Where east and west came together

Post Reply
readerc54

Where east and west came together

Post by readerc54 »

From NY Times
Image

By IAN JOHNSON

SINGAPORE — In the middle of this island nation of highways and high-rises lies a wrinkle in time: Bukit Brown, one of the world’s largest Chinese cemeteries. Now neglected and overgrown, it offers an incredible array of tombstones, statues and shrines just four miles north of the downtown’s banks, malls and regional headquarters.

For years, the 213-acre site was a destination for Halloween thrill seekers and bird watchers, a haven of green in an overcrowded land. But in recent years it has become something much more powerful: a pilgrimage site for Singaporeans trying to reconnect with their country’s vanishing past. That has put Bukit Brown at the center of an important social movement in a country that has rarely tolerated community activism — a battle between the state, which plans to level part of the cemetery, and a group of citizens dedicated to its preservation.

Thanks to the explanations by guides like Ian Chong, a professor at the National University of Singapore; Ang Yik Han, an engineer; lawyer Fabian Tee, a lawyer; and Claire Leow, a former journalist, I began to understand how this city-state was crucial to the British Empire’s Asian holdings.

Built in 1922, Bukit Brown was the final resting place for about 100,000 Singapore families until it was closed in 1972. Its importance is greater than its relatively recent 50-year history implies because many historic graves were relocated there from other cemeteries that were paved over. “This is where East and West came together,” Mr. Ang said. “We are standing at the center of the island, the belly of the dragon, and we can’t let it be cut open.”

We surveyed the enormous mausoleum of Ong Sam Leong, a supplier of labor to the Christmas Islands, who died in 1917 and whose grave was relocated here. I also saw the grave of Tan Kim Cheng, who married Anna to the King of Siam, and those of revolutionaries who supported Sun Yat-sen when he was plotting the ultimately successful downfall of China’s last dynasty.

I couldn’t help but think of many of the world’s other great resting places. In terms of trees and wildlife, Bukit Brown evoked London’s Highgate Cemetery; as a retreat from daily life it felt like Green-Wood in Brooklyn; and as record of one country’s famous people it recalled Père Lachaise in Paris or Buenos Aires’s Cementerio de la Recoleta.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/worl ... ether.html
fountainhall

Re: Where east and west came together

Post by fountainhall »

Interesting article. Having been in Singapore dozens of times and just returned from there a couple of weeks ago, I have never heard of this cemetery. With the price of land in the city state, I wonder for how much longer it can remain just that.

I do think the article gives too much importance to the local revolutionaries who helped Sun Yat Sen. A smallish number of Chinese businessmen certainly got together and raised some funds. But Sun needed vast amounts of cash for the revolution and spent an entire 16 years roaming the world in search of it. I know of no evidence that these Singapore Chinese merchants coughed up anything like that of the Japanese where Sun lived for 6 years, or from those in the USA, Canada and Hong Kong.

The comparison with Pere Lachaise and the Cementerio de la Recoleta cemeteries also seems just a tad far-fetched!
windwalker

Re: Where east and west came together

Post by windwalker »

readerc54 wrote:From NY Times
Image
.”

I also saw the grave of Tan Kim Cheng, who married Anna to the King of Siam, together.html
Anna did not marry the King of Siam.
fountainhall

Re: Where east and west came together

Post by fountainhall »

Anna Leonowens was working as a teacher in Singapore, a widow trying to bring up her two children. Tan Kim Cheng was extremely well connected in Thailand and had been the country's Consul General in Singapore. When the King announced he wanted someone to educate his children but without the baggage of the American missionaries, it was Tan who introduced him to Anna.
Post Reply