Desire to save aspects of history before they disappear altogether
Tan Dawn Wei Straits Times 30 May 10;
An area of growing interest has been in natural heritage, as seen by the public-driven movement to save Chek Jawa in the early 2000s, when planned land reclamation works threatened to destroy the area's rich biodiversity.
It always irks Mr Tony Tan when people accuse his home country of being soul-less, boring and expensive.
In fact, it riled him so much that he decided to prove them wrong. Seven years ago, the travel-savvy information technology professional, who was working in Britain, decided to come home to set up a hostel.
He rented from his parents a 1920s conserved shophouse in the heart of culturally rich Joo Chiat and started Betel Box with a friend.
Betel Box was not going to be just another cheap stay. Mr Tan wanted it to encompass and showcase six facets of Singapore: culture and heritage, food, art and design, nature and conservation, architecture and social studies, and finally, outdoor and adventure.
'I felt so strongly about doing it. It's important because travel agents refuse to debunk these three myths about Singapore,' said the eloquent, chatty 38-year-old who studied economics at University College London.
He did not want tourists to see only Sentosa or the Night Safari either. 'Singapore is a country with its own identity. We want to engage these travellers on a different level,' he said.
So, he got a travel agent licence and has been operating highly popular food and cycling tours that even Singaporeans sign up for.
'Although I'm an accommodation provider, it is the social environment that is most important to me and that is reinforced by the things we do, the way we decorated the hostel and the way we deal with people,' said the committee member of the non-profit Singapore Heritage Society.
His food tours - free for his guests and $50 for everyone else - is a six- to seven-hour chomp jaunt of over 20 dishes around the Joo Chiat area, filled with history nuggets of the food, architecture and how Singaporeans live.
Even those he hires have to fit a certain criteria, top of which is having 'a passion for Singapore'. Conservationists, artists and volunteers of social groups have all been members of his staff.
As Singapore continues to race towards economic excellence and cosmopolitan chic, young Singaporeans are looking back to the country's past and taking a shine to what was once seen as a fuddy duddy topic: heritage.
At the National University of Singapore, Professor Peter Ng teaches a Singapore studies module, Natural Heritage of Singapore, that is open to students of all faculties.
The class size has grown from 400 to 600 in three years and the school has had to cap the number because there are only 600 seats in the lecture theatre.
'It tells us that heritage is something that younger people are interested in and want to know more about,' said Professor Ng, 49, who has been on a crusade the past year to get a natural heritage museum built.
But this growing enthusiasm for the country's natural and man-made endowment is not just confined to the classroom.
Like Mr Tan, young Singaporeans - many born post-Independence - are doing their bit in pockets of this city and in cyberspace to preserve, document and showcase a slice of Singapore's heritage.
In the past few weeks, award-winning filmmaker Royston Tan has been sending out blasts on social networking site Facebook, asking people to share their memories of old places in a new film project. The docu-drama, scheduled for a possible television release later this year, will be a collection of scenes from long-forgotten corners of Singapore.
'Singapore's old places and our childhood places are disappearing every single minute. We want to invite people from all walks of life to help us form a collective memory of all these old places that matter to them,' explained the 33-year-old director of 15: The Movie and 881.
Since he started spreading the word, ideas have been pouring in, such as the last drain where one can catch wild fighting fish, an old confectionery stuck in time and Singapore's oldest bus-stop.
'We are always in transition. Sometimes, you don't even realise the changes that have taken place subtly,' said Mr Tan, who grew up in a kampung in Lorong Chuan.
Anyone interested in contributing ideas can e-mail wyna@chuanpictures.com
An area of growing interest has been in natural heritage, as seen by the public-driven movement to save Chek Jawa in the early 2000s, when planned land reclamation works threatened to destroy the area's rich biodiversity.
That groundswell of public opinion led to the Government making a U-turn on the redevelopment plans and promising to leave it alone for the next 10 years.
'There is a hunger from various stratas in society to have a connection,' said Dr Zeehan Jaafar, 32, president of Blue Water Volunteers and a Chek Jawa activist.
It was around the time the Chek Jawa campaign took off that a group of young people, including Dr Zeehan, banded together as a marine conservation group.
Blue Water Volunteers was registered as a society in 2006, although the group had started the ball rolling since early 2000 on an ad hoc basis. Run by volunteers, it wants to complement research activities and increase awareness of local marine habitats, such as coral reefs.
The core group of volunteers at Blue Water numbers about 50, most of them young working professionals below the age of 40.
'There's something to be said about preserving something that belongs to you, your own heritage,' said Dr Zeehan, a lecturer in biodiversity at the National University of Singapore.
'Our reefs, despite being so impacted because of development, are very diverse. We're still discovering new species.'
Blue Water's ReefWalk programme, where about 10 volunteer guides take 100 people on a chartered boat to Kusu Island for some coral reef spotting, is always overbooked. The group is training a fresh batch of volunteer guides and will restart the programme soon.
Dr Kevin Tan, president of the Singapore Heritage Society, is not surprised that young Singaporeans are getting in on the act of keeping a slice of Singapore's heritage.
'There's so much interest because many young Singaporeans are trying to find their own identities. In order for you to figure out your identity, you start looking at the present and back at the past,' said the 48-year-old, who runs his own consultancy on law and heritage.
'The government can only take care of state-centric heritage whereas younger people are looking at alternative history, history on the ground. These are ephemeral, not monumental. The state can't do this kind of thing but the public can.'
In one case at least, the state and the individual have come into a happy partnership.
In 2007, Dr Alan Prem Kumar, a senior scientist at the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore at the National University of Singapore, and his 38-year-old brother, Indu, decided they wanted to do something for their Malayalee community.
'My brother and I were chatting one day and we realised that we didn't know our own history,' said the 47-year-old, who has spent 20 years in the United States.
'We didn't know the stories of the Singapore Malayalee community and our children would probably also not know. The stories could just die by the next generation instead of being passed down.'
The duo mooted the idea of a Malayalee Heritage Centre and approached Nominated Member of Parliament Viswa Sadasivan, who roped in Mr Predeep Menon and Mr Jaya Prakash Nair as advisers.
Mr Menon is chief executive officer of RSP Meena Architects Planner and Engineers and Mr Nair is director of Pandisea Pte Ltd.
A concept plan was born and Dr Kumar wrote to President SRNathan, who invited him to the Istana. As it turns out, there were plans for an Indian heritage centre.
He is now working with the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts on the Malayalee component of the all-encompassing museum.
He wants it to engage the young, so interactive features are in the plans. He, too, is learning about his heritage along the way and while the centre will take another two years to complete, he is not losing steam.
'We started it in 2007, and we hope to finish it,' he said.
