Selamat Datang [Welcome]

Life has no boundaries when every place can be home – Jen Shyu

Singapore is not just every place – it is the land of my birth. It is where most of my family lives. I was raised and educated there and worked for close to a decade before moving to the United States. I have sometimes been asked what it was like to leave everything behind and to start fresh in a new country. It is not an easy question to answer because as every migrant knows, adaptability takes time, effort, and pain. Even with all the benefits of education and knowledge of Western traditions and mores, finding acceptance and your place is a major process. With time, the right frame of mind and a sense of expansiveness, every boundary can be traversed. Indeed, home can be many places. Michigan is my home. So is Maine and Florida – places we visit regularly to recharge and to enjoy life’s bounties, while they and we still exist.

I had a family reunion in Singapore in December last year. My home for the first thirty years of my life remains an eclectic place. A mix of modern and the old and always evolving. Very few places remain untouched. Land is even reclaimed from the sea and housing units built for the expanding population. My old high school was demolished many years ago and is the site of a shopping and office complex. The hotel we stayed at in Singapore was built on the site of a former police station where notorious gang members were once locked up. Who would have known? We were in the Katong and Joo Chiat neighborhoods in the east of the island, where once coconut plantations and Malay kampungs existed.  Today it is high-rise apartments, new buildings, and restaurants galore.

When I was 12 or 13 years old, I attended a girl’s secondary school in the area where I met many good friends. We would, like all good teenagers check out the neighborhood after school where we could have an ice cream or some Singaporean “kueh mueh” or cakes or do some window shopping. The neighborhood has changed some but there is still a sense of community and nostalgia almost.  The area is well-known for its Peranakan food and culture.  Eurasian, Indian, and Malay influences abound.  The Peranakans were descended from marriages between Chinese men and Malay or Indonesian women. Their food and culture unique, as is the architecture of the terrace row houses that they used to inhabit.  Indeed, just a short walk from our hotel which also has a Peranakan theme in its décor, are rows and rows of these terrace beauties. These distinctive houses are outstanding examples of Singapore’s architectural heritage: ornate designs combining influences from the East and West like elaborate fascia boards, decorative plaster moldings and motifs, patterned tiles, and colored glass. It is fortunate that 800 buildings in the area were conserved. I took many photographs of the exterior facades and thought they would make for an interesting post. There are so many fascinating subjects to focus on in Singapore, but for now these colorful architectural remnants, some even dating back to the early 1820s, will serve as a special memory of the trip.

Written: Jan. 2020. Posted May, 2020.