Further Ramblings of an Emigrant

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Some of you may be aware that I went to Singapore barely a month ago to help my parents settle in with their new live in caregiver. In mid-May, we were caught by surprise when my father passed away sooner than expected, but we are also relieved because he was spared the worst of his illness. When I received the news, I took the first available flight to Singapore. My first few days were spent with funeral activities. After the funeral, I stayed with my mother and spent time with my family, but I also indulged in some side activities. This blog records some of the more interesting things I did.

Please also be aware that FindPenguins will be my primary photo storage now as the app is great for relating photos with timelines and locations. Please feel free to browse photos and videos of this trip here.

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Desperately Seeking Great Grandma

I reconnected with a long lost cousin after my dad's funeral. He told me that our great grandmother (my mother's paternal grandmother) was buried at Bukit Brown, a historically significant cemetery. Bukit Brown had fallen into disrepair before the turn of the century, but it returned to the national consciousness in the mid 2000s after part of it was earmarked for development. Many people were upset by the plans as Bukit Brown is a haven for birdlife, and also because many prominent Chinese from the colonial era were buried there. More info here.

A little more than a decade ago, my cousin sought out our great grandmother's grave. With the help of amateur historians (I think of them more as amateur Lara Crofts LOL), he located her grave, and he hired a cemetery caretaker to clean it up. He gave me directions on how to find it.

One morning, I contacted my friend Chris, whom I knew walked around Bukit Brown most mornings, and asked if he would join me on a little adventure to find my great grandmother's grave. He gamely said yes. He helped me locate the general area that my cousin marked out, and he spent some time with me trying to find her grave. Unfortunately, he had to leave after a while, and I spent some more time making my way through the overgrown vegetation to find the grave. Alas, I could not find it. I'm not sure if my cousin had done any upkeep on the grave since he first discovered it, and I was expecting it to look somewhere between the two photos in this section of the blog, but I did not find anything that resembled either photo.

Despite the disappointment, I still had an interesting time exploring this historic site, and I am glad I took the time to do it. I did apologize to all the deceased laid to rest there for trampling around; I'm sure they'll forgive me since I was looking for my great grandmother.

I have since contacted another amateur Lara Croft - a friend of a friend - and she said she will look for the grave next time she is there and send me a pin drop. Hopefully my next jaunt will be more successful with the pin drop.

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Spirit Mediums in the Red Light District

When I was growing up, the red light district of Geylang was a no go zone. Even as an adult, the only times I ventured into the area was when I was in university to dine at several 24 hour eateries in the area. Those eateries, which were located along the main road, made for fascinating people watching as there was an interesting cast of characters coming in and out of the dark side lanes.

One evening, I had dinner with my high school classmates there, and we wandered around the area after eating. It was quite an eye opener. There were, of course, various establishments of questionable repute, including hotels and barely-disguised brothels. But, we were also taken by surprise at the number of clan associations, small shrines (mostly Buddhist; oddly, these featured figurines with black faces. There was also one church and one mosque thrown in for good measure), and ornate shophouse facades. Each of the shophouses had three upstairs windows - the middle one was always the longest and extended all the way to the floor. One of my friends, whose mother is a tour guide, explained that the middle window extended downwards close to the floor because the shophouses were built before modern sanitation, and waste (colloquially known as "nightsoil") was collected in buckets. The middle window was low to the floor so that the occupants could lower the nightsoil pails to the collectors below.

Our most significant discovery that evening was also the most bizarre. We thrown for a loop by the sight of two trucks with flashing lights blaring loud music. At first, we thought these were mobile karaoke trucks, but we realized we were wrong when we saw figurines on the trucks. One of our party is fluent in Mandarin and she could read the Chinese script, but she could not figure out what they were for. We stared in fascination as we walked past the trucks. Soon after, groups of Chinese people (mostly men) walked past us. In each party, there would be one bare chested man with five long skewers pierced into his back. They wore odd costumes, and one of them even moved like a primate. They all looked like they were in a trance. At the end of the procession, there was a man and a woman with pacifiers in their mouths. We couldn't make head or tail of this.

Our research later revealed that these were spirit mediums, colloquially known as tangki in the Hokkien dialect. Tangki are possessed by spirits (sometimes even gods) and they serve as vessels for them. Some of the key characters include the monkey god, which explains the main walking like a primate, and even child gods, which explains the people with pacifiers. Rather disturbingly, some of them are believed to be possessed by deities from the court of hell. In my western-centric worldview, my immediate thought was that this almost amounts to devil worship. But, there are, of course, nuances: in Chinese folk religion, these deities are charged with escorting spirits of the deceased to the underworld. The white faced ones keep track of deaths, and they then send the black faced ones to fetch the deceased to the underworld. This aligns with the many white and black faced deities we saw among the small shrines.



This was an interesting cultural encounter that I never expected, especially not in the red light district. More information on tangki may be found here.

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Japanese Cemetery

On my trip to Singapore last year, I explored various sites listed in Atlas Obscura. One of the sites - the Japanese Cemetery Park - piqued the interest of my classmate as it is located close to her home. We decided to explore this site on one of her evening walks.



Established in 1891 on the site of a former rubber plantation, the cemetery now nestled in the middle of an upmarket housing estate and it is the final resting place for an eclectic mix of soldiers, sex workers, and business owners. Singapore has had a complicated history with Japan, and the cemetery represents some of that history. The park itself was a serene spot and it was well worth the time we spent exploring.

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Photos

Bukit Timah Nature Reserve
Located close to my parents' condo, I often walk here. This abandoned granite quarry is now a lake teeming with fish, birds, monkeys, and monitor lizards.

Desperately Seeking Great Grandma
My cousin after he discovered our great grandmother's grave about a decade ago. Photo credit: H. Lim.

Desperately Seeking Great Grandma
My great grandmother's grave after my cousin restored it. Photo credit: H. Lim.

Spirit Mediums in the Red Light District
Statues of hell deities on one of the two trucks.

Spirit Mediums in the Red Light District
One of the two trucks blaring loud music.

Spirit Mediums in the Red Light District
A small shrine showing white and black faced deities.

Japanese Cemetery Park
The serene grounds of the Japanese Cemetery Park.

Comments

[alex waring]

Ramblings
I'm sorry to hear your sad news from Singapore Siewch, and my thoughts are with you. I enjoyed reading about your visits to unusual places of interest, and found the procession in Geylang fascinating reading. What a good idea it is to research these interesting places in Atlas Obscura, particularly places we think we may already know.

[Siewch]

Thanks
Thanks Alex. Yes, Atlas Obscura has been a gold mine of information and it has been fun exploring the sites listed. Geylang was a huge surprise for me, and it fed my inner wannabe cultural anthropologist. It's an old neighborhood, and one that has barely been touched by gentrification. I hope to uncover more such gems in my future explorations.

[Ake Och Emma]

Sorry to hear about your dad
I'm sorry to hear that your dad passed away. /Ake