#3: Sounding the Familiar
An excursion through Boon Keng market
An excursion through Boon Keng market
Continually making an effort to ‘see old things anew’ may feel needless and contrived. At the start of the walk, Shawn is quick to lament, “Huh, but this is what I see everyday,” demonstrating the difficulty of stripping oneself away from the familiar, or isolating the familiar from its milieu. If we liken this ‘surrounding’ to an intangible that drones and strings us along, it is understandable that any kind of resistance towards it is akin to an imposed silence or pause- a discomfort, albeit one through which we can deconstruct the aural, visual and physical imprints of the everyday. The act of distancing from our habitual environments can often be made more palatable by first being told a certain history, information that helps to orientate and reposition oneself, in this case of the Mang-Ka-Ka area.
As the oldest member and unofficial connector of the group, Tom is invited to give a personal introduction of Mang-Ka-Ka with a hand-drawn map. One of the most memorable areas to Tom was the Whampoa River, a place with many unrecorded stories. Whampoa River was used primarily as a food rationing centre during World War 2. He tells a tale of his then 7-year-old mother bravely pushing aside dead bodies in the river to swim across for food. Taking pity on her, Japanese soldiers gave her sweet potatoes to eat. His grandmother however, had to hide under a floating boat to escape detection during the war, and as a result suffered from dysentery due to poor hygiene conditions. Little is it known also that the Kallang Basin was actually filled with red soil from the Toa Payoh Grave Hill cemetery, but no one seems to be overtly mindful or superstitious about the soil’s origins. Tom manages to gross everybody out with another story about pulling out human hair along with his sunken leg from the muddy ground!
While it is easy to get excited over things you never knew about, it is much harder to find flavour in plain situations. The group is tasked to walk around Boon Keng market for five to ten minutes and take a picture of something they find interesting. Human figures and identifiable spaces are two of the most relatable ‘characters’ that populate their observations. Everyone was quick to pick up on an ‘old’ person or ‘aged’ place within the market, possibly because they appear truncated or displaced.
Zihuan notices the Chinese medical shop, one of the many icons of the market he remembers from childhood. Run by an old couple, the shop has been around since the 1960s. Zihuan thinks it’s a pity that it now only functions as a dispensary, providing herbs for prescriptions from other physicians.
Jason’s attention was drawn by the curious-looking rooms above the ground floor shopfronts. Their windows are cluttered with laundry and yet they usually go unnoticed. These apparently are the upper halves of what used to be old double-storey shophouses that have since been converted to units that function as both retail and residential spaces. After the exercise, Jason expressed his appreciation for the exercise as it reminded him to take the time to notice little details. With such a hectic working schedule, this is a luxury he really wishes to afford.
After several minutes of walking around, Shawn starts to watch an old lady seated on a granite bench. He observes in amusement as she waits for people to leave before claiming the refuse they leave behind to sell off for small change.
Tom also notices an elderly person — a man seated cross-legged like a kan qia ah pek (hokkien for rickshaw puller), slurping down his meal from a bowl that he holds right up to his face. This reminded him of the good old days.
Zihuan notices the Chinese medical shop, one of the many icons of the market he remembers from childhood. Run by an old couple, the shop has been around since the 1960s. Zihuan thinks it’s a pity that it now only functions as a dispensary, providing herbs for prescriptions from other physicians.
Jason’s attention was drawn by the curious-looking rooms above the ground floor shopfronts. Their windows are cluttered with laundry and yet they usually go unnoticed. These apparently are the upper halves of what used to be old double-storey shophouses that have since been converted to units that function as both retail and residential spaces. After the exercise, Jason expressed his appreciation for the exercise as it reminded him to take the time to notice little details. With such a hectic working schedule, this is a luxury he really wishes to afford.
After several minutes of walking around, Shawn starts to watch an old lady seated on a granite bench. He observes in amusement as she waits for people to leave before claiming the refuse they leave behind to sell off for small change.
Tom also notices an elderly person — a man seated cross-legged like a kan qia ah pek (hokkien for rickshaw puller), slurping down his meal from a bowl that he holds right up to his face. This reminded him of the good old days.
One look at present Boon Keng and it is nearly impossible to sense the landscape in Tom’s stories. While the estate now offers stable infrastructure and a comforting quaintness in contrast to its colourful past, it is extremely evident to Tom and Zihuan, both long-time residents of the area, that the Boon Keng they know is once again evolving — shops changing hands, hawker stalls folding and new residents entering. As Zihuan expresses very passionately, it is simply essential to keep sharing the stories of places that are important to you so that others may know your share of history, and the joy in doing so does not really need explaining. It is also unsurprising that Tom, whose roots in the community go so deep, embraces the changes happening. According to him, there is never any lack of interesting things to talk about.
As much as we don’t like to be too defined by our pasts, it is really the familiar and our memories that keeps us emotionally and psychologically rooted to a person, community or cause. Perhaps the hardest part of seeing old things in newer contexts is acknowledging that that which used to give a sense of knowing and validation has changed or disappeared. In that field of disconnect, things get relegated to memory for real, and we are nudged, sometimes quite harshly, to shed parts of ourselves behind.
As much as we don’t like to be too defined by our pasts, it is really the familiar and our memories that keeps us emotionally and psychologically rooted to a person, community or cause. Perhaps the hardest part of seeing old things in newer contexts is acknowledging that that which used to give a sense of knowing and validation has changed or disappeared. In that field of disconnect, things get relegated to memory for real, and we are nudged, sometimes quite harshly, to shed parts of ourselves behind.
Copyright 2015 Ng Xi Jie, Geraldine Kang