There are ghosts in Hong Kong and we walk among them whether we realise it or not. These are not the spirits of the Hungry Ghost Festival beloved by the tourist board, recipients of burnt offerings bought from the shops in Western. These are different ghosts and memories that are being quietly forgotten by the simple expedient of not being spoken about. We pass by and never see them. Unless we stop and look, take a moment to remember, they remain invisible. 

There are ghosts in the hills above Tsuen Wan, but If you’re hiking the full 100 kilometres of the Maclehose Trail, then by the time you reach the remains of the Gin Drinker’s Line you’re hardly in a condition to pay much attention to a concrete tunnel entrance, even one with the unlikely name of Haymarket or Regent Street neatly carved into the stone lintel. There’s even a Shaftesbury Avenue but don’t expect the bright lights and theatres of the West End. By that point you will have been hiking for hours, and unless it’s winter you’ll have been feeling the heat and high humidity as you deal with Needle Hill and the climb over Tai Mo Shan. You’ll be far more concerned with the blisters and chafing to be bothered with what remains of an attempt at replicating the Maginot line and one that proved to be just as unsuccessful. 

The ghosts are also there when you take a Sunday stroll through Pokfulam Country Park and watch children playing on the old gun mountings. They are present in multitudes if you take a short detour off Shek O Road to the Sai Wan war cemetery – but who does that on a hot summer’s day when the beach beckons or you’re planning to go surfing at Big Wave Bay? And when the minibus is on the final stretch into Shek O itself, do people see the spectres that are said to haunt the country club? 

But above all there’s the single ghost who sleeps outside St John’s Cathedral. On weekdays office workers pass by oblivious to him. On Saturdays everybody heads for the shopping malls of Central, while on Sunday worshippers pay him no attention and Filipina maids spend their one day off picnicking nearby. He’s been there so long he no longer registers. 

Ronald (Roy) Douglas Maxwell was 22 when he was killed on December 23, 1941 – and his is the only grave in the Cathedral grounds, shaded from the summer heat by a tree; a simple gravestone surrounded by a low chain. The story goes that he was buried in a foxhole that had been dug in Cathedral grounds. During the occupation the Cathedral was trashed and used as a club for Japanese officers – but were they being watched all the time by Roy’s ghost? Perhaps he was spying on them. Or perhaps his very presence was the bad fung shui that three and a half years later brought an end to the occupation. They never knew they were doomed from the start; Roy’s final act of defiance against the invader was to haunt them until they were gone in ignominy. And to him they were an invader of his home. 

These days it is fashionable to paint the picture that the likes of Roy Maxwell were colonial imperialists, but he was born in Hong Kong. Eurasian with a British father and Chinese mother, he was just one of many like him who died in December 1941 and whose allegiance was to Hong Kong. But in 2024 where a new patriotism is everything, is it still possible to remember Roy and his comrades? Those who gave their lives for the place where they were born? Are we allowed to honour them or are they being quietly forgotten? 

Twenty-four years ago I was married in St.John’s and there are photographs of that hot sunny June day taken outside the Cathedral. The obligatory formulae: Happy couple with bride’s family, happy couple with groom’s family. With friends, with everyone. Do any of the photographs include Roy Maxwell? Is there a shadow in the background perhaps? I’d like to think so. I’d like to think that he has shared in all the joy and sadness that the Cathedral has seen since the day he was laid to rest. 

We forget our history by not talking about it. To be silenced, to not be spoken of, is a second death. There are still ghosts in Hong Kong and we should remember them.