By TAN SAI SIONG
LAST week, I was in an office at Tong Eng Building in Cecil Street and, in between meetings, found myself drinking in the view from the 26th-floor window.
My gaze swept over Chinatown, lingering over the new terracotta roofs covering row upon row of restored shophouses.
Changing times ... shophouses, once regarded as slums, fit only for the wrecker's ball, are now treasured and worth millions.I mused over my own and the country's changed attitude towards these buildings. They were once regarded as slums, fit only for the wrecker's ball. Now, they are treasured and worth millions.
The change parallels the conversion of that wonderful Nonya woman, Madam Rose Ong, who pioneered a small volunteer group to send English-language books to colleges in China.
I recall reading an interview she gave, confessing that in her youth, she thought her mother's English-speaking world stood for refinement and her father's Chinese world, for everything crude.
"But I have changed," she said. "After so many years of thinking and acting 'the English lady', not bothering about anything Chinese, I am now connecting with my roots."
This is also what is happening to many Singaporeans now experiencing a born-again pride and interest in things past.
Where two decades ago, history was squeezed out of the school syllabus, and the popular notion was that it was bunkum, the subject today has returned to the classroom. Its status is enhanced and fast attaining a patina of chic.
Open a copy of the Singapore Tatler and, more often than not, there is a picture spread of our beautiful people at a museum, to support an exhibition that shows off our pioneer artists, the art, artefacts and other activities of our ancestors or the very building where the exhibition is held.
Museum-going, too, appears to be an "in" activity among the trendy young, going by anecdotal, visual evidence picked up outside the Singapore Art Museum and Asian Civilisations Museum.
This perception receives support from the fact that a hotel, Le Meridien Singapore, has found it worthwhile to offer guests staying three nights in March free passes to the Singapore Art Museum, Asian Civilisations Museum and the Singapore History Museum.
Sure, it is part of Le Meridien's worldwide effort to promote culture, but it also indicates that Singapore's rediscovered pleasure in its past is very much in tune with the times.
Helping to support and fuel this interest is the 20-year-old Friends Of The National Museum, about which I've written before.
But I must add here that, apart from providing volunteer guides for the three museums here, the society also organises a weekly public lecture to inform and educate anyone who wants to know about the past that has shaped Singapore and its immediate neighbours.
In addition, it offers an excellent library and a host of other self-enrichment activities to members, which make its annual $35 membership fee one of the best buys in town.
As for those who prefer to dig into their past on their own, there is a veritable buffet of sources to tap.
Turn on the radio to FM 90.5 and hear three times a day, Monday to Friday, Singapore Memories, a programme that paints vignettes from yesterday.
For me, the programme provided an insight into the old Malay house - why it had few rooms and was sparsely furnished and how that helped to strengthen familial and communal bonds.
Once, I was pleasantly surprised to hear an old friend, Robert Yeo - better known for his plays - reminiscing on the programme about the old baker down the road from his childhood home. This man made bread in ways no bakeries of today could imitate.
In any case, they and today's health authorities certainly would not allow the colonies of lizards to flourish on their premises, as Robert's baker used to do.
But if yesterday's mundane minutiae are not your cup of tea, there is always something grander from Singapore's history warehouse on television.
Lee Kong Chian, the man behind OCBC BankIn the series, They Made A Difference, men and women, whose actions stirred the Singapore of their days, have been featured. They include Lee Kong Chian, the legendary man behind OCBC Bank and the philanthropic Lee Foundation, and Constance Goh, who recognised the post-war birth-rate had to be cut if the people were to get out of the poverty trap and then slaved to have the idea accepted. The programme also featured Hon Sui Sen, former Finance Minister who is credited with laying Singapore's strong financial foundation, whose dividends we are reaping today when we stand virtually unscathed, despite the earthquake rocking our immediate neighbours' currencies in recent months.
Beyond radio and TV, various facets of Singapore's history can be found in newspapers or books, where a few older Singaporeans have come forth enthusiastically to write about their life experiences.
For example, Mr Chan Kwee Sung (who has just begun a fortnightly column in this newspaper) and Mr Lee Kip Lee share their memories in our letter pages regularly.
Mr Lee has also written an autobiography (Amber Sands), as has Dr Maurice Baker, former diplomat and university don (A Time Of Fireflies And Wild Guavas).
These contributions are valuable as their recollections provide a bridge to past events for the young who don't know and for the not-so-young Singaporeans such as I, who have forgotten or were unaware.
They can also provide the spark that fires others to document their lives and times too, so that posterity, unlike today, needn't depend on tomes in foreign lands to explain what made Singapore, and why.
But first, the flame must be kept burning to ensure that the present interest in our past is not another candle in the wind.
First published in The Straits Times, Jan 30, 1998
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