When the National Archives embarked on the declassification initiative to unlock documents previously labelled as “secret” and “confidential” for public access, it also had to decipher what was actually written, says K.U. Menon.

“Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.” – George Orwell

George Orwell’s famous line from his dystopic novel 1984 is a sobering reminder of how important it is to be aware of the origins and sources of information we receive.

It is also a warning about the mutability of information. Through much of history, warring nations have plundered or destroyed the archives of other nations in their bid to expunge the identity of the vanquished. In World War II Europe, the Nazis looted not only art and historical treasures from the countries they invaded but also their precious manuscripts.

Singapore Policy History Project

These were some of the underlying concerns that led to the establishment of the Singapore Policy History Project (SPHP). Initiated by the Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI) just prior to Singapore’s 50th anniversary of independence in 2015, the SPHP proposed a framework for the systematic declassification of public records under the care of the National Archives of Singapore (NAS).

The intention is to gradually release information that will enhance Singaporeans’ understanding of the rationale behind certain government policies and how they have evolved. It is also about setting the record straight: declassifying previously inaccessible public records – including those categorised as “secret” or confidential”– will provide people with factual information on the political and historical development of Singapore.

In short, the declassification initiative will open up aspects of our history that were previously locked up and placed beyond the reach of the ordinary man in the street.

Malaysian Finance Minister Tun Tan Siew Sin (fourth from left) visiting Jurong Industrial Estate with his Singapore counterpart, Dr Goh Keng Swee (fifth from left), in 1964. Goh’s vision of Singapore and Malaysia having a common market was blocked by Tan. The two men clashed on this and over several key economic issues, convincing Goh that the only way Singapore could survive was to break away completely from Malaysia. Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Many key decisions made in government today, for example, in relations with other countries and dealings with multilateral agencies, are based on assessments of personalities and precedents that go back many decades. For instance, in 2014, many Singaporeans did not grasp the gravity of the situation when Indonesia named two warships after the men who bombed MacDonald House in March 1965 until the historical context was made clear from archival records for all to see. In March 2015, there was a sense that many younger Singaporeans who stood in long queues to pay their respects to the late former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew were probably unaware of the extent of his contributions to the nation.

Citizens, researchers and academics, especially historians, have long been lobbying for greater access to our public records. Archival research is primary research based on substantive evidence from original archival records. It is a methodology used by researchers to collect data directly from the sources, rather than depending on data gleaned from previously published research.

Recognising the rights of citizens to access their own history, a National Museum exhibition in 2015 featured the very important declassified secret document known as the “Albatross File”. Belonging to one of Singapore’s founding fathers Dr Goh Keng Swee, the secret file offered insights into the negotiations leading up to separation from Malaysia in 1965. It was a defining moment in our history, and the exhibition included, among other things, handwritten notes of meetings with Malaysian leaders.

In an interview in 1980, Dr Goh admitted that the Albatross referred to Malaysia. He said: “By that time, the great expectation that we foolishly had – that Malaysia would bring prosperity, common market, peace, harmony, all that – we were quickly disillusioned. And it became an albatross round our necks”. This is the first time in history that the existence of the file was revealed to the public.

The MCI began the pilot phase of declassifying files under its purview in late 2013 with a team of researchers, including retired senior public officers, in the first-ever systematic declassification project undertaken in Singapore.

Interestingly, one of the things that struck the team while trawling through old documents from the late colonial and postcolonial period of our history was how the use of language in the civil service has evolved over the years. They were struck by the archaic and formal language, often liberally peppered with humour or sarcasm – and sometimes a blend of the two – employed by civil servants.

Language as a Weapon

For Britain, close to two centuries of colonial rule did not rest entirely on the might of its military forces. Britain also wielded power through other means, and language was a powerful weapon. Extending the use of the English language to the seemingly underdeveloped and backward colonies of Asia was seen as a way of bringing order, political unity and discipline to its colonies.

The British viewed its rule as a form of “autocratic nationalism”, and mandating English as the official language enabled it to monopolise public discourse and to impose arbitrary definitions on terms that framed British policy.¹ As one scholar aptly observed, “colonial structures depended on native scaffolding”.²

One offshoot of that native scaffolding was Babu (or Baboo) English – a particularly florid, sometimes pompous and unidiomatic version of English incorporating extreme formality and politeness that was widely employed by administrators, clerks and lawyers in India. “Babu” or “Baboo” came to be a term of derision used by the British to refer to impertinent “natives” who had the temerity to imitate traits which perhaps only God and ethnology had assigned exclusively to the English gentleman.

The Death of Writing

To be sure, the abundance of jargon and obfuscation that can accompany the use of English in the civil service is nothing new. It is something that was first raised by Singapore’s first-generation leaders, Mr Lee Kuan Yew and Dr Goh Keng Swee in particular, in the early 1980s.

But is the problem worse today, given the pervasiveness of the internet, social media and mobile phone messaging? How has technology impacted the way we use the English language? In a world where instantaneous responses have become the norm, proper conversations and carefully thought out and crafted communications seem to have taken a back seat.

Sadly, one of the causes of the loss of clarity in writing today must surely be the demise of letter writing. As email replaces snail mail, the price of speed is the slide of composition into truncated note. In this age of ephemerality, words appear to be designed to be short-lived. And so it is – given the short screen life of electronic mail, one might well ask, where are the gems of elegant writing to be found today?

VISIT THE SINGAPORE POLICY HISTORY PROJECT @ HTTP://WWW.NAS.GOV.SG/ARCHIVESONLINE/POLICY_HISTORY/ 

Notes

Nearly 70 years have passed since a committee was set up to look into the preservation of buildings and sites with historical value. Lim Tin Seng charts the journey.

Historic and nationally significant buildings are among Singapore’s most important cultural assets, and the protection of its built heritage is an integral component of the nation’s overall urban planning strategy.

The beginnings of the city’s preservation efforts can be traced back to 1950, when a committee was set up to look into the preservation of individual buildings and sites with historic value. In the ensuing decades, these efforts grew to encompass more concrete initiatives that emphasised both the conservation and preservation (see text box at the end of this article) of entire areas, along with a greater focus on heritage buildings and their relationship with the surrounding built environment.

A 1980s aerial illustration of Kreta Ayer, the core of Chinatown. The Urban Redevelopment Authority’s 1986 conservation plan of the city centre identified six historic areas for conservation, one of which was Chinatown. Courtesy of the Urban Redevelopment Authority.

Early Colonial Efforts

The idea of conserving and preserving Singapore’s built heritage is not a recent initiative. It did not emerge with the unveiling of the Urban Redevelopment Authority’s Conservation Master Plan in 1986, nor did it surface when the Preservation of Monuments Act was enacted earlier in 1971. Its history in fact goes back to the postwar period when the colonial government formed the Committee for the Preservation of Historic Sites and Antiquities in 1950.¹

Headed by Michael W. F. Tweedie, who was then Director of the Raffles Museum, the committee was tasked to recommend ways to maintain the tomb of Sultan Iskandar Shah, the last ruler of 14th-century Singapura, and a 19th-century Christian cemetery. Both these sites on Fort Canning Hill were in a dilapidated state due to years of neglect and exposure to the elements.

In 1951, the committee concluded that “the best way of commemorating the people who were buried there” was to turn Fort Canning into a public park.² As part of the scheme, crumbling tombstones from the Christian cemetery were salvaged and embedded into the walls of the new park, while tombs that were still intact, such as that of pioneer architect George D. Coleman’s, were preserved for their historical value.³

In 1954, the committee was given another assignment. Headed by members Carl Alexander Gibson-Hill and T.H.H. Hancock – curator of zoology at the Raffles Museum and senior architect of the Public Works Department respectively – the team was asked to draw up a list of historic sites in Singapore.⁴  The purpose was to put up plaques at these sites describing their significance. The plaque inscriptions would be in English but if the site was of Malay or Chinese origins, then Malay and Chinese text would be correspondingly inserted alongside the English inscription.

The committee identified some 30 sites, most of which were built in the 19^th century.⁵  These included secular buildings and structures like Victoria Theatre, Elgin Bridge, H.C. Caldwell’s House, 3 Coleman Street (also known as Coleman House) and Old Parliament House, as well as places of worship belonging to the major religions practised in Singapore, such as St Andrew’s Cathedral, Cathedral of the Good Shepherd, Sri Mariamman Temple, Thian Hock Keng Temple and Masjid Hajjah Fatimah. Iskandar Shah’s tomb and the gateways of the Christian cemetery at Fort Canning were also included in the list.⁶

3 Coleman Street (or Coleman House) was the former personal residence of Singapore’s first Government Superintendent of Public Works, George D. Coleman. When he left Singapore in 1841, the landmark building was occupied by a succession of hotels and residences, including Hotel de la Paix shown here in the 1880s. The building was demolished in 1965 and the Peninsula Shopping Centre currently occupies the site. Lee Kip Lin Collection, all rights reserved, Lee Kip Lin and National Library Board, Singapore.

Besides identifying historic sites, the committee was also keen to restore historic buildings and preserve them for posterity. However, it admitted that the endeavour would be difficult and could only be undertaken if there were sufficient funds. Tweedie noted that many of the buildings were owned privately, which meant that the government would have to pay exorbitant sums to the owners in order to acquire them.⁷

Despite the lack of funds, the need to preserve historic sites was included in the urban planning process when the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT) – predecessor of the Housing & Development Board – was tasked to “prepare… and amend from time to time a list of ancient monuments… and buildings of historic and/or architectural interest” for the 1958 Master Plan.⁸ Although the list did not guarantee preservation, but only the consideration for the possibility of preservation, the 1959 Planning Ordinance nevertheless provided for the enactment of rules relating to the protection of the sites and buildings identified on the list.⁹

This stately house at 3 Oxley Rise (Killiney House) was built in 1842 by Dr Thomas Oxley, Surgeon General of the Straits Settlements and after whom Oxley Rise was named. When Jewish businessman Manasseh Meyer bought the house in 1890, he renamed it Belle Vue. The house was demolished in 1982 to make way for a private housing estate. Ronni Pinsler Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

To compile the list, the SIT took into account the age of the sites as well as their historical and architectural significance. It also consulted members of the Committee for the Preservation of Historic Sites and Antiquities, including Gibson-Hill and Hancock.¹⁰  For this reason, the SIT’s heritage list was quite similar to the one drawn up by the preservation committee, with 20 of the 32 sites identified by the SIT found on the earlier list. The new additions included Outram Gaol, 3 Oxley Rise (or Killiney House), Kampong Radin Mas cemetery and the Indian cemetery in Geylang.¹¹  SIT’s list, like the one drawn by the preservation committee, comprised both secular and non-secular sites and buildings, underlining the deference the colonial government accorded to the religions observed by its resident communities (refer to the table below).

SIT’s heritage list was drawn up in consultation with a society known as Friends of Singapore. The society was founded in 1937 by the well-known lawyer Roland St John Braddell and other leading public figures, including Song Ong Siang, a prominent member of the Straits Chinese community who later served as the society’s first president. The society had included in its charter “the preservation of historical buildings and sites” as one of the projects it could initiate “for the embellishment or the cultural improvement of Singapore”.¹²

During its formative years, however, Friends of Singapore achieved little in terms of conserving Singapore’s historic landmarks. It was only in 1955 that the society made some progress when it launched a public campaign calling for the preservation of Coleman House (built in 1829 as the private residence of prolific colonial architect George D. Coleman) and the commemoration of the 1942 battle site in Pasir Panjang, where the Malay regiment fought the Japanese Army.¹³

Arguing that the scheme was for the “improvement of the city and the benefit of the people”, the society planned to restore Coleman House and turn it into “a home of the arts”, where exhibitions and concerts could be held. To support its case, the society published a pamphlet detailing the historical significance and the architectural value of the house.¹⁴  As for the Pasir Panjang battle site, the society opposed the War Department’s plan to construct a mess hall there and recommended that a commemorative park be created instead.¹⁵

Besides Coleman House and the battle site, Friends of Singapore also made public calls for nature sites such as Bukit Timah and Ulu Pandan to be preserved and turned into proper nature parks to attract tourists.¹⁶   In addition, in 1957, the society came out to support the SIT when Chartered Bank Trustee Company, the owner of Killiney House at 3 Oxley Rise – built by Thomas Oxley, surgeon-general of the Straits Settlements – tried to have the 1842 property removed from the 1958 Master Plan heritage site list as he was worried that the “ancient monument” status of the house would affect its sale price.

During the inquiry, the society gave evidence to explain why Killiney House should be preserved, pointing out that it was one of the last surviving “planter’s home” from the 1840s, and among the first residences built in the island’s interior. In addition, the house had a dovecote to house pigeons and stables for horses, which made it architecturally unique in the Straits Settlements.¹⁷

Demolition and Urban Renewal

When the People’s Action Party (PAP) came into power in 1959, preserving Singapore’s built heritage was initially accorded little, if any, attention. The new government had other more pressing concerns, chief of which was to improve the housing situation.¹⁸

It was estimated that in 1960, a quarter of a million people were living in overcrowded slums in the 688-hectare city centre, and another one-third in squatter areas – all of whom urgently needed rehousing. Many structures in the city centre were at least a century old and falling apart or had been crudely built by the squatters. Besides being potential fire hazards, these homes also lacked proper ventilation and sanitation. In addition, most were only two or three storeys high, and thus made uneconomical use of valuable land.¹⁹

To solve the problem, the government launched an aggressive public housing programme in 1960 to build housing estates beyond the city centre. The Housing & Development Board (HDB) replaced the SIT, while the Urban Renewal Department (URD; the predecessor of today’s Urban Redevelopment Authority) was created as a department under the HDB to spearhead an urban renewal programme for redeveloping the central area.

In the initial years, urban renewal mainly concerned itself with the demolition of old buildings, clearing of slums, resettlement of the people from the city centre, and the planning of new buildings that maximised the redevelopment potential of the land. As the aim was “the gradual demolition of virtually the whole 1,500-odd acres of the old city and its replacement by an integrated modern city”,²⁰ the priority to preserve historic sites was very low.

When the 1964 redevelopment of Precinct South 1 was rolled out, Outram Gaol, which was on the heritage list of the 1958 Master Plan, was demolished along with many colonial-era shop houses to make way for flats. In 1965, the privately owned Coleman House was razed to build the Peninsula Hotel, while other buildings, such as Raffles Institution and Killiney House, were pulled down in the 1970s to free up space for commercial projects.

In less than a decade after the urban renewal programme was officially launched in 1966, nearly 300 acres of the central area had been redeveloped.²¹  During the same period, the HDB built more than 130,000 flats in new housing estates. These provided accommodation for some 40 percent of the population, most of whom previously lived in the central area.²²

Heritage Sites Identified in Postwar Singapore
* indicates a site that is common to both lists.

A Move Towards Conservation, Rehabilitation and Rebuilding

The seemingly random demolition of historic buildings, however, did not mean that the government was completely unaware of the need to preserve the city’s historic sites. When it engaged Erik Lorange, a United Nations town planning adviser, to propose a long-term framework for urban renewal in 1962, the Norwegian suggested taking measures to “rehabilitate” suitable buildings instead of tearing them down.²³ Similarly, when a second UN team arrived in 1963 to follow-up on Lorange’s work, it advised that urban renewal did not necessarily mean demolishing old buildings in favour of erecting new structures. Instead, the process should have three imperative aspects: conservation, rehabilitation and rebuilding.

The process of identifying areas worth preserving in Singapore, followed by a programme to improve such areas with a better environment as well as the demarcation of remaining areas to be demolished and rebuilt, was conceived based on the observation that the districts undergoing renewal were thriving instead of decaying. The three-member UN team emphasised that a “commitment [should] be made to identify the values of some of Singapore’s existing areas and build and strengthen these values”. This would include the “recognition of the value and attraction of many of the existing shophouses and the way of living, working and trading that produced this particularly Singapore type of architecture”. The UN team also added that preserving parts of the old city such as Chinatown would be beneficial as they could function as “escape hatches from sameness and order”.²⁴

The recommendations raised in the 1963 UN findings were supported by Singaporean architects such as William Lim and Tay Kheng Soon. Notably, the Singapore Planning and Urban Research Group (SPUR) – an urban planning think tank founded by Lim and Tay as well as architect Koh Seow Chuan and others like Chan Heng Chee – published a response in the 1967 issue of its periodical, which noted that “redevelopment is necessary as part of the evolution of any City”. However, the think tank cautioned that the magnitude of redevelopment should be kept to a minimum and carried out using the “same three processes” of conservation, rehabilitation and rebuilding as proposed by the UN team.

More critically, on identifying buildings that were worthy of preservation, the SPUR emphasised that this should be “by reason of their historical, architectural or other special significance”, and the approach should be taken from the perspective of the local context rather than the Western definition, which tended to focus more on grandiose buildings and monuments. This way, even Singapore’s modest vernacular buildings, dismissed by some as insignificant, could be appropriately assessed for their historical significance.²⁵

Perhaps one of the clearest signs that the government was mindful of the need to preserve Singapore’s built heritage came from the town planners themselves. In 1969, Alan Choe, who was then head of URD, wrote that although Singapore had only a “few buildings worthy of preservation” and that many of the buildings in the central area were “overdue for demolition”, urban renewal should not just be the “indiscriminate demolition of properties of historical, architectural or economic value”. Instead, town planners were urged to introduce preservation measures that would “sustain and improve the colourful character of Singapore”.²⁶

In fact, the URD had already moved to preserve some buildings, including Hajjah Fatimah Mosque, in Stage 2B of the redevelopment of Precinct North 2B in 1967. This won praise from then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. In a letter to Choe, Lee wrote that he had read the preservation efforts “with satisfaction”, and commended Choe for taking steps on “preserving what little there is of historic interest and recording in pictorial form for posterity [the buildings that] must economically be destroyed”.²⁷

The Creation of a Preservation Board

Although it was not publicly made known, Singapore’s town planners had been discussing with architects and academics on how historic sites should be preserved during the revision of the 1958 Master Plan.²⁸ In 1963, the Committee on Ancient Monuments, Lands and Buildings of Architectural and/or Historic Interest was set up to review the 32 historic sites identified by the SIT back in the 1950s.

Comprising town planners, surveyors and representatives from the National Museum and the Singapore Institute of Architects (SIA) – such as the director of the National Museum, Christopher Hooi Liang Yin, and W.I. Watson from the SIA – the committee felt that the age criterion that the SIT used to select historic sites should be removed, and the cost of preservation added as a factor for consideration.²⁹

Raffles Institution at its first site bounded by Stamford, North Bridge, Bras Basah and Beach roads in 1971. Established in 1823 as the Singapore Institution, the building was demolished after the school moved to Grange Road in 1972. On the site now stands Raffles City complex. Courtesy of the Urban Redevelopment Authority.

In addition, the committee said that sites that had been rebuilt should be excluded from the list, while “sites of character” and “places or objects of interest to tourists”, including small monuments, be considered as historic sites.³⁰ Based on this new selection criteria, the committee ended up removing some of the historic sites from the SIT’s heritage list. These included Coleman House, Raffles Institution, Outram Gaol, Killiney House and a number of places of worship as these had been substantially renovated or rebuilt.³¹ However, new ones – such as the Istana, Old Parliament House, City Hall, Telok Ayer Market, Tan Kim Seng Fountain, Lim Bo Seng Memorial and the Cenotaph – were added.³²

Besides revising SIT’s list, the committee also began to “examine and recommend the manner of controlling or regulating development” at the identified historic sites. This included identifying the various forms of preservation, and resolving the problems of compensation and acquisition. As early as the first meeting, the committee agreed that the identified historic sites could either be preserved fully so that the complete structure was left intact, or partially such that only portions of it were retained. For sites that were “allowed to be demolished and replaced by more economic or intensive uses”, they would be preserved through documentation, i.e. “measured drawings” and photographs. Some of the sites that were preserved in this manner before they were demolished included Outram Gaol, Coleman House, Raffles Institution, Killiney House and the surviving corner of Ellenborough Building.³³

At the outset, the committee also agreed that both funds and the means of acquiring the historic sites from private owners should be made available before preservation was carried out. As such, it proposed forming a national monuments trust with statutory autonomy. Backed by legislation, the trust would have the legal authority to carry out its functions – including the ability to acquire properties that had been identified as historic sites for preservation, raising funds and providing financial aid for preservation work, as well as carrying out activities to raise public awareness on preservation. In addition, the trust would recommend new sites for preservation and the most appropriate preservation methods to be used.³⁴

The old Thong Chai Medical Institution building at 50 Eu Tong Sen Street (formerly 3 Wayang Street) in 1967. The building was gazetted as a national monument on 28 June 1973, one of the first eight buildings in Singapore mandated for preservation by the Preservation of Monuments Board. Courtesy of the Urban Redevelopment Authority.

In 1969, the government formally announced plans to set up a national monuments trust.³⁵ Two years later, the Preservation of Monuments Board (PMB) was set up following the enactment of the Preservation of Monuments Act. The board was responsible for safeguarding specific monuments as historic landmarks that provided links to Singapore’s past. It identified buildings and structures of historical, cultural, archaeological, architectural or artistic interest, and recommended them for preservation as national monuments.

The PMB’s functions also included the documentation and dissemination of information on these monuments, the promotion of public interest in monuments, and the provision of guidelines and support on the preservation, conservation and restoration of monuments. The board’s definition of national monuments comprised religious, civic, cultural and commercial buildings.³⁶

Among the first monuments to be gazetted by the PMB on 28 June 1973 were the Old Thong Chai Medical Institution, Armenian Church, St Andrew’s Cathedral, Telok Ayer Market (Lau Pa Sat), Thian Hock Keng Temple, Sri Mariamman Temple, Hajjah Fatimah Mosque and the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd.

In order to document information on the gazetted monuments, the board teamed up with the School of Architecture at the University of Singapore to produce a series of measured drawings. Comprising floor plans, elevation sections and other architectural details, these drawings were important as most of the gazetted monuments did not have plans that were drawn to scale. Thong Chai Medical Institution is the first monument to have its drawings completed in 1974. The rest were completed by 1977.³⁷

From Historic Buildings to Historic Districts

Shortly after the PMB announced the first national monuments to be gazetted, the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) – which replaced the URD in 1974 – began looking into the conservation and rehabilitation of entire areas and districts.³⁸ This holistic approach took the preservation of Singapore’s built heritage to another level by providing protection not only to buildings of historical, architectural and cultural significance, but also to their traditional settings, thus allowing the distinct identity and character of an entire area to be preserved.

The first holistic conservation projects that the URA undertook were the rehabilitation and conversion of 17 Melaka-style terrace houses on Cuppage Road for commercial use, 14 Art Deco colonial shophouses on Murray Street as restaurants, nine Tudor-style former government quarters on Tanglin Road as offices and a shopping mall, and six colonial shophouses on Emerald Hill Road as a pedestrian-only mall with a distinct Peranakan flavour.³⁹

An artist’s impression of Sultan Mosque in Kampong Glam as seen from Bussorah Street. Kampong Glam was one of six historic areas identified by the Urban Redevelopment Authority for conservation in 1986. Courtesy of Urban Redevelopment Authority.

In its 1982 review of the urban design structure plan of the city centre, the URA expanded its holistic conservation approach by coming up with a conservation blueprint. The plan, which was unveiled in 1986, identified six historic areas for conservation: Chinatown, Kampong Glam, Little India, Singapore River, Emerald Hill and the Heritage Link – the last being a civic and cultural belt comprising Empress Place, Fort Canning Park and Bras Basah Road.⁴⁰ Covering four percent of the central area, the blueprint aimed to preserve the architecture and ambience of these areas through various means. These included improving pedestrian walkways and signage, as well as organising activities that would raise awareness of the character of these places.⁴¹

The URA introduced conservation guidelines to help developers conserve their properties while, at the same time, preserving the historical character of the area.⁴²  In 1987, the URA embarked on a project to restore 32 dilapidated shophouses in Tanjong Pagar. As part of a larger programme to rejuvenate all the 220 state-owned shophouses in the vicinity, the project was considered the first to show concrete proof that it was both technically possible and commercially viable to restore old shophouses that occupy several streets in an entire conserved area. The project also sought to “educate the public and industry on the importance of heritage conservation by revealing the buildings’ long hidden beauty”.⁴³The URA selected the shophouse at 9 Neil Road to be restored first as the prototype. This set the standard on how restoration work should be carried out on the other shophouses in Tanjong Pagar and the conserved areas.

In subsequent years, the conservation blueprint was implemented through a comprehensive master plan launched in 1989, which saw Chinatown, Little India, Kampong Glam, Emerald Hill, Cairnhill, Boat Quay and Clarke Quay gazetted as Singapore’s first historic districts.⁴⁴  At the same time, the Planning Act was substantially amended in the same year to enable the URA to function as the national conservation authority. The amendments included empowering the URA to identify areas of historical significance for conservation, set guidelines on how conservation works should be carried out, and act as the approving authority for developers who wanted to carry out works on their properties located in conservation areas.⁴⁵

The Way Forward

Since the first conservation areas were gazetted in 1989, the work of the PMB and the URA have continued unabated. The PMB remained a statutory board under the Ministry of National Development until 1997 when it was transferred to the Ministry of Information and the Arts (now Ministry of Communications and Information). In 2009, the PMB merged with the National Heritage Board, and was renamed Preservation of Sites and Monuments (PSM) in 2013.⁴⁶

Between 1973 and 2018, the number of gazetted national monuments increased from eight to 72. In addition to the monuments, the PSM also erected heritage markers at places of historical significance describing important events and key personalities associated with the place.⁴⁷

As for the URA, it is continuously identifying new areas to be conserved and updating its conservation guidelines to improve the standard of conservation works. As at 2018, some 7,000 buildings in more than 100 locations have been conserved.⁴⁸ An integral part of the URA’s conservation strategy is to ensure that the essential architectural features and spatial characteristics of the buildings are retained while allowing flexibility for adaptive reuse, i.e. the process of reusing an existing building for a purpose other than what it was originally designed for. In fact, the URA’s fundamental conservation principle – applicable to all conserved buildings, irrespective of scale and complexity – is maximum retention, sensitive restoration and careful repair.⁴⁹

To recognise monuments and buildings that have been well restored and conserved, the URA launched the Architectural Heritage Awards in 1995. The annual awards honour owners, developers, architects, engineers and contractors who have displayed the highest standards in conserving and restoring heritage buildings for continued use. The awards also promote public awareness and appreciation for the restoration of monuments and buildings in Singapore.⁵⁰The first recipients of the awards in 1995 were River House in Clarke Quay, Armenian Church, 77 Emerald Hill Road, 161 Lavender Road, 149 Neil Road and 11 Kim Yam Road. To date, more than 100 buildings, including the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd, Sultan Mosque and Chijmes, have received the awards.⁵¹

In addition, the URA launched an annual event in 2017 that celebrates Singapore’s built heritage and sensitively restored buildings. Known as the Architectural Heritage Season, the festival organises a variety of activities – talks, seminars, exhibitions and tours – for the public. For the inaugural festival, the URA invited community partners such as professionals, students and volunteers, to conduct guided tours and to share their expertise in technical restoration.⁵²

In many countries, conservation efforts initially viewed buildings as individual entities with scant attention paid to the relationship between buildings or to the relationship between buildings and their immediate surroundings. The same thinking applied to Singapore. While a building conservation policy had existed in Singapore since 1950, the policy for conserving specific areas only developed from the 1960s onwards. The first initiatives to holistically conserve areas took place in the 1970s and early ’80s when the URA embarked on a several small projects to restore rows of colonial shophouses in Murray Street, Cuppage Road, Emerald Hill and Tanglin Road. This subsequently turned into a full-scale master plan that saw larger areas such as Chinatown, Kampong Glam and Little India designated as conservation areas.

Today, Singapore continues to carry out its mission to protect its built heritage and the conservation of historic districts through the twin efforts of the PSM and URA. While what has long met the wrecker’s ball cannot be rebuilt, the future holds bright for historically important buildings and heritage areas that have survived the ravages of time.

Notes

K.F. Wong shot to international fame with his images of Borneo, though not without controversy. Zhuang Wubin examines Wong’s work and sees beyond their historical value.

In 1989, exactly 30 years ago, the late Minister S. Rajaratnam officiated the opening of a solo exhibition by photographer Wong Ken Foo, more popularly known as K.F. Wong (1916–98). Organised by the National Archives of Singapore, “Light on Historical Moments – Images on Singapore” featured 159 photographs that Wong had taken from the mid-1940s to the 1960s.

The poster publicising K.F. Wong’s solo exhibition, “Light on Historical Moments – Images on Singapore”, organised by the National Archives of Singapore in 1989. The exhibition featured 159 photographs on Singapore that Wong had taken from the
mid-1940s to the 60s. Courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

This was a tumultuous period in Singaporean history: the British had returned after the end of the Japanese Occupation in 1945, and instead of being welcomed with open arms, they found a population resentful of their colonial masters. The political awakening among the people sparked a series of events that would eventually lead to self-government, and then full independence in 1965.

In his speech, Rajaratnam pointed out that an understanding of the “history of the private, everyday lives of Singaporeans”, however humdrum their daily routines might be, would be crucial in “moulding a Singaporean consciousness”.¹ It is interesting that Wong, who was born in Sarawak, would be selected for this nation-building endeavour, even though he was by no means unfamiliar with Singapore.

In 1947, Wong and his friends opened Straits Photographers, a photo studio at Amber Mansions on Orchard Road. An advertisement in The Straits Times on 10 June 1948 highlighted his “artistic portraits and transparent oil painting[s]”.² Wong ran the business as the studio manager until 1956, when he decided to return to his photography business in Sarawak.

Before opening Straits Photographers, Wong and his partners had already established the well-known Anna Studio in Kuching in 1938, followed by a branch bearing the same name in Sibu in 1941. Shuttling between the three studios kept Wong busy, but whenever he was in Singapore, he would head out before dawn to photograph street scenes, festivals and markets in the early morning light.³

In 1946, during a visit to Singapore, Wong photographed two bulls pulling a turf roller at the Padang. That photograph was a winner, clinching the top prize in the 1987 Historical Photographs Competition organised by the National Archives.⁴ Wong’s participation in the competition led to his aforementioned solo exhibition in 1989.

Earlier in June 1988, the National Archives had purchased over 2,000 photographs, mostly of Singapore, from Wong. Leading up to the exhibition, between 1988 and 1989, the Chinese daily Lianhe Zaobao published many of his old photographs of Singapore. Showcasing Wong’s old photographs was timely as the images bore testament to the country’s rapid growth and development since independence in 1965, and provided an important visual narrative of the young nation.⁵

A Self-made Photographer

K.F. Wong’s photo of two bulls pulling a turf roller at the Padang in 1946 clinched the top prize in the 1987 Historical Photographs Competition organised by the National Archives of Singapore. Courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

K.F. Wong was born in the Henghua agricultural settlement of Sungai Merah in Sibu, Sarawak, in 1916. His parents were among the first group of Henghua migrants who had arrived from Fujian province in China and settled in Sibu in 1912. Most of them were poor Christian farmers who were recruited by missionaries through the regional Methodist network, spanning Xianyou county in the Putian region of eastern Fujian province to Sarawak in Borneo. In Sarawak, these farmers were employed by Charles Brooke, the “White Raja” of Sarawak,⁶ to clear forested areas for agriculture.

Life was extremely tough in this part of Borneo, with tropical diseases and headhunters threatening the survival of the new immigrants. So many lives were lost at the time that there arose a popular Chinese saying in the community: “今日去埋人，明日被人埋” [“Today you help to bury someone, tomorrow you would be buried by others”]. Nevertheless, the migrants persevered, opening up more farming areas along the banks of Igan River in 1928 and Sungai Poi in 1929.⁷

Twice, Wong’s father moved the family back to China in the hope that his children would receive a better education. However, widespread banditry at his home village in Xianyou finally convinced him to bring his two boys back to Sarawak in 1932. While completing his lower secondary studies at the Chung Hua School in Sibu, Wong would spend his vacation time in his father’s plantation, where he befriended indigenous Iban⁸ workers and became enchanted by their stories and way of life.

Wong’s artistic talent was already apparent in school. Both his teacher and father wanted him to study at the Art Academy of Shanghai but he had already fallen in love with photography. Wong’s first encounter with the camera occurred when the school hired a studio photographer to take some pictures. Wong’s interest in photography was immediately piqued and he bought a Kodak box camera to dabble with. Winning the first prize of a school photography contest boosted his confidence. Unfortunately, his father disapproved of photography as a profession, dismissing it as an idle pastime for those who were not interested in proper work.⁹

In 1935, Wong left Sarawak to further his studies and hone his photography skills. His initial plan was to find a photo studio in Singapore where he could learn from a master photographer. He had set his eyes on Brilliant Studio (巴黎照相商店) on South Bridge Road, but was rejected even though he offered to work without salary for three years. The Cantonese, who dominated the photo studio business at the time, were unwilling to accept an apprentice from a different dialect group.¹⁰

Towards the end of 1935, Wong ended up in Quanzhou, China, and started apprenticing at Xia Guang Studio (夏光照相馆). To appease his father, Wong also studied art in a private art school, majoring in charcoal drawing. In 1937, he found work at the popular Anna Studio in Xiamen (the experience made such an impact that he named the photography business he would later open in Sarawak as Anna Studio).

Photographer K.F. Wong. Image reproduced from Wong, K.F. (1979). Borneo Scene (p. 9). Kuching: Anna Photo Company. (Call no.: RSEA q959.52 WON).

Not long after, the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45) broke out, forcing Wong to flee Xiamen, bringing his wife and one-year-old daughter back to the countryside of Xianyou county before returning alone to Sarawak. He would be reunited with them only in 1975, almost 40 years later.

The Anna Studio in Kuching, which Wong opened in 1938, was originally located across the post office on Rock Road (on the stretch that has since been renamed Jalan Tun Abang Haji Openg). As his business grew, Wong became friends with people of all political persuasions and social class. The fame of Kuching’s Anna Studio spread far and wide, even reaching the ears of Japanese soldiers when Malaya and subsequently British Borneo fell to the Japanese Imperial Army in December 1941.

During the dark years of the Japanese Occupation, Wong was forced to keep Anna Studio open. Business remained brisk in Kuching as the Japanese soldiers enjoyed having their portraits taken. They would frequent his studio, often accompanied by “comfort women” – girls and women who were forced to provide sexual services to Japanese soldiers in occupied territories – some of whom were abducted from as far away as Bandung in West Java.¹¹ It was during the Japanese Occupation when the studio moved to 16 Carpenter Street, the address that would witness the glory years of Kuching’s Anna Studio until its relocation in 1986 to Rubber Road.

Wong’s cordial relationship with his customers held him in good stead during the war years: towards the end of the Occupation, some of the younger Japanese officers who frequented Wong’s studio warned him to escape after learning that he would be arrested.¹²

A roadside Chinese herbal tea stall in Chinatown, 1962. Photograph by K.F. Wong. Courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Making His Mark

After the war, Wong’s reputation as a photographer grew. From around 1947 to the 1980s, his photographs were published in The Straits Times and the popular Straits Times Annual.¹³ Many of his single images featured political events, landscape views and portraits of important personalities in Sarawak and Brunei. He also published several photo essays detailing, for instance, a Malay wedding and the historical landmarks of Penang.

Wong continued to receive commissioned jobs through his studios in Singapore and Sarawak to take portraits of colonial officers, and photograph state functions, archaeological expeditions, movie stars and army servicemen. Some of these images appeared in The Straits Times as well as other publications outside of Singapore, taking on a journalistic slant. His photographs of Sarawak and, to a lesser extent, Brunei, helped to bring these territories closer to readers of The Straits Times in Malaya and Singapore.

Like most postwar practitioners of art photography, Wong was closely involved in the Pictorialism movement or, more colloquially, salon photography. In Southeast Asia, salon photography became increasingly popular with the rise of amateur photo clubs and competitions, which led to numerous exhibition opportunities. In 1950, Wong established his name in the First Open Photographic Exhibition hosted by the British-backed Singapore Art Society, clinching the silver medal for his work “Beauty’s Secret” – a still-life study of a vase of flowers – in the Pictorials section.

It was at the First Open Photographic Exhibition when Wong became acquainted with Malcolm MacDonald, Commissioner-General for Southeast Asia and a well-known art patron. MacDonald, who graced the exhibition opening, would became a firm supporter of Wong’s works, helping to entrench the latter’s name in the world of photography. MacDonald also wrote the introductory chapters to the two photobooks that Wong would later publish.

In the Second Open Photographic Exhibition in 1951, Wong bagged the silver medal again, this time in the Landscapes section for his work titled “A Symbol of Peace”, depicting a farmer tending to his field in Bali. It was the highest award given out for that year’s event, as there was no gold medal winner.

In 1955, Wong was made an Associate of The Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain (RPS) – one of the most prized accolades in salon photography. The following year, together with a few other amateur photographers, Wong helped to establish the Sarawak Photographic Society. In 1958, the society organised the first British Borneo Territories Photographic Exhibition in Kuching, with Wong as one of the jury members. Further recognition came in 1959 when he was elected a Fellow of RPS, having received full marks for each of his 12 entries that he had submitted in his bid for accreditation. At the time, Wong was only the second Chinese in Southeast Asia to have been awarded the fellowship.¹⁴

Photographing the Indigenous Peoples

By 1960, Wong had become one of the most decorated photographers in Asia. Although his winning submissions to salon contests included still-life studies and landscape photography, Wong truly distinguished himself from other competitors with his striking photographs of the indigenous Dayak peoples of Sarawak and, to a lesser extent, Sabah.¹⁵

Wong first began taking pictures of the Dayaks during the Japanese Occupation, and continued to visit the different communities, probably until the 1970s. Describing them as leading a “near-primitive life”, Wong wrote in 1960: “To feel satisfied with life, they need only food to feed themselves, the bare minimum in terms of clothing, and shelter from the sun. Without the material desire of the civilised man, they are the happiest people in the world.”¹⁶

While Wong’s photographs of the indigenous communities have important evidential value, his work is often clouded by his attempts to celebrate their primitive ways. Sunny Giam, a fellow salon photographer and frequent writer of photography for newspapers in Singapore in the 1950s and ’60s, wrote: “This genuine love for the natives, his desire to see the truth with his eyes, his rejection of all that is tragic in life and his exaltation of the happiness of the pagans, have enabled him to produce excellent photographs of them.”¹⁷

Visual sociologist Christine Horn, however, was more critical, taking Wong to task for romanticising the “traditional Indigenous lifestyle while suggesting that its extinction through the influence of development and modernisation was both unavoidable and desirable”. Horn also notes that Wong’s photographs were “created for the commercial market, and provided picturesque compositions of good-looking people in serene surroundings”.¹⁸

Indeed, many of Wong’s photographs were sold as souvenirs in his photo studios. Some of them were also submitted for salon competitions, which placed a premium on aesthetics and technical competency. In this sense, it is perhaps not surprising to learn that one of his iconic portraits of a Dayak girl was in fact created through darkroom manipulation, the analogue precursor to the cut-and-paste of modern-day Photoshop. The girl was photographed in Kapit in Sarawak, while the sakura tree in the same image had been shot in Kyoto, Japan.¹⁹

(Clockwise from top left) A Dayak mother and daughter; an Iban in full war costume – complete with a ceremonial headdress of hornbill feathers and silver belts and chains – performing a war dance; a Kayan girl separating padi husk from rice in her longhouse; and an Iban wedding couple. Dayak or Dyak is a loose term for the more than 200 ethnic sub-groups in Borneo – Iban, Kayan and Punan being just three examples. Images reproduced from Wong, K.F. (1960). Pagan Innocence. London: Jonathan Cape. (Call no.: RCLOS 991.12 WON-[GBH])

Nevertheless, Wong’s photographs attained an ethnographic dimension when they were published in newspapers, accompanied at times by “expert” accounts of the Sarawak indigenous peoples written by Christian priests and colonial officials.²⁰ As Wong’s photographs circulated through newspapers and periodicals, his authority as the pre-eminent ethnographer of indigenous communities was further cemented. To this end, The Straits Times Annual played a crucial role.

In 1957, Vernon Bartlett, a former Member of Parliament in England and a journalist with The Straits Times in the 1950s, reviewed the 1957 edition of The Straits Times Annual. He praised it as a must-have Christmas gift for readers living in the West, who knew “Malaya only by proxy, through the letters of relatives and friends”. In the same review, Bartlett also expressed concern over Wong’s pictures of winsome Iban girls, which were so lovely that he rued the day when Sarawak might be “invaded by the kind of leering tourists” who had “done so much to destroy the unselfconscious beauty of Bali”.²¹ Through their circulation in the print media, Wong’s photographs of indigenous peoples helped put Sarawak on the global tourism map.

