The Big Picture - (Changi Prison) - Part 3/3
(Duration: 06’09.1)
“Whenever I am feeling low I look around me and I know there’s a place within me, whenever I choose to go. I will always recall the city, know every street and shore…[fade out]”
Local warbler Kit Chan sings of how Singapore’s landscape tugs at every expatriate Singaporean’s heart-strings…
But for those who had been away, do they return to the same Singapore in their memory?
Hi, I am Chong Ching Liang with the Big Picture.
The Big Picture in this National Day week went retrospective, we looked at the importance of physical and social landmarks in our country and the measures needed to ensure their survival.
In this last segment, we look at how Singaporeans should and can be more proactive in managing our heritage.
Dr Kevin Tan, board member of the Preservation of Monuments Board on how Singaporeans says everyone can do his or her part:
“We are not omniscient. We have not identified every building worth preserving. Hopefully Singapore will be more conscious of their history and then they will come back to us and help us along the road. You know, we are not here to dictate what buildings are to be preserved. We are here to serve Singapore. Hopefully the public can work with us so that we can identify pockets of our heritage that may be unfamiliar to some of us but are certainly worth retaining that make us Singapore.”
So what is it that makes retaining quirky places and crumbling buildings important?
Geographer Dr Brenda Yeoh:
“We live in a world of change and while undoubtedly, adaptability to change is an important quality to survival, much [of] today is too transient. We sometimes seem bent on creating a culture of rapid obsolescence in the way we relate to things, people and to place. In all these, some degree of stability and consistency in meaning of place are important anchors for us to grow a sense of belonging to each other, to community and ultimately, to the nation. If we fracture and dislocate these places too often or too rapidly, we’ll destroy the social memories which are the intangible threads which help people to connect to each other in concrete ways.”
Dr Brenda Yeoh explains more.
“Places are repositories of collective memories, of biographies and life-stories which only the passage of times can stitch together in meaningful ways. If change to material places happens too rapidly, it may be for the generations to come, they will find it less and less to identify with, to draw connections to. Indeed it may be, to use the words of a famous poem ‘the past of Singaporeans will become a foreign country’.”
It is impossible to arrest change and development in material places in land-scarce Singapore.
Does this mean that the Singapore of our past will become a foreign country?
It need not be.
Creative solutions may provide a life-line to old decaying historical landmarks to our society.
Eminent local architect, William Lim, for one has thought of a possible way to save Changi Prison:
“The image of a building can be changed and adapted under certain conditions. If we are using this to try and explore possibilities… Changi Prison may very well become a large exciting international youth hostel. It will be the biggest of its kind, certainly in this part of the world, and unique. They can sell shirts with Prison numbers, you can have all the atmosphere of telling people this was a prison before. If you are able to do that, this may be a big, big scorepoint.”
An economic solution to an economic problem.
However, there are criticisms that certain monuments are being inappropriately used.
The Old Thong Chai Medical Institution’s metamorphosis into Lan Kwai Fong is probably a striking example.
The history of philanthropy found in the old Thong Chai building is probably not apparent to the party-goers of Lan Kwai Fong, a night-club.
But, it is still very important to have a physical place present.
We must have “storytellers” to help alert us to the significance of such sites.
Mr Jeyathurai of Singapore History Consultants tells us more:
“Very fortunately because of some of the conservation projects, we have kept some of the critical areas like Kreta Ayer. When you see these places, you see them with different eyes if you have the appreciation of the heritage. Without history, without heritage, when our people look at Singapore, at the historic site, they will look at it with the yes of the cow because they have not been given that appreciation. If you don’t understand something, you will never appreciate it and that’s why our job is so important because we get the kids to analyse, look at things, understand them so when they walked past conservation houses, they don’t look at it with the eyes of a cow, they understand that it took a lot of time to be this shop.”
The storyteller figure is very important.
In our land of rapid changes, some conservation projects may not even retain the social meaning it had in the past because of the need to make it economically viable.
Hence, we need storytellers to link the present to the past in order to help us acquire the eye of appreciation for our heritage.
And this appreciation is very important.
Jeya elaborates:
“So even though there is change, some things don’t change. Your heritage, your history doesn’t change and it doesn’t change because you understand it, no matter what else changes around you.”
So maybe Kit Chan is right.
Perhaps, there will, always, be a place that will stay within us.
“…river of life, winding through my Singapore. This is home, truly, where I know I must be. Where my dreams wait for me…”
This is Chong Ching Liang, signing off for NewsRadio 93.8.
