It’s shortly the year of the Fire Horse and it would be hard for Singaporeans not to be aware of that. This one stands, or rather rears, in the middle of New Bridge Street which is a busy road that runs alongside Chinatown.
Upper Hokkien street feeds into it. I mention that since that’s where I get my Lapsang Souchong tea from (though it costs a lot more here than it does in Devizes, make of that what you will). The horse appeared almost overnight – a nice illustration of the blending of old and new. Old ideas, new format. That goes for Chinatown too and in fact everywhere in Singapore despite the surface modernity of much of it. Look closely, or around the corner, and you’ll find bits of the original still hanging in there. It’s why I like it, I suppose.
Behind the horse for example you can see the Majestic theatre. It looks like an Art Deco cinema, but actually it was a Cantonese Opera House built in 1927 so it’s not very likely that either my father or Cherry’s went there when stationed here or passing through before the war. Cantonese opera is an acquired taste. They would certainly have recognised Chinatown, though, and the Tiger and Tsingtao beer is probably much the same.
Perhaps that train of thought was set off by my re-visiting the refurbishing Singapore national museum last weekend. It’s in a splendidly recycled colonial era building – probably the biggest in Southeast Asia – founded in the mid 19th Century. To cover up the on-going refurbishment they put on two big displays of Singapore’s history, mercifully free of the anti-Imperial cant so common these days. One was a kind of sound and light show that you walked through by descending a circular ramp, starting with today and going down to the remote past. It was very effective and photogenic.
I liked this portrayal of the old kampong days, and the awfulness of the war was particularly well done. Equally so, its depiction of the sinking of the Prince of Wales and Repulse in December 1941. But the fore and after really comes across from old photos, like this one of the river just before the First World War.
Now the river is almost
completely empty apart from a few tourist boats chugging around – all the
shipping has shifted now partly to Keppel Harbour and now to a brand-new
ultra-modern, automated port at Tuas at the western end of the island. Building
that was a gigantic project of extraordinary complexity that puts our shambling
H2S to shame. There’s nothing like a bit of ‘guided democracy’ to get things
done ! It’s the same at my university campus which was largely green when we
first came here 20 odd years ago but now has no less than three underground
stations being built on it with twisting overhead tracks all over the place.
It’s still full of trees though. Likewise the shop-houses on the quayside
behind the boats in the river are still there, though mainly restaurants and
bars these days.
I go to college twice a
week by public transport the underground -or MRT Mass Rapid Transport and bus (and
once by minivan) and am always struck by how deeply underground my Downtown
line is. The lift, if uninterrupted, takes a full minute travelling quite fast
to get down to my platform. Some of the escalators are hugely long. And yet
before the war when the military wanted to dig trenches on the Padang (
Singapore’s equivalent of a village green even with the cricket club nearby)
for protection against Japanese planes, they were dissuaded by the locals who
said the water table was so high they would flood. Or so we are told !
Anyhow enough of that. I have been extremely busy teaching and participating in conferences and the like, not the leisured life I had been thinking of, but can still find time for the odd local excursion to favoured places. Unimaginative it might be, but the Botanical Garden just next door a great and easy lure. There’s nearly always something to see.
It might be a shot of a white-fronted waterhen picking his way across the lily-pads or a tiny Kingfisher, or this chap, a monitor lizard dozing at the water’s edge right by the path, so well camouflaged that most people walked past without seeing him, even though he was a good 5 feet long.
I did spot him , and took the photo. while I was so engaged, a small group of young French gentlemen came over to see. ‘Oooo la,la,’ one said, impressed. I didn’t know they really said that !
A sleeping dragon beginning to wake up. So, to summarise, out
here one quietly continues to take delight in little things, be they old or
new.
