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Grave stone howlers leave British officials red-faced

Red-faced British officials in Hong Kong were trying to find stone masons yesterday after crude repairs to crumbling colonial-era war graves left the stones with howling spelling errors.

The restoration work was so bad that instead of reading "This monument is erected (to) the admiral, captain, officers and crew," one memorial says: "This monlmenf is ebbcted (to) the admiral captain ocficers and grew."

On another, the word China has been mis-spelt "Cihna" and on yet another even Hong Kong is rendered as "Honc Honc," according to a report in the South China Morning Post newspaper.

The errors occur on a large number of graves in the old military cemetery in Happy Valley. Some of the affected stones date back to the Opium Wars between Britain and China in the mid-19th century.

One or two more recent World War II monuments are also affected, some of their cracks crudely filled in with cement.

The cause of the errors has been tracked down to a Chinese contractor.

"I suspect he had very poor English," said Brigadier Christopher Hammerbeck, president of the local chapter of the Royal British Legion war veterans' association and director of the British Chamber of Commerce.

"Many of the graves were in a poor condition, they were made of not very good quality stone and had worn out over the years. In many cases it was difficult to make out what was originally carved into them," he added.

Hammerbeck said solving the error was down to the British government, which retains authority over war graves in its former southern Chinese colony.

"It is something we are aware of and it's something that we are trying to find a solution to -- a sensitive solution," he said.

For more than 150 years Hong Kong was a colony of Britain until it was handed back to China at midnight on June 30, 1997.

The two Opium Wars erupted from China's attempts to stop the opium trade.
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