In 1953, on the occasion of Malcolm MacDonald’s visit to Kapit, the Sarawak colonial government appointed Wong as the official photographer. In one particular photograph, Wong captured MacDonald walking hand in hand with two bare-breasted Iban girls as they welcomed him to their longhouse. The conservative papers in Britain seized upon this image, insinuating that MacDonald had enjoyed a far-from-innocent relationship with the girls.²² Ironically, because of the controversy, Wong received even more requests from media agencies around the world to purchase the image, further enhancing his reputation.

Two Landmark Photobooks

Wong produced two acclaimed photobooks from his collection of photographs of indigenous peoples, which have since become collectors’ items. Pagan Innocence was published in London in 1960,²³  possibly the first photobook on the Dayaks.²⁴ In his introduction to the publication, Malcolm MacDonald proclaimed emphatically: “Mr K.F. Wong is a magician with his camera. Every photograph that he takes is a work of art.”²⁵

Pagan Innocence is indeed an impressive photobook. Wong’s photographs are beautifully reproduced on the right-hand side of each spread, with the left page unadorned except for a single line of caption. The nudity depicted in Pagan Innocence made the book all the more infamous. Partly in anticipation of a backlash, a reviewer of the photobook took aim at those “fuddyduddies” who considered the female bosom as something shameful.²⁶ The photobook became so popular that French and Swiss editions were later published.

Wong’s studio in Kuching was credited as the publisher of his second photobook, titled Borneo Scene (1979), with the printing undertaken by Chung Hwa Book Company in Hong Kong.²⁷ Mak Fung, a veteran Hong Kong publisher and esteemed salon photographer, was the editor. Borneo Scene served a dual purpose: it not only showcased some of Wong’s greatest works, but was also pitched as a travel guide for potential visitors to Borneo, especially photographers.

The text makes clear the relationship between tourism and photography, pointing out the picturesque sights in different parts of Borneo for readers to visit and photograph. Given Wong’s life-long interest in indigenous peoples, there is also an ethnographic slant to the photobook. A closer look at the photographs reveal, for instance, the gradual covering up of exposed bosoms by the native women, a legacy of the impact of the “outside” world. Wong focused mainly on portraiture and festivities in the book, avoiding scenes showing the daily routine and hardships of the indigenous communities, except on rare occasions such as when he chanced upon a Penan tribe of nomadic hunter-gatherers preparing for the birth of a newborn in the forest.²⁸

Scenes of Singapore

Most of the images credited to K.F. Wong found in the National Archives feature Singapore’s street scenes taken between 1945 and 1966. Apparently, by the late 1980s, Wong had given up staging his shots, a widespread practice in salon photography even today. Instead, he shifted his focus to the capture of fleeting moments and the myriad expressions of human life taking place on the streets.²⁹

Nevertheless, Wong’s earlier photographs of Singapore prior to this change in direction still appear candid and natural. This is because Wong photographed situations and events where his presence would not be an issue – on busy temple days in Chinatown, during the frenetic Thaipusam procession, or when storytellers spun their magic on their earnest audiences by the Singapore River.

A Chinese street storyteller regaling his enraptured audience with legends, folktales, Chinese classics and martial arts stories by the Singapore River, 1960. Photograph by K.F. Wong. Courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Wong’s oeuvre was broad; he also photographed labourers working in a pepper factory and documented the grittier side of life, such as the infamous Chinese death houses³⁰ along Sago Lane in Chinatown. Esteemed local photographer Kouo Shang-Wei (1924–88), who shared a similar beginning in salon photography, held a much different view, chastising those who brought foreigners to places like Sago Lane.³¹

These days, Wong’s photographs in the National Archives tend to be featured in exhibitions and publications that illustrate the progress Singapore has made over the decades. Although Wong was the most titled salon photographer of his generation, and his photographs of indigenous peoples are still highly sought after by collectors today, his works are rarely shown at the National Gallery Singapore (NGS). This is surprising given NGS’ focus on the modern art of Southeast Asia.

The fact that Wong’s images are held in the National Archives conditions how we think about his work today – as archival and evidential in content. Perhaps it is time to reassess Wong’s work vis-à-vis his photographic contemporaries collected by the NGS to examine how photography is perceived by the arts community as well as the wider public in Singapore.

Notes

Milestones in Singapore’s medical scene – among other subjects – are captured through fascinating oral history narratives in a new book written by Cheong Suk-Wai and published by the National Archives of Singapore. 

Life is a race against time. That much was clear to midwife Sumitera Mohd Letak after she helped a patient with dangerously high blood pressure who had just given birth. “She was bleeding like hell,” Sumitera recalled. “Her baby was gasping away and I had to suck mucus out of her baby’s mouth… I had to, by hook or by crook, take them to hospital.”

Alas, the mother, baby and midwife were on St John’s Island, which is about 6.5 km south of mainland Singapore. What was worse, it was the middle of the night. Sumitera added: “It was low tide, so I had to wake up the whole row of people in the quarters there to give me a helping hand.” The roused boatmen put the ailing mother and baby in a big sampan. Sumitera and the woman’s husband and mother climbed in too and they rushed to Jardine Steps at Keppel Harbour. Upon their arrival, the ambulance from Kandang Kerbau (KK) Hospital was nowhere in sight, so Sumitera left the woman in the care of her husband and the harbour police.

A van converted into a travelling dispensary to reach those living in the rural areas of Singapore. Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

She flagged down a taxi and, with the baby in her arms and its grandmother in tow, rushed to KK Hospital. Sadly, the baby died there, but its mother was saved. “She was in hospital for three weeks because her blood pressure did not come down,” Sumitera recalled, adding that, fortunately, “the hospital treated her for free”.

Sumitera, who was born in 1942, joined Singapore’s medical service as a midwife in the 1960s. She was among those in the Public Health Division who went out in “travelling dispensaries” twice a month. These dispensaries were ships kitted out with a pharmacy and medical equipment. With it, she visited Singapore’s outlying islets, including Semakau, Sebarok, Sudong and Seraya. The ship would berth itself some distance away from the shore, so she had to “go right up to the island in a motorboat, and then on to the community centre”.

Well into the 1960s, healthcare in Singapore was largely rudimentary, and not just on the nation’s outlying islands. Renowned gynaecologist Dr Tow Siang Hwa, who headed KK Hospital in the 1960s, said that at the time, “women walked into KK Hospital to have their 12th or 15th baby. Maternal complications of the most horrendous kind were a common experience. Maternal deaths from bleeding, from obstetric complications, from obstructed labour and from malpractice outside.” Speaking to the Oral History Centre in July 1997, Tow added: “All this is never seen again today.”

Singapore’s colonial administrators had provided free clinics for the needy, but these were few and far between. “The colonial government did give us free medical care at Outram Park outpatient clinic,” Chinatown resident Soh Siew Cheong recalled. In the 1960s, Tow recalled that fewer than 50 medical specialists practised in Singapore. Among those training to be one was Dr Yong Nen Khiong. Yong, who became a heart surgeon, recalled his college days at the University of Malaya in Singapore: “My medical cohort had 100 students. I took the bus to college every day… I was doing open heart surgery, practising on dogs.”

When Singapore attained self-government in 1959, its leaders had to overcome the most fundamental problems to give the nation a fighting chance to thrive. Founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew listed his Cabinet’s priorities as the setting up of defence forces; the provision of affordable public housing for all; the restructuring of the education system; more stringent family planning to curb over-population; and the creation of jobs for the tens of thousands who were unemployed then. Against all these pressing necessities, Lee judged the development of medical services and improvement in healthcare to be, perhaps, fifth or sixth on his list of to-dos. To compound matters, the government was strapped for cash.

So Singaporeans made do, as they always had, with traditional folk medicine or, more often, store-cupboard remedies.

Eugene Wijeysingha, a former Principal of Raffles Institution, recalled that, as a boy, he cut his foot deeply while running around barefoot playing cops and robbers with his mates. “Blood was dripping and we went to someone’s house nearby,” he said. “They got a piece of cloth, put coffee powder and sugar on it, and wrapped the cloth round and round my foot. They hadn’t cleaned it first. But the wound healed; no tetanus or anything like that.”

Housewife Yau Chung Chii remembered well the kitchen-table wisdom passed down to her generation. Speaking in Cantonese, Yau said, for example, that pregnant women would avoid lamb, lest it gave their babies epilepsy. Upon giving birth, women would be fed pig’s trotters stewed with ginger and black vinegar, a dish thought to be effective in ridding their bodies of gas. She added that, however, some mothers told their doctors that they feared the vinegar would be so acidic that “it would melt their plastic stitches”. She added: “The doctors said, ‘No such nonsense. But if you believe it, don’t eat it’.”

Many swore by traditional Chinese tonics brewed from roots, barks and seeds, such as those dispensed here in 1983 by Eu Yan Sang (余仁生) medical hall on South Bridge Road. This medical hall was founded by Eu Tong Sen, after whom the street is named, who treated the ailments of the humblest folk. Eu Yan Sang has since grown into a globally renowned brand. Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

The Malays had plant-based pastes and potions for women in confinement. Midwife Sumitera remembered two – param and jamu. “Param was a herbal concoction that you rubbed all over the mother’s body. It opened the pores, out of which impurities oozed… if you went near those using param, they smelled so sweet, [with] none of that fishy afterbirth smell which was caused by the poor flow of blood.”

Jamu was consumed to expel any blood clots after giving birth. “It’s a spicy herbal paste; you mixed it with water and drank it. It also helped the womb contract and return to normal size faster.” Sumitera never forgot how basic the islanders’ lives were even after Singapore became independent. Women and girls who were menstruating folded cloth, into which they crumpled newspaper, to stanch their bleeding. They would not heed Sumitera’s advice to use the sanitary pads that she distributed to them regularly. “They said they would keep it and use it only when they travelled to mainland Singapore.”

Singaporean Trailblazers

Pathologist Kanagaratnam Shanmugaratnam greeting President Benjamin Henry Sheares at a conference on cancer in Singapore in 1975. Prof Shanmugaratnam, whose son Tharman is a former Deputy Prime Minister (and currently Senior Minister in the Cabinet), initiated a cancer registry in Singapore in 1968 so that no one with cancer here would have to go without treatment. Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Amid this rough-and-ready approach to personal hygiene, some Singaporean doctors were already blazing trails in caring for patients.

Pathologist Prof Kanagaratnam Shanmugaratnam, for one, made sure that anyone in Singapore who had cancer could seek treatment for it without difficulty. Shanmugaratnam, whose son Tharman is a former Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore (and currently Senior Minister), set up a population-based cancer registry in 1968. At the time, he said, “there were hardly any private clinics in Singapore”. His fellow doctors, however, were “very supportive” in voluntarily notifying him and his team of anyone who developed cancer. He also personally scrutinised hospital discharge forms, as he put it, “so we did not miss a case”.

Another trailblazer was Dr Tay Chong Hai. In 1969, he was among the first Singaporeans to discover a disease that was later named after him. Tay’s Syndrome, as it became known, is a disease associated with intellectual impairment, short stature, decreased fertility, brittle hair, and dry, red and scaly skin, making an eight-year-old child look 80 years old.

In 1972, Tay made newspaper headlines when he saved many Singaporeans from over-the-counter pills and tonics that had life-threatening levels of arsenic. These included Sin Lak pills, which killed a woman who had taken them to cure her asthma. He fingered poverty as the root of such drug-related deaths. “It has to do with the cost of living,” he mused. “So such over-the-counter drugs are the first line of treatment.”

Fortunately, he noted, “Singapore is good with regulating” and so there were fewer deaths than there might have been from such self-medication. Also, in 1972, Tay became the first doctor to identify Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease (HMFD) in Singapore. His wife, who is also a doctor, alerted him that she was treating many babies with mouth ulcers and rashes on their backs and legs. Jurong was the site of Singapore’s first HFMD epidemic in the 1970s, but the disease – caused by the coxsackievirus – soon spread islandwide. In 1974, together with six other doctors, Tay published a paper on the outbreak of the disease in the September issue of the Singapore Medical Journal.

The highly contagious Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) dominated newspaper headlines in Singapore between March and July 2003, including this front page story in The Straits Times on 27 March 2003. This report documented the unprecedented closure of all pre-schools, and primary, secondary and pre-university schools. During those four fretful months, SARS claimed the lives of 33 of the 238 people infected with the virus in Singapore. The Straits Times, 27 March 2003, p. 1.

SARS: All Hell Breaks Loose

The yearly panic about HFMD is nothing compared to the terror that seized many Singaporeans when the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) began infecting people here in March 2003.

The very contagious SARS, which originated in diseased civet cats in China, hit Singapore in March 2003, after air stewardess Esther Mok caught it from an elderly man in Hong Kong, with whom she had shared an elevator. Mok, also known as Patient Zero then, survived SARS but watched her parents, uncle and pastor die from the disease, which spreads through infected droplets.

Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) in Novena, where Mok had sought treatment, was designated SARS Central, the nerve centre for treating SARS patients, although the disease subsequently spread to Singapore General Hospital (SGH), Changi General Hospital and National University Hospital, in that order. Ironically, according to hospital administrator Liak Teng Lit, he first got wind of SARS at a dinner thrown by TTSH on 14 March 2003: “My friend Francis Lee had heard a conversation at his table during this dinner that staff of TTSH were falling sick.”

Healthcare officers moved as swiftly as the spread of the SARS virus after that and, Liak recalled, on 21 March 2003, the public finally heard about the epidemic. “Basically, all hell broke loose,” he said.

Bus driver Ang Chit Poh said the private bus business plunged such that most drivers switched to other trades for good. Those who remained in the business had to disinfect their buses day after day in the hope that it would restore the confidence of passengers who had abandoned this transport option. Traditional Chinese medicine practitioner Tan Siew Mong recalled the prices of popular herbs and roots going through the roof as, once again, people resorted to folk remedies as their shields against SARS.

Liak, who was then Chief Executive Officer of Alexandra Hospital – the only Singapore hospital whose patients did not die of SARS – recalled how landlords were so fearful, they kicked out nurses who rented their rooms. He recalled: “They had no place to stay.” So his staff and the hospital’s volunteers cleared a rundown former nursing quarters within the hospital’s grounds to house the stranded nurses.

Liak ordered new beds and furnishings for them from IKEA, the Swedish flat-pack furniture giant. Enter unsung hero Philip Wee, who was then General Manager of IKEA in Singapore. “He and his team personally brought and installed the beds in the hospital,” Liak said, his voice breaking as he recalled this. “We tried to pay for the beds, but they said, ‘Compliments from IKEA for helping the country fight SARS’.”

Once the quarters were fully habitable, Liak invited Jennie Chua, then General Manager of Raffles Hotel – and the first woman to have held that post – to, as he put it, “declare Hotel Alexandra open”.

Besides IKEA’s Wee, Liak was also very impressed with Ho Ching, the Chief Executive Officer of Temasek Holdings and wife of current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. He recalled Ho updating everyone concerned about the SARS situation in various countries “late into the night”. “She was also very creative,” he recalled. “People were worried about Malaysian motorists coming into Singapore, so she said why not set up a drinks stall with thermo-scanners, so that we could check the motorists for fever while they drank their liang teh (cooling tea).”

For his part, Liak – who usually did not walk around the hospital grounds much – made it a point to stroll through its corridors two or three times a day “to show confidence” to all. Things were, nevertheless, tense. He tried to ease it with some black humour. “I said, ‘If we die, it’s game over. If we live, COEs will be cheap and property prices will crash, so we will be able to buy bungalows on the cheap’.”

Liak realised that Singaporeans were in the grip of such fear because they knew next to nothing about SARS, and their imagination was working overtime. So he partnered the South West Community Development Council in a campaign to demystify the coronavirus that causes SARS. They worked with a cartoonist to depict the virus as a silly creature with a crown, and then got members of parliament and ministers to “whack” an effigy of this cartoonish creature.

He and his colleagues also exhorted everyone to wash their hands as often as they could. “If you can’t do anything, you feel helpless,” he mused. “So when you wash your hands, you feel better.” This is how Liak and his team boosted community morale during the crisis. Liak, in fact, believed that that rigorous handwashing saved his colleagues’ lives. “We actually had four patients with the SARS virus at Alexandra Hospital – they even coughed in the faces of my staff.” Not one among them succumbed to the virus, though. Many called them “lucky”, but Liak said it was more likely thanks to their vigilance and, yes, hand-washing throughout.

Anxious Singaporeans waiting to be screened for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) at the Accident & Emergency Department of Tan Tock Seng Hospital in 2003. Source: The Straits Times © Singapore Press Holdings Limited. Reprinted with permission.

While everyone in Singapore’s healthcare system was reminded repeatedly to don protective masks and gowns, and keep washing their hands, some chafed against the sheer inconvenience of it all. Nurse Loo Yew Kim, who began her career at Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital in 1969 and worked there until she retired more than 40 years later, was at first peeved at the nagging of younger doctors for her and her fellow nurses to wash their hands after every step they took in caring for patients. “I really resented that,” she recalled in Mandarin in 2014. “We were by then in our 50s and 60s, so it was not as if we didn’t know that we should wash our hands.”

Loo and other nurses also fumed at having to don protective gear every minute of every day during the SARS epidemic. “Sweat would be dripping down my face from the mask,” she huffed. It was all so inconvenient, she added, that at some points, she would just fling her mask aside as it kept getting in the way of saving lives. “I will never forget the SARS period,” she stressed.

In June 2003, SARS was finally contained in Singapore, but not before claiming the lives of 33 among the total of 238 reported SARS patients.

Liak explained that SARS illustrated how much the world had changed due to globalisation. “Germs will always mutate and, often, viruses exchange material with human beings and animals… but in the past, whenever it mutated and killed an entire village, it could not spread after that because it had nowhere to go. But because transport became globalised, SARS could go from a Guangzhou village [in China] to towns and then cities. That is how dangerous the world has become.”

Worse, he added, people were now eating more meat, leading to increasingly intensive animal farming, which was unhealthy and stoked the spread of viruses which, once mutated, would be very hard to curb.

Prof Tan Ser Kiat, who was SGH’s chief during SARS, mused: “If a terrorist infected himself with smallpox, the incubation period of the virus would be long enough for him to mingle with everyone else. Smallpox would then spread like wildfire. This is what we are afraid of.” That was because, unlike droplet-borne SARS, smallpox is air-borne, meaning “I wouldn’t know who has got it until it’s too late,” he said.

The Goats That Saved Lives

Trailblazing doctor Ernest Steven Monteiro had the brainwave to develop an anti-diphtheria serum in goats. With this serum, he and his team eradicated diphtheria in Singapore. Courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

More than most countries, perhaps, Singapore has had an excellent track record of mounting successful health campaigns. Among its biggest wins by far has been the eradication of diseases such as polio, diphtheria and rheumatic heart disease.

Diphtheria, in particular, was endemic in Singapore as tuberculosis was in the early half of the 20th century. The person to thank for its eradication is Prof Ernest Steven Monteiro. During the Japanese Occupation, Monteiro was in charge of Middleton Hospital, which was TTSH’s infectious diseases wing. The Japanese had taken two of his brothers away, and he never saw them again. He thinks the Japanese spared his life because “they were very short of doctors… and also very health-conscious, especially about infectious diseases such as diphtheria”.

At the time, Monteiro was among the very few doctors in Singapore specialising in the study of infectious diseases. He hit upon a solution to cure diphtheria after reading a book in which a doctor had tried to produce an anti-diphtheria serum by injecting the diphtheria organism into a goat named Mephistopheles. In the play Faust by German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Mephistopheles was an agent of Satan.

Monteiro tried that same experiment. After cultivating diphtheria, he extracted its toxins and injected that into the necks of goats. Then, once the goats were producing serum to combat the toxins in them, Monteiro extracted the serum from the goats and injected that into a child with severe diphtheria. The child recovered.

In 1958, Monteiro introduced the oral polio vaccine in Singapore, developed by American medical researcher Albert Sabin. Some 250,000 children were immunised against the disease, which was endemic then. This was despite much opposition from his compatriots in medicine, as the vaccine had not been tested on a large population in the United States. The vaccine, however, proved effective in blocking the poliovirus and Singapore became polio-free.

His son, Dr Edmund Hugh Monteiro, who once headed TTSH’s Communicable Disease Centre, said that despite his father’s diphtheria breakthrough during World War II, the disease was “a growing problem” in Singapore from the mid-1950s. This was, he added, in spite of doctors’ pleas to parents to get their children immunised against diphtheria. In the 1960s, he recalled, “only 55 per cent of children had that immunisation”. To eradicate the scourge, the younger Monteiro knew the immunisation rate had to be at least 90 percent.

Dr Edmund Hugh Monteiro, who is the son of Prof Ernest S. Monteiro, was just as driven as his illustrious father in that he was among the earliest doctors in Singapore to treat HIV/AIDS patients, at a time when they were shunned by most. Courtesy of Edmund Hugh Monteiro.

So, in 1962, the government made immunisation against diphtheria compulsory on pain of paying a $2,000 fine, a sum too high for most families in those days. “As far as I can remember,” said the younger Monteiro, “no parent has ever been brought to court and fined.” Better yet, he noted, once a child turned up at a doctor’s for immunisation, he or she would most likely accept being immunised against tetanus, polio and so on. In this way, he said, Singapore soon eradicated diphtheria. He recalled further: “In those days, when they published details about the immunisation programme in The Straits Times, immunisation teams would be present for about a week in housing estates.

“And these nurses would actually climb the stairs or go up in lifts and tell parents there, ‘Bring your children down for immunisation.’ That was the sort of service that was provided – on your doorstep and for free. That set the stage for these childhood diseases to be eradicated.” By 1977, he recalled, diphtheria and polio had become things of the past for Singaporeans.

Dr Koh Eng Kheng, a doctor in private practice, said the government’s anti-diphtheria drive was a fine example of how concerted public health campaigns had to be. Quoting former American President Theodore Roosevelt, he said the success of such campaigns hinged on the government penalising anyone who tried to dodge immunisation. “You cannot soft-pedal these things,” Koh said.

Lawyer Nadesan Ganesan, a former chairman of the Football Association of Singapore, remembered government nurses vaccinating him against cholera during the Japanese Occupation, which was another illness that plagued Singapore right into the post-war period and into the 1970s. “There were only two or three nurses vaccinating us, and their needles were blunt to begin with. You could hear the sound ‘tok’ whenever they poked your arm… because the needle was so blunt, our arms swelled and we were all sick for three days. But we recovered lah and it was good because they helped us not get cholera.”

In 1984, measles struck Singapore in a big way. The government ordered the compulsory immunisation against measles and, once again, measles went the way of diphtheria and polio.

Unbeknownst to Singapore’s medical service, it was about to have another terrifying battle on the cards, against which immunisation was powerless – Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

 Could Mosquitoes Give Me AIDS?

One of the many inoculation centres for cholera in 1963. Lawyer Nadesan Ganesan, who was vaccinated against cholera during the Japanese Occupation, remembers that the jab was very painful as the needle was blunt, causing his arm to swell up. Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Edmund Hugh Monteiro remembers Singapore’s very first AIDS patient. It was a man admitted to then Toa Payoh Hospital in 1986 for fever and diarrhoea, and shingles to boot. But the hospital transferred him to the Communicable Diseases Centre – where Monteiro was the Director – when they found that he had a salmonella infection. Monteiro thought about how the man’s immune system could have broken down so badly. He tested the man for AIDS. “And it was positive.”

It was not long before the centre’s senior staff wanted to transfer out because they feared having to care for AIDS patients. “AIDS was something which they were not used to and it was too terrifying. Some among them were not personally panicking, but their family members were saying, ‘You better get out.’ So there was, unfortunately, a lot of ignorance as to how the disease was spread.” That was triggered by the government designating his centre in 1985 as the lone place in Singapore to treat AIDS patients.

The flurry of fearful queries continued from his staff. “If the mosquito bites an AIDS patient and then bites me, will I get HIV?” was the biggest worry. Monteiro said that what he found “most assuring” about AIDS was that, apart from sexual intercourse with the AIDS patient, “you’d have to stick yourself with a needle” to be infected. “In other words,” he said, “you didn’t have to be gloved, gowned and masked whenever you went to see the patient.” In fact, he noted, it was far easier to be infected with Hepatitis B and C then it was to get AIDS.

The stigma against its patients, however, persisted. Monteiro especially rued the unfeeling attitude of some doctors towards AIDS sufferers. “We talk to people very early in their medical careers, tell them that if they are going to become doctors, sometime in their career, they are going to have to treat a person with AIDS. It’s unlikely that you will go through a medical career for 20, 30 years without having to manage a person with AIDS.”

There was, he recalled, “one young doctor who wanted to specialise in infectious diseases ‘as long as I don’t have to manage AIDS patients’. So we closed the door on that person and said, ‘You’d better find another discipline if you can’.”

First, Do No Harm

The case of that young doctor with an aversion to AIDS patients begs the question: what makes a good doctor?

Edmund Hugh Monteiro recalled his father giving him this advice: “You want to do medicine? Okay, two things. One, you never stop learning. Two, you may have to sacrifice your lunch… I think what he meant was that patients can sometimes be overpowering in their demands.”

He then cautioned: “You need to put them off at certain stages, and not make it out that medicine is a profession where everyone is to be heroic and self-sacrificing. You need to draw a line, I mean, you will just be burnt out with patients’ problems… if I draw a line somewhere, I can actually function better than if I just didn’t know what I was supposed to do.”

Kanagaratnam Shanmugaratnam the pathologist thought that a doctor’s empathy for his patients’ predicaments was a hallmark of great medicine. “We inspire them to be interested in the nature of disease because that’s how they can be good surgeons or physicians. To understand suffering, to speak freely, to ask us things which require clarification.”

He added: “And it’s a huge pleasure to be able to solve problems for the medical students. Medicine is not a nine-to- five job; you cannot be a specialist with that kind of mentality. So one has to work long hours, studying in the evenings, keeping up with medicine.”

First Test-Tube Baby

For many years, the parents of Samuel Lee Jian Wei could not conceive a child naturally. Fortunately, they were in an age when science had made much progress. On 25 July 1978, Louise Joy Brown, the first baby created from sperm fertilising a human egg in a test tube, was born in Manchester, England.

Prof S.S. Ratnam (left) bouncing Samuel Lee Jian Wei, his first test-tube baby, on his lap while the baby’s mother Tan Siew Ee looks on. Prof Ratnam was a fertility expert who introduced in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) to Singapore, giving much hope to spouses for whom conception was difficult. Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Back in Singapore, the brilliance of surgeon Prof S.S. Ratnam meant that this artificial method of conception, known as in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), was available to the Lees from the early 1980s.

Samuel was born on 19 May 1983 at KK Hospital. He was a triumph for medicine in Singapore and so captured everyone’s imagination the moment he came into the world. Samuel recalled: “From the age of three or four, I kept hearing the words ‘IVF’ and ‘test-tube baby’.”

At the age of six, he finally met Ratnam the surgeon who had made his birth a reality. “He asked me some questions, like ‘How have you been doing?’ He was quite friendly and treated me very nicely… When I was young, I was quite shy, but he made me laugh so I felt very comfortable with him.”

Given a choice, though, Samuel would rather not have been Singapore’s first test-tube baby. “It’s so that I would not get so much unwanted attention,” he rued. As recently as 2015, he was in the spotlight again, as his profile was included in Singapore’s official SG50 book, Living the Singapore Story.

Access to Ratnam’s September 1997 interview with the Oral History Centre is restricted, so his views on Samuel and other subjects cannot be quoted here for now. But fellow doctor Tow Siang Hwa, who handpicked Ratnam to succeed him at KK Hospital from 1969, can shed light on how skilful Ratnam was. Speaking in July 1997, Tow recalled: “S.S. Ratnam was my handpicked trainee… He was intelligent and had the makings of a professor.” In 1969, when Tow left KK Hospital to start his own practice, he told Ratnam: “Ratnam, I am going to leave, but you will succeed me.

“That was the vision I had, that he would succeed me,” Tow mused. “By then, the ship was high and sailing; the groundwork had been done and now it was for him to keep it going. And he sailed the ship well because in no time, he was reaching the highest levels.”

Tow, who helmed KK Hospital in the 1960s, had raised the reputation of the nation’s medical capabilities. In 1960, his expertise in molar pregnancy – in which an embryo is abnormal, resembling a cluster of grapes, and cannot develop fully – stunned an expert at Leeds University, who encouraged him to submit the discovery for a prestigious lecture in Britain. Before long, inspectors from Britain’s Royal College of Obstetrics & Gynaecology recognised KK Hospital as being of the highest medical standards, from the way it ran its operations to how it cared for patients. Tow said: “Now this was a major, major advance. It meant that obstetrics & gynaecology were on a par with medicine and surgery. So we were able to train our specialists locally.

“So, from that day, instead of having five specialists for the whole population of Singapore, today, in 1997, we have 200 specialists.”

This essay is an extract from the book, The Sound of Memories: Recordings from the Oral History Centre, Singapore, published by the National Archives of Singapore and World Scientific Publishing. The hardcover, paperback and ebook retail for $46, $28 and $19.95 respectively. The book is also available for reference at the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library (Call no.: RSING 959.57 CHE) and for loan at selected public libraries (Call no.: SING 959.57 CHE). The ebook is available for loan on the NLB Mobile app.

List of Interviewees

1. Ang Chit Poh (Accession no.: 004159) was a bus driver who witnessed how private bus business were affected during the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) crisis from March till July 2003.
2. Edmund Hugh Monteiro (Accession no.: 001956) treated many among Singapore’s first HIV/AIDS sufferers. He is former Director of the Centre for Communicable Diseases. He got his smarts, wisdom and compassion from his father, the trailblazing doctor Ernest Steven Monteiro.
3. Ernest Steven Monteiro (Accession no.: 000488), the father of Edmund Hugh Monteiro, was the first Asian to hold the Chair of Clinical Medicine at the University of Malaya, and later Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the same university. He succeeded in cultivating an anti-diphtheria serum in goats.
4. Eugene Wijeysingha (Accession no.: 001595) began his career as a teacher at Raffles Institution (RI) in 1959. He was later Principal of Temasek Junior College from 1980 till 1985 and then Principal of RI from 1986 till 1994, when he retired.
5. Kanagaratnam Shanmugaratnam (Accession no.: 001562) was a pathologist who came to be known as Singapore’s “Father of Pathology”. His son Tharman was Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister from 2011 till 2019.
6. Koh Eng Kheng (Accession no.: 002000) was among Singapore’s most beloved family physicians. He opened Chung Khiaw Clinic in 1957 and was still seeing patients a few months before his death in July 2006. In 1972, he was appointed President of the Singapore Medical Association and was later President of the College of General Practitioners Singapore.
7. Liak Teng Lit (Accession no.: 003867) is the former Chief Executive of Toa Payoh Hospital, Changi General Hospital, Alexandra Hospital and Khoo Teck Puat Hospital. Under his watch, Alexandra Hospital had the fewest patients suffering from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) when the epidemic hit Singapore in 2003.
8. Loo Yew Kim (Accession no.: 003501) grew up in the grounds of Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital, where her foster parents were cleaners. Upon leaving school, she became a patient care assistant – a post we would now refer to as a nurse – at the hospital.
9. Nadesan Ganesan (Accession no.: 003279) is a lawyer and former Chairman of the Football Association of Singapore. He survived the Japanese Occupation, and vowed never to touch tapioca or sweet potato again.
10. Samuel Lee Jian Wei (Accession no.: 003407) is Asia’s first test-tube baby, born on 19 May 1983 to a security supervisor and a secretary. He was named Samuel by Professor S.S. Ratnam, the surgeon who carried out invitro fertilisation to aid his conception.
11. Soh Siew Cheong (Accession no.: 003274) grew up in Chinatown in the days when gangsterism was rife. He trained as an engineer and was among the pioneering batch of local civil servants in Singapore.
12. Sumitera Mohd Letak (Accession no.: 001915) started out as a midwife, travelling to and from mainland Singapore to the outlying islands to care for women there. She later took up nursing and continued to help mothers in need, winning volunteerism awards along the way.
13. Tan Ser Kiat (Accession no.: 003084) was the Group Chief Executive of SingHealth from its inception in 2000 till 2012. An Emeritus Consultant in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the Singapore General Hospital, he is also President of the Singapore Medical Council.
14. Tay Chong Hai (Accession no.: 002537) is the first Southeast Asian to have had a disease named after him – Tay’s Syndrome. In the late 1990s, he discovered another disease, eosinophilic arthritis. With his wife, Dr Caroline Gaw, they first alerted Singaporeans to the existence of Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease.
15. Tow Siang Hwa (Accession no.: 001920) was among Singapore’s pioneering gynaecologists. As Head of what is now KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital from 1960, he secured accreditation for it from the prestigious Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Britain. He later left for private practice and set up Tow Yung Clinic.
16. Yau Chung Chii (Accession no.: 000427) was steeped in Chinese kitchen wisdom. She was by turns a salesclerk at Daimaru departmental store, a telephonist and a typist.
17. Zong Nen Khiong (Accession no.: 003548) was among the Chinese residents of Singapore who settled in the Japanese wartime settlement of Endau in Johor in the mid-1940s. He later became a heart surgeon.

1988 has been held as the watershed year in which Singapore’s contemporary art took root with the establishment of The Artists Village. Jeffrey Say debunks this view, asserting that the contemporary art movement began earlier.

“[T]he emergence of the Singapore artist collective The Artists Village.¹ arguably marks the beginning of contemporary art in Singapore.”²

This assertion by curator and art critic Iola Lenzi reflects a view that has been long accepted in writings on Singaporean contemporary art. Art curator Russell Storer, in his discussion of sculptor and painter Tan Teng-Kee’s 1979 performative work The Picnic, dismissed it as “a flash of avant-gardism within a conservative artistic environment… a form that did not take hold in Singapore for another decade until the establishment of The Artists Village in 1988”.³

Similarly, Kwok Kian Chow’s Channels and Confluences: A History of Singapore Art (1996) points to the contributions of The Artists Village and its founder Tang Da Wu to the contemporary art scene in Singapore, while generally overlooking other significant developments prior to 1988.⁴

In fact, the beginnings of Singapore’s contemporary art scene can be traced back at least two to three years before the formation of The Artists Village. Art historian T.K. Sabapathy has cautioned that “all too often each and every endeavour of developing new or alternative methods of making art, especially installation and performance, is invariably and unthinkingly attributed to the influence of the Village and/or Da Wu”.⁵

Tang Da Wu’s Gully Curtain (1979) was created on-site by hanging seven pieces of linen in a gully in Ang Mo Kio for three months. The resulting soiled and water-stained linens were then displayed at the National Museum Art Gallery in the exhibition titled Earth Work in 1980. Tang Da Wu, Untitled, 1979, Gelatin silver print, 39 x 49 cm. Collection of National Gallery Singapore. Image courtesy of National Heritage Board.

What is Contemporary Art?

Contemporary art is complex in its definition. While it is not within the scope of this essay to delve into the theoretical debates about the term, it would be useful to arrive at some definition that takes the context of Singapore art into consideration. “Contemporary art” has been described as art produced by artists living today. Historically, contemporary art is taken to refer to new art practices such as installation, performance and video that emerged in the 1960s in Europe and America. It was a reaction against modern art, which was felt to be detached from the realities of life.

Contemporary art flourished at different times in different places in Southeast Asia. In Singapore, contemporary art is rooted in the social transformation that took place during the 1970s and 80s. As a young nation, the focus then was on generating economic wealth, along with the pursuit of rapid urbanisation and technology.

Urbanisation invariably resulted in entire communities being uprooted and relocated to high-rise housing which, in turn, led to a general weakening of societal and familial relationships. This resulted in a sense of displacement, and gave rise to issues of identity and alienation.

In the context of these conditions, young Singaporean artists responded in diverse ways to “issues relating to the nature of art, and questions regarding the self in relation to social, cultural and environmental conditions”.⁶ By the mid- 1980s, these artists began using a variety of new artistic techniques that were vastly different in their intent and approach compared with the abstract art forms of the preceding decades.

Precursors and Antecedents

Even before the emergence of a well-defined contemporary art scene in mid- 1980s Singapore, there have been several “flares” or “moments”, as it has been described, of contemporary art as early as the 1970s. However, it would be inaccurate to regard these instances as the budding of contemporary art in Singapore as they did not lead to the proliferation of a sustained critical practice of the form. The three early works (refer to the first text box at the end of the article) often cited as belonging to the genre of contemporary art are Cheo Chai-Hiang’s 5′ x 5′ (Singapore River) (1972), Tang Da Wu’s Earth Work (1980) and Tan Teng-Kee’s The Picnic (1979).

These works incorporate aspects of conceptual, performance and installation art, and are generally regarded as a departure from conventional painting and sculpture. In the 1980s, a number of artists – such as Teo Eng Seng and Eng Tow – began moving away from the modern towards the contemporary by creating works that can be described as bold and experimental in their use of materials and forms. Although it is difficult to establish the exact influence that such practices had on the works of young artists at the time, it would not be too far-fetched to assume that some of the momentum was carried over to the 1980s, setting the scene for contemporary art to flourish in Singapore.

The Role of Art Institutions

It would take an act of rebellion by a group of Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) students to radically shift the history of contemporary art in Singapore. Three of these students – Salleh Japar, S. Chandrasekaran and Goh Ee Choo – became pioneering figures in the contemporary art scene. Salleh recounted that the trio had, very early on, begun resisting the teaching system at NAFA, which required students to copy what they saw in a naturalistic manner and to follow the tradition of the Nanyang School. Finding the teaching dull and unimaginative, the students went on to build a more experimental portfolio in parallel to their mandatory school portfolio.⁷

As a further gesture of dissent, the three young rebels, together with two other students, Koh Kim Seng and Desmond Tan, decided not to participate in their graduation show. Instead, the five staged their own “graduation” show – Quintet – at Arbour Fine Art in May 1987.

Quintet – by (from left) Koh Kim Seng, Goh Ee Choo, S. Chandrasekaran, Desmond Tan and (behind in glasses) Salleh Japar – was staged at Arbour Fine Art in May 1987, with works displayed on the wall, floor and ceiling in seemingly random fashion. According to The Straits Times, Quintet was a “coordinated attempt… to shape new approaches to art display and appreciation in Singapore”. Source: The Straits Times © Singapore Press Holdings Limited. Reprinted with permission.

The founding of LASALLE College of the Arts, then known as St Patrick’s Arts Centre, by Brother Joseph McNally in 1984 was a catalyst in the growth and development of Singapore’s contemporary art scene (LASALLE has since acquired a reputation for its contemporary arts education, while NAFA is better known for its more traditional approach in the training of artists).

According to an interview with former LASALLE student Ahmad Abu Bakar (Diploma of Fine Arts, class of 1989), now a ceramicist and sculptor, the school focused more on conceptual thinking rather than artistic skills during its early years.⁸ The highly influential artist Tang Da Wu, who began teaching at LASALLE in 1988, encouraged students to think out of the box and invited them to his performances and events.⁹ LASALLE students also became involved in a number of external contemporary art events and activities during this period.¹⁰ Interestingly, much of the study of contemporary art practices were taking place outside the classroom.

Before the establishment of the Singapore Art Museum in 1996, the National Museum Art Gallery was the state museum where art exhibitions were held. The role played by this art gallery, which opened in 1976, in the development of contemporary art in Singapore cannot be understated. Although the gallery did not provide a platform for young local artists, the numerous shows it staged that featured the works of well-known international artists would have inspired students from LASALLE and NAFA.¹¹ It is highly plausible that exposure to these international shows would have had an impact on more intrepid art students as well as emerging artists, many of whom could have been influenced by the experimental works on display.

Foreign cultural institutes in Singapore, such as Alliance Francaise, The British Council, the Australian High Commission (which organised the Australian Art Award for Young Artists)¹² and the Goethe-Institut, also served as platforms for learning and exhibitions. The Goethe-Institut was especially instrumental in providing an alternative space for the display of contemporary art: its exhibitions of works by German artists and film screenings would undoubtedly have been seen by young local artists and, in turn, energised their own practice. In addition to hosting the graduation shows of NAFA and those of young emerging artists,¹³ the Goethe also had a library that was well stocked with art books – a useful resource for young artists looking for ideas from outside Singapore.

The Art Commandos during one of their outdoor performances at the 1998 Arts Festival Fringe that combined music, dance, drama and visual arts. The paraphernalia and artworks seen in the photo were all made using materials that had been salvaged. Courtesy of Koh Nguang How.

Groundbreaking Art

Interestingly, many of the visual art exhibitions that featured cutting-edge works by young and emerging artists during this period were organised as part of the Fringe segment of the Singapore Festival of Arts. The Fringe showcased events featuring visual and performing arts that frequently crossed from one discipline to the other. The Fringe was exactly what the term stood for – non-mainstream events that encouraged greater experimentation and diversity of visual expressions, which in turn expanded the scope of contemporary art practice in Singapore.

