Chan Luo Er Channel NewsAsia 21 Apr 15;
SINGAPORE: The Jurong community and the National Heritage Board (NHB) have launched a new heritage trail, as part of Singapore HeritageFest 2015.
The self-guided Jurong Heritage Trail will feature 12 sites which have contributed significantly to the area's development.
NHB said at the launch on Tuesday (Apr 21) that input from the residents form a large part of the trail. Over a year and a half, NHB conducted interviews with 100 residents between the ages of 20 and 80, and did archival research.
Sites include the area where a drive-in cinema used to be, and Jurong Hill, where dignitaries including the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II planted trees to commemorate their visit to Jurong Industrial Estate. There is also a look-out tower there, with a bird's-eye view of Jurong's port and shipyard.
Pandan Reservoir was also chosen as a heritage site after extensive research.
Ms Stefanie Tham, a spokesperson for education and community outreach at NHB, said: "Through our interviews, we found out that Jurong was very famous for its prawn ponds and residents made a living through prawning in the Pandan Reservoir, which used to be the Sungei Pandan or the mangroves area.
"These are the small anecdotes which I think made the area more than what it is today, which is an industrial estate."
Today, Pandan Reservoir serves the community in a different way - water sports enthusiasts go to the reservoir to canoe, sail and row.
Another heritage site is Taman Jurong Market and Food Centre, which was formed from a merger of Yuan Sheng Food Centre - Singapore's first hawker centre - and Corporation Drive Market.
Eighty-year-old Madam Chia Thor Kee ran a hawker store at Yuan Sheng Food Centre before moving to Taman Jurong Market and Food Centre. She said: "In the 1960s, I was at the first market in Singapore and in the 1970s, I moved here when it was a single-storey building.
"Now it has renovated to become three storeys. The history of this place is long. A lot of people recognise me when I am out."
Madam Chia's fish soup stall, which is still located at Taman Jurong, is now run by her daughter and her grandson.
Other heritage sites include the Jurong River, Hong Kah Village, SAFTI, Jurong Railway, Science Centre Singapore and the former Jurong Town Hall.
Apart from marking out historical sites, the trail also aims to showcase a lesser-known side of Jurong. The area was once a hideout for pirates, said NHB. In the 1800s, Jurong Island was a maze of islands which provided pirates many places to retreat after raiding passing vessels.
NHB also published a booklet which includes personal stories and photographs contributed by long-time residents, to complement the trail. Members of the public can view it online or obtain a physical copy at Taman Jurong Community Centre.
The public can access parts of the trail through the park connector network or take a train down to the nearest heritage site.
- CNA/xq/ac
Traipse through pre-industrial Jurong
Olivia Ho The Straits Times AsiaOne 22 Apr 15;
AS A young woman, Ms Cecilia Choo queued with colleagues to get into Singapore's first and only drive-in cinema in Jurong.
"The whole road was jammed when Bruce Lee's movie The Big Boss came," recalled the 60-year-old senior administration executive. "People would sit on top of their cars to watch."
Opened in 1971 by Cathay Organisation, the cinema could squeeze in up to 900 cars. But crowds dwindled with the rise of video piracy, as well as gatecrashers and illegal circuit racing. The cinema finally shut in 1985, after which the Fairway (golf) Club took over the grounds.
The cinema may no longer be standing, but visitors can learn about it from a marker at the site, which is one of the highlights of a new National Heritage Board (NHB) trail.
Developed in partnership with the Taman Jurong Citizens' Consultative Committee, the trail showcases little-known facets of Jurong's history. It will be launched on Saturday as part of the Singapore HeritageFest at the Taman Jurong Community Club by Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, who is also MP for Jurong GRC.
The trail is the NHB's 13th and will highlight 12 heritage spots, including the old Jurong Railway, which transported raw materials and goods to and from Malaysia, and the former Jurong Town Hall with its 58m-high clock tower.
NHB spokesman Stefanie Tham said: "The stereotype of Jurong is that it is merely an industrial town, but through our research we realised there is so much more."
Before factories, shipyards and large malls filled Jurong, the area was home to gambier and rubber plantations. It also hosted a spy and guerilla training camp, where the Japanese tried to build a submarine base during World War II.
Resident Soh Ah Choo, 71, recalled how as a child of eight she would walk barefoot from her kampung to the rubber plantation where her mother worked to take her lunch. The retired cleaner added that she misses her old kampung, which was demolished to make way for Jurong Road.
She said in Mandarin: "We kept pigs, we kept chickens, we planted trees. We were very poor, but we had so many friends."
Memories of residents such as Madam Soh were an important factor in the trail's design, said Ms Tham. "It's the residents' stories that made this trail come alive, how they felt so much fondness towards the place."
This Saturday's free NHB tours were fully booked within three weeks of registration.
Heritage buffs can also do a self-guided trail using a booklet published by NHB. It is available for download from the HeritageFest website or in hard copy at community centres in Jurong.
Jurong Heritage Trail officially launched
Hetty Musfirah Abdul Khamid, Channel NewsAsia 25 Apr 15;
SINGAPORE: The Jurong heritage trail which traces the development of the area was officially launched by Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam on Saturday (Apr 25).
The trail features 12 sites of heritage significance in the area, including Jurong Hill, Pandan Reservoir, and Jurong Lake.
Visitors can also explore the story of Jurong when it was formerly peppered with gambier and rubber plantations and follow its transformation into Singapore’s first industrial estate.
The launch also saw the opening of a new exhibition at the community museum in Taman Jurong, which explores the history of schools in Jurong since the 1930s. Titled My School is Cool: An Exhibition of Educational Institutions in Jurong, it also shows how the schools adapted to meet the challenges faced by the nation.
Mr Tharman said such efforts are worthwhile: "Most important is that the memories of our pioneers and the generation after them that will keep our culture going... Each generation will have its own memories and each generation will keep its memories for the future generations."
- CNA/ac
