UMass Boston students from Professor Peter Kiang’s class Boston’s Asian American Communities visited Mount Hope Cemetery in Mattapan recently to visit the graves of around 1,500 early Chinese immigrants to the city. Most were laborers who were buried in the public cemetery because there was no money to send their bodies home to their families in China.

The Chinese Historical Society of New England led an effort to construct this Chinese Immigrant Memorial in Mount Hope Cemetery alongside some of the immigrant graves.

Stanley La, 24; Jamie Tran, 23; and and Nina Nguyen, 24, worked to light incense despite the wind.

At each grave in the Chinese section of the cemetery, a student faced the stone, bowed three times, and placed lit incense upon the grave.

Stanley La placed incense at a grave. La said the visit made him think about the early Asian American immigrants to this country and the hardships they endured. “It’s kind of like a smack in the face, how they’re often forgotten,” La said.

Most of the Chinese immigrant gravestones are small and weathered, and some have tilted or fallen over. Some of these immigrants served in the US armed forces, and their graves are often marked with American flags.

At the Chinese Immigrant Memorial, students placed incense and placed oranges, which symbolize good fortune in Chinese culture.

Professor Peter Kiang addressed students at the Chinese Immigrant Memorial. Several turned their heads to look as Kiang explained that an adjacent section of the cemetery was a potter’s field where the city buried indigent men and women in unmarked graves.