In the 1986 edition of the Fringe, the works of 12 young artists were shown in five venues¹⁴ here. One of the shows, Not the Singapore River, held at the now defunct Arbour Fine Art in Cuppage Terrace, would become part of local art history. Although short-lived, Arbour Fine Art and its co-owner, Lim Jen Howe, played an instrumental role in providing a platform for untested young artists brimming with fresh ideas to exhibit their works.

By naming the exhibition Not the Singapore River, Lim had intended to usher in a new era in the local art scene, representing a break from the so-called second-generation artists who were either painting abstractions, or clichéd and idyllic scenes of the Singapore River and Chinatown. The five artists featured in Not the Singapore River were Goh Ee Choo, Oh Chai Hoo, Katherine Ho, Yeo Siak Goon and Peter Tow. Although the works exhibited were primarily paintings, their experimental interplay of form and space, and the use of motifs and symbols as metaphors for self-reflexivity leaned towards contemporary art.

The aforementioned Quintet exhibition by NAFA’s five young artists, held at Arbour Fine Art in May 1987, was arguably the most significant art exhibition in the second half of the 1980s, and its radical origins have been noted by various writers. The reviewers of the show were quick to point out the innovative components of Quintet,¹⁵ here with its works displayed on the wall, floor and ceiling in seemingly random fashion.

S. Chandrasekaran (right) performing at the Yin Yang Festival at the National University of Singapore Guild House in November 1987. He is seen here laying a trail of stones into the children’s pool at the Guild House. Not surprisingly, the exhibition invited much negative feedback from a public and press unused to such experimental art forms. (See The Straits Times, 24 November 1987, p.25). Photo on right courtesy of Neo Kim Seng.

While the art works of Desmond Tan and Koh Kim Seng of Quintet conformed to the conventions of easel paintings, those of Salleh Japar, Goh Ee Choo and S. Chandrasekaran broke new ground in Singaporean art. Drawing from Asian heritage and philosophy, their works were a direct reaction to Western-centric art practices prevailing in Singapore. The use of objects such as sand, stones, dried leaves, barbed wire and even a kitchen wok, arranged as installations on the floor or as constructions on the wall – and the creation of a total and immersive art environment in the process – were the key elements that made it so revolutionary.

Significantly, too, Quintet was the precursor of the well-documented Trimurti that was staged in 1988 – the same year The Artists Village was launched. Trimurti is regarded today as a seminal exhibition in the history of Singaporean contemporary art (refer to the second text box at the end of the article).

In 1988, an unsung figure in Singaporean contemporary art history, the French-born multidisciplinary artist Gilles Massot, conceived and organised Art Commandos, a group of about 30 individuals who launched “raids” into the city area as part of the 1988 Arts Festival Fringe. The “raids” constituted one of the first instances of intervention by a group of creative individuals in a public space.

After having trained for a week under different mentors in an experimental workshop in Sentosa that combined visual art, music, drama and dance, the Art Commandos settled into their “base camp” at the former St Joseph’s Institution (now Singapore Art Museum), from where they fanned out into various parts of the city, including Orchard Road. The performances were spontaneous and involved members of the group expressing themselves in song, dance and drama, and using a variety of artistic props made from readily available materials.

Massot had earlier co-curated a six day interdisciplinary event from 19 to 24 November 1987 called the Yin Yang Festival, organised by the National University of Singapore Society. It included an outdoor performance by S. Chandrasekaran, which saw the artist leading a procession of chanting performers carrying stones while clashing cymbals resonated in the background. They then proceeded to arrange the stones in a mound while throwing “bits of plastic, sponge and paint over them in a random fashion”.¹⁶

Another innovative event that was part of the 1988 Fringe took place on the premises of the former St Joseph’s Institution in June. It was one of the first instances where a group of artists took over a vacated building and transformed it into a dynamic art space with site-specific works that involved active audience engagement. Titled More Than 4, it was staged by four young artists – Tang Mun Kit, Baet Yeok Kuan, Lim Poh Teck and Chng Chin Kang.

Occupying old classrooms, corridors and other spaces, the artists responded to the building’s former life as a school by using materials and furniture salvaged from the premises in their installations. Experimental works were placed alongside school remnants such as blackboards, desks and notice boards. The artists also made personal interventions in public spaces; in one instance, a girl wrapped in white and strapped to the front of a wooden box was pushed from the school to Marina Square. Outside Raffles City, a shirtless Tang Da Wu “ran up to the girl at top speed and screamed into her face…” He then grabbed the girl and said: ‘This is live art’.”¹⁷

A wooden box made by young artists – Tang Mun Kit, Baet Yeok Kuan, Lim Poh Teck and Chng Chin Kang – being pushed from the former St Joseph’s Institution to Marina Square for the More Than 4 event staged as part of the 1988 Arts Festival Fringe. Courtesy of Koh Nguang How

In September 1988, Cheo Chai-Hiang presented an installation titled Gentleman in Suit and Tie. Artist and archivist Koh Nguang How recalls how, at the opening event, 60 audience members, each equipped with a charcoal stick and a piece of paper pre-printed with a man’s image, simultaneously started running their charcoal sticks over the image – in effect producing 60 portraits in one fell swoop – as guest-of-honour and then principal of LASALLE College Brother Joseph McNally walked the length of the gallery while a flautist played in the background.

Cheo’s work can be framed within what is known as relational aesthetics, in which the artist is viewed as merely a facilitator and art is regarded as the exchange of information between the artist and the audience.¹⁸ “The artist, in this sense, gives audiences access to power and the means to change the world.”¹⁹ It is clear that Cheo was years ahead of his time.

Public Reception and Perception

The public reception to contemporary art in Singapore has been mostly overlooked in existing writings. One of the strongest indicators that a contemporary art scene had emerged in the mid-1980s was the public discourse that took place in response to its development. By its very nature, contemporary art is meant to be provocative and interactive, demanding, as it were, the audience to participate. The coverage of the visual arts in the press and other writings during this period were largely attempts to make sense of some of the avant-garde and experimental art practices that had begun surfacing. The cutting-edge quality of contemporary art inevitably elicited strong reactions from the public.

During S. Chandrasekaran’s performance for the Yin Yang Festival in November 1987, for instance, players at a nearby tennis court got into a heated exchange with members of the artist’s procession, questioning whether splashing paint over a heap of stones can be considered art.²⁰ In July 1988, a member of the public wrote toThe Straits Times, expressing disappointment with the Art Commandos, criticising the artistic quality of the performers and the lack of good content.²¹

Much of the criticisms, particularly in newspapers and magazines, took aim at the seemingly gimmicky and experimental nature of the works, which themselves were a barometer of a growing interest in forms and practices that were shifting from the more familiar art of the 1970s and early ’80s that were expressed mainly through paintings, sculptures and salon photography. The reactions from both audience and journalists ranged from utter bewilderment to complete denial that what they were witnessing was art. But ironically, headlines such as “Art or gimmick?”.²² and “A year when the young hogged the limelight”²³ were ample evidence that new art forms were emerging in Singapore.

Among those who contributed art reviews and columns to The Straits Times was the prolific art historian T.K. Sabapathy, whose incisive remarks and critical tenor were hallmarks of his writing. Sabapathy’s reviews were a reflection of the personal relationships that he had forged with many contemporary artists during their formative years.

It is clear that the growth of Singapore’s contemporary art scene cannot be single-handedly attributed to the establishment of The Artists Village in 1988. There is sufficient evidence that contemporary art was already beginning to take root in the early 1980s and made especially significant inroads between 1986 and 1988 when young artists, disillusioned with outmoded ways of making, displaying and viewing art, began experimenting with new techniques and forms that would in time be regarded as contemporary art.

A confluence of various factors – institutional support and reception by the media, innovative individuals and groups, and cutting-edge exhibitions – were responsible for the development of contemporary art in Singapore during this period. This would provide the momentum needed to carry contemporary art forward to the 1990s and beyond.

The author hopes this essay will lead to further discourse on the individuals, exhibitions and institutions that have contributed to the growth of the contemporary art scene in Singapore. As part of his research, he interviewed three individuals who have been instrumental in this area: artist and photography historian Gilles Massot; artist and archivist Koh Nguang How; and ceramicist and sculptor Ahmad Abu Bakar. The author would also like to thank Salleh Japar and Goh Ee Choo for allowing access to their archival materials, and to Seng Yu Jin and S. Chandrasekaran for sharing their knowledge.

In 1972, Cheo Chai-Hiang’s proposal 5′x 5′ (Singapore River) – which provided instructions for a blank square measuring five feet by five feet to be drawn over a wall and adjoining floor – to the Modern Art Society for its annual exhibition was rejected due to its iconoclastic nature. This display is a recreation of the original work. Cheo Chai-Hiang, 5′ x 5′ (Inched Deep), 1972, remade for display in 2015, mixed media, 150 x 150 cm. Collection of National Gallery Singapore. Courtesy of National Heritage Board. Three Artworks Ahead of Their Time In 1972, Cheo Chai-Hiang submitted a proposal, titled 5′ x 5′ (Singapore River), to the annual exhibition of the Modern Art Society. The proposal contained a set of instructions directing the exhibitors to draw a square measuring five feet by five feet straddling the wall and the floor. Cheo’s work was an example of conceptual art, in which the idea or the concept was more important than the actual execution or aesthetics. At one level, the work was a parody of the cliched representations of the Singapore River popular among painters then. On another level, it was a critical work meant to provoke discourse about the general state of art in Singapore, which had hitherto been dominated by international abstraction. Given its iconoclastic nature, 5′ x 5′ (Singapore River) was not selected for the 1972 Modern Art Society exhibition. Even before Tang Da Wu returned from undergraduate studies in the UK in 1979, he had begun engaging in experimental art forms such as performance and installation. In 1980, Tang presented an exhibition titled Earth Work at the National Museum Art Gallery. Earth Work featured lumps of earth, soil and clay as well as linens and wooden boards that had been exposed to the sun, rain and soil. One of these works, Gully Curtain (1979), was created on-site by hanging seven pieces of linen in a gully in Ang Mo Kio, which was then being developed into a public housing estate. Left in the gully for three months, the resulting soiled and water-stained linens became part of his exhibition at the gallery. Tan Teng-Kee staged The Picnic as an outdoor event at the field outside his flat in Normanton Estate on 14 September 1979. While there was nothing extraordinary about the exhibition of several of Tan’s paintings and sculpture, what was highly unusual was the inclusion of a series of actions that is today regarded as the first documented instance of performance art in Singapore. One of the works featured was a 100-metre-long painting, The Lonely Road, which Tan sliced into smaller paintings in response to what potential buyers wanted. The climax of the event was Fire Sculpture, which saw one of Tan’s constructions – wrapped in newspaper and supported by long wooden poles – incinerated with a torch. The Picnic, however, was an isolated occurrence in Tan’s practice, which was primarily sculpting.

Goh Ee Choo during one of his ritualistic performances for Trimurti in 1988. Courtesy of Goh Ee Choo, S.Chandrasekaran and Salleh Japar. Trimurti: A Return to Asian Aesthetics In March 1988, Goh Ee Choo, Salleh Japar and S. Chandrasekaran staged an exhibition at the Goethe-Institut titled Trimurti. The exhibition was, in many ways, a crystallisation of the ideas and concepts that they had been working on in Quintet that took place in May 1987. In Quintet, these three artists drew extensively from Asian philosophical systems relating to ideas of creation and the cosmos, but with Trimurti, these ideas became more fully fledged and explicit as concepts underpinning the exhibition. Trimurti is a Sanskrit word that describes the Hindu triumvirate of Shiva (the Destroyer), Vishnu (the Preserver) and Brahma (the Creator). These roles were symbolically appropriated and executed by Chandrasekaran, Goh and Salleh respectively in the exhibition. Trimurti was an assertion of the ethnic and cultural identities of the three artists (Indian, Chinese and Malay), combined into a syncretic unity – an acknowledgement of Singapore’s multiethnic and multicultural society. Unlike Quintet, Trimurti had all three artists engaged in ritual-like performances, in addition to installations as well as painted and sculptural works that are charged with symbolism – all geared towards transforming the gallery into what the artists called an “energy space”. After this event, Goh, Salleh and Chandrasekaran never exhibited collectively again, but went on to forge successful individual careers as artists. The only exception was in 1998, when the artists reprised Trimurti in the exhibition Trimurti and Ten Years After at the Singapore Art Museum.

Notes

Keppel and Sembawang shipyards are major players in Singapore’s maritime and shipping industry. Wee Beng Geok traces the colonial origins of these two companies.

Singapore has always been highly prized for its location. Fortuitously positioned at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, at a key crossroad along the East-West trade route, its importance as a port settlement can be traced to the 14th century when the island was known as Temasek.

In 1819, the British arrived on the scene, and were quick to grasp Singapore’s potential as an entrepôt and a base to spread its version of merchant capitalism in Southeast Asia. Land was leased from the indigenous rulers to set up a British trading post on the island, and in a treaty signed in 1824, Singapore was ceded in full to Britain. For the next 140 years, the British built institutions that would lay the foundations for the rise of a modern global city, including a market infrastructure that took advantage of Singapore’s strategic position as a prime node in the global shipping routes.

Two dockyard entities from the colonial period became precursors of well-known post-independence companies: Keppel Shipyard and Sembawang Shipyard. Although the origins and legacies of these two shipyards could not be more different, their trajectories were shaped by the imperatives of the British Empire as well as an industrialising Britain that was at the forefront of major technological and business innovations. One shipyard had purely commercial roots, while the other was a military naval base established to protect British imperial interests in Asia.

Rows of lighter boats at Boat Quay, 1890. These lighters transported coal from the coal-carrying ships anchored at the mouth of the Singapore River to be stored in godowns along the river banks. When the steamships arrived for refuelling, lighters would transport the coal out to the steamships. Courtesy of National Museum of Singapore, National Heritage Board.

Early Dockyard Entrepreneurs

The advent of steamships for sea transportation in the 19th century drew entrepreneurs to invest in the ship repair business in Singapore. Although steamships were faster and more reliable compared with wind-powered vessels, repairs to the steamship hull – unlike sailing vessels – could not be done by beaching the vessel¹ but had to be carried out in a drydock.²

The use of steamships also required new logistical arrangements. Coal, the energy source of steamships, had to be first transferred from coal-carrying ships anchored at the mouth of the Singapore River onto small lighters, which in turn transported the coal to warehouses situated along the river bank for storage. Lighters then transported the coal out to the arriving steamships. It was a laborious process, made all the worse during stormy weather and choppy seas when the lighters would sometimes capsize, resulting in tons of lost coal. Furthermore, stored damp coal combusted easily and became a constant fire hazard.

In 1845, the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O) in London began monthly sailings to the Far East, including a stop in Singapore. In 1852, P&O became the first shipping company to move its coaling stations from the Singapore River to New Harbour (now Keppel Harbour³) where it built its own wharf. The new location had a sheltered anchorage, a pier for bunkering, as well as space for coal storage and godowns (warehouses). Other shipping firms followed suit and New Harbour, with its deep waters, soon became the preferred berthing location for ships calling at Singapore.

With increased steamship traffic, several Singapore-based British and European companies as well as residents became keen to invest in the construction of drydocks for ship repair. Although considerable start-up capital was needed, the returns were projected to be good and several companies were willing to take the risk.

Competition, Monopoly and a Government Takeover

New Harbour was deemed a suitable location for drydocking facilities. In 1859, British mariner Captain William Cloughton built Singapore’s first drydock, aptly named Dock No. 1, at New Harbour. The Patent Slip and Dock Company was subsequently formed in 1861 to assume control of this ship repair facility.

In 1864, a group of investors decided to build another drydock at New Harbour. To raise funds for the project, they set up a joint-stock limited liability company – Tanjong Pagar Dock Company Limited (TPDC) – which became the first local joint-stock company to offer shares to the public in Singapore.

The TPDC initially hoped to raise $200,000 in Singapore, with 2,000 shares of $100 each available for purchase. However, as not all shares were taken up by local residents, the balance was sold to investors in London. With a reasonably attractive dividend policy, TPDC shares were considered a good investment by the 1870s. In subsequent fundraising exercises, new shares were offered for sale at a premium, with some bought by shareholders in London.

Victoria Dock, TPDC’s first drydock located on the western side of Tanjong Pagar, started operations in 1868. With the opening of this new dock, the Patent Slip and Dock Company faced intense competition. It mounted a price war, and TPDC was forced to cut its prices. Although TPDC’s drydock business faced losses as a result of this move, its wharf services still managed to turn in a profit and became the company’s main income source.

Albert Dock was built by the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company in Tanjong Pagar in 1879. It was located to the east of Victoria Dock, the company’s first drydock which began operations in 1868. Lim Kheng Chye Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, more steamships called at Singapore and, by the following year, dock operations had become profitable. In 1870, Patent built its second dock, Dock No. 2, at New Harbour. Nine years later, in 1879, TPDC built another drydock, Albert Dock, located to the east of Victoria Dock, to meet the growing demand. The TPDC began to acquire smaller rivals that owned docks and wharves at New Harbour, but who were less able to withstand the competitive business environment.

Finally, in 1899, TPDC merged with its main rival, the New Harbour Dock Company (in 1875, Patent Slip and Dock Company had incorporated itself into a public company bearing this name). With this acquisition, TPDC came to control the entire shipping, dockyard and wharf business at New Harbour, except for the P&O wharf. Singapore’s port and its future prosperity rested heavily on TPDC’s shoulders.

Singapore’s port was the seventh largest in the world in 1904 but faced strong overseas competition, especially from the port in Hong Kong. TPDC’s port facilities became increasingly inadequate to compete internationally and the company’s wharf system was under severe strain as no major improvements to its facilities had been carried out since 1885.

This situation was exacerbated by differences with regard to capital spending between the TPDC Board in Singapore and the London Consulting Committee in Britain representing the company’s group of European and British shareholders.⁴

In March 1904, TPDC submitted a $12-million modernisation plan to upgrade and expand its facilities, including a proposed financing scheme. This was rejected by the company’s Europe-based shareholders, who were concerned that the costs of financing the project would “endanger a dividend of 12 per cent”.⁵ TPDC sought financial support from the Straits Settlements government, but instead the government decided to expropriate the company’s assets and take over the management of its operations.

With the passing of the Tanjong Pagar Dock Ordinance in April 1905, TPDC became a government organisation known as the Tanjong Pagar Dock Board. TPDC shareholders received from the government $761 for each $100 share – substantially higher than the $600 peak reached by the share in the stock market. The board was reconstituted in 1913 as a statutory board known as Singapore Harbour Board (SHB). In the same year, the SHB launched King’s Dock, the largest dock east of the Suez. In 1917, another drydock, Empire Dock, was completed. Port facilities at Keppel Harbour were also enhanced.

This wood-engraved print shows the opening of Victoria Dock at New Harbour by then Governor Harry St. George Ord on 17 October 1868. Courtesy of National Museum of Singapore, National Heritage Board.

The SHB retained TPDC’s monopolistic ship repair business, and for the next five decades, it controlled the entire chain of repair business at Keppel Harbour. With its sizeable facilities, the SHB soon edged out the smaller shipyards and engineering workshops in Tanjong Rhu and Kallang. This commanding position lulled the SHB to such complacency that by the end of the 1950s, capital investment had slowed down considerably and SHB’s costs and productivity began lagging behind overseas dockyards like Hong Kong’s.

A New Naval Base in Asia

After World War I, as the locus of naval power moved to the Pacific, the Board of Admiralty in London, as part of its appraisal of British naval policy, proposed building a new naval base facility in Asia. In the light of the growing threat posed by the Japanese military and rising international tensions, Britain grew anxious to protect its empire in Asia, and Singapore was considered the most ideal location for its new naval base.

(Top) When completed in 1938, King George VI Dock at the Singapore Naval Base in Sembawang was touted as one of the largest naval docks ever built and capable of accommodating the biggest ship in the world. The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, 14 February 1938, p. 1.
(Above) King George VI Dock under construction at the Singapore Naval Base, 1933. The National Archives of the UK (ADM195/106).

Although British naval ships had previously docked at SHB’s drydocks, the new British battleships were too large to berth at these facilities as their anti-torpedo bulges extended out on either side of the ship’s hull. Thus, Sungei Sembawang, facing the Johor Strait, was chosen as the new site to construct the naval dockyard. Its strategic location as well as the deep waters of the Johor Strait would provide good anchorage for the naval fleet, bolstered by facilities such as onshore wharves and workshops.

The Singapore Naval Base Scheme was announced to the British Parliament in 1923. The plan was immediately met with hostile reactions from the British public, who were weary of war and expected the government to improve their lives through more social spending. Although the original plan was for the naval dockyard in Singapore to be completed in 1930, the construction timeline was extended by another three years to avoid the immediate need for heavy expenditure. The completion date of the naval dockyard was thus pushed back to 1933.

To appease its citizens back home, Britain sought monetary contributions from its Asian colonies to ease the funding burden. In May 1923, Singapore made a gift of 2,845 acres of land for the naval base valued at about £150,000, or 1.25 million Straits dollars. This was followed by a donation of £250,000 from the Hong Kong government. Domestic issues in Britain in 1924, however, impeded progress when the incoming Labour government blocked the funds that had been earmarked for the construction of the dock. When the Conservative government returned to power in late 1924, the Singapore Naval Base Scheme was revived, but the construction of the drydock was delayed yet again.

In mid-1926, the largest single contribution of £2 million was received from the Federated Malay States. Then in April 1927, New Zealand came forward with a commitment of £1 million to be disbursed over eight years.

In 1928, the tender for the drydock and wharf construction in Sembawang was awarded to a South African company, Sir John Jackson’s Ltd, for £3.7 million, and construction began with some 5,000 workmen and 100 British staff. Millions of feet of soil were dug, and 1.6 million tons of granite stone were brought in from Johor. In the same year, a newly built floating dock, with lifting capacity of 50,000 tons, was commissioned at Sembawang, and a floating crane with a lifting capacity of 100 tons also arrived.

However, the building momentum almost ground to a halt when a new Labour government came into power in Britain in 1929. As the government was unable to abort the project, it decided to slow down the pace of construction.

In 1931, the Japanese army invaded Manchuria. Faced with the looming prospect of a war with Japan, the completion of Sembawang Naval Base became a priority for Britain. King George VI Dock was finally completed in early 1938 and was touted as one of the largest naval docks ever built, capable of accommodating the biggest ship in the world.

The War Comes to Singapore

In December 1941, as Japanese imperial forces advanced into Singapore from Malaya, Sembawang Naval Base came under heavy Japanese shell and mortar attack. Just before the British surrendered to the Japanese on 15 February 1942, the retreating British naval personnel blew up the drydock’s caisson and pumps as well as its electrical generating plant. The intention was to prevent the Japanese from using the naval base. The Japanese navy, however, managed to repair the damaged facilities at Sembawang Naval Base and used it to service its naval fleet during the Japanese Occupation.

As the tide of war turned in late 1944, the naval base became the target of air raids by Allied Forces, and the dockyard facilities suffered severe damage. When the British returned to Singapore following the Japanese surrender in September 1945, they began repairing and upgrading the naval base facilities. By the end of 1951, Sembawang Naval Base was back on its feet again.

The postwar years leading up to the 1960s were the most productive for the naval base. With British involvement in the Korean War in 1949 and other regional conflicts, the dockyard serviced a wide range of naval vessels in the region, including aircraft carriers, commando helicopter carriers, cruisers, destroyers, frigates, submarines and minesweepers.

Developing a Ship Repair Industry

Singapore inched closer to independence from British rule when the first Legislative Assembly general election was held in 1959. The victorious People’s Action Party which formed the government, was faced with bleak economic prospects and severe unemployment, and its key priority was the creation of jobs for a young and growing population.

In October 1960, a United Nations Industrial Survey Mission led by Dutch economist Albert Winsemius visited Singapore to conduct a feasibility study and provide advice on how to steer its fledgling economy. In the final report submitted in June 1961, the team identified ship repair and shipbuilding as a potential industry as it would take advantage of Singapore’s natural deep harbour and strategic location while providing employment to thousands. In line with this vision, one of the government’s first moves was to restructure and reorganise the ship repair operations of the SHB and Sembawang Naval Base.

A two-step process to restructure the SHB began in 1964. First, the Port of Singapore Authority (PSA) was set up as a statutory board to take over the functions, assets and liabilities of the SHB. The new entity would also manage port operations and serve as the government port regulator.

Second, SHB’s dockyards, which had more than a century of commercial ship repair experience, were restructured as a separate business entity. In September 1968, Keppel Shipyard Pte Ltd, with shareholdings held by the Singapore government, was incorporated to take over SHB’s ship repair operations. The SHB ceased to exist.

After Singapore gained independence in 1965, the British gradually reduced its military presence in the region. The formation of Sembawang Shipyard Pte Ltd in 1968 was precipitated by Britain’s surprise announcement in January that year of an early withdrawal of its military forces in Singapore, including the closure of Sembawang Naval Base, by 1971.

In June 1968, the Singapore government began the process of converting the naval base into a government-linked commercial entity known as Sembawang Shipyard Pte Ltd. The shipyard began operations in December the same year after the British government sold the naval base to Singapore for a token sum of $1. The assets of the naval base were valued at £2 million and included a 100,000-dwt drydock, five floating docks, a mile-long deepwater berthside, full cranage and 22 hectares of workshop facilities.

The first female apprentices at Sembawang Shipyard, 1970s. The shipyard set up its own apprenticeship training centre in 1972 to train a new generation of Singaporean engineers and managers, who would eventually take over the reins from British managing agent, Swan Hunter. Image reproduced from Chew, M. (1998). Of Hearts and Minds: The Story of Sembawang Shipyard (p. 116). Singapore: Sembawang Shipyard Pte Ltd. (Call no.: RSING 623.83 CHE).

A New Vision for Keppel and Sembawang

In 1968, Hon Sui Sen, then Chairman of the Economic Development Board, was appointed the first chairman of both Keppel and Sembawang shipyards. His first priority was to transform the two shipyards into for-profit business enterprises. The same year, British shipbuilding group, Swan Hunter of Tyneside, England, was appointed as managing agent to help the shipyards build up their capabilities and resources. These included the development of international commercial and marketing networks that were critical for success in the ship repair business.

By then, decades of monopolistic practices had made Singapore’s ship repair business uncompetitive. The same job that took 20 days to complete in Singapore required a mere six days in Hong Kong. Furthermore, charges were generally 15 percent lower in Hong Kong compared to Singapore.

One stumbling block was caused by Sembawang’s elaborate naval dockyard design. In comparison, commercial dockyards had compact designs, making them more cost-efficient. New skillsets and business processes in areas such as international networks, marketing, commercial estimating and billings had to be developed, as these capabilities had not been the concerns of a naval dockyard. Swan Hunter’s brief included training local managers and technical staff as well as transferring essential skills and knowledge to a new generation of Singaporean shipyard engineers and managers, who would eventually take over the reins.

The two shipyards set up their own apprenticeship training centres – Keppel in 1969 and Sembawang in 1972. Many young Singaporeans who completed these apprenticeship programmes formed the backbone of Singapore’s maritime industry in the 1980s and 90s.

Keppel and Sembawang shipyards became major beneficiaries of scholarship programmes aimed at nurturing local talent to fill key positions in Singapore’s maritime and shipping industry. Recipients of various government and the Colombo Plan scholarship schemes were among the first generation of local engineers and managers at the two shipyards.

A ship undergoing repair in Keppel Shipyard, c. early 1990s. Image reproduced from Lim, R. (1993).Tough Men, Bold Visions: The Story of Keppel (p. 65). Singapore: Keppel Corporation Limited. (Call no.: RSING 338.76238309 LIM).

Before Swan Hunter’s managing contract with Keppel ended in 1972, a group of Keppel’s key local officers drafted a localisation plan and submitted the blueprint to the chairman of the board. The blueprint was accepted and a local management team took over the shipyard on 1 June 1972, helmed by its new chairman, a prominent Eurasian named George Bogaars. Chua Chor Teck, a former naval dockyard apprentice and naval architecture graduate, was appointed general manager. Briton C.N. Watson of Swan Hunter was retained as interim managing director until 1974, when Chua took over.

Keppel’s new management built a 150,000-dwt drydock on reclaimed land in Tuas, and the new yard commenced business in June 1977 when the dock was completed. In 1979, work on another drydock for ultra-large crude carriers of up to 330,000 dwt began at the Tuas shipyard.

In 1980, Keppel Shipyard Limited (KSL) shares were listed and traded on the Stock Exchange of Singapore, with the launch of an initial public offering of 30 million shares at $3.30 each. Besides the Singapore government, KSL shareholders included institutional investors and private individuals.

Swan Hunter’s contract with Sembawang Shipyard was for 10 years beginning from 1968: the first three years to commercialise the naval dockyard and the subsequent seven years to transform it to a full-fledged ship repair enterprise.

In 1970, senior civil servant Pang Tee Pow was appointed the board chairman of Sembawang Shipyard and Lim Cheng Pah, also from the public service, became its first local senior manager. As the director of personnel and training, Lim led the localisation initiative to nurture and train local staff. In 1972, the year that Sembawang first began commercial operations, the company achieved a revenue of $71.2 million, with a profit of $15 million. This positive start gave Sembawang the confidence to seek public funds through an initial public offering on the Singapore Stock Exchange in June 1973. The company raised $51 million through the issue of 25 million shares at $2.04 each. In 1975, a new and larger drydock catering to the repair market for very large crude carriers was completed.

By the time Swan Hunter personnel left in 1978, almost all the managers in Sembawang were Singaporeans, except for the managing director C.N. Watson, who had previously been with Keppel. Lim succeeded Watson as managing director in 1983, thus completing the entire localisation process.

Over the next three decades, Keppel and Sembawang would emerge as major players in Singapore’s maritime and shipping industry as well as leaders in the global offshore rig construction business.

Today, Keppel Shipyard is a division of Keppel Offshore & Marine, one of the core businesses of conglomerate Keppel Corporation. Keppel Shipyard has three yards in Singapore – Tuas, Benoi and Gul – which together operate five drydocks.

Sembawang Shipyard was renamed Sembcorp Marine Admiralty Yard in 2015. Today, it has five docks, the largest being the 400,000-dwt Premier Dock, as well as KG VI Dock, which is one of the deepest in Southeast Asia. Admiralty Yard is one of the four major yards in Singapore operated by Sembcorp Marine Limited.

A large crude carrier at Sembawang Shipyard’s new Premier Dock, a $50-million, 400,000-dwt drydock, at its official opening by then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew in May 1975. Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

References

Chew, M. (1998). Of hearts and minds: The story of Sembawang Shipyard. Singapore: Sembawang Shipyard Limited. (Call no.: RSING 623.83 CHE)

Keppel Shipyard Limited [Advertisement]. (1980, October 27). The Straits Times, p. 15. Retrieved from NewspaperSG

Lim, R. (1993). Tough men, bold visions: The story of Keppel. Singapore: Keppel Corporation Limited. (Call no.: RSING q338.762383095957 LIM)

McIntyre, W.D. (1979). The rise and fall of the Singapore Naval Base 1919–1942. London: MacMillan. (Call no.: RSING 359.7 MAC)

National Library Board. (2014). Formation of the Port of Singapore Authority 1st April 1964. Retrieved from HistorySG.

Neidpath, J. (1981). The Singapore Naval Base and the defence of the Britain’s eastern empire, 1919–1941. Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press. (Call no.: RSING 359.7 NEI)

Turnbull, C.M. (1989). A history of Singapore: 1819–1988 [2nd ed.]. Singapore: Oxford University Press. (Call no.: RSING 959.57 TUR-[HIS])

Notes

The Wilkes Expedition – as it is popularly known – vastly expanded the borders of scientific learning. Vidya Schalk explains how this historic American naval mission between 1838 and 1842 is linked to Singapore. 

In early 1842, almost 500 naval officers, sailors and scientists from the United States visited Singapore on their way home after an epic four-year voyage of discovery. They were members of the United States Exploring Expedition, part of the last All Sail Naval Squadron to circumnavigate the globe and the first-ever scientific mission mounted by the fairly young nation (the country had achieved independence in 1776).

A sectional view of the earth showing the openings at the North and South poles. In 1818, American John C. Symmes put forward the “Holes in the Poles” theory. Illustration reproduced from Seaborn, A. (1820). Symzonia: A Voyage of Discovery. New York: J. Seymour. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Few people have heard of the Wilkes Expedition, its more commonly used name, and fewer still about the United States Exploring Expedition – or simply the U.S. Ex. Ex. Although the expedition became mired in controversy, it nonetheless left behind an important legacy in its meticulous documentation of the earth’s biodiversity. Among its contributions are the first-ever systematic mapping of the coastline of the US Pacific Northwest, the charting of some 1,500 miles (2,414 km) of the frozen Antarctic coast, and the first concrete proof that Antarctica is a continent.

The Mission

The Wilkes Expedition was primarily a mission of exploration. It aimed to extend the borders of learning, and came at a time when Britain, France and other European nations were busy expanding their territories through colonisation. The mission parameters were two-fold – navigational and scientific – as directed by the US Congress:

“To explore and survey the Southern Ocean, having in view the important interest of our commerce embarked in the whale fisheries, as well as to determine the existence of all doubtful islands and shoals; and to discover and accurately fix the position of those which lie in or near the track pursued by our merchant vessels in that quarter… Although the primary object of the expedition is the promotion of… commerce and navigation, yet all occasions will be taken, not incompatible with the great purpose of the undertaking, to extend the bounds of science, and to promote the acquisition of knowledge…”¹

Genesis of the Expedition

In 1818, an American eccentric named John C. Symmes put forward the “Holes in the Poles” theory. He declared the earth as hollow, with a habitable interior only accessible through openings at the North and South poles that were large enough to accommodate sailing ships. This was picked up by an enterprising newspaper editor from Ohio, Jeremiah Reynolds, who called for further research to establish the veracity of the so-called “polar holes”, eventually advocating a national maritime expedition to explore the mysteries of the South Pole. By 1828, Reynolds had managed to pique the interest of US Naval Secretary Samuel Southard and President John Quincy Adams.

Support also came from whalers and sealers who needed accurate charts of islands and navigational hazards in the Pacific Ocean. Whaling had become a booming business – whale oil was as significant then as crude oil is today – and the US was then the global industry leader. With whales hunted to near extinction in the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean was the next fertile ground and the ability to navigate safely in these waters would be crucial to its success.

The process of getting the expedition off the ground, however, dragged on for almost a decade as the government’s priorities shifted due to political changes and financial pressures. Also, the public was suspicious of any scientific research, considering it the idle pastime of bored aristocrats. The expedition soon earned the unfortunate moniker the “Deplo­rable Expedition”.

In the midst of this, the financial crisis known as the Panic of 1837 struck the nation and thrust the American economy into chaos. Nonetheless, in 1838, against all odds, as directed by Secretary of War Joel Poinsett (who was also an amateur botanist), the U.S. Ex. Ex. was put back on the agenda and Lt. Charles Wilkes was asked to take full command of the mission.

A full-blown controversy erupted when this was announced. Wilkes (see text box below) was one of 40 lieutenants on the navy list, along with 38 others who had chalked up more sea service than him. Such a command conferred upon a junior officer was unprecedented in the naval service and caused an uproar. Letters of protest poured in and heated debates ensued in Congress, but in the end the appointment went through.

Portrait of Charles Wilkes painted by Thomas Sully and engraved by R.W. Dodson. The image appears in vol. I of Charles Wilkes’ Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition During the Years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842, published by Lea and Blanchard in 1845. Retrieved from Internet Archive. A Military Man and a Scientist Lt. Charles Wilkes was 40 years old when he was given command of the U.S. Ex. Ex. in 1838. Wilkes was a military man and a scientist – a very exacting combination. He was also a proud man who firmly believed that no important accomplishment could be achieved without discipline. He demanded much of himself and those around him. In addition to being self-opinionated and stubborn, Wilkes possessed a fiery temper and, as a result, became embroiled in frequent altercations with his superiors throughout his naval career. Incidentally, Wilkes is believed to be the inspiration for the character Captain Ahab in Herman Melville’s 1851 classic, Moby Dick.2 But the truth was, in spite of his relatively junior rank, no officer in the navy was more suitable than Wilkes to lead the scientific mission. He had trained under two of the leading scientists in their fields – James Renwick and Ferdinand Hassler – under whose tutelage he became proficient in astronomy, magnetism, geodesy and nautical surveying. True to his character, Wilkes accepted the appointment to lead the squadron as no more than his due and was granted a great deal of autonomy by Secretary of War Joel Poinsett to make plans and lead the expedition. The Ex. Ex. had many daunting objectives to fulfill – and Lt. Charles Wilkes was deemed the best person for the job.

The A-Team

Wilkes personally selected the vessels, crew and scientists for the expedition. He also decided that all duties pertaining to astronomy, surveying, hydrography, geography, geodesy, magnetism, meteorology and physics would be the preserve of the naval officers. Any work relating to zoology, geology and mineralogy, botany and conchology was to be filled by the naval medical corps, failing which civilians could be appointed.

A painting of the USS Vincennes in Disappointment Bay, Antarctica, c. 1840, based on a sketch by Lt. Charles Wilkes. The ship was a 127-foot (39 m) Boston-class sloop-of-war carrying a crew of 190. This was the flagship under the command of Lt. Wilkes. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

All personnel and crew members of the expedition came under the control and direction of Wilkes. Disappointed that there was no “respectable naturalist”³ in the medical corps, he fell back on the best civilian talents the country could offer. The “Scientifics”,⁴ as they were called, were a group of brilliant scientists and naturalists, almost all of whom went on to redefine the scientific fields of botany, zoology and geology as well as then emerging fields like volcanology and anthropology. Two artists were also part of the crew: they sketched and used the camera lucida – an optical device used to aid drawing – to capture portraits of people and to maintain a visual record of the voyage.

Also assembled onboard were taxidermists, equipment makers, carpenters, sailmakers and surgeons, in addition to naval officers (many of whom later became high-ranking servicemen), marines and other sailors. It was not glory or wealth but the thirst for knowledge that inspired many of these men to leave their homes and embark on a journey into the unknown.

Sailing to the Ends of the Earth

The U.S. Ex. Ex. set sail at 3 pm on 18 August 1838 from New York. From the east coast of the United States, the fleet sailed to Madeira in Portugal, stopping at Porto Praya before heading to Rio de Janeiro in South America and then southwards to Cape Horn at the Tierra de Fuego, where they made their first attempt to reach the Antarctic.

The gales and terrible weather, however, forced the ships to turn back but not without the tragic loss of the USS Sea Gull: its 15 men on board were never seen again. The rest of the fleet sailed to Peru and headed westwards to survey and explore the Tuamotu and Society islands in the South Pacific, before moving on to Tahiti and Samoa, and finally arriving in Sydney, Australia, in November 1839.

The fleet sailed into Sydney harbour in the middle of the night. Delighted to be at a port where English was spoken, the Americans took every opportunity to enjoy the sights. They also noted that rum was used as a medium of exchange; with a population of 24,000 in the city, it seemed there was a tavern for every 100 inhabitants.

A map showing the major geographical features of the Antarctic continent. Wilkes Land, as indicated along the southwestern coast of East Antarctica, occupies an area of almost 2.6 million sq km. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

From Sydney, the U.S. Ex. Ex. launched a second encounter to the Antarctic on 26 December 1839. Well stocked with 10 months of provisions in case they became trapped in ice, the expedition proceeded south. On 19 January 1840, land was identified at roughly 160 degrees east and 67 degrees south. Wilkes surveyed and mapped nearly 1,500 miles (2,414 km) of the Antarctic coastline – considered a remarkable achievement to this day – providing substantial proof that Antarctica is a continent. In honour of Lt. Charles Wilkes, a million square miles (almost 2,600,000 sq km) of land on East Antarctica is named Wilkes Land.

From the icy waters of the Antarctic, the U.S. Ex. Ex. sailed towards New Zealand and then to the Fiji Islands, where four months were spent on detailed surveying. Altogether, 50 reefs and 154 islands were carefully mapped, but a bloody encounter between the crew members of the expedition and the Fijians would mar this accomplishment. The Fijians had a reputation as cannibals. At first the crew thought these were mere myths but soon realised that the reports were true. As the fleet was preparing to leave Fiji in July 1840, two of its officers, one of them Wilkes’ nephew, were killed by the islanders while bartering for food on Malolo Island. In the subsequent disproportionate reprisal by the Americans, some 60 islanders lost their lives.

Leaving Fiji behind, the expedition headed to Hawaii and from there to survey and chart the American Pacific Northwest in April 1841. From California, the fleet briefly returned to Honolulu and proceeded to Manila in the Philippines. By then, time was running out for the expedition. Wilkes had promised the crew that they would return to the US by the end of May 1842, and the men were eager to get home.