“Whenever I am feeling low I look around me and I know there’s a place within me, whenever I choose to go. I will always recall the city, know every street and shore…[fade out]”
Local warbler Kit Chan sings of how Singapore’s landscape tugs at every expatriate Singaporean’s heart-strings…
But for those who had been away, do they return to the same Singapore in their memory?
Hi, I am Chong Ching Liang with the Big Picture.
The Big Picture in this National Day week went retrospective, we looked at the importance of physical and social landmarks in our country and the measures needed to ensure their survival.
In this last segment, we look at how Singaporeans should and can be more proactive in managing our heritage.
Dr Kevin Tan, board member of the Preservation of Monuments Board on how Singaporeans says everyone can do his or her part:
“We are not omniscient. We have not identified every building worth preserving. Hopefully Singapore will be more conscious of their history and then they will come back to us and help us along the road. You know, we are not here to dictate what buildings are to be preserved. We are here to serve Singapore. Hopefully the public can work with us so that we can identify pockets of our heritage that may be unfamiliar to some of us but are certainly worth retaining that make us Singapore.”
So what is it that makes retaining quirky places and crumbling buildings important?
Geographer Dr Brenda Yeoh:
“We live in a world of change and while undoubtedly, adaptability to change is an important quality to survival, much [of] today is too transient. We sometimes seem bent on creating a culture of rapid obsolescence in the way we relate to things, people and to place. In all these, some degree of stability and consistency in meaning of place are important anchors for us to grow a sense of belonging to each other, to community and ultimately, to the nation. If we fracture and dislocate these places too often or too rapidly, we’ll destroy the social memories which are the intangible threads which help people to connect to each other in concrete ways.”
Dr Brenda Yeoh explains more.
“Places are repositories of collective memories, of biographies and life-stories which only the passage of times can stitch together in meaningful ways. If change to material places happens too rapidly, it may be for the generations to come, they will find it less and less to identify with, to draw connections to. Indeed it may be, to use the words of a famous poem ‘the past of Singaporeans will become a foreign country’.”
It is impossible to arrest change and development in material places in land-scarce Singapore.
Does this mean that the Singapore of our past will become a foreign country?
It need not be.
Creative solutions may provide a life-line to old decaying historical landmarks to our society.
Eminent local architect, William Lim, for one has thought of a possible way to save Changi Prison:
“The image of a building can be changed and adapted under certain conditions. If we are using this to try and explore possibilities… Changi Prison may very well become a large exciting international youth hostel. It will be the biggest of its kind, certainly in this part of the world, and unique. They can sell shirts with Prison numbers, you can have all the atmosphere of telling people this was a prison before. If you are able to do that, this may be a big, big scorepoint.”
An economic solution to an economic problem.
However, there are criticisms that certain monuments are being inappropriately used.
The Old Thong Chai Medical Institution’s metamorphosis into Lan Kwai Fong is probably a striking example.
The history of philanthropy found in the old Thong Chai building is probably not apparent to the party-goers of Lan Kwai Fong, a night-club.
But, it is still very important to have a physical place present.
We must have “storytellers” to help alert us to the significance of such sites.
Mr Jeyathurai of Singapore History Consultants tells us more:
“Very fortunately because of some of the conservation projects, we have kept some of the critical areas like Kreta Ayer. When you see these places, you see them with different eyes if you have the appreciation of the heritage. Without history, without heritage, when our people look at Singapore, at the historic site, they will look at it with the yes of the cow because they have not been given that appreciation. If you don’t understand something, you will never appreciate it and that’s why our job is so important because we get the kids to analyse, look at things, understand them so when they walked past conservation houses, they don’t look at it with the eyes of a cow, they understand that it took a lot of time to be this shop.”
The storyteller figure is very important.
In our land of rapid changes, some conservation projects may not even retain the social meaning it had in the past because of the need to make it economically viable.
Hence, we need storytellers to link the present to the past in order to help us acquire the eye of appreciation for our heritage.
And this appreciation is very important.
Jeya elaborates:
“So even though there is change, some things don’t change. Your heritage, your history doesn’t change and it doesn’t change because you understand it, no matter what else changes around you.”
So maybe Kit Chan is right.
Perhaps, there will, always, be a place that will stay within us.
“…river of life, winding through my Singapore. This is home, truly, where I know I must be. Where my dreams wait for me…”
This is Chong Ching Liang, signing off for NewsRadio 93.8.
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posted by CHONG Ching-liang | 10:48 AM
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