HSA1000 Individual Assignments
1st Essay Score: 90.0/100.0
2nd Essay Score: Unknown, part of final assignment
Final Grade: A
A steaming hot bowl of chicken curry graced the center of the table. It was a regular treat from the neighbors living across the aisle, a reciprocal gift for the cupcakes that my aunt had baked yesterday. An ornate vessel carved from jade is prominently displayed in a glass cabinet. It had passed through the hands of many male ancestors before it was given to my grandmother.
Despite being born in a household of seven sons and eight daughters, my grandmother was by far the favorite child in the family. When my grandmother was born, the war had just ended and my great-grandfather recouped a loss that his gambling business had suffered. He was thus certain that his new daughter was a lucky charm. As a result, my grandmother enjoyed luxuries that her siblings could only dream of. She had a mischievous twinkle in her eyes as she said, “My sisters had to ensure that the mosquito net covered my entire bed every night. If I woke up the next day and suffered so much as a single insect bite, all of my sisters would get caned.”
My grandmother was thus chosen to inherit the jade vessel after my great-grandfather passed, breaking from the tradition of only giving the heirloom to males. “Our ancestors, both your grandfather’s and mine, came from Guangdong. We are known as guangdongren, which means Cantonese. This little ship was commissioned by one of your ancestors on my side. He was a Qing dynasty official.” I twirled the ornate artefact in my hands in fascination. This ship had been through the fall of dynasties, the rise of new cities and two world wars. It had sailed across the oceans with the early settlers of Singapore and watched over generations of ancestors before me. I was awestruck by how the jade vessel was a representation of my family’s history as early migrants of Singapore, as well as a reminder of my family’s Chinese roots and our ties to the imperial court of China.
The second generation of Singapore-born residents, my great-grandfather was the towkay (owner) of the gambling den at the Old Sembawang Kampong. Consequently, my grandmother was no stranger to the various personalities who would patronize their business to congregate and discuss political matters, from gangsters to Communist party members. “You must know, being associated with Communists back in the early 1950s was a dangerous activity and would lead to disastrous consequences if caught.” However, my grandmother also explained that many Singaporean Chinese still had a collective memory of China as their hometown. As a result, they were often ready to donate funds and supplies through the various political backchannels available to them, and to offer their support to local politicians. Such was the spirit of the Chinese diaspora, who viewed themselves as culturally connected to their ancestral home.
“Eventually, because we were suspected of being affiliated with Communists, our gambling den was shut down. They even brought my father in for investigations!” Though she seemed to dismiss the incident as a mere fact of life, I could imagine the fear that her family lived in. It was a very different time back then, where political allegiance and colonial conceptions of race meant that people in Singapore were often divided along those lines. Those who were found to be “conspiring” with Communists were arrested under the Internal Security Act, which was extended to Singapore in 1963 thanks to the merger with Malaysia.
It was a matter of time before racist undertones spun out of control. By 1964 there was ample distrust between the races in the lead up to the 1964 Racial Riots of Singapore. My grandmother remembered the incident with remarkable clarity, “At that time, I was only 18. We were all told to stay at home. You could see uniformed men patrolling outside the houses with rifles. It was frightening.” I could almost see my grandmother, a girl my age, grappling with the gravity of what had just rocked their homeland and changed it forever. Like most young people, she questioned the logic of assigning stereotypes onto an entire group of individuals. “My best friend back then was Malay. We thought the whole thing was ridiculous. Even then, we were barred from meeting up for weeks.”
My grandmother was part of a generation who saw the Ethnic Integration Policy in Housing Development Board (HDB) estates, where people from different races lived close together for the first time. It was a drastic lifestyle change for those who had lived in kampongs their entire lives, and they had to adapt to the new Singaporean model of multiculturalism. Pointing to the bowl of curry on the table, my grandmother noted, “Now everyone’s living together in harmony. The Indian family next door sends curry to our house every day, and we send freshly baked cakes in return.” I understood her point of view even though a part of me wanted to ask about the well-documented occurrences of racism in Singapore. Inequality is interwoven into every society, and I wondered if our generation could rise up to the challenge of reducing it as much as we can.