The U.S. Ex. Ex. left Manila in January 1842, making their way home via the Sulu Sea. When Sultan Jamal ul-Kiram I of Sulu sent word that he was interested in establishing closer trading ties with the US, Wilkes signed a peace and trade treaty with the king, which gave protection to US vessels and a shorter passage to Manila and on to Canton (now Guangzhou) in China.

Heading south, on their return journey, the fleet made one last stop in Singapore before returning to the US. The expedition’s documentation of Singapore constitutes one of the first primary accounts of Singapore by Americans.

Singapore Stopover

On 19 February 1842, the USS Vincennes with Wilkes on board arrived in Singapore,⁵ then part of the Straits Settlements together with Malacca and Penang. Wilkes was warmly received by the US consul Joseph Balestier, his wife Maria Revere – the daughter of the famous American patriot Paul Revere – and son Joseph. The two men had become acquainted some years earlier in Washington prior to Balestier’s arrival in Singapore. In fact, Wilkes had provided Balestier with information on the region, including a copy of the best map he had at the time. Balestier reciprocated Wilkes’ kindness by hosting him in Singapore. Years later, when Wilkes wrote his autobiography, he would make special mention of a huge cabinet presented to him by Mrs Balestier, fashioned out of “woods of this country [Singapore]”.⁶

Wilkes and his crew were so fascinated with Singapore that he dedicated an entire chapter to the island in his “Narrative” of the expedition.⁷ Several astute observations were made by Wilkes and the crew during their brief stay here. It is remarkable that several of these observations hold true almost 200 years later.

A Colourful Melting Pot

The crew was amazed by the confluence of races, languages and cultures in Singapore and the peaceful coexistence among the people, the “rarity of quarrels between different races and religions owning to the consideration of the place being neutral ground”. They were also “struck with the order and good behaviour existing among such an incongruous mass of human being[s]… speaking a vast variety of tongues, and some of who would infallibly have been at war with each other elsewhere”.⁸ Wilkes called Singapore the “Babel of the East”.⁹

A Thriving Entrepôt

Wilkes estimated there were at least 1,500–2,000 vessels in the port at any one time, with numerous prahu (wooden sailing boats) from neighbouring Riau and Lingga, Celebes, Flores, Timor, Ambon, Sumba and Lubok, and also from resource-rich Borneo. Popular goods imported from Riau and Lingga included pepper, rice, camphor, sago, coffee, nutmeg, oil, tobacco, biche-de-mer (sea cucumber), birds’ nests, tortoise shells, pearls, rattan, ivory, animal hides and sarongs, among other items.¹⁰ Boats from Papua and Aru brought birds of paradise flowers, which were found in abundance in the markets of Singapore.

The expedition noted that “every avenue, arcade, or veranda approaching it [the bazaar] is filled with money-changers, and small-ware dealers, eager for selling European goods, Chinese toys, and many other attractive curiosities.”¹¹

Some of the items obtained by the Wilkes Expedition from Southeast Asia include the kris (dagger) and a model of a prahu (wooden sailing boat). These are currently kept at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, Department of Anthropology (E3911-0 & E3893-0).

Singapore was described as a thriving entrepôt, with arriving goods redistributed to other places, with hardly anything produced here. Vessels that called at the port were not charged duties on imports or exports, and the only questions asked were the contents of the cargo, the value of the goods and the size of the vessel. Such information was then published weekly in the newspaper, “so anyone may inform themselves of the charges he is liable to incur and of the advantages it has over the other ports in the Eastern seas.”¹²

The era of steam-powered vessels was just starting to take off and Wilkes mentions that “during… [his] stay in Singapore, the subject of steam navigation was much talked of, and many projects appeared to be forming by which the settlement might reap the advantages of that communication, when established between India and China”.¹³

A Place of Transience

In 1842, the population in Singapore was recorded as 60,000, comprising 45,000 Chinese, 8,000 Malays and 7,000 Indians, with only one-tenth of the whole as female. The people were diverse, with Malays, Chinese, Hindus and Muslims, Jews, Armenians and Europeans, and Parsees, Bugis and Arabs. Wilkes wrote about the transient nature of the population, remarking that “no European looks upon the East as a home, and all those of every nation I met with invariably considered his sojourn temporary”.¹⁴ The Chinese, for instance, were likely to return home to China as soon they acquired a skill, even at the risk of being punished for having left their homeland illegally.

Lush Flora and Fauna

Wilkes and his men found the jungle undergrowth in the interior so impenetrable that no Europeans or natives had ever climbed Bukit Timah Hill, the highest point of the island even though it was only 500 ft (152 m) high. Tigers were not indigenous to Singapore, but the big cats had begun to swim across the narrow Johor Strait from the Malay Peninsula in search of food. Even criminals and thieves avoided their usual escape routes in the jungles for fear of tigers.

Records of the crops grown here included ​nutmeg, coffee, black pepper, cocoa, gambier, gamboge (a kind of resin) and a variety of fruits. Timber was also an important cash crop, and highly prized for shipbuilding. The Americans noted an abundance of fruit in Singapore; they were told “that there are 120 kinds that can be served as a dessert”¹⁵ and they especially enjoyed pineapples. They collected many zoological, conchological and botanical specimens, including two species of the Nepenthe (pitcher plants) that were preserved and brought back to the US.

A Vibrant Cultural Scene

The arrival of the U.S. Ex. Ex. in Singapore coincided with the Chinese New Year celebrations. The eve fell on 21 February 1842, and the expedition members were awed by the processions of lanterns, noisy gongs and cymbals. Wilkes described the sight of “an immense illuminated sea-serpent” made of lanterns.¹⁶ The Americans were astonished at “the extent and earnestness with which gaming was carried [out] by the Chinese at every shop, bazaar and corner of almost every street with cards or dice… their whole soul seemed to be staked with their money”.¹⁷

They also watched a Chinese opera and an Indian theatrical show that was performed by plantation workers on Balestier’s estate. In addition to Chinese New Year, the Americans also encountered Muharram processions.¹⁸ Wilkes observed men and boys playing football which he called “hobscob”, although it was most likely sepak takraw, a sport played with a rattan ball and native to the Malay Archipelago. The expedition also witnessed wedding and funeral processions, and even visited Chinese and Hindu cemeteries.

The Thian Hock Keng temple in Singapore sketched by Alfred T. Agate and engraved by J.A. Rolph in 1842. The image appears in vol. v of Charles Wilkes’ Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition During the Years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842, published by Lea and Blanchard in 1845. Retrieved from Internet Archive.

Opium smoking was one of the social ills that plagued Singaporean society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Courtesy of National Museum of Singapore, National Heritage Board.

The Scourge of Opium

According to Wilkes’ account, opium smoking in Singapore was one of the most repugnant sights witnessed by expedition members during their time on the island. Opium was easily available and shops were licensed to sell it, which was a huge source of revenue for the government but a great cause of human degeneracy. Many of the vessels that trafficked opium were either owned or operated by merchants. Wilkes noted “how some of those who knew its effects and condemned its use engaged in and defended its trade…”¹⁹

One of the crew wrote that opium vendors would set up their “little table in the public street, with his box and scales upon it, and tempting samples of the “dreamy drug… A single glance of these opium dealers will convince you that they are their own best customers… [with] their soiled and disorderly dress, the palsied hand and pale cheek, the sunken eye and vacant stare…”²⁰

The Library of Congress and the Singapore Link

Wilkes and his team obtained a number of rare Malay and Bugis manuscripts and books with the help of the Singapore-based American missionary Alfred North.²¹ Some of these beautifully written manuscripts were described “as forming a collection which is said to be the largest now in being, that of Sir Stamford Raffles having been lost”.²² (Raffles’ precious collection of drawings, manuscripts, books and wildlife specimens were destroyed when the ship Fame, taking him and his family back to England, went up in flames and sank on 2 February 1824).

Initially known as the “Smithsonian Deposit”, the manuscripts and books were transferred in 1866 to the Library of Congress (LOC) in Washington D.C. – the oldest federal cultural institution in the country and reputedly the largest library in the world – forming the first documented Asian books in its collection. The materials were rediscovered in 1966 when they came to the attention of scholars. They are now part of the Southeast Asia rare collections of the Asian Division of the LOC.²³

The Malay manuscripts at the LOC consist of 14 codices, six additional codices and a bound volume containing handwritten official correspondence and letters with official seals addressed to then British Resident in Singapore, William Farquhar. These were sent by heads of state in what are now Brunei, Cambodia, Malaysia and Indonesia, and are an important source of information about the early British colonial period in the region.

Among the documents are seven letters from the Raja Bendahara of Johor-Pahang (1819–22), three letters from the Pangeran Dipati of Palembang (1819–22), and a letter from Sultana Siti Fatimah binti Jamaluddin Abdul Rahman of Pamanah dated 1822. There are also numerous letters from Riau dating from 1818, as well as those from Siak, Lingga, Terengganu and other places.

In Singapore, Charles Wilkes and his team obtained a number of rare documents with the help of American missionary Alfred North. One of these is a letter (shown here) from Sultan Ahmad of Terengganu to William Farquhar dated 29 Rejab 1234 (24 May 1819). Farquhar Collection, Asian Division, courtesy of Library of Congress, Washington D.C.

Other treasures of note are two copies of the rare 1840 lithographed Mission Press edition of the Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals) written in Jawi,²⁴ a copy of the Hikayat Abdullah (1843) by Munshi Abdullah,²⁵ as well as codices such as Hikayat Amir Hamzah (1838),²⁶ Hikayat Johor (1838),²⁷ Hikayat Panca Tanderan (1835), Hikayat Patani (1839), and a handcopied (by Munshi Abdullah) version of Kitab Tib from 1837.

Home at Last – But No Hero’s Welcome

The U.S. Ex. Ex. set off from Singapore on 26 February 1842 without the smallest ship in the fleet, the USS Flying Fish. She had been sold because her frame had weakened considerably and was unlikely to survive the perilous journey home around the Cape of Good Hope in the hurricane season.

When the USS Vincennes finally pulled into New York harbour on 10 June 1842, there was no welcome ceremony or celebration after its nearly four-year sojourn. Much had changed politically in the country in the time Wilkes and his crew were away. Instead, Wilkes and several other officers were court-martialled for various charges – including abuse of power – that distracted from the achievements of the expedition. In the end, Wilkes was found not guilty on all counts, except for using excessive punishment on his men, for which he was reprimanded.

In the days that followed, Wilkes marshalled the support of influential politicians to safeguard the discoveries of the expedition. It is to Wilkes’ credit that the first-ever national institutions in the US became home to the important collections that the U.S. Ex. Ex. had brought home, where their proper safekeeping and study could be ensured.

Despite the dent to his reputation, Wilkes was placed in charge of the expedition’s collections on 1 August 1843.²⁸ Once again, he was deemed the best person for the job and set about preserving and preparing the collection for display in addition to preparing reports and directing the production of the expedition charts. The “Collection of the Exploring Expedition” was displayed at the Patent Office Building in Washington D.C. until 1858 when it was transferred to the Smithsonian Institution which, together with artefacts from American history, influenced the early development of the institution.

In 1844, the original and official (by the authority of Congress) publication of the expedition, titled Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition, During the Years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842, was assembled by Wilkes using the journals and records of his officers and others. The work was issued in five volumes with illustrations, maps and an atlas.²⁹

The Legacy of the U.S. Ex. Ex.

The expedition was not an easy one by any measure – the gruelling four-year sea voyage saw the loss of close to 40 men and two ships, the USS Sea Gull and USS Peacock. Despite the immense challenges of the mission and the difficulties that beset Wilkes on his return, the accomplishments of the U.S. Ex. Ex. would go down in the annals of American history for its success in not only promoting American commerce and industry, but also for expanding the borders of scientific knowledge. Altogether, some 40 tons of material were brought back by the expedition, along with an astounding amount of data.

The items collected from the Wilkes Expedition were initially kept by the National Institute for the Promotion of Science. In 1858, the collection was transferred to the Smithsonian Institution and housed in the museum (seen here) in the Smithsonian Institution Building, nicknamed The Castle. Image reproduced from Rhees, W.J. (1859). An account of the Smithsonian Institution, its founder, building, operations, etc.: prepared from the reports of Prof. Henry to the regents, and other authentic sources (p. 20). Washington: Thomas McGill. Retrieved from Internet Archive.

The team surveyed 280 Pacific islands, created 180 charts and logged 87,000 miles (140,013 km) without the use of modern navigation aids. The expedition also mapped 800 miles (1,287 km) of the Pacific Northwest coastline and 1,500 miles (2,414 km) of icebound and frozen Antarctica coast. A century later, during the Pacific campaign in World War II, the maps and charts created by the U.S. Ex. Ex. of the Pacific Islands (Tarawa, Gilbert and Marshall islands) would be used for the American island-hopping strategy during the war.³⁰

The Wilkes Expedition played an important role in the development of science not only in the US but the world over. By making its research publicly available, the expedition was also instrumental in the democratisation of science. The specimens and items amassed from the expedition formed the core collection of many departments at the Smithsonian Institution, and the work of the “Scientifics” would profoundly affect the subsequent development of American science and, by extension, all scientific discovery on the global stage.

Notes

Sara Siew examines the link between visual art and the written word through the fascinating story of Singaporean artist Georgette Chen.

Artists express themselves in a variety of ways. Although art is the most obvious of these, some artists also rely on the medium of words as a means of self-expression. From private musings and working notes to published essays and interviews, many artists have chronicled their experiences, thoughts and feelings through the written and spoken word.

Some writings, like manifestos and declarations, tell us about the ideas behind a certain style or about the context in which artists worked, while others strike a deeper, more emotive chord. The Dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh, for example, wrote 800 or so letters to his younger brother Theo, laying bare his private anguish and joys, and in the process painted a portrait of himself that is arguably as compelling as his artworks.

The celebrated Singaporean artist Georgette Chen (1906–93) also wrote extensively. Chen’s achievements as an artist are widely recognised: her lively oil paintings of the places and people of Singapore at a formative time in its history have cemented her status as one of the nation’s most important first-generation artists; she was also a respected art educator for 27 years and a Cultural Medallion recipient. Less well known, however, is her personal story, one that spans wars and revolutions, triumph and tragedy, and loves lost and found.

(Left) Georgette Chen (seated rightmost in the first row) at the Horace Mann School, New York, 1923. Chen studied in private schools around the world. She received her primary education at the Lycée Jules-Ferry in Paris, followed by Horace Mann School in New York, the exclusive McTyeire School for Girls in Shanghai, and the Art Students League in New York, before studying art in Paris. Image reproduced from Chia, J. (1997). Georgette Chen. Singapore: Singapore Art Museum. (Call no.: RSING q759.95957 CHI).
(Right) Georgette Chen and her first husband, Eugene Chen, whom she married in 1930. Date of photo unknown. Courtesy of National Gallery Singapore.

A Life Less Ordinary

“I often sit quietly in the silence of the night and wonder at the mysterious drama that is life…”¹

Georgette Chen, who was named Zhang Liying when she was born in October 1906, was the fourth daughter of Zhang Jingjiang, a wealthy Chinese merchant. Growing up, Chen experienced a cosmopolitan and privileged upbringing in Paris, New York and Shanghai.

Chen’s father had encouraged her interest in art since young, even engaging a private art tutor, Victor Podgorsky, for her. Father and daughter, in fact, attended these lessons together. Chen’s affinity for oil as a medium was apparent even then.

She recalled of her childhood: “My father expected me to study Chinese painting, but I had a different idea. I told him I wanted to study the oil medium, which would enable me to paint everything around me, people, food, flowers, salted ducks, sampans, peasants and potatoes.”² On another occasion, she remembered her father “impatiently enumerat[ing] the long list of Chinese vegetables which could be painted. He wanted to know why I insisted on painting the foreign potato.”³

Chen’s foundation in oil painting was further developed when she studied art in New York (1926–27) and then Paris (1927–33). Her time in the French capital was perhaps the most significant. The City of Light was not unfamiliar to Chen; having spent part of her childhood there, she spoke fluent French and was well acquainted with the sights and sounds of Paris. Chen counted the Tuileries Garden and Parc Monceau among her favourite childhood haunts and, decades later, would still delightfully recall riding on the merry-go-round at the park and feeding her favourite swans at the Tuileries.

Georgette Chen said that France was in a way her home. She knew Brittany, in the northwest of France, best besides Paris, having spent many years of her childhood in St Enogat, a village near the beachside suburb of Dinard. Georgette Chen. Coast of Brittany. c. 1930. Oil on canvas, 54 x 65 cm. Gift of Lee Foundation. Collection of National Gallery Singapore. Courtesy of National Heritage Board.

Revisiting Paris in her early 20s, now as a budding artist, further strengthened Chen’s relationship with the city. While enrolled at the less structured art schools of the Académie Biloul and Académie Colarossi, Chen also carved for herself an education that extended far beyond the classroom. She travelled around Paris frequently, seeking subjects to paint and relishing “the freedom of painting whatever you like”.⁴

Chen gradually found acclaim, beginning with the acceptance of one of her paintings by the Salon d’Automne in 1930, an annual exhibition that had by then transcended its beginnings as an alternative to the official conservative salon to become an influential, progressive platform in the Parisian art world. She also started to exhibit regularly in other salons and participated in two major exhibitions in 1937: Palace of Painting and Sculpture as part of the Paris World Fair, and Les Femmes Artistes d’Europe Exposent (Women Artists in Europe) at the Jeu de Paume museum.

Beginnings and Endings

“A good love story is always close to one’s heart.”⁵

Paris augured exciting beginnings for Chen not just in art, but also in her personal life: it was here where she found a love that was to become her most enduring. In 1927, at the age of 21, she met Eugene Chen in Paris. The two were introduced by their mutual friend Soong Ching Ling, more famously known as Madam Sun Yat Sen (Chen’s father was a key funder of Sun Yat Sen’s political activities in China).

Eugene, a political journalist and respected diplomat, had been Sun’s foreign policy adviser from 1922 to 1924 and, following that, the minister for foreign affairs of the nationalist government in Wuhan, China. With the collapse of the nationalist government in 1927, Eugene found himself exiled in Europe, his political career in limbo. His encounter with Georgette Chen was, however, to bloom.

Despite their vastly different professions, the two were aligned in their mutual love for the arts. Chen recalled: “Well, in the first place he always loved art, music, literature, French. He was a very good French scholar as well. And he was always ready to pose for me. That always helps an artist. He always told me not to sew because there were many tailors who could do the work. And if I wanted to sew, then it was better to take up my easel and paint instead.”⁶

Despite their 30-year age difference, and the initial disapproval of Chen’s father at their pairing, the couple found in each other “the closest of companions”,⁷ and were married in Paris in 1930. Chen would take on Eugene’s surname and retain it even when she remarried after his death.

Georgette Chen, c. 1950s. Courtesy of National Gallery Singapore.

The revelatory nature of the written word – even of life at its most mundane – is exemplified in Chen’s writings. The simple, sequestered joys that she shared with Eugene in Paris were rarely mentioned publicly; rather, they were expressed in diaries where she recorded the minutiae of everyday life with her husband – from giving him a haircut to talking a walk together to search for pineapples and avocados for a still-life painting. In one candid entry, she wrote: “Begin small canvas of E portrait. Poses so badly & talks all the time.”⁸

Chen recorded not just details of her daily life but also, significantly, information on her art and the subjects she was studying or portraying, with descriptions such as “roses still-life 10F” and “nature morte 6F”, terms that likely refer to standard French canvas sizes. On occasion, she would also briefly mention if her painting or study was successful, or if it had to be executed again. These details, which Chen recorded dispassionately and faithfully, offer precious insights into the often hidden and banal aspects of artistic practice, as well as the hard work and dedication behind an artist’s craft.

Over time, Chen’s writings also bear silent witness to the progression of her career: while early diary entries speak of these attempts and studies, later accounts (which appeared in letters to family and friends instead) describe the pieces she was commissioned to create, her attempts at juggling painting and teaching, and the tedium of preparing for exhibitions or judging on committees.

Chen’s blissful life in Paris as a happy newlywed and an emerging artist was soon compromised by the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. In 1941, while she and Eugene were living in Hong Kong, they were detained by the Japanese and placed under house arrest before being moved to Shanghai, where they were interned until 1944.

During their time in the Chinese city, Eugene was often called up for “interviews” with the Japanese; fearing for Chen’s safety, he always insisted on taking her everywhere he went.⁹ Chen would later recount an exchange between Eugene and a Japanese officer at one of these sessions, following yet another failure on the part of the Japanese to secure her husband’s cooperation:

“Another arrogant Japanese left our sitting room humble and human again. These were his parting words: ‘Other Chinese leaders have several faces and several tongues, but you, Mr Chen, have only one face and one tongue…’ And in his characteristic humour, Eugene replied: ‘That is precisely why I must not be made to lose that one and only face and tongue, having no spares’.”¹⁰

Eugene Chen passed away in 1944 at the age of 66 due to ill health. He was still under house arrest in Shanghai at the time.

Peace in a New Land

“We have all found peace of mind in a land which is not our own…”¹¹

When Chen wrote these words in a letter to Dorothy Lee, Eugene’s cousin, in 1961, she was 55 years old and living alone in Singapore. Much had transpired in the 17 years since her husband’s death, bringing her serendipitously to a Southeast Asian island that was worlds away from the cities she had known: Paris, Shanghai and New York.

Following the end of World War II, Chen stayed in China until 1947, when she left for New York. That same year, she married Dr Ho Yung Chi, Eugene Chen’s colleague and an old mutual friend of theirs. Together, Chen and Ho lived in New York then Paris, all the while bearing hopes of eventually returning to China. However, in the absence of better prospects in China, the couple eventually decided to take up an offer to teach at Han Chiang High School in Penang, Malaya, arriving in 1951 to what Chen described as “a beautiful tropical island which I call my Tahiti”.¹²

(Top) Georgette Chen painting Tunku Abdul Rahman in Kuala Lumpur, June 1956. Also pictured is the Tunku’s wife, Sharifah Rodziah. The Tunku first met Georgette and Eugene Chen in 1931 on a ship from Marseilles, Paris, to Singapore. He noted that Chen had a “beautiful and charming” presence, and attributed his political awakening to her husband. Courtesy of National Gallery Singapore.
(Bottom) Georgette Chen. Singapore Waterfront. c. 1963. Oil on canvas, 50 x 61 cm. Gift of Lee Foundation. Collection of National Gallery Singapore. Courtesy of National Heritage Board.

While Chen was immediately enthralled by this new land and enjoyed her life in Penang immensely, the experience was marred by growing strife in her marriage. Her relationship with Ho was increasingly plagued by bitter arguments over issues like money (she suspected Ho to have an ulterior motive) and her continued use of Eugene’s surname. Chen’s eventual decision to part with Ho was further complicated by intransigence on his part, and it was only after a lengthy, draining process that the couple were eventually divorced in 1953, after six years of marriage. In the same year, Chen moved to Singapore.

Chen arrived in Singapore with renewed hope for a peaceful life. In a letter to friends in early 1954, she said: “With my regained liberty, I now look forward to a simple, useful, and creative existence for the remaining short years that are left.”¹³ She rented a house in Sennett Estate and took up part-time teaching at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, a move that would allow her to pursue her art independently while supporting herself financially.

She frequently described this arrangement in her letters as allowing her to have “bread without butter”, and with characteristic good humour, often added, “I don’t like butter much anyway, too fattening!”¹⁴ Despite the toll of age and debilitating rheumatoid arthritis (a condition that began in her 40s), Chen adopted a simpler lifestyle – one far removed from the material comforts of yesteryear – with bravado, relishing even “the ordinary chores of life”.¹⁵

Paradise on Earth

“So you can see why I am fast becoming a tropical plant and desire nothing more than to spend the rest of life painting the vivid motifs of this multi-racial paradise of perpetual sunshine.”¹⁶

The simple, satisfied existence in Malaya that Chen often spoke of was due to her art, which flourished in this land she now called home. From the 1950s to the 70s, she firmly established herself artistically, creating many of the pain­tings she is known for today. This would, arguably, not have been possible if she had not settled down in Malaya: so closely intertwined was her art with its people and places.

Chen, in turn, would increasingly identify herself as being a part of this land, a new citizen who set out to learn the mother tongue Malay, print her own batik and adopt the Malay nom de plume of Chendana (which refers to fragrant sandalwood), becoming, in a sense, the metaphorical tropical plant she often wrote about in her letters. Her art and life were an indivisible whole that was inextricably linked to the land she had settled into.

Chen’s enchantment with Malaya was, in fact, already apparent when she first arrived in Penang in 1951 with Ho. In a letter written a few months after her arrival, she had gushed about her new home:

“I have always had a sort of weakness for this little island while passing through it on my many journeys westward and hoped that some day, I may have more than just a glance at it. It is called the ‘pearl of the East’ or ‘Paradise on Earth’ not without reason. If Malaya does not prove to be a fruitful period for me artistically, it shall not be for the lack of beauty which seems to be everywhere… The waterfront with the rows of Malayan straw huts bathing right in the water whose color is green and violet, make me shout with excitement each time I pass them by… As to the great variety of fruits, with their strange, new, and unexpected forms, they are not only wonderful to look at but delicious to eat! I have been introduced to the Durian fruit and consider that my life has been enriched by it!”¹⁷

Georgette Chen. Self-Portrait. c. 1946. Oil on canvas, 22.5 x 17.5 cm. Gift of Lee Foundation. Collection of National Gallery Singapore. Courtesy of National Heritage Board.

The inspirations and attractions that Malaya afforded clearly invigorated Chen. She made no secret of the “inexhaustible motifs”¹⁸ that she found in this “seasonless newfoundland”,¹⁹ which she embraced wholeheartedly. Tropical fruits in their bright colours and variegated forms take centre stage in her still life paintings. These are accompanied by depictions of daily scenes: from a bustling outdoor market to a satay seller working by the beach, to the Singapore River. Chen’s portraits, which she was frequently commissioned to make, form another compelling body of work; whether they portray her family and friends (including the first prime minister of Malaysia, Tunku Abdul Rahman) or strangers, these depictions are warm and intimate, sometimes capturing their subjects in the middle of private, interior moments.

Chen often professed, in letters to friends, of her desire to spend the rest of her life depicting Malaya and its motifs. This desire was, however, stymied by age and debilitating illness. She battled rheumatoid arthritis from her 40s until death. The condition, which had also afflicted her father, caused much pain and lack of mobility (in one account, a severe attack in her knees left her “hobbling on a stick for months and months”²⁰), which, although controlled by medication, worsened over the years. This was in part and, quite ironically, due to the medicine that Chen was taking religiously, a side effect of which was osteoporosis.

Despite having to deal with the painful condition alone, Chen remained strong and gentle in spirit; it is in this regard, perhaps, that her writing is most instructive, for it reveals her character in a way that her paintings arguably could not. In letters to friends, Chen often spoke about how “life is anguish and blessings all intermingled which we must accept and carry on as best we can”.²¹ True to this proclamation, she seemed to accept her adversities stoically, however big or small, and forge ahead. The measure of Chen’s inner strength further comes through in the self-deprecating humour evident in her writing. In a letter to Patricia Kennison, one of her students who later became a close friend, she compared herself to an old, worn machine:

“My ‘full form’ can partly be explained by the fact that friends always revive me, for there are times when I do feel quite PATRAQUE, to use an apt French word. (patraque: both a’s are short. Said of a machine that functions badly because it is badly made or old.) But on the whole the slow coach has gone fairly well after its last major repair though the rounds have not been reduced.”²²

As Chen alluded to in her letter, it was the simple joy of friendship – in addition to art and a home she loved – that helped sustain her through adversity.

Georgette Chen. East Coast Vendor. 1961. Oil on canvas, 92 x 73 cm. Collection of National Gallery Singapore. Courtesy of National Heritage Board.

The Last Chapter

In an introspective moment while writing to Eugene’s cousin Dorothy Lee in 1967, Chen, then 61, offered what could be described as a summary of her remarkable life:

“I shall be glad to leave my pictures to Singapore and Malaysia as my little contribution to this tropical land in which I have found rehabilitation. This last chapter of mine on this ‘treasure island’ which I call my ‘Tahiti’ (Tahiti, as you know, is another tropical island where the French painter Gauguin adopted as his new home) has been creative and peaceful. Here, I have stood on my own two feet, albeit arthritic, and I have cut a happy coat with his colorful tropical cloth at my disposal. I have tried to pursue my work to the best of my ability, I have continued to be myself seeking neither fame nor riches. Art like love and friendship or religion is a pursuit of love and devotion. I have respected and cherished my friends and have tried hard not to take advantage of them and their love has kept me alive. Sometimes when I think that I am the product of four world events, all wars – two Chinese revolutions, the one of Dr Sun and Mao Tse-tung and the 1st and second World Wars in all of which I have been inexorably involved, the wonder is that my profession should have been one of good-will and peace! Only God can answer for these paradoxes…”²³

In 1981, Chen suffered a serious fall. She was hospitalised and required hospice care for the next 12 years until her passing in March 1993 at age 87. Following Chen’s death, 53 of her pain­tings as well as a voluminous archive of her personal papers and belongings were bequeathed to Singapore. Georgette Chen’s love for and gratitude to this land – “this tropical land in which I have found rehabilitation” – had finally come full circle.²⁴

The Artist Speaks: Georgette Chen is the first title in the eponymous series published by National Gallery Singapore. The book is available for reference at the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library and for loan at selected public libraries (Call nos.: RSING 741.595957 ART and SING 741.595957 ART). Other artists in the series include Chua Ek Kay, one of Singapore’s most esteemed Chinese ink practitioners, and the late performance artist Lee Wen Speaking of… Georgette Chen is the first artist featured in The Artist Speaks, a series of books published by the National Gallery Singapore featuring visual artists who write. The Artist Speaks: Georgette Chen draws upon the National Gallery’s extensive archive of materials on the artist dating from the 1930s to the 1970s. The collection consists of Chen’s journals, photographs, official records, newspaper clippings, personal belon­gings – including her beloved Hermes Baby typewriter and Malay books, among others – as well as carbon copies of some 1,000 letters that Chen had written to friends and family between 1949 and 1972. The book also draws from mate­rials held in the collections of the National Library and National Archives, including the oral history interview that art historian Constance Sheares conducted with Chen in 1988.25 Other resources in the National Library include a video on Chen produced by the Singapore Art Museum for the National Library Board in 2008;26 a biographical account of Chen’s life authored by Jane Chia in 1997;27 and the catalogue accompanying the 1985 retrospective exhibition of more than 170 of Chen’s works at the National Museum Art Gallery.28

Notes

History may be written by the victors, but what they conveniently leave out can be more telling. Farish Noor reminds us of the violent side of colonial conquest.

“All conquest literature seeks to explain to the conquerors ‘why we are here’.”¹

– Robert Bartlett,The Making of Europe (1993)

The court of the Sultan of Borneo, with the audience chamber filled with natives, all well dressed and armed. The sultan sits cross-legged on the throne at the upper end of the chamber. Frank Marryat describes him as being bald and dressed in a “loose jacket and trousers or purple satin, richly embroidered with gold, a close-fitting vest of gold cloth, and a light cloth turban on his head”. Image reproduced from Marryat, F.S. (1848). Borneo and the Indian Archipelago: With Drawings of Costume and Scenery (p. 109). London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans. Retrieved from BookSG.

Among the many outcomes of the colonial era in Southeast Asia – from the 18th to the 19th century – is a body of writing that can be best described as colonial literature. By this I am referring not only to the accounts that were written by intrepid European travellers who ventured to this region, but also the writings of colonial bureaucrats, colony-builders and administrators, and the men who took part in the conquest of the region by force of arms.

The Justification for Violence

It is interesting to see how these authors dealt with the issue of violence that often came with colonisation, and how such violence was sometimes justified or even celebrated. In the long-drawn process of colonisation in Burma, Anglo-Burmese relations were largely hostile throughout most of the 19th century, and culminated in a series of costly wars: the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–26), the Second Anglo-Burmese War (1852–53) and the Third Anglo-Burmese War (7–29 November 1885).

Among those who wrote about these wars was Major John J. Snodgrass, whose account of the First Anglo-Burmese War was from the viewpoint of a British officer serving in the colonial army. Snodgrass’ Narrative of the Burmese War (1827) was a work that was bellicose and ultimately triumphalist in tone and tenor, and as he had conceded earlier in his work, the war was in fact “an unequal contest”.² Although Snodgrass had little sympathy for the Burmese as a people – his work is full of snide and disparaging remarks about the Burmans and their ruler – he did not hide the fact that the battles of the First Anglo-Burmese War were ferocious, and remarked that “our first encounters with the troops of Ava were sanguinary and revolting”.³

A similar kind of frankness can be found in the works of men like Admiral Henry Keppel, George Rodney Mundy and Frank Marryat. All three were navy men, and all of them had taken part in the naval campaign off the coast of Sarawak that led to the eventual attack on the Kingdom of Brunei. The works of these three men – Keppel’s Expedition to Borneo of HMS Dido for the Suppression of Piracy (1846);⁴ Mundy’s account in Narrative of Events in Borneo and Celebes, Down to the Occupation of Labuan (1848);⁵ and Marryat’s Borneo and the Indian Archipelago (1848)⁶ – would become the most widely read accounts of the so-called “war on piracy” in maritime Southeast Asia, ultimately adding the seal of legitimacy for what was really a sustained campaign to weaken Brunei’s standing as an independent Southeast Asian polity.

Although Keppel, Mundy and Marryat were directly involved in the naval campaign in Borneo, and supportive of the efforts to expand British colonial power across the region while weakening the power of local kingdoms such as Brunei, they were also brutally frank in their accounts of the conflict and the realities of colonial warfare.

Keppel and Mundy did not hide the fact that attacks on native settlements did indeed take place, and Keppel was honest enough to admit that, in the course of the subjugation of the natives of Sarawak, the colonial forces – led by the adventurer James Brooke – had also committed acts of plunder and looting.⁷ Keppel went as far as stating that such excessive use of violence – which included the razing of native villages to the ground – was necessary, for “without a continued and determined series of operations of this sort, it is my conviction that even the most sanguinary and fatal onslaughts will achieve nothing beyond a present and temporary good”.⁸

 Violence was thus a constant leitmotif in many of the works written by colonial authors who arrived in Southeast Asia in the 19th century. Colonies were rarely built by peaceful negotiations, and often through the unequal contest of arms between unequal powers. In the writings of men like Snodgrass, Keppel, Mundy and Marryat, we see the power differentials between East and West laid bare as we witness the bloody genesis of new colonies across the region.

The fact that these authors did not feel the need to hide the truth that colonialism was built through violence is also a reflection of the mores and sensibilities during the age of Empire. In the 19th century, the technological gap between East and West widened. In tandem with this development arose a body of pseudo-scientific theories of racial difference and racial hierarchies in which Asians and Africans were cast as “inferior” races who were backward, degenerate and unable to govern themselves.

Such notions – though largely discredited today – were all the rage then, and were often used to justify the use of force in the process of empire-building. The idea was that “savage” and “primitive” Asians and Africans stood to benefit from exposure to Western civilisation, and would only submit to their colonial subjugators if they were forced to do so at gunpoint.

Native Dayaks (or Dyaks) in Sarawak using sumpita, or blowpipes, to defend themselves from a coastal attack led by James Brooke, the White Rajah of Sarawak. Image reproduced from Brooke, J., & Mundy, G.R. (1848). Narrative of Events in Borneo and Celebes, Down to the Occupation of Labuan […] (Vol. II; 2nd ed.) (facing p. 227). London: John Murray. (Microfilm no.:NL7435).

The Erasure of Violence

And yet there is also another parallel tradition of colonial writing that emerged in the 19th century. This took the form of works that seemed to deliberately sideline the topic of violence altogether, attempting to erase all memory of the violent encounters between the colonising powers and the societies they came to dominate.

Among the books written about colonial Southeast Asia where we see a near-total erasure of the memory of conflict, three works come to mind: Stamford Raffles’ The History of Java (1817),⁹ Hugh Low’s Sarawak: Its Inhabitants and Productions (1848)¹⁰ and Spenser St John’s Life in the Forests of the Far East (1862).¹¹

The History of Java was a monumental two-volume work that courted controversy almost as soon as it came off the press. Raffles’ peers, such as John Crawfurd, took exception to the work and accused the author of misinterpreting elements of Javanese history by presen­ting a one-sided view of the Javanese as a “degenerate” race that was lost in the past and unable to progress without Western intervention. To make things worse, contemporary scholars such as Peter Carey (1992) have noted several instances of plagiarism and fabrication in Raffles’ work.¹²

 Notwithstanding the academic shortcomings of The History of Java, there is also a glaring omission in the text – the elephant in the room as it were – which is the absence of any mention of the invasion of Java itself. In Carey’s account of the British occupation of Java from 1811 to 1816, we find a detailed recounting of the violence of the British attack as well as instances of violence, humiliation and plunder that took place during the British occupation thereafter.

The same cannot be said of Raffles’s work. Although Raffles had claimed that he had amassed more information about Java than any other European in his time, The History of Java does not elaborate on how all that data was collected and how the treasure horde of Javanese antiquities – including statuary, manuscripts, royal regalia and jewellery, among other items – was put together by Raffles for his own research and his private collection.

(Left) A Javanese man of the lower classes. Image reproduced from Raffles, S.T. (1817). The History of Java (Vol. I) (p. 84). London: J. Murray. Retrieved from Internet Archive.
(Right) A Loondoo Dayak of Borneo, whom Frank Marryat described as being “copper-coloured, and extremely ugly: their hair jet black, very long, and falling down to the back; eyes were also black, and deeply sunk in the head, giving a vindictive appearance to the countenance; nose flattened; mouth very large; the lips of a bright vermilion, from the chewing of betel-nut; and, to add to their ugliness, their teeth black, and filed to sharp points”. Image reproduced from Marryat, F.S. (1848). Borneo and the Indian Archipelago: With Drawings of Costume and Scenery (facing p. 5). London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans. Retrieved from BookSG.

The Violence Wrought Upon Java

Contemporary historians have pointed out that the arrival of the British in Java, which began with the attack on Batavia (present-day Jakarta), was anything but peaceful: so violent was the assault on the fortified port-city that bodies were said to have been piled up one on top of the other. Equally shocking are local accounts of the British attack on the royal city of Jogjakarta, which led to the killing of hundreds, including the Javanese defenders who had taken cover in the royal mosque.

Carey, Tim Hannigan (2012)¹³ and others have noted that, in the wake of the successful attack, the Javanese royal family and nobles were forced to submit to the conquerors in the most humiliating manner, and that the royal palace was looted and sacked. Hannigan described the manner in which the Sultan of Jogjakarta was stripped of his courtly regalia by the victorious British troops, and then thrown into a backroom, “while the sepoys and English soldiers embarked on a victorious rampage” within the compound of the royal palace they had overrun.¹⁴ There are also accounts of how members of the royal family had their jewels literally ripped off their bodies by the troops of the East India Company.

And yet nowhere in The History of Java do we read of what truly happened during these assaults, and the image of Java that we are left with is that of a tranquil land rendered static and domesticated by colonial intervention. Even in the images that accompany the text – the now-famous images of Javanese monuments and the hand-coloured figure studies of the Javanese themselves – all we get to see are idyllic portraits of a land and a people rendered passive, inert and thus exposed to the outsider’s gaze.

The White Rajah who “Saved” Sarawak

Southeast Asia would experience a succession of such violent incursions where brutalities would either be subsequently erased or forgotten. More than two decades after the British occupation of Java, another military-naval campaign visited maritime Southeast Asia – the aforementioned “war on piracy” – leading to the capture of Sarawak by the former East India Company-man-turned-rogue-adventurer, James Brooke.

As noted earlier, there exist several accounts of the Sarawak campaign that were explicit in their treatment of colonial warfare. But parallel to these works was another kind of historical recounting written by the likes of Hugh Low. His book Sarawak: Its Inhabitants and Productions is startling in how it weaves a narrative that re-presents the conquest of Sarawak and the attack on Brunei in an almost fairytale-like manner.

A painting of James Brooke, the “White Rajah” of Sarawak, by Francis Grant, 1847. Brooke took Sarawak by force in 1841. The land was not gifted to him, as some colonial writers have claimed. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Low’s work purported to be a study of the land and people of Sarawak as well as a history of that part of Southeast Asia. But in the course of recounting this history, Low was also attempting to present a sanitised account of how an Englishman like James Brooke could have assumed the role and title of the “White Rajah” of Sarawak. Low’s retelling of the Brooke tale borders on the fantastical when he glibly states that Rajah Muda Hassim of Sarawak found himself “tired of Sarawak”¹⁵ for no explicable reason, after which he promptly handed over the territory of Sarawak to Brooke on 24 September 1841.

