YAbout
Year 3 Social Studies Performance Task!
Social Changes in Singapore
Targeted Area: Chinatown!
Done By:
Li Yunshan
Class: 312
Index: 07
YLinks
YCREDITS
Designer:
desperatefor.glamour
Image:
Red Packet & original picture of the fan
Brushes :
Portfelia, Insomiac BrushWorks
Fonts :
Dafonts
YARCHIVES
YBLOG
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Chinatown
A Bird’s Eye View
Targeted Area
Kreta Ayer consists of the following streets: Mosque street, Pagoda street, Temple street, Smith street, Sago street. I will be concentrating on Pagoda street. Pagoda street has many shop houses and the Chinatown Heritage Centre.
Target Audience
My target audience is the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) and the residents who used to live in Chinatown. It is important to retain the essence of Chinese culture in Chinatown and the spirit of Chinatown, and I hope that URA can take action to control western and commercial influence on the area, with the help of the residents who used to live there.
Emotional Attachment and Collective Memory
Chinatown was a place where immigrants from China used to live and work, back in the days when Singapore was just a tiny fishing village. Where the shop houses now stand used to be workplaces and living quarters of the Chinese immigrants. Chinatown is where our ancestors lived, and it is to the utmost importance that we conserve the past. Chinatown should be a place where we can revisit our roots and honour our ancestors. However, due to the redevelopment and modernizing of the area, the Chinatown today can no longer effectively reflect and bring out the essence of the Chinese. Shop houses are westernized, a lot of shops sell western items and food, and many shops also double up as a souvenir shop selling souvenirs of Singapore. This shows that the area is much to commercialized and westernized to effectively reflect Chinatown as a place with rich Chinese heritage of Singapore in the past. Thus, I urge the Urban Redevelopment Authority to reconsider the current Chinatown and take effort to retain and reconstruct a new Chinatown that truly reflects the essence of the Chinese. Chinatown should also effectively reflect the spirit of the place and the residents who used to live there. Some residents feel that the spirit of Chinatown is replaced by the many shop houses, which are for business, and do not reflect the past and the spirit. Pagoda street used to have a wet market and was a tailor’s hub, having as many as 21 tailor shops. There were also many coolie dens in the area. Some old residents still go back to Chinatown often as it is a memorable place. The old Chinatown reflects the openness and pragmatism of the Cantonese, as 90% of the residents back then was Cantonese. Chinatown used to be full of residents and the spirit of Chinatown was brought out by residents and their lifestyle and this is something worth preserving. However, urban renewal in the 1980s changed the whole of Chinatown. In 1983, the hawkers were relocated to Chinatown Complex, and Chinatown was zoned for commercial use due to a high price as a conservation area. There is importance in recapturing the spirit of Chinatown, and quoting Eu Tong Sen, the owner of Eu Yan Sang, who used to live in Chinatown, we must not just retain the “hardware part” of Chinatown, but also the “software part” (spirit of the place).
Physical structures and Cultural Symbolisms
Chinatown, at the very least should look Chinese. However, the reconstruction of the old shop houses looks like this:
The design of the current shop houses are of “Early, Transitional, Late and Art Deco Shophouse Styles”. The shops themselves also sell western items, and many Chinese shops also double up as souvenir shops selling items such as key chains and postcards that feature the Merlion and other iconic places. For example, a shop selling TinTin's collectors' items and a western clothing shop.
Many restaurants there also sell food that is not necessarily Chinese.
This has changed the original spirit of Chinatown, reflecting a place that is modernised and commercialised for tourism. We must retain Chinatown as a place that retains the memories of Singapore in the past, not a place zoned for commercial use. Pagoda Street also contains the Chinatown Heritage Centre, which is situated where 3 tailor shops used to stand. The Chinatown Heritage Centre is a good attempt to conserve the spirit of Chinatown, but many people in Singapore do not bother to go as the entrance fee is a costly ten dollars and the place looks rather small and hard to spot and can be easily mistaken for a shop.
The information in Chinatown Heritage Centre is an eye-opener though, and more attempts to promote the centre must be made. Inside the centre, there is a very realistic sense of Chinatown in the past, although the facilities must be maintained properly.This picture shows water dripped on the floor by a spoilt air-conditioner from above.
However, little people were there and most of them were tourists. This emphasizes the need for promoting the centre and most Singaporeans would not bother go, especially the younger generation, unless it was a compulsory school field trip.
Human Activity
Many of the people around Chinatown are tourists from all over the world, and large tour groups are often seen. This shows that Chinatown is being commercialized as a commercial hotspot for tourists. Although this is an effort to improve Singapore’s tourism, we must also keep in mind to retain the spirit that makes Chinatown “Uniquely Singapore”, a place that Singaporean can see and learn to treasure their past. Many of the people there are usually middle-aged and up, and hardly any teenagers or young adults are seen. An effort must be taken to increase the interest of the younger generation in Singapore.
Suggestions!
The spirit of Chinatown cannot be an immediate implementation, and gradual change is the best solution to the problem at hand. I would suggest renovation of the shop houses to a more Chinese design. This will give Chinatown a look that would better fit its name. Taking into consideration that the old Chinatown is not practical today, we should instead try to bring out the spirit of Chinatown. An area to work on is the Chinatown Heritage Centre, which should be widely promoted, and expanded, and an entrance fee of fewer than five dollars would be more appealing than the current ten dollars. The facilities (like the air-conditioner) should also be maintained. However, this would mean more subsidies from the government as the heritage centre also has to maintain its facilities. There should also be control of what the shops sell in Chinatown, including the restaurants. A food street may also be introduced, to sell delicacies and food that people in Chinatown used to eat for occasions such as Chinese New Year, which may attract more locals and the younger generation. A point to note is that the stakeholders in Chinatown should also try to preserve the spirit, and if only the government was trying, the effort would prove rather futile. There are shops selling Chinese paintings and calligraphies in Chinatown, and this can be further improved on by getting the vendors to do a “live” demonstration of these Chinese works. All in all, let’s work together to make Chinatown a place of our heritage!