After the entire conversation, I realized that the word “Asia'' was never mentioned. I asked my grandmother what being Asian meant to her, and she said, half in jest, “What’s that? I’m a guangdongren and a Singaporean, that’s all.” To her, an “Asian” was a broad umbrella term used by Westerners. In a city where race is demarcated by the CMIO model, Asia holds little significance as an identity marker to my grandmother who rarely has any contact with people from other continents. Meanwhile, I identify as Asian within the international space of social media. Ultimately, knowing where a person comes from may be a starting point for us to relate to each other. However, that is no substitute for knowing them as individuals rather than labels, and from there, friendships may be cultivated as it has for millennia of human civilizations.
Nestled within the historic first satellite Housing Development Board (HDB) flats in Singapore, the United Temple is an eye-catching traditional building. Uniquely designed with five separate hallways and a common corridor, it was built to house five temples and their caretakers. A concrete marker identified the United Temple as part of the Toa Payoh Heritage Trail (Tham, 2014), cementing its value in defining Toa Payoh’s history. We gathered from the marker that the United Temple was formed from five different temples: the Chee Tian Keng, Shan Zu Yuan Fu De Ci, Tong Xing Gang, Wu Ji Gong and Zhao Ying Ci temples. The United Temple in Toa Payoh is the first of its kind to promote a common religious space for different Chinese dialect groups while pooling financial resources together, becoming a model for 68 more united temples to spring up across Singapore (National Heritage Board, n.d.).
As we took in the sights and sounds of the temple, we were approached by an elderly man who introduced himself as Mr Ng Gek Hai, the caretaker of Toa Payoh United Temple. Mr Ng kindly offered to tell us more about the history of the United Temple, and shared interesting anecdotes of Toa Payoh’s troubled history as the “Chicago of Singapore”, a moniker that references the heavy influence of gangs and secret societies back in the 1960s. We were fascinated by the political significance of Toa Payoh given that the newly independent Singapore government transformed it from a secret society stronghold to Singapore’s first satellite HDB town.
I later understood that the new town was largely responsible for the creation of the United Temple. First formed in 1972, the Toa Payoh United Temple was a novel concept arising from governmental pressure to create space for urban redevelopment (Hue, 2012). According to Hue, the five constituent temples of the Toa Payoh United Temple ran into financial issues due to the high costs of purchasing land and reconstructing the temples. They eventually reached a decision to pool their resources together and to construct a new “united temple” (Chinese: 五合庙 or Five Combined Temple), which was lauded by residents and politicians alike (Hue, 2012).
I asked Mr Ng about the rows of glowing yellow lanterns which graced the entrance of the temple. He shared that during festivals such as Chinese New Year, hundreds of devotees would visit the temple to pay for lanterns where they may write their names and well-wishes. The proceeds would then be distributed as bursaries to students living in Toa Payoh (Ng, G. H., personal communication, September 24, 2021). By bringing the Toa Payoh Chinese communities together in the name of charity, the United Temple also helps to foster a sense of inclusivity and integration among the different Chinese diasporas.
Aside from financing education, Chinese temples were known to be beacons of community leadership, particularly during the colonial era and in the early years following independence. Mr Ng noted that while the United Temple’s constituent temples used to serve as community mediators between aggrieved parties from different dialect groups, those services gradually became redundant once the Singapore government had established formal channels for social welfare and legal disputes.
Through our dialogue with Mr Ng Gek Hai and my subsequent research, I had learnt so much about the rich and storied past of Toa Payoh. The unique infrastructure of the United Temple had me seeing the Toa Payoh Chinese Singaporean community through different eyes, and I now understood more about how religion and social change in Singapore has been underscored by the rapid development of the country in the last half-century.
Chua, A. (2014). Toa Payoh Heritage Trail [Brochure]. Author.
Hue, G. (2012). The Evolution of the Singapore United Temple: The Transformation of Chinese Temples in the Chinese Southern Diaspora. Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies, 5, 157-174. Retrieved from http://chl-old.anu.edu.au/publications/csds/csds2012/csds2012_07.pdf
National Heritage Board. (n.d.). United Temple. Retrieved from https://www.roots.gov.sg/places/places-landing/Places/landmarks/toa-payoh-trail/united-temple
Tham, S. (2014). Toa Payoh Heritage Trail. Retrieved from https://www.roots.gov.sg/stories-landing/stories/toa-payoh-heritage-trail/story
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