What is totally absent from Low’s rose-tinted account of Brooke’s rise to prominence is the fact that Brooke, as the leader of his private army of 200 men, had attacked Rajah Muda Hassim’s compound and forced the latter to surrender to him – a fact that was highlighted in the work by Gareth Knapman (2017).¹⁶ As far as fairytale heroes go, Low’s depiction of Brooke fits the bill in many ways: for Low, nothing of significance could be achieved in Brooke’s absence or without Brooke’s guidance; Asiatic monarchs would incredulously surrender their ancestral lands to him in return for nothing; and the man was motivated by only the best motives “to do good, to excite interest and to make friends”.¹⁷

Such sanitised colonial propaganda would become the norm in the decades to come. In 1862, yet another hagiographic account of the Brooke legend appeared in the form of Spenser St John’s two-volume work, Life in the Forests of the Far East. In this work, St John repeated the familiar trope of Brooke as the white saviour whose presence alone would restore order – which was in turn framed in bold relief against a backdrop of “savage” Bornean natives and “treacherous” Bruneians and Chinese. That Sarawak’s story could only have a fairytale ending seems obvious when we consider that the story was told in conjunction with other tales of the Empire.

In order for the story of benevolent imperial intervention to make sense, it was necessary to have as its counterpart the story of native malevolence and decline; and more perceptive readers of the works of Low and St John will be able to see that both writers have woven a number of complex narratives that developed in tandem with one another.

At the forefront is, of course, the tale of the Brooke dynasty, whose messy and bloody genesis was cleaned up and sanitised. Parallel to this are three other narratives that framed Brooke’s idealised image in bold relief: the story of the decline of Malay power, embodied by the tale of Brunei’s fall from grace; the story of Chinese treachery, encapsulated in St. John’s account of the Sarawak uprising; and the story of native backwardness and vulnerability that is found in the studies of native life and customs carried out by Low and St John.

Coming to Terms with Reality

Reading works such as these today we are reminded of the fact that colonialism was a complex process that in turn gave birth to complex accounts of it. At face value, the works of Raffles, Low and St John strike the contemporary reader as being straightforward examples of colonial propaganda, which they undoubtedly were – and this was a type of writing that continued well into the 20th century, as exemplified by the works of later colonial functionaries such as Frank Swettenham (1907).¹⁸

But what is equally important to note is how and why some of these colonial writers chose to sideline or even silence the violence that invariably accompanied colonisation, and what they hoped to achieve by doing so in their writings. Scholars of colonial history are no doubt appreciative of the fact that some of these colonial-era writers – such as Snodgrass, Keppel, Mundy and Marryat – were honest in their accounts of the violence they perpetrated. At the very least, this opens the way for a critical discussion of colonialism and its enduring legacy.

The works of Raffles, Low and St John, however, pose a far greater challenge. In rereading the works of this other group of writers with a critical eye today, we see the stark and enormous gaps and long instances of silence where the brutal realities of colonial conquest were deliberately erased and eventually forgotten. In doing so, we can critique these authors for their moral complicity in what was, in the final analysis, one of the most violent eras in recent Southeast Asian history.

Notes

No great work of literature is completed in just one draft. In an age where writers have gone paperless, novelist Meira Chand ponders over the value of manuscripts, and what they might reveal about a writer’s thought process.

As a young writer many years ago, it thrilled me to go to the Reading Room of the British Museum in London. This massive circular room with a soaring glass-domed ceiling opened in 1857, and it quickly became a mecca for writers from all over the world, who came here to research and write, and breathe in its rarefied literary atmosphere.

Until its closure in 1997 and its transformation into an exhibition space in the British Museum, many famous writers and luminaries used the Reading Room, including the likes of Oscar Wilde, Karl Marx, Sun Yat Sen, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Virginia Woolf and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, to name but a few.

There were glass cases in the Reading Room, in which were displayed the handwritten manuscripts of famous authors: Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and many more. I used to stare at these sheets of paper in awe. Thin and yellowed with age, they were crammed with inky words that, in a long ago moment, had fallen fresh from the minds of these great writers.

A flow and urgency were apparent in the writing, the dark hatching of corrections thick upon the pages, as were the occasional ink blobs, smears and fingerprints. So much of the writer’s emotion seemed evident in the handwriting, in the choice of paper, and even the strength of the pen marks. It was humbling to realise that before me was the rawness of the creative process in the seminal moments of a classic work.

Meira Chand is an award-winning novelist of Swiss-Indian parentage, who is now a Singaporean citizen.

This moment is beautifully described by Agatha Christie:

“You start into it, inflamed by an idea, full of hope, full indeed of confidence… know just how you are going to write it, rush for a pencil, and start in an exercise book buoyed up with exaltation. You then get into difficulties, don’t see your way out, and finally manage to accomplish more or less what you first meant to accomplish, though losing confidence all the time. Having finished it, you know it is absolutely rotten. A couple of months later you wonder if it may not be all right after all.”

Whenever I pick up, in a library or bookshop, the published volumes of those very manuscripts I had gazed at in awe in the British Museum – still being printed and read by modern readers – I can only marvel at the unchanging quality of the writer’s imagination through time. These memories came back to me recently in Singapore when I donated my own manuscripts and associated research materials to the National Library.

In the digital age, most, if not all, work is produced on a computer, the document saved to a file in the hard drive and finally emailed to a publisher, who will likely read it on a computer screen. Increasingly, writers accumulate paperless manuscripts and, because of this, original handwritten manuscripts, such as those of the classics I saw in the British Museum, hold ever more fascination for us.

Old habits die hard, and although I now work in a largely paperless way, I still like to correct and edit on a printed hard copy. When I began my career as a young writer in the days before computers, manuscripts were bulky things comprising many physical drafts. As a result, the writer invariably ended up with stacks of paper, boxed or bound with string, all heavily worked with corrections and edits.

Not yet published and unsure of my own worth as a writer in those early days, it was easy to question the value of storing so much paper and, in exasperation, sometimes even throwing it all away. Indeed, I did dispose of early typed drafts of my first novel, thinking them to be of no consequence until my first publisher in London alerted me to the fact that I might regret such impulsive action at a future stage in my writing career. I understood this sentiment when I made my donation to the National Library.

I have written nine novels over several decades, but have lived an itinerant life for the most part, residing for long periods of time in different parts of the world. After several decades of living in Japan I finally made my way to Singapore in 1997; among the things I brought with me were drafts of some of my novels. As a professional nove­list, I have continued to write through my long residence in Singapore. As the number of my published books accumulated, so have the paper drafts of those works that I still need to work on. Over the years, the boxes of stored manuscripts have taken over my study, stacked shoulder high, the span of my writing life grown up like a forest around me.

A panoramic view of the interior of the British Museum Reading Room in 2006. Situated in the centre of the Great Court of the British Museum, this used to be the main reading room of the British Library. In 1997, this function moved to the new British Library building at St Pancras in London. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

When the librarians from the National Library came to view the materials, it amused me to see how delighted they were at the emergence of the most hea­vily worked manuscripts. Not only were these manuscripts thickly pencilled upon with corrections, but many pages were, quite literally, cut and pasted together. In the days before computers, this is what all writers did – a pair of scissors and a tube of glue were part of any writer’s kit. When I now click the “cut” button on my Mac, and then slide the cursor down and select “paste”, I never fail to draw a breath of deep gratitude for the wonders of modern technology.

While assessing and sorting through the many boxes in my study, the National Library people noticed that most of the manuscripts were of my later books. “Where are your earliest handwritten manuscripts?” they asked me. Although I had indeed handwritten my first four novels, and laboriously typed them up on an old typewriter, in the intervening years of relocating from one place to another, I had forgotten where I had stored them. But I was certain they were not lost.

Manuscripts do get lost for many different reasons, and there have been some famous losses in history. In 1597, the playwright Ben Johnson, a contemporary of William Shakespeare, wrote a play, The Isle of Dogs. The subject matter so offended the government that Johnson was arrested and orders given to burn his script. Unfortunately, there is no record of the contents of the play; we only know that it was written by Johnson and subsequently fell victim to the censorship of the day.

In more modern times, the Polish Jewish writer Bruno Schultz, aware of the threat to his life (he was murdered by the Nazis in 1942), entrusted the manuscript of his last novel, The Messiah, to the care of friends. After his death, his biographer searched in vain among his friends for this missing work. The manuscript has never been found.

Following her suicide in 1963, Sylvia Plath’s estranged husband, Ted Hughes, destroyed her last writings because he did not wish their children to read the contents. Similarly, William Blake’s literary executor deliberately destroyed some of his works, believing that they were inspired by the Devil no less.

Some of the manuscripts and ephemera for The Painted Cage that Meira Chand donated to the National Library. Work on The Painted Cage started several years prior to its publication in 1986. She also visited museums and heritage sites in Japan to gather information on foreigners who had lived there in the 19th century as part of her research.

Many writers, such as James Joyce, destroy their own work for reasons known only to them. Joyce destroyed an early play, A Brilliant Career, leaving just the title page with the words “To my own soul I dedicate the first true work of my life”. The poet Philip Larkin kept very personal diaries throughout his life, but wished them destroyed upon his death as he did not want controversial elements of his life to be revealed. His request was honoured by his long-time secretary, who burned the lot.

My own early manuscripts were not lost for any such dramatic reason; I had just forgotten where I had stored them.

Last summer, with my family, I visited a home I still own in the mountains of Nagano, northwest of Tokyo, the residue of my many years in Japan. The house has a dusty attic that, to my grandchildren, was magically intriguing. Exploring the attic in excitement, they found, under a pile of old carpets, a leather suitcase and four large boxes of manuscripts. I had forgotten I had stored them there when relocating to Singapore, and hadn’t noticed them beneath the carpets while previously cleaning out the attic. I was filled with enormous relief and emotion at the sight of all this yellowing paper, as if a lost child had been returned to me.

In the boxes and suitcase that I unpacked upon my return to Singapore, the many notebooks and binders in which I had handwritten my first four novels finally emerged. I also found the early typed drafts of these novels, all heavily cushioned by the literal cutting and pasting together of text that I did in those days.

It was a strange feeling to open up those old dog-eared exercise books, to look down at the flow of my own firm writing, and to see the pressure of emotion, the urgency to capture the torrent of thoughts, the cross-hatching of corrections, the smears and finger-marks, the stain of a coffee cup. And remembering how I had stood before the writings of Dickens and so many other literary immortals in the Reading Room of the British Museum so long ago, I felt humbled to have shared with every writer across time, in my own very small way, the miracle of our human imagination. Walt Whitman described it most evocatively:

“The secret of it all, is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood of the moment – to put things down without deliberation – without worrying about their style – without waiting for a fit time and place… By writing at the instant, the very heartbeat of life is caught.”

Philosophers have examined the miracle of the imagination across the ages, from Sophocles to Paracelsus to those of our modern times. Breaking with earlier ideas about the source of the imagination, the philosopher Immanuel Kant saw it as the hidden condition of all knowledge. He speaks of it as being transcendental, of grounding the objectivity of the object in the subjectivity of the subject. To Kant, the imagination preconditions our very experience of the world, rather than coming from a transcendent place beyond man, as some earlier philosophers suggested.

To the writer, however, when caught in the heat of inspiration, the seemingly unstoppable flow of words can come only from a Divine Mind. The poet William Wordsworth provides a wonderful metaphor for the way all writers feel when writing. He speaks of withdrawing from the world to the “watchtower” of his solitary spirit. Perhaps it is this heightened state of awareness and its connection to our common humanity that the writer seems able to command that imbues literary manuscripts with such romantic power for the public.

In our modern world, the interest in literary manuscripts has grown enormously. Many institutions, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom, spend large sums of money to acquire the manuscripts of famous writers. Two hundred years ago, nobody would have bothered to archive contemporary literary work. Today, in the digital age, manuscripts have acquired both a meaningful and a magical value.

For the student of literature, the meaningful is found in what a writer has cut out or changed in the manuscript, the variations of each draft presenting a mental map of the writer’s intention, struggle and literary journey. The magic, however, is found in the mystery of artistic genius. While viewing a manuscript, we can, as it were, stand at the author’s side at the very moment their imagination is pushed beyond the boundaries of human ability.

Literature’s invaluable gift to society is found in the human sharing of spirit and experience. The reader enters the writer’s mind, and the writer enters the reader’s mind. Together, they journey through the imagination to unknown worlds and to those deepest parts within us. It is this wish to share in the direct experience of the writer that fuels the push within libraries and archival institutions around the world to build archives of primary materials.

This is why the librarians from the National Library welcomed my own humble, handwritten exercise books, the sheets of manuscript padded with pieces of cut and pasted text, and even an unrelated shopping list hastily scribbled into a margin. The extraordinary journey of literary creation holds us in awe as we view a manuscript. From the intimacy of the written page, the writer appears to reach out across time and space, linking us in direct and authentic experience to the work being produced.

The author’s copious markings in her own handwriting on the time-ripened pages of her manuscripts for her novel, The Bonsai Tree, offer a glimpse into the painstaking creative process. Previously published by John Murray (London) in 1983, The Bonsai Tree was reissued by Marshall Cavendish (Singapore) in 2018. The novel was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 1983. The Magic of Manuscripts By Michelle Heng, Literary Arts Librarian, National Library, Singapore. Dr Meira Chand’s first donation to the National Library, Singapore, in 2014 included manuscripts, typescripts and research materials relating to drafts for A Different Sky (Random House: London, 2010), an Oprah Winfrey-recommended novel that follows the arc of modern Singapore history. Her most recent donation in 2018 includes typescripts of The Bonsai Tree (John Murray: London, 1983), a novel about a young English woman who marries the Japanese heir to a textile empire and her many travails at a time when foreigners were reviled by conservative Japanese society. The author’s reworked editions and handwritten markings on these typescripts offer a glimpse into the painstaking process that goes into the birth of a literary work. The British Book News stated in October 1983 that, “The Bonsai Tree is a considerable achievement both as a novel and as a social document…” While living in Japan, the author visited various museums and heritage sites to gather information for her early novels. These Japanese- and English-language ephemera – including brochures and booklets – on old European-style mansions inhabited by expatriates in Japan from the mid-19th to early 20th-century were donated to the National Library, along with a reproduction of a 1865 plan of the Yokohama Foreign Settlement. The author used these materials as research for The Painted Cage (Century Hutchinson: London, 1986), a murder mystery set in 1890s Yokohama that was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 1986 and reissued by Marshall Cavendish (Singapore) in 2018. Meira Chand’s authorial drafts and research materials capture the magic of a writer’s creative process and provide a fascinating behind-the-scenes peek into her works. One of the key functions of the National Library is the collection and preservation of documentary materials relating to Singapore’s history and heritage. Dr Chand’s donation to the library’s Donor Collection augments the growing collection of research materials gifted by authors associated with Singapore’s literary development.

References

Brock, J.A. (2018, January 8). 100+ famous authors and their writing spaces. The Writing Cooperative. Retrieved 2019, April 29, from The Writing Cooperative website.

Gioia, D. (1996). The magical value of manuscripts. The Hudson Review. Retrieved 2019, April 29, from Dana Gioia website.

Military camps and training areas comprise a significant portion of Singapore’s land use. What can a single camp tell us about Singapore’s geopolitical history? A lot, as it turns out, says Chua Jun Yan.

Travelling along Sembawang Road, you will pass several military installations, including Nee Soon Camp, Khatib Camp and Sembawang Camp. At the end of the road is Sembawang Shipyard, site of the former Singapore Naval Base and the cornerstone of Britain’s ill-fated Far East defence strategy before World War II.¹

This military corridor in the north of Singapore, whose roots go back to the colonial period, is historically significant. Of the various camps along this stretch, Dieppe Barracks (pronounced “dee-ap”) stands out because it housed the last permanent foreign presence in Singapore until 1989, bearing witness to the geopolitical transformations of the 20th century. Today, the barracks is home to the HQ Singapore Guards and the HQ 13th Singapore Infantry Brigade of the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF).

Endings and New Beginnings

Constructed between 1965 and 1966 for British troops based in Singapore, Dieppe Barracks was originally part of the new but short-lived Far East Fleet Amphibious Forces Base.² Even as the Malayan Emergency (1948–60)³ gave way to Konfrontasi⁴ with Indonesia (1963–66), Britain maintained its military position on the island after Singapore became an independent sovereign nation in August 1965.

The first occupants of Dieppe Barracks was the 40 Commando unit of the British Royal Marines, which had relocated from Borneo to its new base in Singapore. Incidentally, it was the Royal Marines Commando unit’s service in France during World War II that gave Dieppe Barracks its name.

In 1942, the Royal Marines Commandos had participated in the bold but disastrous Operation Jubilee, better known as the Dieppe Raid, in which some 6,000 Allied troops – comprising Canadian soldiers, British commandos and US Rangers – mounted an assault on the German-occupied port of Dieppe in France. Less than 10 hours after the first amphibious landings on 19 August took place, nearly 60 percent of the men had been killed, wounded or captured.⁵

Given the inglorious and humiliating defeat at Dieppe, why did the British choose to name its new military installation in Singapore after the raid?

Historical studies on the Dieppe Raid offer a clue. In the 1960s, military historians had vigorously debated the necessity of the Dieppe Raid. Revisionist scholars argue that the raid resulted from inexcusable shortcomings in the Allied pre-operation planning and represented an avoidable loss of human life. By contrast, orthodox historians of World War II hold the view that the Dieppe Raid was a necessary rehearsal for the D-Day landings,⁶ which ultimately liberated Europe from Adolf Hitler and the tyranny of Nazi occupation.

“Honour to the brave who fell. Their sacrifice was not in vain,” wrote Winston Churchill in The Hinge of Fate, the fourth installment in his multivolume history of World War II.⁷ Seen in this light, the etymology of Dieppe Barracks might have represented an intervention in a broader debate about World War II’s reputation as “the good war”, at a time when the British Empire was rapidly losing its lustre and the Vietnam War was becoming a debacle for the free world.

Within this context of global strategic flux, the British did not remain at Dieppe Barracks for long. In July 1967, then British Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced plans to withdraw all British troops from Singapore by 1975. The following year, Wilson brought forward the withdrawal deadline to 1971 as his Labour government grappled with a floundering domestic economy back home. The unexpected pullout of British troops would not only create problems for Singapore’s national security but would also put a huge dent in its economy: it was estimated that more than 20 percent of Singapore’s gross national product came from British military bases on the island.

That Dieppe Barracks was constructed just a year before Wilson made the announcement also indicates how unexpected this move was, reflecting the wider uncertainty about Britain’s role in the world at the time.⁸ The decline of British preeminence in Asia might have been gradual, but the final retreat was ultimately unpredictable, as Dieppe Barracks attests.

The departure of British forces from Dieppe Barracks and the arrival of the New Zealanders embodied the wider geo-strategic changes that were taking place in the 1970s. In 1971, the 1st Battalion of the Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment (1 RNZIR) replaced the British commandos at Dieppe Barracks, marking a shift from imperial defence to regional security as the prevailing strategic paradigm. During a 1975 trip to New Zealand, then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew credited New Zealand’s presence with creating “a psychological sense of stability”, giving Singapore time to develop its own defence capabilities.⁹

In 1975 and again in 1978, the New Zealand government sought to withdraw its troops from Singapore. Given Singapore’s growing defence capabilities and the apparent stability in the region, the Kiwi presence appeared increasingly anachronistic.¹⁰ However, New Zealand’s plans were foiled by the escalating Cold War tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States, specifically, the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in December 1978 and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979.

In 1979, Dieppe Barracks bore witness to one of the biggest humanitarian crises of the period: the exodus of Vietnamese boat people following the end of the war in Indochina. On 14 April, then New Zealand High Commissioner G.C. Hensely hosted 51 Vietnamese refugees, including 18 children – who had been granted asylum by Auckland – at Dieppe Barracks during their eight-hour transit in Singapore.¹¹

The refugees had arrived in Malaysia by boat six months earlier and were housed at the refugee camp on Pulau Bedong, off the coast of Terengganu. At Dieppe Barracks, they were treated to food and drinks, and the children watched colour television for the first time. Given Singapore’s limited size and resources, the government was firm in denying refuge to the Vietnamese, but had granted special permission to the High Commissioner to entertain the refugees at Dieppe Barracks, reflecting its liminal position as a foreign base on Singaporean soil.

With the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s and the growth of the SAF, the Kiwi presence at Dieppe Barracks seemed increasingly irrelevant. Towards the end of 1986, New Zealand announced it would withdraw all its infantrymen from Singapore by 1989. On 21 July that year, as the “Last Post” played in the background, the New Zealand flag was lowered over Dieppe Barracks for the last time.¹² A few months later, an auction was held at the barracks to dispose of more than 60 Kiwi vehicles.¹³ For the second time in just over two decades, Dieppe Barracks had changed ownership, but this time to the SAF and not to a foreign entity.

Rugby Diplomacy and Geopolitical Golf

While Singapore enjoyed relative peace and stability from the late 1960s, the foreign military presence at Dieppe served as an important conduit for defence diplomacy and cultural exchange. Sports facilities in and around the barracks provided the troops with recreational activities, fostered informal contact between military leaders, and engendered positive civil-military relations.

After Britain’s Royal Marines Commandos moved into Dieppe Barracks in 1967, they built a nine-hole golf course, which would evolve into today’s Sembawang Country Club – a club that is presently affiliated to the SAF. The early course was primitive: it was “short and carved out of an area of poor soil”, and was so hilly that it was informally known as the “commando course”.¹⁴ However, Singaporean leaders perceived golf as an opportunity to cultivate friendly relations with foreign military officials.

During the early 1970s, then Minister for Defence Goh Keng Swee urged senior SAF officers to pick up golf in order to facilitate interactions with their foreign counterparts. In the late 1970s, the SAF redeveloped the golf club, before taking it over from the New Zealand forces.¹⁵

Similarly, rugby also helped to forge closer ties between Singapore and New Zealand. When the New Zealand forces occupied Dieppe Barracks in 1971, the rugby pitch along Sembawang Road became the centrepiece of public diplomacy between the two countries. From 1971 to 1989, Dieppe Barracks hosted hundreds of rugby matches, often between the Kiwis and local teams. These efforts strengthened New Zealand’s soft power and enhanced people-to-people ties between the two countries.

In 1979, for instance, the Singapore Combined Schools’ rugby squad described a match and training clinic with the New Zealand All Blacks as a “dream date”, held in what The Straits Times called “a truly New Zealand atmosphere at the Dieppe Barracks”.¹⁶ In the Singaporean schoolboy’s imagination, Dieppe Barracks was a portal into the distant land of New Zealand.

Aside from sport, Dieppe Barracks also boasted a Maori Cultural Group, which established its base at Marae of Tumatauenga, a sacred meeting place located within the perimeters of the camp. Apart from catering to the spiritual needs of the soldiers, the Maori group toured Southeast Asia to showcase New Zealand’s heritage and culture. In 1981, for instance, it visited Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Brunei, performing at the Sabah Centenary Expo and appearing on Radio Television Malaysia. Similarly, the Kiwi regimental band performed at different venues around the region, enhancing New Zealand’s visibility and prestige.¹⁷

Against this backdrop, the SAF developed strong relations with New Zealand troops at Dieppe Barracks. In 1974, the SAF’s elite unit, the 1st Commando Battalion, established ties with 1 RNZIR, visiting each other’s units and holding friendly sports matches. The two countries formalised this partnership in 1982 and thereafter held an Alliance Day parade at the barracks annually. At the 1986 New Zealand Day parade, then Second Minister for Defence Yeo Ning Hong told the men of 1 RNZIR that the SAF was “proud to be associated with a unit as distinguished as [theirs]”, reflecting the fruit of years of defence diplomacy.¹⁸

As recently as May 2019, Singapore and New Zealand signed a joint declaration to deepen bilateral cooperation in four areas, including defence and security. At a press conference, Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Hsien Loong and Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern described the two countries as “natural partners”.¹⁹ In fact, this “natural” partnership reflected a decades-long history of mutual goodwill, some of which had been fostered at Dieppe Barracks since the 1970s.

Life in Dieppe Barracks

For the most part, a jocular mess culture prevailed at Dieppe Barracks. Archival video footage features barebodied servicemen practising drills, playing squash or basketball, lifting weights and wolfing down copious amounts of food at the cookhouse. The journal of 1 RNZIR described the camp as “our little kingdom… situated among golf courses, rugby fields, bars, messes, clubs and more bars”.²⁰ For young Kiwi soldiers, an overseas posting also presented a chance to see the world and travel across Southeast Asia.

Christmas was always a special occasion at Dieppe Barracks, eagerly anticipated by the servicemen each year. In 1970, 160 children of the Royal Marines watched in awe as a British commando dressed as Santa Claus parachuted from a helicopter over the barracks, bearing presents for the children.²¹ With the New Zealand troops, the tradition was for its senior officers to serve the junior ranks at Christmas parties held in the messes.²²

To be sure, life in Dieppe Barracks was not always rosy, reflecting the emotional and psychological challenges of long-term overseas deployments during peacetime. Indeed, the 1 RNZIR journal introduced an “advisory service” in 1975, noting that the “pressures of modern day living in Singapore can be considerable, leading to stress, tension and worry”.²³ Far away from home and without a specific mission, there was a high chance of young soldiers becoming bored and restless. Indeed, in 1972, a soldier set fire to the sacred Maori meeting place in Dieppe Barracks and was sentenced to one year’s detention. During his trial, the soldier said that he had gotten up to mischief simply because he had wanted to be sent home.

Almost a decade later, two New Zealand soldiers were each sentenced to three years’ jail and given three strokes of the cane by a Singaporean district court for selling cannabis to fellow servicemen (they had earlier pleaded to be court-martialled in order to escape caning). According to a lawyer, the drug problem at Dieppe Barracks “had reached unmanageable proportions despite efforts by military authorities”, leading the New Zealand army to hand over jurisdiction of the case to Singapore.²⁴

An Inherited Legacy

Why does this story of Dieppe Barracks matter? Much of Singapore’s military history remains focused on World War II and the Japanese Occupation, and scholars have increasingly called for greater attention to our more recent past.²⁵

Military spaces physically express the colonial, post-colonial and neo-colonial processes that have shaped Singapore’s history and landscape over the decades. Given that foreign military bases in Singapore were a major driver of the economy in the late 1960s and employed some 25,000 locals,²⁶ it is impossible to understand the social, economic and cultural changes that had taken place here without reference to the vast numbers of soldiers and seamen who passed through this island from the 19th century to the present day.

I myself completed national service in Dieppe Barracks from 2018 to 2019, and in some small way was part of its geostrategic history and destiny. From British commandos to New Zealand infantry soldiers and finally to me and my fellow national service mates, places like Dieppe Barracks have witnessed and stood sentinel to the transformations of Singapore we have seen over the years.

Notes

Barely 13 years old then, K. Ramakanthan and his family escaped with their lives from Perak to Johor during the Japanese Occupation. Aishwariyaa Ramakanthan recounts her father’s harrowing journey.

My father’s scramble to safety in the final days before the fall of Malaya to the Japanese in December 1941 is regular fodder for teatime conversation with my parents. I grew up listening to my father tell of his harrowing escape, but it is his ability to recount the journey in such fascinating detail that inspired me to write about it.

My father, K. Ramakanthan, was born in December 1929 in Bruas (Beruas), Pahang, and later moved to Perak with his family. His father’s beginnings were quite similar to those of early migrants from South India looking for a better life in Malaya.

My grandfather had arrived in Malaya on board the Rhona with his young wife, starry-eyed and full of hope, like many others on that ship. After early struggles to find employment, he secured a reasonably well-paying job at a rubber plantation in Perak. This enabled him to buy his family a few luxuries – like a treasured Austin 7
car for one.

Having settled down to life in Perak, my grandfather did not imagine even for a moment – like so many others who blindly believed in the invincibility of the British – that they would have to flee for their lives one day. When the Japanese invaded Malaya during World War II, my grandfather lost everything that he had worked so hard for.

This is my father’s story.

My first sense that the world I knew would collapse was when I was waiting to take the train back home from school one Friday afternoon in late 1941. People were moving hurriedly with packed bags, their faces etched with tension and worry. I was puzzled when a man walking past whispered in Malay: “Jepun datang. Lekas balik.” (“The Japanese are coming. Go home quickly”).

I hurried home only to discover that a large group of Indian soldiers from the British Army had assembled in the open space in front of our home. Why they were there we didn’t quite know, but my mother was clearly disturbed at this sight. My father, however, brushed her worries aside, convinced that the whispered rumours were untrue. Above anything else, he was certain that the might of the British Empire would prevail. So we went about our usual routine that Friday, unaware that our lives were about to change in ways we could never have imagined.

I remember spending the day reading my favourite Rainbow comics and playing with my two baby brothers. I knew of Benito Mussolini, the fascist prime minister of Italy, from a Beano comic strip that caricatured him as the ridiculously pompous Musso the Wop. Adolf Hitler of Germany had been similarly portrayed as a laughable character in Charlie Chaplin’s film, The Great Dictator. Perhaps these depictions of evil men who had been caricatured as idiotic and harmless had lulled me into a false sense of security.

Saturday dawned in a deathly silence. I peered out of my bedroom window but the soldiers in front of my house were no longer there. My father left for work as usual while my mother and I played with my brothers on the verandah. The peace was suddenly shattered by my father’s return in his Austin 7. We watched aghast, completely confused as he drove up like a madman, gesticulating wildly. The car screeched to a halt and he jumped out yelling, “Pack up! Pack up! They are here! They are here!” It didn’t strike us immediately that he was talking about the Japanese.

He rushed around frantically gathering what he could, telling us to do the same while trying to explain that the Japanese were gaining ground. In our shock, we grabbed whatever seemed most valuable and necessary at the time – money, jewellery and some clothes. Everything else was left behind, including a prized gramophone that had provided hours of entertainment and my Hornby clockwork train set, a gift from my uncle.

As father’s little Austin 7 could only accommodate my mother, my younger brothers, a female cousin who was living with us at the time, and our belongings, I was put in the care of a trusted family friend and his family to travel by train to Kuala Lumpur, about 200 miles from our home in Perak.

As I watched my parents drive away after dropping me off at the railway station, I felt a palpable sense of excitement at the thought of being plunged into an adventure of the sort I had only read about in books. But at the same time I was fearful that I would not see my family again. At the station, I saw people with bags, children, pets and chickens in tow rushing towards the waiting train – their ticket to safety. Men, women, children, the young and the old clambered over each other, fighting to get onto a train that was already bursting at its seams.

I fought off sleep as the overnight train chugged towards Kuala Lumpur, picking up more people along the way. The train pulled into Kuala Lumpur at about five the next morning. Staying together was a struggle as we made our way past the heaving mass of passengers. When we finally emerged from the cramped train, the fresh air that greeted us was a welcome respite, and we took deep gulps of it. For a minute, we forgot the gravity of our situation.

Acting on my father’s instructions, my guardian dropped me off at Lakshmi Vilas on Ampang Street, a popular Indian vegetarian restaurant in Kuala Lumpur in those days. Alone now, I anxiously scanned the crowd in the restaurant and the street outside, hoping for a glimpse of my family. Suddenly, a piercing “Wooo-oo-oo!” sound ripped through the air, rising to a crescendo. It was the air-raid siren. Pandemonium ensued, and people started shouting and screaming as they made a mad dash for the air-raid shelters.

Paralysed with fear, I stood rooted to the ground not knowing what to do. None of the war stories I read had prepared me for this.

Suddenly, I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder. It was the restaurant manager. He grabbed my arm and we ran into the shelter just as the first bombs hit. It was a full 10 to 15 minutes before the “all clear” signal sounded. People sighed with relief, thankful that they were still standing even as their legs trembled.

A grim sight met us as we emerged into the blinding sunlight. Many buildings had been badly damaged, and several dead bodies littered the streets. The restaurant, miraculously, was still intact. Among the casualties were the wife and two sons of the family friend who had accompanied me to Kuala Lumpur – although I wasn’t aware of this at the time. When my own family finally turned up at the restaurant, my relief and joy knew no bounds.

My father then drove to his office headquarters in Kuala Lumpur to inform them of his whereabouts. There, his British boss (or “Tuan”)¹ pressed my father to let him borrow the Austin 7 to drive to Singapore, as he needed another car to accommodate his whole family. My father had no choice but to agree. His Tuan, like the rest of the British, believed that Singapore was a stronghold that would not fall to enemy attack – the British called the island the “Gibraltar of the East” in reference to its European bastion at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula.

We spent the night at the abandoned house of a family friend. The next morning, my father went to look for a taxi to take us to Muar, while the rest of us prepared to leave. Just as we finished lunch, the ominous sound of the siren tore through the air again. With pounding hearts, we took cover under a staircase, the only shelter available. This time it finally dawned on me that death was a real possibility. We covered our heads and clung tightly to each other as the ground under us shook. My mother urged us to be calm and brave, and to pray – which we did, fervently.

We didn’t realise how lucky we were to be alive until we emerged and saw shrapnel embedded in the walls outside the house, deep craters in the streets and buildings ablaze. The bombings, which lasted around 30 minutes, felt like an eternity. We were relieved only when father returned, safe and sound, in a taxi. Gathering our few belongings, we made our way to Muar, arriving at my uncle’s house just before nightfall. We were thankful to be with our relatives, but the respite was brief.

Tired of being cooped up all day, the following afternoon at around four, my father and I decided to take a walk. The cloudless blue sky was so beguilingly attractive that we soon let our guard down. Squinting at the sun, I spied in the distance some glinting silver objects falling from the sky. I tugged at my father and pointed upwards. He took one look at the sky before grabbing my arm and started to run. Just as we entered the house and shut the door, we heard the drone of low-flying planes.

All of us instinctively dived under a bench in the storeroom. Trembling, we could hear the bombs raining down on Muar town and the river. The assault sank a cargo vessel that had been travelling upstream with supplies for people living along the river banks. The 30-minute bombing blitz was meant as a warning to instill fear, for the Japanese could have obliterated the town if they had wanted to.

As soon as the air raids stopped, we and several other Indian families in the small town gathered for a quick meeting. We decided to leave Muar for Batu Pahat as a group – it somehow felt safer to move around in large numbers. We chose to travel inland, away from the main thoroughfares. But once again, despite the life-and-death predicament of his own family, duty called upon my father: he was instructed by his British boss to meet him in Singapore (we would lose all contact with my father for several weeks after this, but were later reunited). The rest of the family journeyed without my father to Batu Pahat as part of a convoy of cars heading south in the general direction of Johor and Singapore.

Overcome by tension and fear, the convoy soon separated. Some cars headed towards Yong Peng, while others towards Pagoh and Segamat; still others drove inland into remote villages. En route to Batu Pahat in my uncle’s car, we could heard the drone of airplanes. My uncle floored the accelerator and drove towards the town, to the house of someone he knew, who very kindly agreed to accommodate us. The most wonderful thing about those troubled times was that people were willing to open their homes to those in need.

Just as we arrived, the bombings began and sent us scurrying for safety in the house. When all was quiet once again, we gingerly peered out the window. A few bodies were strewn on the street, and there was a huge crater not 50 yards from the house. One of the bombs had just missed us by a whisker.

The next day, the friend suggested that we move to Sankokoshi Estate, a Japanese-owned oil palm plantation, which he thought would be safer. We were to occupy one of the abandoned houses there, a Japanese-style house with sliding doors and tatami mats on the floor. We shared this house with a few other families.

I spent the next few days exploring the grounds of the beautiful estate, oblivious to the worries of the adults or even to my mother’s fears about my father who still had not returned from Singapore. Fruit trees with low-hanging guavas and mangoes, a stream teeming with fish, and abandoned railway trolleys meant for transporting palm fruit were enough to keep me and the other children occupied. The women helped each other with the cooking, while the men fortified the place as best as they could. They gathered sticks, fashioned homemade spears and other weapons for protection, and cycled to nearby villages to buy supplies and groceries.

A few days later, a squadron of Japanese planes swooped low over the estate. We watched the planes as they headed south towards Singapore to celebrate Japan’s victory. The Gibraltar of the East had evidently fallen, signalling the start of the Japanese Occupation – and the beginning of three-and-a-half-years of untold suffering and atrocities.

Several uneventful weeks had passed. One particularly warm night, the men had just finished playing cards, the only entertainment available, while the women were chatting or looking after their children. Soon, the adults began turning in for the night. The women and children slept indoors, while the men slept outside on the verandah surrounding the house.

Sometime around midnight, the dog Somu, which belonged to a Dr Sharma, one of the men in the community, let out a long, rumbling growl that suddenly erupted into ferocious barking. We were jolted out of slumber. The household stirred and concerned voices called out in the dark. Before anyone could stagger to their feet to determine the cause of Somu’s barking, the clatter of heavy boots was heard, followed by harsh cursing in Japanese. We were instantly awake, attentive and frightened – very frightened.

“Kara kura!” snapped the man who seemed to be the sergeant. By now we knew enough Japanese to know that the phrase meant “Hurry up! Pay attention!” He was a short, squat fellow with an expression of ferocity that matched Somu’s bark. Somu was barking his head off by now, and Dr Sharma was desperately holding the wriggling dog and trying to calm him, but to no avail. In a split second, we saw a glint of steel and a sword pointing at the terrified doctor.

The rest of us were paralysed with fear and at a loss as how to help the doctor. Dr Sharma immediately fell at the feet of the sergeant begging for his life. And then, the most amazing thing happened. As if on cue, Somu stopped barking and began to whine and follow his master’s example. He, too, crawled up to the sergeant on his stomach, as if in total supplication, while the rest of us watched open-mouthed.

The scene was so surreally funny that even the Japanese sergeant chuckled. That was enough for the rest of us to start laughing, violent paroxysms that were induced by a combination of fear and relief, and the comic despair of it all. The pudgy soldier exclaimed, “Yoroshi!” (“Good!”) He appeared to have softened a little. He eyed us and then reached out and ruffled my hair, saying, “Kodomo tachi! Yoroshi!” (“Young fellow! Good!”). The tension evaporated and the mood lightened. But we relaxed a little too soon. It appeared that the sergeant was a little temperamental.

“We want borrow car! You give?” asked the sergeant in broken English. When Dr Sharma responded “Sorry, no petrol”, the sergeant flew into a rage. “No petrol, no petrol, all die! Boom!” he snapped, all the while gesticulating wildly. When two canisters of petrol were miraculously produced by someone in our group, he calmed down. “We borrow car and give receipt. We return car in Muar,” he promised. “Ok! Arigato gozaimasu!” (“Ok! Thank you”) he barked, and all his men piled into the car and drove off into the night.

In the weeks and months that followed, we began the long and laborious journey to rebuild our lives. Many things had changed forever and even I, a young lad, could see that. The “Tuans” were not the almighty forces they had made themselves out to be. The superiority with which they had conducted themselves now seemed laughable. Many white folks escaped violence at the hands of the Japanese by the skin of their teeth, helped by the kindness of their local staff. My father, for instance, could have refused help to his British boss, but he chose to be gracious.

Shortly after the Japanese Occupation of Southeast Asia officially ended on 12 September 1945, my father and his family made their way back to Kuala Lumpur where he completed his education. He worked for a short while as a stenographer in the attorney-general’s office there before moving to Singapore to train as a teacher, where he met and married my mother in 1958. My father turns 90 in December this year.

Note

This 1927 silent Chinese movie is the first feature film to be made in Singapore and Malaya. Jocelyn Lau traces its genesis with researcher Toh Hun Ping and translation editor Lucien Low.

In the mid-1920s, Shen Huaqiang (沈华强), a poor “new immigrant” from China, arrives in Nanyang¹ to seek his fortune. He ends up in Johor, staying with his wealthy Peranakan (Straits Chinese) relatives who help him assimilate to life in Nanyang.

Compared with his impoverished counterparts in mainland China, Huaqiang has far better opportunities in his adopted country. Shortly after, Huaqiang’s uncle, Zhang Tianxi (张天锡), finds him a job in Singapore, where over time Huaqiang rises up the ranks through sheer hard work and perseverance.

Meanwhile, Zhang’s elder child, a teenage daughter named Huizhen (慧贞), becomes increasingly aware of her own identity and interests through attending school in Singapore, and grows more confident of herself, and of what she wants in life. Thus, when her father’s English-speaking Peranakan clerk Gan Fusheng  (甘福胜) begins to show an interest in her, she senses trouble and rejects him. Huizhen realises that Fusheng is not to be trusted as he indulges in drinking, gambling and womanising. She falls for the hardworking and honest Huaqiang instead.

Unfortunately for Huizhen, her ­parents think that Fusheng is a pleasant and well-educated person as he speaks and dresses well. Unbeknownst to Huizhen, her parents promise her hand to him in marriage.

