Today's talks -- both very interesting -- were presented by author Yu-Mei Balasingamchow who spoke on "Writing the City: Rendering the Invisible", and Associate Professor Victor Savage, who spoke on a topic close to my heart...
The complimentary booklet handed out had interesting photos of bygone Singapore scenes including that of the Singapore River in the early 20th Century (above) and an aerial view of the Empress Place area in the late 19th Century (below):
I learnt so much about Singapore's past! Here's one: how did the backlanes of places like Tiong Bahru, Chinatown and Geylang come about?
Well, back in the days when the removal of human waste from the crowded shophouses was done by the "nightsoil man" (I had blogged about him!), this fella would enter the buildings by the only way he could get in, ie, by the front door. On the way in and on the way out, and with two buckets perched precariously on a pole carried on his shoulder, one can expect spillage. It meant too that diseases like typhoid and dysentery spread much faster under such unsanitary conditions.
The colonial government then mandated the requirement for backlanes, so that the nightsoil man need not go further than those dwellings' squat toilets, which were in the back.
During Q&A, I asked Prof Savage two questions. The first was: Considering that so many "relatively flat terrain" places here have names with "Bukit" (Bukit Pasoh, Bukit Chermin, Bukit Merah, etc), "Mount" (Mount Elizabeth, Mount Sinai, etc) and even "Hill" (One Tree Hill, Hillview, etc), was the Singapore that Raffles landed on a much, much more undulating island than it is now?
The answer was that, yes, indeed it was. And Prof Savage added that the immigrant Chinese made a point to bury their dead at the bottom of hills, as they did in China for reasons of geomancy (feng shui). He also reminded the older folks in the audience that -- in the Orchard Road shopping belt -- the area around Ngee Ann City had such a cemetery as did the area around Tangs.
My other question was also about something I had blogged about: Where exactly was the spot where Pulau Saigon once was? Prof Savage admittedly that it was difficult to pinpoint the exact location of this feature -- a tiny islet between the banks of the Singapore River -- other than that it was in the Clemenceau/Robertson Quay area.
I decided to check out the Internet and found these links which shed some light (but note that the new Pulau Saigon Bridge is not near the site of the original Pulau Saigon which would appear to be in the vicinity of the present day Alkaff Bridge):
http://timesofmylife.wordpress.com/2008/06/23/lost-islands-of-the-singapore-river-part-2/
http://pictures.nl.sg/77f3679c-f08a-4d25-b33d-7c43b73d366a.aspx
http://www.streetdirectory.com/sg/pulau-saigon/20835_1.html
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I won't be blogging again till a few days after mid-June as I will be taking a vacation!
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