Bukit Cina- Melaka

Bukit Cina - Malacca

Bukit Cina is the ancestral burial ground of Malacca’s Chinese community. Also known as Chinese Hill, it is the largest and oldest Chinese graveyard outside of China itself with over 12,500 graves. Although it is primarily a graveyard for early Chinese settlers, the cemetery has about 20 Muslim tombs, too.

The oldest grave in Bukit Cina is that of Tin Kap, the first Chinese kapitan (a mediatory position created by the Dutch East India Company which made it possible for them to rule the various ethnic communities). These days the 20ha hill is chiefly used as a jogging track.

According to the Malay Annals, Bukit Cina was a marriage gift from Sultan Mansur Syah (ruler of the Malacca Sultanate) to Princess Hang Li Poh from China.  After Princess Hang Li Poh had converted to Islam, Sultan Mansur Syah married her and ordered a palace to be built at Bukit Cina for his wife and her entourage that followed her from China. They stayed in this Chinese settlement until the Portuguese invaded in 1511. The Chinese community eventually grew into a class of straits-born Chinese known as the Peranakan. The Portuguese once built a Franciscan chapel on the hill dedicated to “Madre de Deus” (Mother of God) but the chapel was destroyed during the Achinese attack in Melaka  in 1629.

 

 

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