The 1927 silent Chinese film Xin Ke (新客; The Immigrant) is believed to be the very first full-length feature film to have been made in Singapore and Malaya. Xin Ke, like most of the silent films produced globally between 1891 and the late 1920s, has likely not survived the passage of time due to the highly ephemeral nature of the material used back then.² The items that are still extant today are the film’s Chinese intertitles (see text box overleaf), two synopses, a film still – all published in the local newspaper Sin Kuo Min Press (新国民日报)³ in 1926 – and photos of the film crew and cast.

Xin Ke was produced by Liu Beijin (刘贝锦; 1902–59; also known as Low Poey Kim), a prominent Singapore-born entrepreneur. His father, Liu Zhuhou ­­ (刘筑侯), was an immigrant from Huyang, Yongchun, in Fujian province, who became one of the wealthiest rubber plantation owners in Muar, Malaya. Liu Beijin was also related to Liu Kang (刘抗; 1911–2004), the pioneer Singaporean artist (Liu Beijin’s and Liu Kang’s fathers were cousins).

A Film Pioneer

Liu Beijin led a very comfortable lifestyle while growing up. He was born in Singapore, and when he was about four months old, his family moved to Muar. When he was six, his father took him back to China, where he lived until he was 16 before returning to Nanyang.⁴ Back in Muar, Liu took over his father’s rubber plantation business when the latter died at the relatively young age of 56.

Liu was an amiable, well-educated and socially conscious person. He was also a polyglot – fluent in six languages, including English, Mandarin and Malay – and enjoyed dabbling in both business and the arts, particularly motion pictures.

Zhang Tianxi, an entrepreneur who runs a rubber plantation business. 经营树胶种植之实业家，张天锡。 Zhang’s daughter, Huizhen, is lively and intelligent; it’s a pity she has been influenced by local habits. 张女慧贞，性活泼而聪颖，惜染土人习气。 Huizhen: Daddy, what are you looking at? 慧贞：爸爸！你看什么？ Tianxi: A letter from your cousin: he will be arriving in a few days. 天锡：你表兄寄来的信，他说这几日就要到了。 Huizhen: Which cousin? 慧贞：哪个表兄？ Tianxi: The one from China. 天锡：在中国的。 Huizhen: Oh! That new immigrant. 慧贞：哦！那个新客。 The causeway connecting Singapore and Johore. 新加坡接连柔佛之大铁桥。 Tianxi’s rubber shop. 天锡树胶店。 Tianxi’s English-speaking clerk, Gan Fusheng. Gan is a rogue who indulges in alcohol and women. He looks conscientious and dresses well. 天锡之英文书记甘福胜，性无赖，嗜酒色，貌似纯谨，颇善修饰。 Fusheng: Apa? (Malay: “What?”) 福胜：阿把？（马来语「什么？」） Fusheng: Tak tahu. (Malay: “Don’t know.”) 福胜：特兜。（马来语「不知」） Tianxi’s Chinese-speaking clerk, Kang Ziming. 天锡之中文书记，康子明。 Tianxi guides Huaqiang on a tour of the rubber plantation. 天锡导华强参观橡胶园。 Rubber trees, planted months earlier. 种后数月的橡树。 Rubber-tapping. 割胶。 Gathering latex. 收集胶液。 Adding vinegar to the latex.6 胶液，先注以醋。 Smoking the rubber. 继薰以烟。 Machine-rolling rubber into sheets. They are now ready to be sold. 轧以机，成胶片，即可贩卖。 Rubber is Nanyang’s largest produce. 树胶，为南洋出产大宗。 Tianxi’s son, Xinmin. 天锡之子，新民。 Huizhen: Little Brother, a new immigrant has arrived at our house. 慧贞：弟弟，我们家里，来了一个新客。 Xinmin: What’s so special about the new immigrant? 新民：新客有什么稀罕？ Huizhen: Others have said that they are slow-witted! Stupid! They don’t know anything! 慧贞：人家说，新客是呆！笨！什么都不知道！ Xinmin: Really? Let me go take a look at him! 新民：当真吗？让我看看！ Tianxi’s wife, Yu. 天锡之妻余氏。 The next day. 翌日。 Nanyang’s famous fruit, durian, has an odour. People who like it find it tasty. Those who dislike it are repulsed by the smell. 榴梿，南洋著名之果品，有异味，嗜者甘如饴，恶者畏其臭。 Tianxi: New immigrants don’t know how to appreciate it. You have tried it. How does it taste to you? 天锡：新客，是不会吃的，你尝了，味道如何？ Xinmin: Aiyoh! 新民：啊哟！ Fusheng likes Huizhen, and arrives at the Zhang’s residence. 福胜属意慧贞，时至张宅探望。 Fusheng: Sister Hui, I got permission from the Sultan of Johore yesterday to visit the palace today. Do you want to come with me? 福胜：慧妹，我昨日得马来王之许可，今天到皇宫游览，你愿意同去吗？ Huaqiang: What? They allow visits to the palace? 华强：什么！王宫也可以去得的？ Tianxi: Yes, do you want to come along? 天锡：可以的，你要去吗？ Yu: Huizhen, why don’t you go with your cousin? 余氏：慧贞，你和表兄一起去罢。 The Sultan of Johore’s palace.7 柔佛马来王之宫殿。 Returning in high spirits, and passing by Fusheng’s house on the way. 乘兴而归，道经福胜之家。 Fusheng’s mother, Zhao. 福胜之母赵氏。 Zhao: It’s late. Come have lunch with us. 赵氏：时已不早，请吃 午饭去。 Huizhen: Thank you, maybe next time. 慧贞：谢谢！下次再来。 Zhao: Miss Huizhen, lunch is already prepared. Why don’t you oblige us? 赵氏：慧姑，饭已经预备好了，还不赏面吗？ The Babas8 enter the house. 进屋时之哇哇! Babas like sour and spicy food. Curry is a delicacy. 哇哇味嗜酸辣，加厘尤为上品。 The Babas are eating. 吃饭时之哇哇！ The Babas laugh at Huaqiang when he eats. 华强食饭，哇哇笑之。 Tianxi: Don’t laugh at him. They don’t eat with bare hands in China. If you go to China, they will laugh at you instead. 天锡：你莫笑他，在国内没有用手拿饭的，倘然你到国内去，人家多要笑你哩。

Between December 1925 and February 1926, when he was about 24 years old, Liu travelled to China to observe the educational, industrial and film industries of the country. Filmmaking was entering a golden age in Shanghai, with local filmmakers taking inspiration from their Chinese roots and the volatile social and political circumstances of the time.

The booming Shanghainese film industry encouraged Liu to establish the Anglo-Chinese Film Company (中西影片公司) in Singapore to distribute Shanghai-made films. Not content with playing a passive role in the film business, Liu co-founded Nanyang Liu Beijin Independent Film Production Company (南洋刘贝锦自制影片公司; also known as Nanyang Low Poey Kim Motion Picture Co.) at 12 Pekin Street. His intention was to produce Chinese films with a “Nanyang” flavour and showcase local talents. Liu’s start-up became the first local film production company in Singapore and Malaya, and one of the earliest in Southeast Asia.⁹

Liu did not establish the film production company for profit; his intention was to use film – then a relatively new medium – as a means “to instill knowledge among the masses, improve the well being of society [and] promote the prestige of the nation and propagation of culture”.¹⁰ To him, the art form, being “the essence of all arts”, had unprecedented potential to “transform” people.

Through his films, Liu wanted to showcase life as it was in Singapore and Malaya to the Chinese in China. Liu also held the view that many among his intended audience in Nanyang – the overseas Chinese – had adopted the unsavoury habits of their countrymen back home, including opium smoking, drinking, gambling and patronising prostitutes, and feudal Chinese customs such as arranged marriages for girls.

A Failed First Screening

Xin Ke was produced between September 1926 and the beginning of 1927. Liu rented a bungalow at 58 Meyer Road, in the affluent beachfront neighbourhood of Tanjong Katong in the east of Singapore, to serve as a studio and film-processing base. The film was shot entirely in Singapore and Malaya, including the bungalow and locations such as the Botanic Gardens, the Causeway and the Istana Besar in Johor.

The first screening of Xin Ke, which was meant to be a preview but was organised more like a premiere,¹¹ was held at the Victoria Theatre on the evening of ­ 4 March 1927. The highly publicised event was free.¹² To celebrate the occasion, the organisers published Xin Ke Special Issue, an illustrated souvenir booklet containing information about the Nanyang Liu Beijin Independent Film Production Company and the cast as well as photographs.¹³

The theatre was reportedly opened to viewers at 7.30 pm and filled to capa­city – all “500 seats upstairs and downstairs”¹⁴ – by 8 pm, leaving “people without seats”. The film started at 8.30 pm. The audience, comprising mostly women, also included cast members, the film crew and invited guests from the media.¹⁵ One of the invited guests, a journalist with the Nanyang Siang Pau newspaper, reported on the event:

“I was able to watch the preview of the first production of Xin Ke by Nanyang Liu Beijin Independent Film Production Company, which opened at Victoria Theatre yesterday at 8 o’clock in the evening. I was honoured to be given a ticket to the film by the company itself. I arrived at the theatre at 7 pm. The workers were still working in the theatre, but there was already a steady stream of people and vehicles at the door. More than 100 viewers had already gathered, and it was crowded. They were only allowed to enter the theatre at 7.30 pm, and by 8 pm, all the seats were already occupied. There were 500 seats upstairs and downstairs, but there were still people without seats. The Singapore General Chamber of Commerce and the various newspaper offices all sent representatives to the event.”¹⁶

However, even before the screening began, an announcement was made, causing much confusion among the audience and throwing the evening’s proceedings into disarray. Apparently, the film authorities had censored the last three reels of Xin Ke, leaving only the first six to be shown. An attendee recounted the incident:¹⁷

“… someone from the company came announcing in Mandarin: ‘There are only six reels. The government didn’t pass seven, eight and nine.’ The loud and hurried tone caused quite a stir among the guests, but the announcer simply stopped at that and left. Not long after that, another representative came out and explained, in Cantonese, that for some special reasons, the three reels were banned by the censorship board and thus could not be screened together with the rest. It was then that the audience understood the reason for the delay.”¹⁸

For silent films produced in the 1920s, one standard reel of 1,000 ft (305 m) of 35 mm film ran at approximately 16 frames per second, which meant that each reel was around 15 minutes long. The exclusion of three entire reels caused about 45 minutes of the film to be excised. Not surprisingly, the removal of the film’s conclusion affected the storyline and cast a pall on the viewing experience.

The reasons for the censorship were not released, but it is believed that the Official Censor objected to the graphic scenes of violence and fighting in the last three reels. Unfortunately, all nine reels of film no longer exist. Liu had planned to shoot a revised conclusion but it is unclear whether this eventually materialised.

Subsequent Screenings

Shortly after that failed first screening, it is likely that Xin Ke continued to be shown in cinemas in Singapore, but so far there has been no documentary evidence to support this. More certain is the fact that screenings took place in Kuala Lumpur, Melaka and Hong Kong.

In Kuala Lumpur, the film was screened on 27 May 1927 at the Empire Theatre (also known as Yi Jing Garden Cinema), but attendance was dismal. The film similarly met with little enthusiasm in Melaka. Over in Hong Kong, the film was shown at Kau Yue Fong Theatre under a different title, Tangshan Lai Ke (唐山来客), from 29 April to 2 May 1927. It is not clear if the film was also censored or whether it garnered more favourable reviews.

In May 1927, Liu was forced by personal circumstances to close his film production company for good. He had planned to produce a second feature, A Difficult Time (行不得也哥哥), but shooting was never completed. Liu tried to revive his film production business in 1929, but he would not make another motion picture again.

This essay is abridged from the recently published book, Xin Ke: The Story of Singapore and Malaya’s First Feature Film (新客: 新马首部长篇电影的故事) (2019), written by Yvonne Ng Uhde and Jan Uhde, edited by Toh Hun Ping, Lucien Low and Jocelyn Lau, and published by Kucinta Books. It retails for $28 at major bookshops and is also available for reference at the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library and for loan at selected public libraries (Call nos.: RSING 791.43095957 UHD and SING 791.43095957 UHD).

Notes

Paintings by John Turnbull Thomson, poems in Jawi script, an early 19th-century map of Asia and a Russian traveller’s tale of Singapore are some of the paper artefacts featured in the National Library’s latest exhibition, “On Paper: Singapore Before 1867”.

J.T. Thomson’s Paintings

John Turnbull Thomson is best known for his role as Government Surveyor of the Straits Settlements as well as his design and engineering work on several key early buildings in Singapore. What is less well known is that Thomson, a self-trained artist, also made invaluable contributions to the pictorial documentation of Singapore through his paintings.

The four vibrant watercolour works featured here, which exemplify Thomson’s unique artistic approach and style, vividly capture the state of Singapore’s built landscape in the mid-1840s. They also reflect the cultural diversity of the communities and people who made their home on the island.

The 1847 painting, “Chinese Temple to the Queen of Heaven”, depicts the Thian Hock Keng temple on Telok Ayer Street. The temple began as a shrine erected around 1820–21 by Chinese immigrants from Fujian province, China, and was dedicated to Mazu, Mother of the Heavenly Sages and patron goddess of sailors. The Chinese migrants would make offerings at the shrine in gratitude for their safe passages to and from China.

Between 1839 and 1842, the shrine was transformed into Thian Hock Keng temple after massive construction works. The project was spearheaded by Chinese merchant Tan Tock Seng, who also funded a large portion of the construction costs. Many of the builders and artisans were brought in directly from Fujian.

Today, Thian Hock Keng remains the most important temple of Singapore’s Hokkien community. Thomson’s painting shows its facade, which has largely been preserved. One feature that stands out is the seafront, which is visible in the painting’s foreground. Telok Ayer Street used to run along the coast, before land reclamation pushed the road inland.

Thomson’s painting titled “Muslim Mosque in Campong Glam” (1846) is of special historical interest as it depicts the Masjid Sultan (Sultan Mosque) in Kampong Glam before it was replaced with the present structure we are familiar with. The earlier iteration of Sultan Mosque was a single-storey brick building that featured a tiered pyramidal roof commonly found in traditional Southeast Asian religious architecture.

It was built between 1824 and 1826 by Sultan Husain, whom Stamford Raffles had installed as the Sultan of Johor in order for the 1819 Treaty of Friendship and Alliance to be signed (the treaty allowed the British East India Company, or EIC, to set up a trading post on Singapore). Land for the mosque was allocated by Raffles, who also contributed 3,000 Spanish dollars on behalf of the EIC towards its construction.

This building served the Muslim community in Singapore for more than a hundred years before it was torn down in 1932 to make way for a new mosque, designed by the architectural firm Swan and Maclaren in the Indo-Saracenic style, complete with onion domes and minarets. Masjid Sultan is a well-known landmark in Kampong Glam today.

Another of Thomson’s paintings, “Hindoo Pagoda and (Chulia) Mosque” (1846), depicts two religious buildings along South Bridge Road. On the left is Sri Mariamman Temple, the oldest Hindu temple in Singapore. The structure shown in the painting, with its three-tiered gopuram (pyramidal entrance tower), was constructed in 1844 – by craftsmen and former Indian convicts from Madras – replacing a wood-and-attap structure built in 1827 by the Tamil pioneer Naraina Pillai.

From its inception, the Sri Mariamman Temple has played a key role in Singapore’s Hindu community, serving not only as a place of worship, but also as a refuge for newly arrived immigrants from India seeking accommodation and employment. While the temple compound has remained largely unchanged since the 1880s, the tower was replaced in 1925 with the elaborately decorated five-tiered structure that stands today.

On the right of the painting is Jamae Mosque (Masjid Jamae), which was completed in 1833 to replace the original wood-and-attap mosque built by the Chulia (Tamil Muslim) community, led by Anser Saib, in the late 1820s. Today, the mosque’s distinctive twin minarets continue to be a landmark on South Bridge Road, but the lush greenery surrounding the temple and its spacious frontage seen in Thomson’s painting have given way to shophouses and a busy vehicular thoroughfare.

Thomson’s works also include sweeping views of Singapore from various vantage points. In his 1846 painting, titled “Singapore Town from the Government Hill Looking Southeast”, the viewer is positioned on what is now Fort Canning Hill, overlooking the Singapore River. Densely built shophouses and godowns can be seen along the river at Boat Quay, while a number of expansive bungalows, occupied mostly by Europeans, are found by the seafront north of the river.

In his first book, Some Glimpses into Life in the Far East, published in 1864, Thomson remarked on the stark contrast between the two areas:

“The European part of the town was studded with handsome mansions and villas of the merchants and officials. The Chinese part of the town was compactly built upon, and resounded with busy traffic. In the Chinese quarter fires frequently broke out, spreading devastation into hundreds of families.”¹

Taken together, Thomson’s sketches and paintings serve as an invaluable visual record of 19th-century Singapore. As a surveyor and engineer by training, Thomson was able to bring both a critical eye and a different perspective to his art.

– Georgina Wong

Syair Dagang Berjual Beli and Syair Potong Gaji

Syair Dagang Berjual Beli (On Trading and Selling) and Syair Potong Gaji (On Wage Cuts) are two early 19th-century Malay narratives in the form of the syair (rhymed poem), written by Tuan Simi in Singapore. Tuan Simi was a scribe and translator who had worked for several British personalities, including Stamford Raffles.

These two syair occupy a special place in the Malay literary tradition, bearing testimony to the early years of colonial Singapore, then administered by the British East India Company (EIC; sometimes referred to as the Company). Both syair, composed in the 1830s, may be described as poems of protest, as they give voice to the author’s grievances against the EIC’s practices that affected the lives and wellbeing of local traders and workers.

Syair Dagang Berjual Beli, comprising 56 stanzas, contains Tuan Simi’s observations on trade practices in Singapore. The poem cautions readers to be wary of the unfair practices that were being imposed by the new “Kompeni” (Company) rulers and their network of Chinese and Indian middlemen. Tuan Simi’s realistic style of narration, together with his views on the competing traders who were depriving the indigenous traders of their livelihood, offer the reader an intimate, unvarnished insight into inter-ethnic tensions in colonial society:

“Akan halnya kita Bugis dan Melayu
Harapkan orang putih juga selalu
Hukum bicaranya kelihatan terlalu
Mulut disuap pantat disumbu”²

“Such is the state of us Bugis and Malays
When to the white man we surrender our fates
Of the rulings – it’s true what they say
The hand that gives is that which confiscates”³

The second work, Syair Potong Gaji, comprising 38 stanzas, narrates the misery and frustrations of coolies from Bencoolen (Bengkulu) who worked for the EIC in Singapore. Tuan Simi notes that the coolies suffered economic hardship because of senior managers who neglected their welfare. Profit maximisation had become the EIC’s mantra, to the extent that the work of three men often had to be carried out by one man alone:

“Perasaan hati sangatlah rendah
Kebajikan dibuat tidak berfaedah
Beberapa lamanya bekerja sudah
Harganya dinilai setimbang ludah”⁴

“We feel very much undignified
Our services rendered unrecognized
Alas a long time we had labored
Like the weight of a spit, it was valued”

These narratives, dissenting in tone and spirit, were naturally considered subversive by the British authorities. They disappeared from local circulation and were eventually forgotten. The two syair were only rediscovered in 1986 by Muhammad Haji Salleh, a Malaysian scholar, when he was conducting research on Malay manuscripts at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris.

The handwritten Jawi texts of the two syair were discovered alongside another, titled Syair Tenku Perabu di Negeri Singapura (On Tenku Perabu of Singapore), which narrates a scandalous affair that allegedly took place in the house of Sultan Husain, between the Sultan’s consort Tenku Perabu and his private secretary, Abdul Kadir. The three syair were compiled, transliterated and published in an anthology, Syair Tantangan Singapura Abad Kesembilan Belas (19th-century Singapore Syair of Remonstrance), by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, Malaysia, in 1994.

Today, these texts are part of Singapore’s history and literary heritage. They provide insights into the early days of modern Singapore, and thus deserve greater recognition and appreciation.

– Dr Azhar Ibrahim

Map of Asia, Used by A.R. Falck in London in 1824

Printed by John Carey in London in the early 19th century, this map of Asia was used during the final negotiations of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty in London between December 1823 and March 1824. It was acquired in 1909 as part of the collection of Anton Reinhard Falck (1777–1843) and is preserved today in the Nationaal Archief in the Netherlands.

A pencil line can be seen running through the Singapore and Melaka straits on the map. This was drawn to illustrate a proposal made by Falck, the Dutch chief negotiator and diplomat. Falck proposed using the line to divide the region into British and Dutch spheres of influence. The story of how this pencil line came about was recounted by Otto Willem Hora Siccama, a relative of Falck’s, who had accompanied the elderly Falck to London as an aide and personal assistant during these negotiations.⁶

From Falck’s memoirs, as well as Dutch foreign ministry papers relating to the negotiations, it transpires that the scheme to carve up the Southeast Asian region – into a Dutch sphere of influence in the archipelago, and a British one on the Malay Peninsula and the mainland – came from Falck, who had earlier discussed the proposal with the Dutch king, William I. An experienced negotiator and diplomat, Falck hoped to resolve a package of outstanding trade and colonial issues with British Foreign Secretary Lord George Canning by streamlining their patchwork of possessions in Southeast Asia.

After the two spheres of influence were marked out, the British were persuaded to trade off their possessions and concessions on and around the island of Sumatra, namely Bencoolen (Bengkulu) and Billiton (Belitung), which were now in the Dutch sphere of influence, and exchange these for the settlements of Melaka and Singapore on the peninsula.

As a result, certain arrangements in the Lampongs (southern Sumatra) were affected, as was Stamford Raffles’ treaty with Aceh, which effectively became null and void. The spheres, moreover, were to be exclusive to each party, and so the 1824 Anglo-Dutch Treaty implicitly forbade the commerce of independent polities like Aceh with traders from other states in Europe or the Americas, significantly pepper traders from the United States.

In reaching this arrangement, the Dutch would drop their objections to the British occupation of Singapore as well as the presence of the British East India Company’s trading post there, a concession that was captured in Article 12 of the final Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 17 March 1824. The treaty provided the geographical framework for Anglo-Dutch relations for the remainder of the 19th century and arguably beyond, and today forms the foundation of the borders between Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.

There are two additional observations worth mentioning in the present context. First, in using the Singapore and Melaka straits as a notional dividing line between the exclusive Dutch and British spheres of influence, the Johor-Riau Sultanate would be split in two. The possessions on the peninsula would fall into the British sphere, while the islands excluding Singapore would go to the Dutch. In this way, Sultan Abdul Rahman, who at the time was based in Daik on the island of Lingga, formally lost control of lands on the peninsula, including Singapore. Moreover, Temenggung Abdul Rahman, who resided in Singapore, lost some of the people and lands that were part of his traditional domain, which included Karimun, Batam, Bulan and other islands to the south.

The second observation concerns the course of the pencil line. This starts off at the northwestern coast of Sumatra, around the northern tip of the island, then runs down through the Straits of Melaka past Karimun through the Durian Strait. Thereafter, it turns eastward between Bintan and Lingga before heading through the Karimata Sea towards Borneo. The line makes a slight southerly bend and finally stops off the Borneo coast near Sukadana.

Therefore, according to this initial proposal captured by Falck’s pencil line, Batam, Bulan (together with the islands south thereof) as well as Bintan were originally slated to fall into the British sphere. That would have included the court of the Bugis Yang di-Pertuan Muda, Raja Ja’afar, but not Sultan Abdul Rahman’s court at Daik on Lingga. The termination of the line off the coast of Borneo, moreover, would assume significance in the later decades of the 19th century, when Raja James Brooke established himself on the island that is today the Malaysian state of Sarawak.

– Assoc Prof Peter Borschberg

A Russian Traveller’s Tale of Singapore

Travel literature on Singapore proliferated during the 19th century in tandem with the spread of colonialism and the expansion of trade and missionary activities in the East. As Singapore was a natural transit point along the East-West route, it was a popular port-of-call for many travellers. From diplomatic and scientific expeditionary parties to sightseers lured to the Far East by the opening of the Suez Canal, visitors recorded their impressions of the island in writing, and sometimes through illustrations.

Although these travelogues were naturally coloured by the subjective views and values of their authors, they offer a wealth of information on early Singapore.⁷

A 19th-century memoir, Ocherki Perom i Karandashom iz Krugosvetnogo Plavaniya v 1857, 1858, 1859 i 1860 godakh (Sketches in Pen and Pencil from a Trip Around the World in the Years 1857, 1858, 1859 and 1860), describes the voyage of the Russian naval clipper Plastun from 1857 to 1860. It stands out among European travel narratives on Singapore as it presents a rare account of early Russia-Singapore relations. Written and illustrated by the doctor on board, Aleksei Vysheslavtsev (1831–88), the memoir also contains some of the earliest views of Singapore executed by a Russian artist.

The book traces the ship’s journey from the Russian port town of Kronstadt to the Atlantic islands, around the Cape of Good Hope, across the Indian Ocean, through the Sunda Strait to Singapore, and then on to Hong Kong, Canton, Formosa, Manchuria and the Russian Pacific Far East, where it inspected the territories that Russia had recently acquired with the signing of the Russian-Chinese Treaty of Aigun in 1858. From there, the ship sailed to Japan, where the Russians spent a year negotiating a treaty with the Japanese, before heading home. Unfortunately, the ship came to an untimely end when it was destroyed by an explosion on board. By a stroke of providence, the author lived to tell his tale as he had transferred to another vessel before disaster struck.⁸

The Plastun arrived in Singapore in July 1858, where it anchored for a week. In a chapter titled “The Malay Sea”, the author writes a brief history of British colonisation of Singapore and a description of the settlement’s economy, trade and town layout, which was characterised by separate quarters for Europeans, Chinese, Indians and Malays.

A keen observer, Vysheslavtsev detailed various aspects of life in Singapore: street peddlers, Chinese houseboats on the river, an Indian theatre performance, Indian jugglers, and the manners and appearance of the Chinese, Indian and Malay inhabitants. He took an excursion to some of Singapore’s offshore islands and paid a visit to Hoo Ah Kay (1816–80; commonly known as Whampoa), who later became the first Vice Consul to Russia in 1864. Vysheslavtsev’s account was accompanied by four illustrations: the Singapore harbour, Indian jugglers, Chinese inhabitants and two Chinese men beside a bridge.⁹

Parts of Vysheslavtsev’s travel account first appeared in the magazine Russky Vestnik from 1858 to 1860 under the title “Letters from Clipper Plastun”. The complete work was published by the Russian Naval Ministry in 1862 with 27 lithographed plates redrawn from the author’s original sketches. In response to warm reviews by the Russian audience, who praised it for its fine drawings and literary style, a second edition was issued in 1867 by a major St Petersburg commercial publisher, Mauritius Wolf, with 23 illustrated plates.¹⁰

Although Vysheslavtsev’s travelogue achieved critical and popular acclaim in its time, it was invariably compared to and perhaps even overshadowed by Russian novelist Ivan Goncharov’s (1812–91) The Voyage of the Frigate Pallada (1858). Published four years earlier, Goncharov’s book traces a similar journey to the East – with the Russian mission to Japan under Admiral Putyatin (1803–83) from 1852 to 1854. It includes a vivid description of his visit to Singapore in 1853, which has been studied and translated into Chinese, and partially into English. In contrast, there are no known translations in any language of the Singapore portion of Vysheslavtsev’s account.¹¹

By and large, Russia has occupied a marginal place in the scholarship on European expansion in Southeast Asia. However, this is by no means an indication of its lack of commercial ambitions or scientific interest.

Russia actively sought to protect its shipping routes and extend its influence in the region from the early 19th century. From the 1850s, Russian vessels started using Singapore as a provisioning and coaling station. In the 1870s, the Russian anthropologist Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay embarked on a scientific expedition to study the Orang Asli in the Malay Peninsula and his findings were published in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society in Singapore.¹² In 1881, K.A. Skalkovsky published an account of a Russian trade mission and survey of the Pacific, which included Singapore.¹³

However, there still remains a paucity of information on relations between Singapore and Russia until a Russian consulate was formally established in Singapore in 1890 and began submitting regular consular reports on bilateral affairs. Given the dearth of literature, the writings of Vysheslavtsev and Goncharov are valuable for their historical research on the interactions between Tsarist Russia and British-controlled Singapore in the longue durée of Russia-Singapore relations.¹⁴

– Gracie Lee

Notes

Celebrated by Hindus of South Indian origins, the Golu festival is a lively melange of colourful dolls, womenhood and spirituality. Anasuya Soundararajan shares with us its origins.

Every year, dolls in various forms and sizes take centre stage in many Hindu households for nine nights and 10 days. Known as Bommai Golu in Tamil (meaning “Court of Dolls”), this celebration is an integral part of the Navaratri festival. Navaratri, meaning “nine nights” (nava is “nine” and ratri is “nights”), honours the Hindu goddess Shakti in all her different manifestations.

Navaratri Golu is believed to have been celebrated since the existence of the Vijayanagar kingdom in 14th-century India, and was especially popular with the royal families of Thanjavur and Pudukkottai in the state of Tamil Nadu.¹ Today, Golu is mainly observed by South Indians from the states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka.

Interviews with older Singaporeans reveal that this quaint custom of displaying dolls in the home has been a tradition for a number of Indian families in Singapore since the 1940s, or perhaps even before that.² Over the years, there seems to be more families and even younger Singaporeans embracing the practice. Besides the homes, Golu is also observed in Hindu temples in Singapore.

The Legend of Navaratri

Golu is celebrated annually as part of the Navaratri festival. The festival begins on the day of a new moon, between September and October, in the Hindu month of Purattasi.

Shakti, one of the goddesses in the Hindu pantheon, takes many forms and names.³ Her most important manifestation is Durga, the warrior goddess who vanquished the evil buffalo demon Mahishasura.⁴

According to the legend of Navaratri, Mahishasura waged war in heaven, imprisoned all the gods and wreaked havoc on earth. In retaliation, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, the three gods making up the Hindu Trimurti, enlisted the help of their respective consorts, the goddesses Saraswati, Lakshmi and Parvati.⁵ From the combined strength of the goddesses emerged Goddess Durga – full of voracious strength and power, and riding a tiger with a trident in her hand.⁶ In the ensuing battle between Durga and Mahishasura, all the other gods and goddesses spiritually imbued Durga with their divine powers and weapons.

At midnight, on the 10th and final day of the ferocious battle, Durga finally managed to pierce her trident into the buffalo demon’s chest and behead him. However, the gods and goddesses, whose powers were completely spent after aiding Durga, were turned into statues. Devotees honour and remember the selfless acts of these gods and goddesses, which are symbolised by the dolls displayed during Golu. Navaratri ultimately commemorates the victory of Durga over Mahishasura – the triumph of good over evil.⁷

Celebrating Golu

Mrs Lalitha Vaidyanathan, a musician and retired teacher, remembers her family’s Golu celebrations in their home from the early 1940s. Neighbours and friends would visit their home at 16 Kirk Terrace during the festival, which she describes as a happy gathering of people who came to worship and enjoy the festive spirit as well as indulge in her mother’s delectable home-cooked vegetarian meals. Mrs Vaidyanathan has since continued the tradition in her own home after she married in 1980.⁸

The Navaratri Golu was an integral part of the yearly festivities at my home when I was growing up. Every year during the Navaratri period, my mother would arrange the dolls and figurines on a platform, and perform a nightly puja (prayer). Relatives and friends would be invited to partake in the festivities, resulting in a lively confluence of colourful dolls, animated guests, devotional songs and delicious food during the nine nights. As little children, my brother and I eagerly looked forward to this celebration each year. My mother, who is 80 this year, has been putting up Golu displays since 1972 and continues to do so until today.

Families would first clear their furniture to create space in the living room for the makeshift steps, which are erected a few days before Navaratri. The dolls are exhibited on odd-numbered steps – three, five, seven or nine – as odd numbers are considered auspicious in Hindu custom and tradition. The steps are then covered with a white piece of cloth, usually a cotton veshti.⁹

Traditionally, families would create the steps from whatever furniture is found in the home, such as low tables, shelves, benches, stools, metal trunks or even empty boxes.¹⁰ The number of steps varies in each home, depending on the available space and the number of dolls to be displayed.

The very first Golu display in our home in 1972 was a simple three-step contraption fashioned out of a coffee table and stools of varying heights. The following year, my father constructed a more elaborate nine-step platform by using metal brackets fastened with nuts and bolts and custom-made wooden planks. These days, it is much easier to set up a display as ready-made Golu steps can be bought in stores in India and Singapore. These lightweight and foldable steps are made of plastic and come in sets of three, five, seven or nine.¹¹

As Golu dolls represent a divine presence in the home, great care goes into their upkeep and storage when not in use. A few days before the start of the festival, my mother would retrieve the dolls from the storeroom and begin arranging them on the steps. This is a task traditionally performed by women.

While most of the dolls represent gods and goddesses, some are based on popular saints in Hindusm while others reflect scenes from everyday life. The dolls can also depict characters in Hindu mythology, royal processions and weddings. In addition to the wide assortment of dolls, miniature kitchenware, little trinkets and anything ornamental and colourful can be part of the Golu display.¹²

Golu dolls are traditionally handed down from one generation to the next; some families may even possess dolls that are more than a hundred years old.¹³ In addition, people may buy new dolls every year, thus adding to their collection over the years and passing these on to their descendants. Mrs Vaidyanathan proudly tells me that most of the dolls featured in her Golu display were given to her by her late mother. These are family heirlooms that hold precious memories for her and reflect the rich history of the Golu tradition. She has also been buying new dolls over the years, and now has an impressive collection.¹⁴

There is no hard and fast rule for arranging the dolls. Those that depict deities are usually placed on the topmost tiers: dolls representing Rama, Lakshmana, Sita, Krishna, Radha, Siva, Vishnu, Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati occupy this favoured position. The middle steps are dedicated to saints and religious figures, while dolls in the lower steps portray vignettes such as a wedding scene, a religious procession or scenes of village life. Toys and miniature kitchenware are displayed on the lowest steps. These include Thanjavur dolls, which are traditional bobble-head dolls made of paper and clay or plaster of Paris.¹⁵

Traditionally, only dolls of Hindu deities and saints, and scenes depicting everyday life in India were featured during Golu. However, in many modern homes today, dolls from all over the world – Thailand, the Philippines and also from Britain and Europe – are sometimes included in the Golu display.

The inclusion of non-traditional dolls and themes make Golu even more interesting today. Families showcase their creativity and artistry in the display and try to come up with special themes each year.¹⁶ Some homes prefer to stick to tradition, while others present the dolls in more elaborate and extravagant settings. Stories from Indian epics, such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata, come alive on the steps, while more creative families may recreate a miniature park or zoo complete with trees, plants and animals.¹⁷ The displays are often decorated with twinkling fairy lights to create a festive atmosphere.

The dolls are usually made of clay, stone or wood and mainly produced in the villages of southern Indian states such as Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. A smaller number of such dolls are made in the northern state of Rajasthan and the eastern state of Kolkata.¹⁸ My parents bought our dolls during their travels to India in the 1970s and ’80s, as it was difficult to find Golu dolls in Singapore at the time. Today, one can find a wide assortment of dolls in shops in Little India during the Navaratri season, with prices ranging from $20 for the simpler ones to $150 for the more elaborate creations.

Rituals and Customs

Besides commemorating the victory of good over evil, Navaratri is also a cele­bration of womanhood where feminity is elevated to a highly auspicious state.¹⁹ Three forms of the Goddess Shakti are worshipped during the festival. The first three nights of Navaratri are devoted to Goddess Durga when devotees pray for the eradication of evil in thought and deed, and for the strength to overcome this struggle; the next three nights honour Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, fortune and prosperity; and the last three nights celebrate Saraswati, the goddess of know­ledge, wisdom and the arts.²⁰ Families observing Navaratri seek the divine grace of the three goddesses, invoking their blessings for good health, happiness and prosperity.

On the new moon day of the month of Purattasi, a kalasam (silver or brass pot) is placed on the middle step of the tiered platform. The pot of water, which represents Goddess Shakti, has mango leaves covering its opening and is topped with a coconut and ringed by a garland of rose and jasmine blooms. Worshippers invoke Goddess Shakti with prayer offerings of flowers, oil lamps, camphor and incense.²¹

The first set of dolls to adorn the display is a pair of wooden ones symbo­lising a man and a woman, known as the marapachi dolls. Usually placed on the upper steps of the display, these dolls represent Venkateshwara, an avatar of Lord Vishnu, and his consort Mahalakshmi. Dressed in the traditional silk veshti and saree,²² they also depict the union of a husband and wife, and symbolise prosperity and fertility.²³ If there is a girl in the family, it is customary for the mother to gift a new set of marapachi dolls to her daughter when she gets married so that she can start her own Golu tradition.²⁴

All the dolls are ritually worshipped during the celebrations.²⁵ In the evenings, a lamp is lit in front of the display, and bhajans (devotional songs) are sung in praise of Goddess Shakti. Golu is also a social event where relatives and friends are invited to view the doll display and participate in the prayers and celebrations. Visitors are then served light refreshments and prasadam (offerings of food).

When the guests leave, each woman is presented with a thamboolam – a tray containing auspicious items like kungumam (red powder), turmeric, betel leaves, flowers, fruits, sweets and other gifts. The belief is that whatever you give will be returned to you by the goddesses – as represented by the dolls – that are residing in your home for the nine nights.²⁶ In some homes, a kanya puja²⁷ (young girls’ prayer) is performed on any chosen night of Navaratri. During the prayer, nine prepubescent girls are revered and offered gifts such as clothing, fruits and sweets.²⁸

On the 10th and final day, or Vijayadasami, the marapachi dolls are made to lie down and symbolically put to sleep, to mark the end of the year’s Navaratri Golu.²⁹ All the dolls are then removed from the display, carefully wrapped in cloth and stored in boxes, ready to be taken out again for the following year’s Golu.

Mrs Vijayam Balakrishna Sharma, a renowned Carnatic musician who has celebrated the festival for many years, recalls in her oral history interview with the National Archives that a special drink made of yogurt and spices is offered to Goddess Durga on the last day to quench the deity’s thirst and revive her after the tiring battle with the buffalo demon.³⁰

It is believed that once you have begun the tradition of celebrating Golu, you cannot arbitrarily stop celebrating it. Unless there is an event such as a death in the family, the display must continue every year uninterrupted. Even then, the tradition cannot come to a complete stop, but takes place on a smaller scale, perhaps with just a few dolls and only a single step.³¹

Keeping the Tradition Alive

Mrs Lalitha Vaidyanathan and my mother, Mrs Komalavalee Soundararajan, who was interviewed by the National Archives in 1991, believe that the doll display, daily prayers and gathering of people usher a divine presence into the home and bring with them a sense of fulfilment and happiness. Having practised the tradition for decades in Singapore, they hope to see women of the younger generation celebrate this festival in their own homes.³²

Darshna Mahadevan, who is in her late 20s, has been putting up a Golu display in her home since she married two years ago. She is determined to continue the tradition started by her mother and grandmother, and wishes that more young people would celebrate Golu in Singapore.³³

Golu not only showcases the rich culture and customs of Hindus, but it is also a way for young people to be introduced to the various deities and their significance in Hinduism.³⁴ Navaratri is also an occasion to seek divine blessings and spiritual fulfilment. On a social level, Golu provides the chance to meet and engage in community fellowship, offering an opportunity for everyone to discover more about Hindu mythology and religious practices.³⁵

Hinamatsuri: Japan’s Doll Festival Interestingly, the Hindu Golu festival mirrors a tradition in Japanese society that also centres on dolls. Hinamatsuri, also known as “Dolls Day” or “Girls Day”, is celebrated annually in Japan on 3 March when families pray for the happiness and wellbeing of their young daughters (usually up to age 10). Hinamatsuri originates from an ancient custom called hina nagashi, in which hina dolls made of straw are placed in a boat and sent down a river that eventually empties into the sea. This act has become a symbolic gesture for warding off bad luck. During the festival, the figurines of royal personages are arranged on as many as seven hinadan, or platforms, in Japanese households. Covered with red fabric, each step displays a set of decorative dolls called hina ningyo, representing members of the imperial court. The size of the dolls and the number of tiers vary, but usually there are five to seven tiers. The topmost tier features dolls representing the two most important members of the Japanese imperial family – the emperor and the empress. The second tier carries three court ladies and the third supports five male musicians. The fourth tier features two ministers, while the fifth holds three samurais who serve as protectors of the emperor and the empress. On the sixth and seventh tiers are displayed a variety of miniature furniture, utensils and carriages. The hina ningyo dolls are made of wood and decorated in traditional court dress of the Heian period (794–1185). Similar to the Hindu Golu practice, these Japanese dolls are handed down from one generation to the next, or bought by a girl’s parents or grandparents for her first Hinamatsuri. On the day of the festival, girls wake up early and put on their best kimono, eat hishimochi (diamond-shaped rice cakes) and drink shirozake, a type of sake made from fermented rice. The emphasis on girls during Hinamatsuri is similar to the Navaratri Golu’s focus on women and womenhood. Japanese families start preparing for this festival around mid-February, and put away the dolls on the day after Hinamatsuri. There is a superstitious belief that families who delay keeping away the dolls will have trouble marrying off their daughters when the time comes. References Krishnan, J. (2016, October 4). A cultural connection: Japanese Hina Matsuri and Navratri Kolu. India America Today. Retrieved from India America Today website. Nair, P. (1997, October 3). ­Nine nights of excitement honour the Goddess Devi. The Straits Times, p. 17. Retrieved from NewspaperSG.

