, with the more ornate and large ones obviously costing more. Once the lease had ended, the families would either have to cough up the amount to renew or move the bodies elsewhere, explaining why many gravesites were either abandoned or left to ruin. But there is a catch: individuals who contributed significantly to the Filipino-Chinese community, such as the leaders of the anti-Japanese movement during World War II, and trailblazers in industries like lumber, construction, and shipping, can get buried here for free, for life.

If you think having 54 hectares of land meant lots of space in between graves, sprawling patches of green, think again. The Manila Chinese Cemetery is densely populated. Graves sit side by side with no semblance of order; mausoleums tower and overlap with each other, but occasionally, there would be a break: large patches of land belonging to VIPs like shipping magnates, construction tycoons, and the like.

Interestingly enough, it’s not just the big mausoleums that will catch your eye; even the more modest gravesites are worth a stop. One such tomb is what Pamorada and the gang affectionately call “Daddy’s Girl.” This grave, dedicated to a young child, boasts lovingly detailed tile work and the beautiful printed ceramic image of the departed.

Another striking stop was the abandoned mausoleum of Carlos Basa Ongchunco, a master craftsman known for his intricate glasswork inspired by Chinese imagery and iconography. His tomb, fittingly, is adorned with a mosaic of colored glass pieces arranged into birds, flowers, and flowing vines.

Today, though, it’s far from pristine. Shrubs and vines crawl across its walls, and shards of glass scatter the ground. Pamorada shared that the grave may already be empty—its remains either moved or left behind once the family stopped renewing the lease.

Nearby is another memorable structure that has met a similar fate: a watchtower-like mausoleum, once imposing, now almost completely claimed by a towering tree—reminiscent of Cambodian temples slowly surrendering to the forest.

These sites are haunting, but not in the way cemeteries are usually imagined. They haunt because they remind us that no matter how carefully and beautifully something is built, beauty fades when memory does.

Unfortunately, this was hardly the only case of beauty lost to the elements. Several grandiose mausoleums have been either abandoned or uncared for due to family members leaving the country or choosing to wait out the lease and transfer their ancestors elsewhere. And honestly, you can’t blame them; this cemetery has seen better days. Back in the day, Pamorada recalls visits to the cemetery (he has family buried here) were like reunions with some mausoleums even having chandeliers, air conditioning, and other luxuries. Today, electricity and water are scarce or nonexistent. It may not make any difference to the dead, but to the living who visit, those creature comforts matter.

You’d think that after a couple of hours of walking—and quite possibly racking up over 3,000 steps—the novelty would wear off. But it doesn’t. There’s so much to unpack and discover at every turn. Pamorada and his team can’t possibly tell the story behind every structure, of course, but the architecture alone keeps you hooked. Some graves here date back to the 1800s, creating a skyline that feels like a time-capsule collage: traditional Chinese roofs beside Art Deco flourishes, Brutalist lines, and sleek contemporary designs.

If this tour imparted anything, it’s that places come alive once you learn the stories inside them. These graves stopped being anonymous family plots; the Manila Chinese Cemetery now feels less like a cemetery and more like a cultural landmark — an outdoor museum full of memories, community, and, ironically, life.

To be clear, this is not a place we want to romanticize or sanitize with nostalgia. There's beauty here, yes, but it's a far cry from the posh, luxe modern memorial parks with their manicured Bermuda-grass-covered graves and wide-open spaces. Walking through the grounds today, it’s impossible to miss the contrasts. Beyond the cemetery walls are cramped homes and narrow streets; there's no hiding Manila's poverty. Inside, overgrown grass creeps over family plots, and ornate mausoleums stand in quiet decay. A faint stench drifts from the nearby creek, while the rumble of the LRT1 and the incessant honking along Rizal Avenue cut through any attempt at stillness. It's a striking and unnerving contrast: grand architecture and layered history, living side by side with neglect, and a city that has simply grown around it.

Which goes to say that the work and storytelling don’t stop when the tours do. On ordinary days, Pamorada, Tai, Guinto and many other heritage volunteers can be found quietly walking the grounds mapping the cemetery one grave at a time. They read epitaphs, trace families, and ask elders and community groups for stories, hoping someone remembers. 

Heritage walks like these matter because they remind us that cemeteries are archives in plain sight. They reveal how people are remembered, and what they valued when they were alive. But what does that say about our collective memory if we let places like this fall to ruin? Hopefully, we’ll never have to find out.

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Photos by Paul Sugano.