Notes

Ronnie Tan recounts the hardship suffered by civilians as a result of the British government’s fight against the communists during the Malayan Emergency.

China-Japan relations, which are marked by a long history of animosity that goes back several centuries, took a turn for the worse from the 1870s onwards. During the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45), many overseas Chinese who were still loyal to their motherland, including those in Malaya and Singapore, supported China’s war efforts against Japan. Thus, when the Japanese Imperial Army invaded Malaya in December 1941, one of the first communities they targeted was the Chinese. To escape torture and persecution, many Chinese fled to the fringes of the Malayan jungles where they set up makeshift homes.

The Malayan Communist Party (MCP) had been a formidable element even before the Japanese invasion. It had been set up a decade earlier in 1930 with the primary aim of overthrowing British colonial rule. When Malaya fell to the Japanese and the British were booted out, the MCP went underground and formed the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA).

The MPAJA, which comprised mainly ethnic Chinese fighters, found a ready source of new recruits among the Chinese squatters in the Malayan jungles to fight the guerrilla war against the Japanese and their sympathisers. In a quid pro quo arrangement, the MPAJA turned to the British for military training and supplies, provided the communists with the resources they needed to defeat a common enemy.

Following Japan’s surrender in 1945 and the return of the British in the form of the British Military Administration,¹ the MPAJA was formally dissolved in December that year. For the MCP, however, the problem had not gone away; the British had reinstated themselves as colonial rulers and the communists would once again resume its armed struggle.

As hostilities between the MCP and the British grew more intense, on 16 June 1948, three European planters in Perak were brutally murdered by communist insurgents. Two days later, on 18 June, a state of emergency was declared in Malaya and subsequently in Singapore on 24 June. The Malayan Emergency would last for the next 12 years, ending only on 31 July 1960.

One of the first things the MCP did was to revive the MPAJA, rebranding it as the Malayan People’s Anti-British Army (MPABA), and subsequently renaming it the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) in 1949.²

To secure access to supplies of ammunition and food, the communists began intimidating, torturing and even murdering civilians who refused to support their anti-colonial activities. By October 1948, the MNLA had killed 223 civilians, most of whom were Chinese, “for their reluctance to support the revolution”.³ To counter the communist threat, the British put in place the Briggs Plan, a strategy aimed at defeating the communist insurgency.⁴

The Briggs Plan

One of the chief aims of the Briggs Plan was to deprive the communist guerrillas of sources of support and sustenance. The plan was described as “a policy of starving [the communists] out, coupled with ceaseless pressure by security forces operating in small patrols… intended to deprive the MRLA [Malayan Races Liberation Army]⁵ everywhere in the country of every necessity of life from food to clothes, and every article for their military aims from printing materials to parts for radio receiving and transmitting sets, weapons and ammunition”.⁶

Shopkeepers in operational areas for instance were not allowed to store excess quantities of canned and raw food that were designated as “restricted”. In addition, they had to keep detailed records of all customers and their purchases, and not sell any kind of food item unless the customer produced an identity card. Restricted items included “all types of food, paper, printing materials and instruments, typewriters, every drug and medicine, lint bandages and other items; torch batteries, canvas cloth, and any clothing made from cloth as well as cloth itself”.⁷ Even cigarettes and beverages like coffee and tea were restricted. The regulations were so stringent that in some instances, people were not allowed to stock more than a week’s supply of rice.

Relocation to “New Villages”

To further ensure that the communist guerrillas were isolated from the main population, the predominantly Chinese villagers living in squatters in the jungle fringes were relocated to settlements called “New Villages”. These villagers were “strategically sited with an eye to defence, protected with barbed wire and guarded by a detachmentof Special Constables, until they were each able to form their own Home Guard units”.⁸

Each relocation was shrouded in secrecy and the villagers were not notified beforehand. According to British military historian Edgar O’Ballance, “secrecy was essential to success, otherwise the squatters would have disappeared into the jungle in mass flight”.⁹ The operation usually began before dawn, with troops and police surrounding the squatter area. The villagers were then moved en masse, along with their belongings and livestock, using one truck per family to the New Villages scattered throughout Malaya.¹⁰

Most villagers were caught unawares and “stupefied by shock” at the sudden move, protesting that they should not be forced to relocate as they had never helped the communists. Some tried delay tactics, for example, by claiming that they had to round up their livestock in the jungle, or that they were ill.¹¹ Most were persuaded to move only when told that the plots of land in the New Villages would be allotted on a first-come-first-served basis.¹² By mid-1951, around 400,000 villagers had been resettled in such New Villages. The reality was, however, far from rosy for these new settlers.

Once settled in the New Villages, people who entered or left the villages were subject to stringent checks by armed security personnel guarding the gates around the clock. This was to ensure that the villagers could not secretly send supplies to the guerrilla fighters. Plantation workers, whom the communists targeted, also had to be home by 3 pm daily and were not allowed to leave the village from 5 pm until 6 am the next day.

These measures had an adverse impact on the livelihoods of the people. Apart from having to wait in long queues to be searched by security officers, those who worked outside the villages were prohibited from taking their mid-day meals with their families. In fact, all they could have on them was a bottle of water; tea or coffee was not allowed to be brought out of the villages “for these would be welcome drinks to the enemy”.¹³ Those in the trucking business, too, were affected as the regulations meant that lorries could only stop in certain areas, which in turn impeded the supply of food to small villages.

Despite the best efforts of the British to cut off the supply of food and other essential items, the communists still managed to infiltrate and obtain supplies from people residing in these New Villages. The presence of armed security personnel at the gates and the severe consequences that awaited those caught red-handed were not enough of a deterrence. Communist sympathisers and those coerced into aiding the communists “invested extraordinary tricks to smuggle rice, often to relations in the jungle”¹⁴ (see textbox below).

There were also reported cases of crimes committed by the security forces against the villagers. Under the pretence of checking for possible smuggling attempts, some police officers were known to have outraged the modesty of young girls by strip-searching them.¹⁵

The forced resettlement in the New Villages also led to a sense of social dislocation among its inhabitants. Livelihoods were disrupted, and many lost lucrative sources of income and had to find alternative means of survival. In some cases, people who were separated from their families and loved ones suffered from anxiety, despair and hopelessness.

Punishment for Abetting the Communists

Severe penalties were meted out to those caught for not divulging information on communist activities to the authorities or for helping the communists, with the punishments often disproportionate to the actual crimes committed.

One particular incident stands out. Collective punishment was meted out to some 20,000 people living in Tanjung Malim, a town in Perak, which already had a reputation for being a hotbed of communist activity since the start of the Emergency. This took place after an incident on 25 March 1952 when a group of civilian officers, accompanied by security personnel, were ambushed on their way to repair a nearby waterworks that communist guerrillas had sabotaged. Twelve civilian personnel were slain and eight wounded in the ambush.

Since the villagers were not forthcoming with information about the ­perpetrators, General Gerald Templer, who was then General Officer Comman­ding and Britain’s High Commissioner to Malaya, stripped the town of its status as a district capital and imposed a 22-hour curfew every day for a week. Shops were permitted to open only two hours a day, people were banned from leaving town, schools were closed, bus services were ceased and rice rations were reduced.

To provide a secure way for villagers to supply information, the authorities handed out questionnaires to the head of each household. The completed forms were then brought to Kuala Lumpur in sealed boxes and reviewed by Templer himself in the presence of the town’s representatives. The exercise resulted in the ambush and killing of the communist guerrilla leader in Tanjung Malim, the detention of 30 Chinese shopkeepers and several arrests. Only then were curfew and restrictions lifted in the town.

Even harsher punishments were exercised on at least six other occasions in different parts of Malaya:

• A 70-year-old man, Chong Ngi, was given a five-year prison sentence for providing communist guerillas in an unidentified part of Malaya with food and rice.¹⁶
• Hee Sun, a resident of Kulai Besar New Village in southern Johor, was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for being found in possession of one kati and one tahil (478 g) of rice intended for the guerrillas.¹⁷
• A 44-year-old rubber tapper, Wong Pan Sing, from Gombak, Selangor, was sentenced to 10 years’ jail for possessing five gantangs (14.7 kg) of uncooked rice, sugar, cigarettes and Chinese medicine.¹⁸
• Phang Seng, a farmer from Kelapa Sawit New Village in southern Johor, was jailed three years for being caught at the village gate without a valid permit for carrying six tahils (227 g) of rice on him. When apprehended, he could not give a satisfactory explanation as to why he had uncooked rice with him because he claimed “he could not speak a word of Malay”.¹⁹

Coercion from Communists

Many people living in the New Villages were caught between a rock and a hard place. Apart from mounting pressure from the police, they were also not entirely safe from the clutches of the communist insurgents. As mentioned earlier, those who were either neutral or opposed the goals of the communists were coerced into aiding them or faced reprisals – even death – if they did not cooperate. For instance, a villager in the northern state of Kedah was killed by three communist guerillas for refusing to buy them food.²⁰

Hee Sun of Kulai Besar New Village, for example, had the misfortune of encounte­ring communist guerrillas while working and was warned, in no uncertain terms, that he would be killed if he did not supply them with food. He did not report this incident to the police because he feared for his life and that of his family members as the communists knew where he lived.

As for Wong Pan Sing from Gombak, Selangor, he was threatened with death if he did not use the $18 that three communist guerillas gave him to buy “uncooked rice, sugar, cigarettes and Chinese medicine”.²¹ Such hapless civilians had little choice in these situations because the communists usually made good their threats of reprisal.

Even children and youths were not spared. On 20 June 1951, it was reported that an 11-year-old Malay boy from Bentong in Pahang was forced off his bicycle at gunpoint, “tied and blindfolded and forced some distance into the lallang” by communist insurgents and persuaded to work for them as a courier and supplier.²² The boy refused and managed to escape from his captors a short while later.

In another instance, on 26 October 1954, 17-year-old rubber tapper named Low Hoon “pleaded guilty to attempting to supply one tin of milk beverage, two bottles of curry powder, dried chillies and salt fish” to the communists along Cheras Road in Kuala Lumpur.²³ Low claimed that the communists had threatened to kill him if he did not comply with their demands to buy the items with the money they had forced upon him.

In order to implement an admi­nistration system in the New Villages, government officials urged the villagers to stand for election as council members. However, it was difficult to persuade the villagers to do so as they were “terrified that the communists would see their election as an anti-communist stand and would kill them the moment they left the village”.²⁴ Even when the elections went ahead and people were voted in as council members, some were so terrified for their lives that they “bolted for Singapore and safety”.²⁵

Such fears were not unfounded, for in the town of Yong Peng in central Johor, two such councillors had their arms hacked off. The murder of another village committee member in Kebun Bahru, northern Johor, also underscored the probability of severe reprisals awaiting those whom the communists deemed to be pro-British.

Lost in Translation

Language barriers between the local authorities and villagers also proved problematic, as illustrated by the aforementioned trial of Phang Seng. In court, Phang pleaded ignorance and claimed he did not know that a permit was needed to bring rice out of the village to cook in the pig sty where he worked. The rice was intended for two of his four sick, young children. He also claimed that he could not give a satisfactory answer to the Malay guard on duty because he could neither speak nor understand Malay.

The language barrier became a subject of ridicule when British officials in Malaya tried to communicate with the grassroots. After communist insurgents descended on Kulai New Village in sou­thern Johor, taking away 20 shotguns as well as ammunition from the local guards without a fight, Templer unleashed his fury on the villagers by describing them as “just a bunch of cowards”, even berating them with the use of an expletive. Unfortunately, the translator totally missed the point and reportedly said, “His Excellency says that your fathers and mothers were not married when you were born.”²⁶

Templer, apparently ignorant that his words were lost in translation, continued to use the same expletive to describe himself, saying that he could be even more ruthless than the communist guerrillas. Once again, the message was lost in translation when the translator announced to all present that Templer himself admitted that his parents were also not married to each other when he was born!²⁷

Post-Templer Era

By the time Templer left Malaya and returned to the United Kingdom in 1954, the authorities had already gained the upper hand in the fight against the communists. It was clear that the Briggs Plan had proven effective in cutting off supplies to the communists; it not only hurt them physically and militarily, but their morale was also severely affected. The dire lack of food caused some communist insurgents to surrender to the authorities, while dozens more perished in the jungles. Many guerrillas were killed while foraging for food near the New Villages. In one instance, two dead communists in their mid-30s were found with “three wild jungle yams and a green papaya – all inedible”.²⁸ It was reported that some guerrillas even resorted to killing monkeys for meat in order to survive.

How to Outsmart the Authorities These are some of the ingenious methods that people in the New Villages used to smuggle out essentials to the insurgents: The bicycle frame was a favourite tool for smuggling supplies. In a village near Kluang in central Johor, two soldiers who dismantled a bicycle belonging to a nine-year-old boy found rice and antibiotic pills hidden in the bicycle frame. The boy drew suspicion because he had been learning to ride a bicycle, “or pretending to, for the past week”, and was always doing so by riding beyond the security checkpoints.29 In another village, an old woman walked past through the checkpoint daily, carrying two buckets of pig swill that hung from a bamboo pole balanced on her shoulders. When the suspicious police officers “put their hands daily into the filthy mess”, they found nothing.30  A month later the officers realised they had been hoodwinked when they found rice hidden in the hollow bamboo pole instead. Medicine and other items were concealed under raw pork as the Malay constables would not touch these receptacles. Night soil carriers squirrelled items out of the villages by stashing them in false bottoms of their buckets, while rubber tappers did the same by hiding rice at the bottoms of pails containing latex. Women pretended to be preg­nant and wore big brassieres where rice could be stashed, while men strapped bags of rice to the inside of their thighs and wore loose pants. Those living near the fences surrounding the New Villages often placed supplies near the fences where the communist guerrillas could easily retrieve.31 Planks were sometimes placed across the fences or holes were made in the fences so that the guerrillas could enter and leave the villages easily.

The communists’ efforts to grow their own vegetables in the jungle also proved futile: the neat rows of vegetables were easily spotted from the air by British Royal Air Force (RAF) aircraft and bombed. After realising their mistake, the communists began planting vegetables in a haphazard manner like the Orang Asli, but the RAF still managed to find and destroy these agricultural plots.³²

Chin Peng, the MCP leader during the Malayan Emergency, admitted just as much in his memoir when he said that the Briggs Plan was the MCP’s Achilles heel.³³ Recovered communist documents revealed that the “shortage of food in various places prevented us [the communists] from concentrating large numbers of troops and launching large-scale operations” and that “they must guard against quarrelling over the table and stealing each other’s food. People with huge appetites should be admonished and taught to develop self-restraint”.³⁴

Even the restriction to beverages such as coffee affected some: a note written by a communist insurgent lamented that he had not drunk coffee for over two months, and when he finally had the good fortune to find some, there was not enough sugar to sweeten the treat.

As for the civilians who suffered through it all, the psychological impact stayed with them long after the Emergency officially ended on 31 July 1960. They remained suspicious of strangers and had difficulty accepting help from outsiders. Even after the barbed wire surrounding the New Villages had been dismantled and outsiders started moving in, there were frequent altercations between former residents and the newcomers.³⁵

On a positive note, the communists never regained their foothold in Malaya. They were put on the defensive and eventually retreated to the Thai-Malaysian border. On 2 December 1989, the MCP agreed to “disband and end its struggle against the Malaysian forces” by signing a peace accord with the Malaysian and Thai governments in Hat Yai, southern Thailand.³⁶

Notes

The oldest known photographs of Singapore were taken by Europeans in the early 1840s. Janice Loo charts the rise of commercial photography in the former British colony.

Photography is the “method of recording the image of an object through the action of light on a light-sensitive material”.¹ Derived from the Greek words photos (“light”) and graphein (“to draw”), photography was invented by combining the age-old principles of the camera obscura (“dark room” in Latin²) and the discovery in the 1700s that certain chemicals turned dark when exposed to light.

However, it was not until 1839 that the daguerreotype, the earliest practical method of making permanent images with a camera, was introduced. Named after its French inventor Louis Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, the daguerreotype spread across the world, and soon found its way to Singapore.

A Marvellous Invention

The earliest known description of photography here is found in the Hikayat ­Abdullah (Stories of Abdullah), the memoir of Malay scholar Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir (better known as Munsyi Abdullah³), first published in 1849 by the Mission Press in Singapore.

In the Hikayat, Abdullah recounted how Reverend Benjamin Keasberry, a Protestant missionary whom he was teaching the Malay language to, had shown him “an ingenious device, a copper sheet about a foot long by a little over six inches wide, on which was a picture or imprint of the whole Settlement of Singapore in detail […] exactly reproduced”.⁴ What Abdullah saw was a daguerreotype, an image captured on a polished silver-coated copper plate.

“Sir, what is this marvel and who made it?”, the astonished Munsyi had asked.⁵

“This is the new invention of the white man,” replied the Reverend. “There is a doctor⁶ on board an American warship here who has with him an apparatus for making these pictures. I cannot explain it to you for I have never seen one before. But the doctor has promised me that he will show me how it works next Monday.”

Abdullah’s meeting with the said doctor took place around 1841 – just two years after the daguerreotype was invented and introduced to the world.⁷

Although it was Abdullah’s first encounter­ with the technology, he was able to describe in impressive detail the equipment and the manner in which it should be used: how the doctor buffed and sensitised the plate, and then exposed it in the camera to create a latent image that subsequently emerged in a waft of mercury fumes. The resulting photograph of Singapore town taken from Government Hill (now Fort Canning) was, in Abdullah’s words, “without deviation even by so much as the breadth of a hair”.⁸

Indeed, the daguerreotype brought a degree of sharpness and realism to picture-making that was unparalleled in its time. However, the technology had its drawbacks: the black and white image would become laterally reversed and, as it was composed of tiny particles deposited on the plate’s polished silver surface, it could be marred by the slightest touch. Due to its metal base, the daguerreotype was also highly susceptible to tarnishing. To protect the image, daguerreotypes were typically displayed under glass within a frame or case.

The Oldest View

Since the fate of the images mentioned in the Hikayat Abdullah remains unknown, the daguerreotypes produced in 1844 by Alphonse-Eugène-Jules Itier, a French customs inspector, are considered the oldest surviving photographic views of Singapore.

Itier travelled through this part of the world en route to China as part of a French trade mission led by French ambassador Théodose de Lagrené.⁹ The delegation arrived in Singapore on 3 July 1844, staying here for two weeks before departing on 16 July. The sights and sounds of the bustling port left a deep impression on Itier, who took pictures to show the remarkable development of the port settlement within a mere two decades of its founding in 1819.

One of the four known daguerreotypes of Singapore taken by Itier currently resides in the collection of the National Museum of Singapore. It shows a panoramic view of shophouses and godowns lining the banks of the Singapore River at Boat Quay, and was likely to have been taken on 4 July when Itier visited the residence of then governor, William J. Butterworth, on Government Hill.

Due to its age, the picture appears hazy and dull. But what might it have looked like in its time?

Held in hand and viewed up close, the townscape would have appeared ethereal as it lay suspended on a mirror-like surface, whose reflective properties lent visual depth to the scene. The image also alternated between positive and negative depending on the angle in which it was held and observed. Recalling Munsyi’s reaction, one could imagine how these unique characteristics would have enthralled many a first-time viewer. The other three daguerreotypes by Itier feature the entrance to Thian Hock Keng temple on Telok Ayer Street, a horse cart on a street, and two Malay carriage handlers.¹⁰

Itier was a keen amateur scientist and daguerreotypist. His skills became invaluable during the long voyage as a confidential aspect of the mission was the exploration of possible locations for setting up a French port in the China Sea. The delegation stayed at the London Hotel whose proprietor, Gaston Dutronquoy, ran a photographic studio offering daguerreotype portraits in the same building.¹¹

A Hotelier’s Sideline

Dutronquoy first advertised himself as a painter in March 1839. Two months later, he opened the London Hotel at Commercial Square (now Raffles Place). In 1841, the hotel shifted to the former residence of architect and Superintendent of Public Works, George D. Coleman.¹² It was here that the enterprising Dutronquoy started the town’s first commercial photographic studio in 1843, offering daguerreotype portraits at $10 each, or $15 for two persons in one picture.

To attract prospective customers, Dutronquoy proclaimed his mastery of the daguerreotype process, asserting that his portraits would be “taken in the astonishing short space of two minutes […] free from all blemish and […] in every respect perfect likenesses”.¹³ Given that the subjects had to hold absolutely still to obtain a sharp picture, a two-minute exposure (painfully slow by today’s instant imaging standards) was a selling point at the time.¹⁴

In the absence of surviving works, it is difficult to say how successful Dutronquoy was as a daguerreotypist. There was not enough demand to maintain a fulltime photography business, yet Dutronquoy was sufficiently motivated to keep up with advances in the technology, and made efforts to grow his clientele.

For example, an advertisement in The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser on 16 January 1845 announced that Dutronquoy had acquired a new “D’arguerothipe Press”, and portraits could be made at the studio for $6 each, or if one prefers, in the comfort of one’s own home for double that price. The London Hotel, along with his photographic studio, had by then relocated to the corner of High Street and the Esplanade (Padang), with the studio open only in the mornings between 8.30 and 10 am.¹⁵

Another advertisement in The Straits Times three years later publicised the avai­lability of “likenesses, in colours, taken in four seconds”.¹⁶ This is interesting for two reasons. First, it indicates that Dutronquoy practised hand-colouring, which involved the careful application of pigments to a monochrome portrait for aesthetic purposes and to simulate real-life colours. Like many of his counterparts in the West, Dutronquoy might have enhanced the jewellery pieces worn by the subjects with gold-coloured paint, added a touch of pink to their cheeks, or tinted the background with blue to mimic the colour of the sky.¹⁷

Second, the ability to make a portrait in just four seconds indicated that Dutronquoy kept abreast with advances in photographic technology that tackled the problem of lengthy exposures. Interested customers who wanted their portraits taken had to give him a day’s notice and were instructed to wear dark clothing. His studio was only open for two hours in the morning: between 7.30 and 9.30 am from Monday to Saturday.

Dutronquoy’s daguerreotype business was likely not a money spinner and he fared better in hospitality, opening a branch of the London Hotel at New Harbour (today’s Keppel Harbour) in 1851. Alas, Singapore’s first resident commercial photographer met with a mysterious, if tragic, end. During a prospecting trip to the Malay Peninsula in the mid-1850s, Dutronquoy was feared murdered after he suddenly disappeared.¹⁸ A 1858 notice in The Straits Times announced the insolvency of his estate.

After Dutronquoy’s departure, Singapore was not to see another resident professional photographer for some time. The 1850s was a period of sporadic photographic activity owing to the fleeting presence of travelling daguerreotypists who passed through Singapore: H. Husband in 1853, C. Duban in 1854, Saurman in 1855, and J. Newman from 1856 to 1857. They stayed only as long as there were enough customers before moving on to other places.

The limited commercial success of daguerreotypes in Singapore could be attributed to several factors: the small consumer population, the relative high price of commissioning a portrait and the capital required to run a professional studio. Human vanity also came into play; for those who were used to seeing a more flattering version of themselves rendered in painting, the stark precision of the daguerreotype could be an unpleasant reality check.

A New Method

The daguerreotype was eventually superseded by the wet-plate collodion process, which produced a negative image on a glass plate. Invented in 1851 by the British amateur photographer Frederick Scott Archer, the wet-plate process was the most popular photographic method from the mid-1850s to the 1880s.

The process of creating a wet-plate negative called for ample preparation time, skill and speed. The photographer had to work swiftly to coat, expose and develop the glass plate while the light-sensitive collodion on its surface was still damp (hence the “wet-plate” process).¹⁹ This meant that a photographer working away from the comfort of his studio would have had to carry all the materials and equipment necessary to set up a portable darkroom on location.

Although cumbersome, the wet-plate technique was inexpensive and, once mastered, could create detailed images of a consistent quality. Moreover, unlike the single irreproducible image created by the daguerreotype process, an unlimited number of positive prints could be produced from a single wet-plate negative – setting the stage for the rise of commercial photography. These prints were typically made on albumen paper.

Edward A. Edgerton, a former lawyer from America, is credited for introducing the wet-plate technique to Singapore in 1858. Edgerton first advertised his services in February that year, providing photographs on glass or paper by a process “never before introduced here, being much superior to the reversed and mirror-like metallic plates of the daguerreotype”.²⁰

Initially operating from his residence on Stamford Road, Edgerton entered into a partnership with a certain Alfeld, and the studio relocated across the road to 3 Armenian Street by May 1858. A year later, however, Edgerton moved on to run another studio at Commercial Square. By 1861, he was no longer in the trade and had become editor of the Singapore Review and Monthly Magazine. Unfortunately, as far as we know, none of Edgerton’s works have survived the passage of time.

Pioneering Commercial Studios

Other photographers soon set up shop in the wake of Edgerton’s short-lived venture. These include Thomas Heritage, formerly from London, who came to Singapore after completing work in Penang. He opened his studio at 3 Queen Street on 20 August 1860, and is listed in the Straits Directory of 1861 and 1862; French photographer O. Regnier, whose studio at Hotel l’Esperance is listed in the Straits Directory of 1862; and Lee Yuk at Teluk (Telok) Ayer Street, who is also listed in the 1862 Straits Directory. These studios operated in Singapore for a short period only.

For a brief time, Singapore was also home to John Thomson, who later gained recognition for his extensive photographic documentation of China in the 1870s, and is feted as one of the most accomplished travel photographers of the 19th century. A Scotsman, Thomson came to Singapore in June 1862 to join his older brother, William, who had arrived about two years prior and ran a ship chandlery business on Battery Road.²¹

The two formed a partnership called Thomson Brothers. With Singapore as his base, the younger Thomson spent conside­rable time travelling in the region, building up an impressive portfolio of images of Siam (Thailand), Cambodia and Vietnam.²² He moved to Hong Kong in 1868 to begin the ambitious project of photographing China, while William continued the business in Singapore until 1870.²³

One of John Thomson’s significant works on Singapore is the four-part pano­rama of the Singapore River that he produced in the early 1860s. Using the wet-plate collodion method, Thomson created four separate exposures that could be aligned to form a single panorama, with each retaining its appeal as an individual photograph.

A contemporary of the Thomson Brothers was Sachtler & Co., which was most likely established in 1863 and came to dominate commercial photography in Singapore for a decade.²⁴ The identity of Sachtler & Co.’s original proprietor remains a mystery. By July 1864, however, the business had been taken over by a German, August Sachtler, in partnership with Kristen Feilberg. Sachtler was a tele­grapher by profession, but his exposure to photography during an assignment to Japan in 1860 led to a change in career.²⁵

Located on High Street near the Court House, Sachtler & Co. offered photography services with the images mounted on a wide variety of the latest frames and albums imported from England, as well as a ready selection of Singapore-made photographs. In 1865, a branch studio, Sachtler & Feilberg (a partnership between Hermann Sachtler, presumably August’s brother, and Feilberg), opened in Penang. Feilberg went on to start his own practice in 1867, and Hermann Sachtler returned to Singapore by 1869.

That year, it was reported that Hermann had met with a bad accident while taking photographs from the roof of the French Roman Catholic Church (present-day Cathedral of the Good Shepherd). While adjusting his camera, Hermann lost his footing and fell from a height of some 20 to 25 metres, fracturing his skull and arm, yet miraculously surviving the ordeal.

In 1871, Sachtler & Co. relocated to Battery Road before returning to High Street in 1874, reopening as Sachtler’s Photographic Rooms at No. 88, opposite the Hotel d’Europe. By then, the firm was supplying an extensive range of photographs taken around the region, including “views and types of Borneo, Java, Sumatra, Saigon, Siam, Burmah, and Straits Settlements”.²⁶ Sachtler & Co. ceased business shortly after; in June 1874, its stock of negatives and equipment was acquired by another photographic studio, Carter & Co.

Held in the National Library of Singapore is an album by Sachtler & Co. titled Views and Types of Singapore, 1863, containing 40 albumen prints that make up the oldest photographic material in the library’s collection. As the title indicates, the album features picturesque scenes (“views”) of the settlement and portraits of its diverse inhabitants (ethnographic “types”).

Bearing in mind the inconvenience of the wet-plate process, it is no surprise that photographs during this period tended to be produced in the studio, or if taken outdoors, were of stationary or posed subjects. Portraiture, landscape and architectural views were the norm, as the album amply demonstrates. These were the stock-in-trade of European photographic studios, and served as a visual representation of the exotic “Far East” for a predominantly Western audience.

The Boom and Bust Years

The closure of Sachtler & Co. left a gap that another photographic studio, G.R. Lambert & Co., rose to fill and in fact surpass. G.R. Lambert & Co. was established at ­ 1 High Street by Gustave Richard Lambert from Dresden, Germany, on 10 April 1867. The first mention of the studio was in an advertisement placed in The Singapore Daily Times­ on 11 April 1867.²⁷ The next reference to Lambert’s presence in Singapore appeared in the 19 May 1877 edition of The Straits Times, announcing his return from Europe, and the opening of his new studio at 30 Orchard Road.²⁸

It is difficult to assess Lambert’s own photographic contributions due to the scarcity of surviving works from the period when he managed the firm in the late 1870s until the mid-1880s, coupled with his sporadic presence in Singapore. Lambert travelled to Bangkok in late 1879 to expand the firm’s photographic collection, returning in February 1880. It was during this visit that G.R. Lambert & Co. was appointed the official photographer to the King of Siam. With Lambert away for much of 1881 and 1882, the firm was overseen by its managing partner, J.C. Van Es. By 1882, G.R. Lambert & Co. had also become the appointed official photographer to the Sultan of Johor. The studio shifted to 430 Orchard Road by 1883.

Lambert returned to Europe by 1887, leaving the business in the capable hands of a fellow German, Alexander Koch, who joined the firm as an assistant in 1884, and was made partner in 1886. The studio moved to 186 Orchard Road in 1886. Koch would prove to be the man behind the stellar rise of the firm. Over the next two decades, G.R. Lambert & Co. expanded its business, opening another office at Gresham House on Battery Road in 1893, and at various times maintained overseas branches in Sumatra, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur.

This period coincided with the widespread adoption of the gelatin dry-plate process – invented in 1871 – which enhanced photographic production. Unlike the wet-plate technique, the glass plate could now be coated, dried and stored for later use, and need not be developed immediately upon exposure. Compared to collodion, the gelatin emulsion was more sensitive, opening up the possibility of capturing motion. Such technical breakthroughs helped expand the photographer’s repertoire to include fast-moving human figures and objects. Imagine a photograph of a street scene where pedestrians and traffic no longer disappear into a wispy blur, but have a distinct presence, their movements frozen in time.

The advent of mass travel at the turn of the 19th century brought new opportunities. G.R. Lambert & Co. successfully capitalised on the lucrative demand for photographs – and later on, picture postcards – as tourist souvenirs. In 1897, the firm produced the first picture postcard of Singapore, and by 1908 reportedly sold “about a quarter of a million cards a year”.²⁹

By the early 20th century, G.R. Lambert & Co. was lauded as “the leading photographic artists of Singapore [with] a high reputation for artistic portraiture”. It had “one of the finest collections [of landscapes] in the East, comprising about three thousand subjects, relating to Siam, Singapore, Borneo, Malaya, and China”.³⁰

Although advances in photography made G.R. Lambert & Co. the most prolific studio, technology also came to place the tools of a photographer’s trade in the hands of laymen. The growth of amateur photography chipped away at the firm’s revenue, and perhaps as a sign of things to come, G.R. Lambert & Co. gave up its studio at 186 Orchard Road in 1902, downsizing to smaller premises at 3A Orchard Road. Koch retired in 1905, and the firm’s fortunes continued to decline in subsequent years, with its picture postcard trade disrupted by the outbreak of World War I (1914–18) in Europe. Ironically, it was the popularity of picture postcards that had canniba­­lised its sale of photographic prints in the first place.

Unable to keep up with the times, G.R. Lambert & Co. eventually closed in 1918. It was by no means the only one to suffer as other European firms in Singapore also succumbed to the vagaries of the changing business environment.

An Incomplete Picture

The story thus far constitutes a series of snapshots, a quick survey of the milestones and key movers in the history of photography in 19th-century Singapore. It is, unsurprisingly, a narrative dominated by European photographic studios, which left documentary evidence of their presence, and whose extensive work make up some of the most valuable early visual records of the settlement.

As these European studios faded from the scene in the early 20th century, it paved the way for Asian players to take their place in the interwar period. To give a sense of the new situation, the census of 1921 counted 171 photographers comprising 109 Chinese, 52 “others” (Japanese, Siamese, Sinhalese, Arabs or Asiatic Jews), six Malays, three Indians and only one European.

Some research has been done and continue to be carried out on Asian photographers, for example, the Lee Brothers Studio, a family-owned photographic enterprise run by Lee King Yan and Lee Poh Yan, at the corner of Hill Street and Loke Yew Street. There are many more photographers whose names await to be uncovered and their stories told.

Notes

The five-footway – the equivalent to the modern-day pavement or sidewalk – was a hotly contested space in colonial Singapore. Fiona Lim relives its colourful history.

“Crowded, bustling, layered, constantly shifting, and seemingly messy, these sites and activities possess an order and hierarchy often visible and comprehensible only to their participants, thereby escaping common understanding and appreciation.”¹

– Hou & Chalana, 2016

It may seem surprising in today’s context but the concept of a “messy urbanism” as defined by academics Jeffrey Hou and Manish Chalana is an apt description of Singapore in the 19th and mid-20th centuries. Such a phenomenon was played out in the five-footways of the town’s dense Asian quarters, including Chinatown, Little India and Kampong Glam.

Before Singapore’s skyline was dominated by soaring skyscrapers and high-rise flats, the most common architectural type was the shophouse. A typical shophouse unit comprises a ground-floor shop and a residential area above that extends outwards, thus increasing the living space above and creating a sheltered walkway below called the “five-footway”, between the street and entrance to the shophouse. Today, depending on the area, shophouses are highly sought after as commercial spaces or as private residences; they rarely function as both shop and house.

Early paintings of Singapore by Government Surveyor of the Straits Settlements John Turnbull Thomson – such as “Singapore Town from the Government Hill Looking Southeast” (1846) and “View of Chinatown from Pearl’s Hill” (1847) – feature contiguous rows of shophouses in the town centre. But what was not depicted in these early paintings, often framed from a considerable distance, was the bustling local life unfolding within the five-footways.

The Mandatory Five-footway

The five-footway (historically, often used interchangeably with the term “verandah”) was originally mandated by Stamford Raffles as part of his 1822 Town Plan of Singapore – also known as the Jackson Plan. Article 18 of the plan states: “Description of houses to be constructed, each house to have a verandah open at all times as a continued and covered passage on each side of the street.” This was to be carried out “for the sake of uniformity” in the townscape.² Raffles’ intention to have the verandah “open at all times” would be frequently invoked in future contentions about the use of this space.

Scholars suggest that Raffles became acquainted with this architectural feature during his time as Lieutenant-General of Java. The Dutch colonisers had earlier introduced covered walkways and implemented a regular street alignment in Batavia (present-day Jakarta), capital of the Dutch East Indies.³

In the late 19th and right up to the mid-20th century, an assortment of traders, from tinsmiths, barbers and cobblers to letter writers and parrot astrologers, conducted their businesses along the five-footways, while hawkers peddled food, drinks and even household sundries.

Operating in the five-footway required minimal capital, and thus it was the most viable option for those with little means. In turn, vendors could provide essential goods and services to consumers cheaply. The five-footway came to sustain the economic and social life of a working class of mainly immigrants who had come to Singapore to find work, hoping to give their families back home a better life.

Although the lives of Asian migrants in Singapore were steeped in this ecosystem, many Europeans found this vernacular environment appalling. Those who considered this social space as a novelty tended to view it as “exotic”, as John Cameron, former editor of The Straits Times, did when he wrote: “[I]n a quiet observant walk through [the five-footways] a very great deal may be learned concerning the peculiar manners and customs of the trading inhabitants”.⁴

British traveller and naturalist Isabella Bird was similarly taken by the liveliness of the five-footways when she visited Singapore in 1879:

“… more interesting still are the bazaars or continuous rows of open shops which create for themselves a perpetual twilight by hanging tatties or other screens outside the sidewalks, forming long shady alleys, in which crowds of buyers and sellers chaffer over their goods.”⁵

Life in the Five-footway

Depending on which part of town a traveller was exploring, he or she might be in for a rude shock if they believe the following description of the five-footway (c. 1840) by Major James Low, a long-time employee of the Straits Civil Service:

“A stranger may well amuse himself for a couple of hours in threading the piazas [sic] in front of the shops, which he can do unmolested by sun, at any hour of the day.”⁷

In reality, the five-footways in the town’s Asian quarters teemed with so much obstruction and activity that pedestrians were all too often forced onto the road.

Low’s view was not a popular one. In 1843, a disgruntled individual offered a sharply contradictory experience in a letter to The Singapore Free Press, arguing for the public right of way:

“[The verandah] is or was intended to provide for the accommodation of the public by furnishing them with a walk where they might be in some degree free from the sun and dust, and be in no danger of sudden death from numerous Palankeens that are always careering along the middle of the way. But this seems to have been forgotten, and the natives have very coolly appropriated the verandahs to their own special use by erecting their stalls in it and making it a place for stowing their goods.”⁸

The five-footway was originally intended for the use of pedestrians. Not only would the sheltered path provide respite from the tropical heat or a sudden downpour, it also served as a safe path away from road traffic. However, over time, the Asian communities began to use the five-footway for their own purposes, according to their needs and the realities of the day.

Pragmatic shop owners often used the five-footway outside their shop to store or display goods. The more enterprising ones rented out parcels of space to other small vendors – an attractive deal considering the good flow of human traffic and low overheads. Soon, all sorts of trades and activities began occupying the five-footways.⁹

In the Kampong Glam district, ­designated as the Arab quarters in Raffles’ 1822 Town Plan, the five-footways became thriving sites for Bugis, Arab and Javanese businesses and all manner of Islamic trade. On Arab Street, historically referred to as Kampong Java, Javanese women sold ­flowers along the shophouse verandahs. So famous was this street for its flower trade that it was known as Pookadei Sadakku (Flower Street) in Tamil.

Meanwhile, lined up along the five-footways of nearby Bussorah Street were ambin, or platforms, on which people could rest or have a shuteye. Rosli bin Ridzwan, who grew up on Bussorah Street, recalled that whenever an elderly person was seated on the ambin, younger ones would greet him or her and promptly walk on the road alongside as a show of deference.¹⁰

The most common occupant of the five-footway was probably the food vendor. Hawkers were either itinerant, meaning they would move around looking for customers, or they might occupy a fixed spot on the five-footway or on the kerbside, sometimes even extending their makeshift stalls onto the road with tables and chairs. All manner of food was sold, including satay, laksa, “tok-tok” noodle, putu mayam and kacang puteh. During lull periods, some hawkers laid down their wares and took a nap in the five-footways.

Besides food, one could find tradesmen and women engaging in various occupations that supported the inhabitants of the densely populated Chinatown. Letter-writers armed with ink and brush penned letters for illiterate customers or wrote festive couplets for Chinese celebrations.¹¹ Barbers simply pulled out a chair and hung a mirror on the wall in front before providing haircuts and shaves for customers.¹²

Foong Lai Kum, a former resident of Chinatown, remembered a man known as jiandao lao (剪刀佬; colloquially “Scissors Guy” in Mandarin) plying his trade on the five-footway of Sago Lane, sharpening the scissors used by young women working at rubber factories, or the knives used by hawkers or butchers.¹³ And, thanks to the itinerant pot mender, one never had to shell out money for a new pot.¹⁴

Five-footway traders were also found in the Serangoon Road area, today’s Little India. The lady selling thairu (curd) would be perched on a step, with packets of the Indian staple displayed on a wooden crate. On another five-footway nearby was the paanwalla, who prepared the betel-leaf-wrapped snack known as paan. Indian parrot astrologers were also a common sight: based on the customer’s name and date of birth, these fortune tellers used green parakeets to pick a numbered card inscribed with the customer’s fortune from a stack.¹⁵

During festive occasions like Hari Raya, Deepavali and Chinese New Year, shop owners and vendors packed the five-footways, with their goods often spilling onto the streets. And whenever a wayang (Chinese opera) performance or other communal event was staged, the five-footway became part of the viewing arena.

At dusk, as traders wound up for the day, residents gathered at the five-footway for a conversation, to smoke opium or just enjoy the fresh air. Many shophouse residences were occupied by coolies and samsui women, who each rented a tiny cubicle out of the many that had been carved up for subletting in a single unit. This resulted in cramped living quarters with poor ventilation. Unsurprisingly, residents preferred to relax outdoors after a hard day’s work, and often the only available space was the five-footway below. Some even opted to sleep there at night as it was airier than their dank and overcrowded cubicles.¹⁶

The five-footway did not merely serve economic needs – it was also a space for social interaction. Rather than being just a “conduit for human traffic” as it had originally been intended, academic Brenda S.A. Yeoh suggests that Asians perceived the five-footway in a “more ambivalent light”, such that the space was “sufficiently elastic to allow the co-existence of definitions”.¹⁷ It was precisely this flexibility of use that created the colourful multiplicity of local life found in the five-footways.

A Public Health Threat

While mundane daily life unfolded in the five-footways, the authorities were dogged by sanitary issues such as clogged drains and sometimes even abandoned corpses. A strongly worded letter published in The Straits Times in 1892 by the municipal health officer accused “vagrant stallholders” of dumping refuse and bodily excretions into drains, causing an “abominable stench”.¹⁸

An exasperated member of the public echoed this sentiment in 1925, calling the obstruction by hawkers a “grave menace not only to the safety but also to the cleanliness and order of the town”.¹⁹ The congestion of the five-footways prevented the municipa­lity from carrying out sanitation works, such as the maintenance of drains. Over the years, the campaign to remove five-footway obstruction was often couched in the interests of public health and hygiene.

Adding to the public health threat was the issue of visual disorder, which was also anathema to the government. An article published in 1879 in the Straits Times Overland Journal bemoaned the state of chaos along the five-footways:

“It is not too much to say that there is no well-regulated city in this world in which such a state of affairs as can be daily seen, in say China Street, would be permitted.”²⁰

Some Europeans also floated orienta­list – and ultimately racist – conceptions of Asians in Singapore.

An 1898 article in The Singapore Free Press charged that the practice of obstructing a public walkway was “essentially Eastern” and attributed this to the Asians’ supposed lack of civility, “as the large majority of those… have been born and brought up in places where our more civilised views do not prevail… it is the more difficult for the authorities to secure obedience to their wishes”.²¹

Whose Right of Way?

As the public and private spheres met in the liminal space of the five-footway, conflict over the right of use became ­inevitable. Almost from the very start, the verandah had been a thorny issue for the municipal authorities. Members of the public – mainly Europeans – expressed their frustration at having to jostle for space with vendors and their wares, along with shops whose goods occupied the entire walkway and the odd coolie having a siesta. Complaints revolved around the “risk of sunstroke or being run over” as pedestrians had to walk along the side of the road.²² Meanwhile, the municipality faced great difficulty in regulating the verandah for pedestrian use.

Conflict over the use of the footways persisted for over a century, with the “Verandah Question” becoming a hotly debated topic in many municipal meetings. In 1863, it seemed that the municipal commissioners and frustrated pedestrians had won the battle when the court ruled that all verandahs were to be “completely cleared and made available for passenger traffic”.²³

However, as few people actually adhered to the regulation, the encumbrance of the five-footways continued, much to the chagrin of law enforcers. Finally, in July 1887, legislation was passed granting municipal officers the power to forcefully clear the five-footways and streets of any obstructions. The perceived incursion into the space used by the Asian communities resulted in a three-day strike and riot in February 1888 (see textbox below).

Nonetheless, the five-footway trade and the various obstructions continued unabated – as did complaints by the Europeans – with the Asians fighting back against any threat to their livelihoods and way of life. At the end of the 19th century, the municipal authorities decided that it would be impossible to enforce a completely free passageway; instead, they sought a compromise such that vendors could carry on with their trades as long as they were itinerant and did not encroach on any particular area for prolonged periods.

By 1899, the five-footway problem was referred to as the “very old Verandah Question” in the press,²⁴ with the situation devolving into a game of “whack-a-mole” as officials sought out “obstructionists” and meted out fines to offenders. On 26 September 1900 alone, 70 individuals were fined $5 each for obstructing the five-footway.²⁵ However, as the sheltered walkway was a transient space that saw the movement of both humans and goods, the task of completely eradicating occupation of the five-footways proved rather onerous. A letter to The Straits Times in 1925 said as much:

“The most insidious and worst kind of obstruction is the temporary one. It consists generally of merchandise being either despatched from or received into a godown. In reality the obstruction is permanent, because as soon as one lot is removed another takes its place.”²⁶

From 1907 onwards, night street food hawkers were subject to licensing by the authorities. After Singapore’s independence in 1965, food peddlers were moved into new standalone hawker centres. Nevertheless, the occasional itinerant food vendor could still be spotted along five-footways up until the 1980s. Over time, other five-footway traders also disappeared as the rules and their enforcement were tightened. Those with the means could relocate to a permanent location, while others simply gave up their trade for good.

Resurgence of an Old Problem

In 1998, the problem resurfaced when Emerald Hill in the Orchard Road district was redeveloped into a nightlife area. To promote vibrancy in Emerald Hill, the Urban Redevelopment Authority permitted the use of the five-footway for food-and-beverage businesses. However, this drew the ire of a long-time resident, who said she was deprived of “the seamless, sheltered stroll she used to enjoy”, denying her the “equal right to that public space as intended by the town planners of yore”.²⁷

In 2015, the popular nightlife at ­Circular Road near Boat Quay came under threat when the Land Transport Authority became stricter with countering pavement obstruction. Officials spotted “goods, tables and other materials” that had been “untidily” laid out on the streets, five-footways and back lanes of shophouses. This led to pedestrians having to skirt these obstructions and walk along the side of roads, causing them “inconvenience and danger”²⁸  – a refrain that harks back to as early as the 1840s.

But one thing has changed: the use of the five-footway for business is today framed in terms of culture and heritage as people feel that allowing a more flexible use of the five-footway would help preserve the “city’s character”.²⁹

These days, albeit rarely, one may encounter a cobbler, florist or tailor on the five-footways of Little India, Chinatown or Kampong Glam, or shophouse businesses using the walkway space in front to display their goods.

Navigating Singapore’s five-footways today is still a more interesting way of experiencing the city compared to the modern air-conditioned shopping complex, where homogeneity and predictability reign.

Notes

The very first census here was conducted in 1824. Ang Seow Leng reveals how doing a headcount has evolved over the last 200 years.

Singapore’s population has grown steadily over the decades to reach a total population of 5.7 million as at June 2019.¹

Population censuses provide vital surveys of individuals in order to understand the basic demographic composition and trends of a society. They are also useful for developing evidence-based policies in strategic planning and decision-making. In the case of Singapore, figures on population distribution by areas, for instance, are studied to plan the requirements for schools, markets, hospitals and other public amenities.

The Handbook on the Management of Population and Housing Censuses, published by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs in 2016, defines a population census as “the total process of planning, collecting, compiling, evaluating, disseminating and analysing demographic, economic and social data at the smallest geographical level pertaining, at a specific time, to all persons in a country or in a well-delimited part of a country”.²

While huge amounts of resources are required to conduct a massive census exercise, the methods used in collecting data are equally important as these affect the quality and accuracy of the final results.

Censuses are conducted on either a de facto or de jure basis. The de facto population “consists of all persons who are physically present in the country or area at the reference date, whether or not they are usual residents”, while the de jure population is defined as “all usual residents, whether or not they are present at the time of the enumeration”.³

Patterns of global migration and settlements shape the demographic, social and economic histories of a country. For instance, Adam McKeown’s research showed that major long-distance migration flows in the years between 1846 and 1940 from India and southern China, and to a much lesser extent from Africa, Europe, North Eastern Asia and Middle East to Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean Rim and the South Pacific, numbered around 48 to 52 million.⁴ These migration patterns make for interesting analyses and studies.

Early Censuses in Singapore

According to then Acting Colonial Secretary of the Straits Settlements Hayes Marriott, when Stamford Raffles arrived in Singapore in 1819, the estimated population size was around 150, including 30 Chinese and the Malays who had accompanied Temenggung Abdul Rahman when he settled in Singapore in 1811.⁵ The number of inhabitants soon grew exponentially. Raffles, writing to Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, the 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne, on 15 April 1820 claimed:

“When I hoisted the British flag the population scarcely amounted to 200 souls, in three months the number was not less than 3,000 and it now exceeds 10,000 principally Chinese…”⁶

Although primary records of the early censuses of Singapore are no longer available, they can be found in secondary sources such as newspapers and books. According to Charles Burton Buckley, one of Singapore’s earliest newspaper columnists, Singapore’s first census took place in January 1824. It recorded a population of 10,683, comprising 74 Europeans, 16 Armenians, 15 Arabs, 4,580 Malays, 3,317 Chinese, 756 Indians, and 1,925 Bugis, and others.⁷

Marriott reported that censuses were taken almost every year, from 1825 to 1860,⁸ but noted that the figures for these earlier censuses were unreliable. He pointed out that, in 1833, the census was carried out by two constables who were deployed to the settlement and had to attend to their primary duties on top of census-taking.⁹ Thomas John Newbold, a lieutenant with the Madras Light Infantry who moved to Melaka in 1832,¹⁰ also recorded the censuses of Singapore from 1824 to 1836, noting that a census was not taken in 1835. He did not list any figures for 1831.¹¹

It was only on 2 April 1871 that the first systematic census of Singapore as part of the Straits Settlements was conducted.¹² The Census Bill had been passed in October 1870 to collect more reliable data, conferred power on the Governor and Executive Council to formulate rules for taking the census and to impose punishments on those who refuse to cooperate.¹³ This bill was introduced at a time when the practice of taking a census once every 10 years was adopted throughout the British Empire. In 1871, the Singapore census took place around the same time that Great Britain and Ireland conducted theirs. ¹⁴

The 1871 landmark census was different from the 1860 census, which Governor Harry Ord had dismissed. He wrote that “no great reliance can be placed upon the returns of the population stated to have been taken in that year [1860], so that for any purposes of comparison now, they are of little or no value”. ¹⁵ The 1871 census, on the other hand, had trained enumerators to handle the census. The categories of data collected were also expanded from sex and race to include information on age, occupation, town-country divisions and the type of dwellings. The total population of Singapore at the time was 97,111. ¹⁶

Successive censuses were carried out once every 10 years until 1931. It was observed during the 1931 census that all the non-Malay immigrants in Malaya were mainly sojourners who arrived here to seek a fortune without any intention of residing here permanently, and that the increase in the formation of a settled population of non-Malay origin had been very slow. ¹⁷ The first pan-Malayan census began in 1921. ¹⁸ Although preparations for the 1941 census had been underway, the onset of World War II derailed plans.

Biting Dogs, Capsized Boats and Striking Workers: Stories from the 1947 Census By Jimmy Yap In general, carrying out a census is no easy task. However, back when Singapore was not as urbanised as it is now, counting its inhabitants was particularly challenging. Newspaper accounts of how the 1947 census was conducted give a good sense of the issues faced by census takers (or enumerators as they are more properly known). The 1947 census was an important one, being the first undertaken after the war. It was a massive exercise that included all towns, villages, people living in the jungles and on boats and houses built out at sea, and even passengers on trains.19 To incentivise enumerators, the Malayan Census Headquarters introduced a prize scheme under which $40,000 were given out in Singapore and the Malayan Union to the most efficient enumerators on the recommendation of the local headquarters.20 Besides using government department staff and teachers for census work, hundreds of schoolboys in Singapore were also recruited as enumerators and were each paid $40 for their efforts.21 About 80 scouts from the 10th Singapore Troop of St Andrew’s School also volunteered to assist in the taking of the census in the rural areas of Singapore.22 According to one news report, enumerators in the rural areas were frequently regarded with “extreme suspicion”: “The country population, especially farmers are not always willing to open their doors. It takes a good five minutes to convince the occupants of some houses that census officers are not policemen, detectives or gangsters, but just people assigned by the Government to find out the number of people living in a house. “This information must be obtained from the principal occupier of the house and if he does not happen to be in, as is often the case, the census officer has to make the long trek back at a time when his informant is likely to be home.”23 Another problem faced in the rural districts was that many houses were not marked on maps. “The census officer covers a district, then climbs up a hill for the house on top. When he reaches it and looks round the surrounding country he is almost always sure to spot a hut that he had overlooked because it was not marked. He is then obliged to go down again to fulfil his task.”24 In addition to swamps, rivers, jungles and suspicious tenants, the enumerators had to deal with dogs. The same news report said that “two of the men returned with dog bites while several others have been chased by dogs found in almost every house in the country”.25 Another challenge was to count those who lived off the main island of Singapore. In some cases, the government relied on the people who knew the area best – the fishermen. One man, Penghulu Awang Chik, described as a “weather-beaten, 41-years’-old fisherman who has spent more than a score [of] years on Singapore’s fishing ground”, was roped in to be an enumerator. In one week in May, he visited eight small islands and “accounted for 188 lonely island homesteads”.26 Because of the weather, travelling by sea could be challenging. Census supervisor T. Cordeiro had to carry out census work on Pulau Tekong. Unfortunately, just as he was about to leave the island, he was hit by a storm and his boat capsized. Fortunately, Cordeiro and five others in the party managed to hang on to their boat and they made their way safely back to Pulau Tekong.27 Counting the people living aboard vessels in the harbour required census officials to carry out their task between midnight and dawn. The enumerators – each supplied with a torchlight, a pencil, census forms, passes, and a set of instructions – were protected in the course of their duties by the police. Malaya Tribune reporter Harry Fang accompanied the enumerators as they boarded the various vessels in the harbour and on the rivers. The night did not begin well for them though. The first vessel they boarded was the steamer Giang Ann. Fang said: “[W]e were half way through when a European member of the crew, apparently awaked in his sleep by the commotion, appeared in his pyjamas and created a small argument. Finally, we learned that the steamer’s crew had [already] been censused.”28 Naturally, most crew members did not react well to the appearance of Fang and company, given that they were awakened by enumerators “armed with torchlight, and escorted by policemen”. Fang added that the “first reaction was always one of fear but after our explanation, the men became assured and readily supplied us with required information”. That said, getting the truth took time. “False names and ages were often given at first and after much gentle persuasion, the truth was finally told.”29 Conducting a census at sea had unexpected hazards as well, namely hardworking fisherman. “An old disinterested Chinese with his son fishing in a sampan off Beach Road nearly snared the Marine Police Chief, Mr J.W. Chiltern, when he cast his prawn net at the moment Mr Chiltern passed in one of his branch’s fast new launches.”30 This is not to say that census officials working in the city had an easy time. Some had to be given police escorts because as the Deputy Superintendent of the Census put it, in some parts of Singapore, “they would knock you on the head if you asked them their names”.31 Sometimes the census officials would get help from unexpected sources, as one newspaper story reported. “The Singapore Rubber Workers’ Union yesterday took time off from conducting a strike and a ‘squat’ to help the Deputy Superintendent of Census, Mr R.H. Oakeley, get census particulars from 120 recalcitrant workers.”32 The official report of the 1947 census – released in October 1949 – gave Singapore’s population as 940,824, which was almost double the figure for the 1931 census.33

The Japanese Occupation Years

After Singapore fell to the Japanese in February 1942, the island became known as Syonan-to. During the Japanese Occupation (1942–45), the Chosabu (Department of Research) recruited Japanese academics and civil servants, and sent them to Southeast Asia to research Southeast Asian economies and societies for Japan’s administrators.³⁴ One of the reports produced by the Chosabu in Singapore was “Population by Occupation in Syonan Municipality” in December 1943.

The Chosabu noted that the last population census had taken place in Singapore in 1931, and that the police stations on the island had conducted a census survey in April 1943. The same report recorded the approximate population as being around 855,679. This figure was derived from the category that recorded occupations in the April 1943 census survey. The information was used to “identify the circumstances among the population in regard to rationing and other matters”.³⁵

The Chinese viewed the information-gathering with suspicion as they had suffered greatly during Operation Sook Ching from February to March 1942 when Chinese males between the ages of 18 and 50 were summoned to report at mass screening centres; anyone who was suspected of being anti-Japanese was executed. Hence, the report also noted that “for nationality, most Chinese responded with their home region but a few identified themselves only as Chinese. There was no consistency. The same is true of occupation”.³⁶

Post-war Censuses

The first post-war census was conducted in 1947, after a lapse of 16 years. M.V. Del Tufo, Superintendent of the Census, wrote in the Foreword of the Report on the 1947 Census of Population that the Japanese Occupation had resulted in loss or destruction of records, and the lack of manpower and frequent strikes added to the challenges of carrying out the census.

To quell fear and distrust among people after the war, the British authorities explained that the “census had nothing to do with income tax or rice cards, nor would it be used as a check on individuals”.³⁷ They also assured the people that “all the information with regard to individuals [would be] treated as confidential, and may not be used for any purpose other than preparing tables of statistics about the community as a whole”.³⁸ At the time, there were thousands of squatters, mostly Chinese, who were living on lands that did not belong to them and they feared eviction if discovered during the census taking.³⁹

Compared with the labour-intensive manual method of processing earlier censuses, the 1947 census used a mechanical method of punched cards to speed up the tabulation of the results. Deputy Superintendents of Census were appointed in the states of the Federation of Malaya, except in Perak where the Census Headquarters undertook the Deputy’s functions, and in Singapore. The Singapore census also included the populations residing in offshore islands such as Pulau Ubin, Pulau Tekong Besar and St John’s Island as well as those on Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands. (The Cocos Islands and Christmas Island were transferred to Australia in 1955 and 1958 respectively.⁴⁰)

The next census was conducted on 17 June 1957, with the Singapore Department of Statistics handling the census for the first time. It also marked the first time that the census was conducted only for Singapore.⁴¹

Post-independence Population Censuses

Singapore gained independence in 1965 and the first post-independence population census was conducted in 1970, 13 years after the 1957 census. This was based on recommendation by the United Nations (UN) that each country undertakes a population census during the year ending in “0” or as near to those years as possible. The UN held the view that “the census data of any country are of greater value nationally, regionally and internationally if they can be compared with the results of other countries which were taken at approximately the same time”.⁴² Subsequent censuses in Singapore saw a constant improvement in the coverage of data, fieldwork, method in collecting data and an increasing reliance on technology.

The 1970 census adopted the de facto concept and counted all persons present in Singapore at the time of the census enumeration. Then Minister for Finance Goh Keng Swee was the Chairman of the Census Planning Committee. The Superintendent of this census was P. Arunmainathan, and he was supported by 3,000 field workers comprising mainly teachers and students. The census involved the use of computer-generated data as well as a wider coverage of the types of data collected and the use of sampling population. A two-volume report was published in 1973.⁴³

The census in 1980 saw new data collected, for instance, income from work, address of work place or school, and usual mode of transport to work and school. Then Minister for Trade and Industry Goh Chok Tong was the Chairman of the Census Planning Committee, while the Superintendent of Census was Khoo Chian Kim. About 2,600 people were employed for this exercise.⁴⁴ Between 1981 and 1986, nine statistical releases and five census monographs on demographic trends, trends in language, literacy and education, labour force, household and housing, as well as geographic analysis, were published.

The Census (Amendment) Bill that was passed on 28 March 1990 allowed for the exchange of information between government bodies in order to facilitate data gathering during population census exercises, and thus avoid duplication of efforts. To preserve confidentiality and prevent the misuse of information, only the Superintendent of Census is able to obtain and share information.⁴⁵

Then Minister for Trade and Industry Mah Bow Tan chaired the 1990 Census Planning Committee, with Lau Kak En as Superintendent. With the support of more than 2,000 people employed to conduct the census exercise during the peak period, it was the first time when details of Singaporeans and permanent residents abroad were included. This was also the first time a country used a census form that had been pre-printed with relevant particulars from various government databases.⁴⁶ Six statistical releases and six census monographs were published between 1991 and 1996, covering almost the same topics as the 1980 census.

Singapore became one of the first countries in the world to submit census returns through the internet for the 2000 population census. In this census, Singapore adopted a register-based approach to census-taking for the first time, in which basic data from existing government databases were utilised, thus greatly reducing the need for data entry.⁴⁷ With the adoption of a register-based census, the de jure concept based on a person’s usual place of residence was used instead.

In 1996, the Department of Statistics developed an integrated database system known as the Household Registration Database, which captured the basic count of individuals and the overall profile of the population, including information like age group, sex, ethnic group, citizenship and house-type.⁴⁸ Only 20 percent of all households were surveyed in order to verify the accuracy of data.⁴⁹ For these participating households, the census adopted a tri-modal data collection strategy that allowed residents to choose one out of three options to provide information: internet enumeration, computer-assisted telephone interview or the traditional face-to-face interview.⁵⁰ This resulted in greater efficiency in data collecting and was less labour-intensive.

The Chairman for the Census 2000 Planning Committee was then Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Trade and Industry Khaw Boon Wan, and the Superintendent was Leow Bee Geok. Five statistical releases and nine advance data releases were published between 2000 and 2001. These covered topics such as education, religion, literacy and language, economic characteristics, mode of transport, households and housing, household income growth and distribution, and marriage and fertility.

As the fifth census since independence, the exercise in 2010 also adopted As the fifth census since independence, the exercise in 2010 also adopted a register-based approach in which the basic population count and characteristics were compiled from administrative sources. Hence, there was a reduction of field interviewers to only 140, with 20 field supervisors across 10 regional offices in the country. These interviewers also made use of mobile personal computers to carry out their enumeration on the go, thus removing the need for hardcopy survey forms. Another 400 daily-rated staff were recruited to support day-to-day operations. Ravi Menon, then Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Trade and Industry, was the Chairman of the 2010 Census Planning Committee, with Chief Statistician Wong Wee Kim as Superintendent. ⁵¹ In 2011, three statistical releases were releases were published on demographic characteristics, education, language and religion, households and housing, and geographic distribution and transport.

The Future of Census

Censuses allow a country to collect data on the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of its population. Singapore has gone through 14 censuses since 1871, and each one has seen an increasing reliance on technology, especially in the recent censuses.

Emerging global trends have influenced the manner in which a census exercise is designed and undertaken, especially in developed countries. While the purpose of a census has evolved from its early days as a means for implementing taxation policies, and conscription into military service or forced labour, it has become a useful tool for social analysis and understanding as can be seen in the increasing number of census questions to gather more social statistics for successive censuses.⁵²

Data collected during a census is crucial for any government for the purposes of long-term planning, decision-making and policy formulation. A thorough and detailed analysis of any census typically takes two years or more to complete, by which time the efficacy of the results might be called into question. One of the challenges in census-taking is the timely analysis of the findings so that these remain relevant and useful for the aforementioned purposes. Another challenge is the difficulty in capturing accurate demographic characteristics due to increasing migration and human mobility for work and study.

In a digital age where linked data and sophisticated data analysis tools are readily available, countries like Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Slovenia have moved away from traditional approaches in conducting a census. They now rely on centralised databases administered by the government such as tax records, electoral lists and school rolls, and also engage in periodic polling of a sample population size.⁵³

Census data derived completely from administrative register-based sources do not require citizens to fill in census questionnaires. However, such a method is not without its drawbacks.  The administrative sources may not be appropriate for census use as the information gathered is not meant for statistical purposes. Certain information may also not be available or complete in administrative databases.

It is common for countries, therefore, to adopt a combination of a register-based survey with enumeration or survey data, similar to what Singapore did in the 2000 and 2010 censuses; this will also be the case in the upcoming 2020 census.⁵⁴ It will be interesting to see how Singapore’s future censuses keep up with evolving demographics and trends.

The author wishes to thank the Singapore Department of Statistics for reviewing the essay. The National Library’s latest exhibition “On Paper: Singapore Before 1867”, held at level 10 of the National Library Building until 22 March 2020, features a scribal copy of the 1827 census of Singapore.

Notes

The resplendent Istana – where colonial governors and modern-day presidents once lived – celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2019. Wong Sher Maine recounts key moments in its history.

“The building is a handsome one – the handsomest by a long way in the Settlement and one which will be an ornament to the place long after those who fought for and against it have passed away.”¹

– The Straits Times, 24 April 1869

These words by a Straits Times scribe some 150 years ago would prove to be uncannily prophetic. He was referring to Government House, which is today known as the Istana, the official residence and office of the president of Singapore. A century-and-a-half old, the Istana – which means “palace” in Malay – is a gazetted national monument and also functions as the working office of the prime minister of Singapore. It is the closest thing Singapore has to Buckingham Palace or the White House.

Colonial Beginnings

Government House was originally built by the British colonial government to serve as the residence of the governor of the Straits Settlements and later the governor of the Colony of Singapore.² For about 40 years after Stamford Raffles landed in 1819, the early governors (initially known as Residents)³ lived in a wooden house on Government Hill⁴ (now Fort Canning). However, when the house was demolished in 1859 to make way for a fort, another home had to be found for the governor.

A 106-acre (0.4 sq km) plot of land was identified as an alternative. It was part of the former nutmeg plantation owned by the East India Company barrister Charles Robert Prinsep, after whom Prinsep Street is named. The plantation had been devastated by a disease that killed off all the nutmeg trees in the mid-1850s in Singapore.⁵ The land was on elevated ground and provided superb views of the town and harbour.

Government House was built on the instructions of Harry St George Ord, then governor of the Straits Settlements (1867–73). The appointed architect was Colonial Engineer Major John Frederick Adolphus McNair.

In July 1867, the Straits Settlements Legislative Council approved a budget of $100,000 to build a structure that was much smaller in scale than the present building we now know as the Istana. In the same month, the governor’s wife Lady Ord laid the foundation stone.

A plan for a larger building was subsequently approved, but the money set aside was insufficient. McNair managed to get the additional funds he needed by pointing out unanticipated construction challenges, such as the need to build a granite foundation. An upcoming visit by Prince Albert – Duke of Edinburgh and the second son of Queen Victoria – in December 1869 hastened the pace of construction.⁶

Government House took shape under the hands of convict labourers from India, Ceylon and Hong Kong who were paid 20 cents a day to work as stone masons, plumbers, carpenters, painters and stone cutters. It was completed in October 1869 at a cost of $185,000.⁷

The stately building was designed in the neo-Palladian style⁸ and reflected architectural elements of the East and West: imposing Greek-style columns, cornices and arches reminiscent of buildings in Europe, and wide verandahs, large louvred windows and dwarfed piers adapted from traditional Malay architecture.

Between 1869 and 1959, Government House was home to 18 colonial governors.⁹ Government House also bore witness to a procession of kings, sultans, dukes and other members of the nobility, who graced the halls with their presence. These included the Sultan of Selangor Abdul Samad, who called on the governor in 1890 with an entourage of over 30 people, and King Chulalongkorn of Siam who visited with a reported 66 people in 1871.¹⁰

Given Singapore’s prime geographical location, the island was a popular stopover for European visitors en route to China, and some of these visitors put up at Government House on transit. These included the likes of the English botanical artist Marianne North, who visited in 1876 and waxed lyrical about the lush vegetation around Government House; Annie Brassey,¹¹ inveterate traveller and wife of the first Earl of Brassey, who stayed over in 1877 when her schooner had to be replenished with coal at the Tanjong Pagar docks; and Prince Albert Victor and his brother, Prince George of Wales, who were treated to a royal party at the house by Governor Frederick Weld in 1882.¹²

On occasion, the large and leafy expanse of grounds hosted garden parties, while dances were held in the capacious ballrooms. Retired colonel John Morrice, who lived in the servants’ quarters of Government House between 1935 and 1947 as his father worked as a waiter there, recalled:

“During the time of the British there used to be a lot of parties and tea dances, once a fortnight or month. We all used to hang around there and watch from the side. The ladies wore long dresses all the time…”¹³

The War Years

Those halcyon days ended as the Japanese advanced down Malaya in late 1941. In February 1942, a cellar at Government House, which was connected to a tunnel leading out to an opening beyond its domain, was bombed by the Japanese. When the soldiers discovered the escape hatch, they sealed it by pushing grenades into the tunnel, killing a number of staff and partially damaging the cellar.¹⁴

The remaining staff escaped and hid in houses along Kampong Java Road. When Count Hisaichi Terauchi, a Field Marshall in the Imperial Japanese Army and Commander of the Southern Expeditionary Army Group, took up residence in Government House in March 1943, he brought them back. Donning their old uniforms, the staff served their new boss and had to learn Japanese.¹⁵

Thankfully, Terauchi left much of the building intact, apart from redecorating some rooms to give it a Japanese flavour, including introducing some Japanese-style screens and getting rid of items with the British Royal crest on them, such as the crockery. However, he largely respected and preserved what was contained in the building.

Abdul Gaffor bin Abdul Hamid, whose father worked as a butler in Government House, was born on the grounds in 1931 and spent his childhood and teen years there. He recalled:

“Before the Japanese came in, we were still here [in the Istana]. We had a shelter underneath the building… air raid shelter for all the staff. When there was heavy bombardment, the governor said don’t stay here because [it] was dangerous. Then they got us a lorry… We moved to some old house at Java Road.

“When the Japanese came, we all came back. They asked us to come back. My father did the cleaning and gardening… A year before they went off, they called me to come and work in the Istana because I was learning Japanese. I said okay because they gave us oil and fish… I attended a Japanese school for 2 ½ years. I learnt Japanese – katakana, hiragana – and Malay. Whenever visitors wanted to come into the Istana, the Japanese sentry would call me to translate. The Japanese were quite polite to us.”¹⁶

When the Japanese surrendered in September 1945, the British returned and reoccupied Government House once again.

From Government House to Istana

The biggest transformation to the building took place after 1959, when Singapore embarked on its road to independence and the Istana became a symbol of an increasingly independent Singapore and not of colonial Britain.

When Singapore achieved internal self-government in 1959, Government House was renamed Istana Negara Singapura, or Palace of the State of Singapore. This was shortened to The Istana when Singapore separated from the Federation of Malaysia on 9 August 1965 to become an independent, sovereign nation.

From housing colonial governors who hailed from Britain, the Istana became the designated official residence for the presidents of Singapore. The last governor of Singapore was William Allmond Codrington Goode, who served as the Yang di-Pertuan Negara (Malay for “Head of State”) from June to December 1959, before making way for Yusof Ishak, the first local-born Head of State. When Singapore gained independence, Yusof was sworn in as the country’s first president.

While the Istana still remains the official residence of Singapore’s presidents, only two have actually lived on the Istana grounds and, even then, not in the main building: Yusof lived in an outlying bungalow named Sri Melati, which was built in 1869 to house the colonial under-secretaries.¹⁷ Third president Devan Nair lived in the Lodge, which was built to replace Sri Melati after it was torn down in the 1970s when termite infestation rendered it structurally unsafe.

Yusof explained at the time when he became Head of State that he felt that the Istana’s main building was too lavish for him and his three children. The family stayed in Sri Melati for 11 years, between 1959 and 1970, where Yusof indulged in his passion for gardening by growing papayas and orchids.¹⁸ Devan Nair and his family lived in the Lodge between 1981 and 1985.¹⁹ The other presidents, on the other hand, felt more comfortable living in their own homes elsewhere in Singapore.

Aside from its occupants, the way of life in the Istana also changed when local staff ran the Istana after the British left. In 1960, the first Asian Comptroller of Household Jean Leembruggen, a Eurasian from Melaka, was appointed. Her husband, Geoffrey Leembruggen, was then acting permanent secretary at the Ministry of Health.

Yusof’s wife, First Lady Puan Noor Aishah, personally supervised the menu and food preparation in the Istana, from English-style fare like roast beef and Yorkshire pudding to local favourites.²⁰ The skilled home chef introduced dishes like nasi sambal, chicken rendang and chap chye which were served to foreign nitaries. She was particularly well known for her gula melaka dessert made with sago, egg white and coconut milk.²¹ The First Lady was also known for her shrimp and sardine sambal sandwich rolls:

“I wanted something different so instead of cutting the sandwiches into triangles or rectangles like usual sandwiches, I would roll them up and cut them into circular segments like a Swiss Roll. That way, the ‘sandwiches’ would be easier to eat… we usually had two fillings – sardines and shrimp sambal.”²²

Puan Noor Aishah also trained the Istana’s chefs to whip up her signature dishes which included curry puffs and kueh onde onde.²³ One of her trainees, Wong Shang Hoon, is still said to be cooking up a storm in the Istana today.

After Singapore gained independence in 1965, the new nation began establishing diplomatic ties with other countries, and soon, visitors from foreign countries started streaming in. Memorable visits include those by West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, China’s Deng Xiaoping and Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. Queen Elizabeth visited Singapore in 1972, 1989 and 2006 and each of her visits caused much excitement among the Istana’s household staff. Senior Butler Ismail Abdul Ghani recalled meeting her in 1972 and 2006.²⁴

“The first time I met Queen Elizabeth, I was one of two Istana butlers who was assigned to attend to her personal needs. I didn’t think she would remember me. But when I next saw her, at an event where all the butlers lined up in a row to greet her, she stopped when she came to me and said – ‘I remember you’. I felt so happy!”²⁵

Sometimes, visitors were invited to stay at the Istana. The guest facilities, which no longer exist today, comprised two rows of five rooms on the second floor of the main building. Guests were supplied with Lux brand soap, one box of detergent in the form of soap flakes as well as toothbrushes and toothpaste.²⁶ VIPs who had spent the night at the Istana include Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, who stayed with his two pet dogs in 1968,²⁷ and Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1978.

Yusof and his wife also opened up the Istana to ordinary Singaporeans. Puan Noor Aishah was the Patron of Girl Guides Singapore, and she would invite the Guides to hold their annual campfire on the Istana grounds once a year.²⁸ Puan Noor Aishah’s life changed dramatically after she became First Lady:

“Life used to be simple. But once we moved into the Istana, we became very busy; there were many changes in our lives and there was a lot of protocol to observe. I remember there would be courtesy calls in the morning, tea parties in the afternoon, and I had to meet many charity organisations which were coming to me for help. All the meetings and social gatherings were necessary as we were new and we had to get to know people to win their confidence.”²⁹

It was Yusof who started the Istana’s open house tradition. The very first open house event took place on 1 January 1960, between 8 am and 6 pm, on New Year’s Day. Numerous slides, swings and seesaws were trotted out for children, while the police band entertained the public.³⁰

Jewelled Greens of the Istana Landscaping has always been an essential element of the Istana’s grounds. From the beginning, a nursery was established and many varieties of fruit and flowering trees and shrubs were planted on the 41 hectares that Government House stood on.31 In the years following Singapore’s independence, the gardens grew in tandem with founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s efforts to turn Singapore into a garden city. Remembered by many as Singapore’s chief gardener, Lee used the Istana as a testbed for flora to be planted in the rest of Singapore. He also felt it was important for the Istana’s gardens to make an impression on visitors. He said: “When they drove into the Istana domain, they would see right in the heart of the city a green oasis, 90 acres of immaculate rolling lawns and woodland, and nestling between them a nine-hole golf course. Without a word being said, they would know that Singaporeans were competent, disciplined and reliable, a people who would learn the skills they required soon enough.”32 When Lee came across the foxtail palm – the name inspired by the bushy fronds resembling the tail of a fox – while on a visit to Australia, he asked for it to be planted on the Istana grounds. Visitors to the Istana today can still see this palm, which is found beside the iconic Swan Pond.33 The Swan Pond, home to a pair of white mute swans, is also a legacy of Lee’s. It was constructed in 1968 at his request and is the largest of various ponds on the Istana grounds.34 As Lee often spent long days working inside the Istana building, the gardens were a welcome respite. He and Mrs Lee would visit and feed the swans during their evening walks and he would sometimes pick a cluster of white flowers, commonly known as the breadflower, for his wife. These flowers, with their sweet pandan fragrance, were a favourite of Mrs Lee’s.35 The fruit trees on the grounds also provided an occasional treat for the Istana staff who used to reside in the staff quarters on the grounds. Many of them, and their children, recall plucking fruit off the trees. Today, more than 10,000 trees and palms – making up some 260 species – grow on the grounds of the Istana.  Around 100 are mature trees with girths of over 4 metres. The oldest tree is a Tembusu, which is believed to have been planted in 1867, two years before the Istana was completed. This tree is located next to Sri Temasek,36 which is the designated official residence of the prime minister of Singapore. The gardens have naturally become home for a great variety of wildlife, including butterflies like the Lesser Grass Blue Butterfly, which is only one centimeter in size, dragonflies, fish, terrapins, squirrels, bats, flying foxes, monitor lizards, snakes and weaver ants, which are found on trees like the Tembusu.37 As a gazetted bird sanctuary, the Istana grounds teem with avian life. A survey carried out in April 2019 registered 89 bird species.38 In fact, current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has had a barn owl visit him in his Sri Temasek office in 2013 and 2015. In both cases, the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority of Singapore and the Jurong Bird Park had to be called in to trap the bird and release it behind Sri Temasek. He saw the bird again in 2017, but this time it was perched in the overhang along the exterior of the Istana.39 As for larger animals, horses used to be stabled in the Istana, though no longer today. In the 1950s, an elephant was briefly a resident of the Istana’s grounds and it aided the gardeners by supplying bounteous composting material. However, the elephant was apparently sent to Malaya in early 1960.40

The First Major Renovations

By the time Singapore’s fifth president Ong Teng Cheong took over, the Istana had stood for over 120 years and was in need of a major overhaul.

Renovation works were carried out between 1996 and 1998. This was the Istana’s first major infrastructural upgrade, and the aim was to create more room for state functions and to replace the building’s ageing mechanical and electrical services while preserving its heritage features. Ong, who served as president from 1993 to 1999, explained the need for the makeover:

“[The Istana] is a stately building, very grand, very symmetrical, as it should be for an institutional building. But internally, it needs refurbishing. Where we can, we will try to renovate the place and try to bring back its old grace.”⁴¹

Many new features were added, including centralised air-conditioning, mechanically activated louvres, restored timber rafters and beams, automatic sliding doors and a dedicated Ceremonial Plaza with four flagpoles for military displays. Previously, these displays were performed at the airport when foreign guests disembarked from the aeroplane.⁴²

The Istana gardens were also overhauled and professionally landscaped, a Herculean effort that took the team two years and which involved making trips to countries such as Australia to source for unusual plants.

The front lawn of the main garden was originally designed as a traditional European garden.⁴³ To frame the Istana’s main building upon approach, the team transplanted 18 majestic meninjau trees, each soaring over 10 metres in height, from other parts of Singapore to the periphery of the circular front lawn.

The Istana Today

The main building of the Istana exudes elegance, while retaining its heritage and historical roots.

State gifts bestowed by foreign visitors are showcased in the main building as well as at the Istana Heritage Gallery, which is located at the Istana Park opposite the Istana’s main entrance facing Orchard Road. The walls of the main building are also decorated with artworks by local artists, some commissioned by former presidents.

Foreign VIPs continue to pass through the halls of the Istana, among them US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who were in Singapore for the historic Trump-Kim Summit on 12 June 2018. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong hosted Kim at the Istana on 10 June, while Trump and his delegation attended a working lunch there on 11 June.⁴⁴

For many Singaporeans, the Istana is a place associated with the highest honours in the land. All manner of ceremonies honouring individuals at the top of their professions are held there, such as the President’s Award for Teachers, the President’s Award for Nurses and the Cultural Medallion.

A total of eight presidents have passed through the halls of the Istana. The current president is Madam Halimah Yacob, Singapore’s first female president.

Madam Halimah declared at the beginning of her term in 2017 that she wanted to make the Istana grounds more accessible to the people, including the elderly and those with special needs. She launched the Picnic@Istana series when she took office, where four picnics would  be held each year for underprivileged children as well as those with special needs.⁴⁵ Another programme that she initiated, Garden Tours@Istana, has welcomed senior citizens, hospice patients and their caregivers, and patients from the Institute of Mental Health.⁴⁶

On 6 October 2019, the Istana held its very first open house event at night, hosted by Madam Halimah and her husband Mohamed Abdullah Alhabshee, to mark its 150th anniversary. Highlights included a lightshow on the walls of the main building depicting the Istana’s heritage and history over the years, and performances by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and other local talents.⁴⁷

Soon after, the Istana launched an interactive multimedia website with augmented reality features titled “Inside the Istana” in collaboration with The Straits Times. The website allows people to “walk around” the Istana and experience the sights and sounds on their computers or smartphones.⁴⁸

While the Istana may have started out as symbol of imperial strength and power 150 years ago, today it is a national icon and occupies a special place close to the hearts of Singaporeans.

Notes