A comparative study of singapores chinatown and bangkoks chinatown

Chapter 1: Why A Comparative Study of Chinatowns? 1.1 Chinatown: The Ethnic Enclave An ethnic enclave, it is observed, is created when people of a particular racial or cultural group create a ―protective‖ (Portes and Manning, 1996) neighborhood which functions separately from the majority population of a city as they try to be self-sufficient and basically survive in a new environment (Hummon, 1996). In many ways, enclaves like Chinatown were a support mechanism for incoming immigrants (Kwong, 1996; Logan, Alba and Zhang, 2002), allowing incoming immigrants to adapt more comfortably to the new way of life in new places while providing them with much-needed requirements for settlement, like housing, jobs, contacts and access to networks (Zhou, 1992; Portes and Jensen, 1992). ―Dominant in the urban sociology literature on immigrant incorporation is the role of ethnic enclaves—ethnic neighborhoods that provide a ―port of entry‖ or ―context of reception‖ and help facilitate incorporation in the host society by generating informal resources, networks, and institutions that provide linguistic and cultural services and products (Portes and Rumbaut, 1990). The seminal work of Alejandro Portes and his colleagues developed the concept of a ―context of reception‖ to describe the key factors that mediate the incorporation of new 1 immigrants (Portes and Bach, 1985; Portes and Rumbaut, 1990; Portes and Zhou, 1992) such as the provision of emotional, social and cultural support, as well as other resources such as information, housing, initial entry into the labor market, and social capital, and shelter from abuse all of which help them adapt to the new environment (Aldrich et al; 1984; Zhou and Logan 1991; Bailey and Waldinger 1991; Logan, Richard and Wenquan, 2002) attest to the importance of this arrangement to the new immigrant; for immigration then is more or less a social process facilitated by ethnic-based networks and these largely informal networks also promote a particular set of conditions for socio-economic integration in the host country through the formation of immigrant enclaves and occupational niches. The enclave is thus where new migrants congregate, live, work and trade and these activities sustain the place and give it life and vibrancy as communal ties are forged and a certain level of interdependency holds everyone in tension with each other in the same mutual help community. For our purposes here, it is important to note that besides being highly contingent social developments that were engendered out of perceived gaps in service provision and were constituted as a response to the prevailing social environment these new migrants find themselves embedded, these ethnically constituted social developments also bear very significant spatial expression as activities are enacted in a specific place or ‗quarters‘ or 2 ‗neighborhoods‘, and give rise to very distinct spatial outcomes. These are places whereby ethnic identity was heavily and meaningfully inscribed, developing a distinct sense of place and they exist in heavily interdependent relationships with their incumbents and the social institutions that these then nascent immigrants engendered to cater to their perceived needs and that of their fellow countrymen, institutions that are embodiments of that ethnic identity. Given this high dependency in taking cues from the physical and social environment in its development, how the initially strongly welded relationship between place and ethnic identity has evolved over time will by implication be a good commentary of the contemporary social relations between those that currently inhabit these traditional enclaves. This means that it will be instructive to begin looking at the contemporary manifestations and read the changes that have been wreaked on these traditional enclaves against its genesis to look at how ethnic identity has transformed, and how it manifests itself in place (See Genealogy of both Yaowarat and Chinatown SG‘s development at Appendix A). Looking at how ethnic identity is embodied in space or emplaced (Gieryn, 2000) today in these traditional enclaves, engendering various spatial outcomes constitutes a large part of our endeavour in this thesis. 3 1.2 The Ethnic Enclave Today: Chinatown SG Niu Che Shui Singapore‘s Chinatown (Chinatown SG) was conceived in the Jackson Plan of 1822 when Sir Stamford Raffles delineated parcels of land for different groups of migrants to inhabit with the main purpose of facilitating proper governance in the colony the British established in 1819. This form of urban planning based on ethnicity inaugurated the emergence of the phenomenon of ethnic enclaves1 in Singapore, creating the institutionally developed presence of ―distinct social and spatial areas‖ or urban villages‖ (Bell and Jayne, 2004:1). Chinatown grew quickly as immigrants arrived mainly from the southern Chinese provinces with a variety of dialect groups such as the Hokkiens, Teochews, Cantonese, Hainanese, Hakkas and Foochows which each formed their own communities. Raffles' influence also led to the allocation of different areas for each clan group. The Hokkiens settled around Telok Ayer and the waterfront, the Teochews along Singapore River (Clarke Quay) and around Fort Canning, while the Cantonese and Hakka lived further out at Kreta Ayer2. 1 An „enclave‟ is a distinctly bounded area enclosed within a larger unit. An „ethnic enclave‟ is such an area that is mostly populated by recent immigrants who have voluntarily or involuntarily1 chosen to cluster together. There is usually a geographical concentration of residents, businesses and community institutions (Zhou and Logan, 1989) of a single ethnic group 2 It should be noted that despite these dialect group differences, there was also a palpable sense of a unified „Chinese‟ identity as evidenced by examples of supra-Chinese institutions such as the Chinese Chamber of Commerce started in 1908 where “nearly all well-known Chinese of Singapore have been members” . The Chamber acts as an arbitrator and intermediary between Chinese and non-Chinese migrants. In fact when the Hokkien-Teochew riot broke out in 1906, Capt A.H. Young, then the Colonial Secretary, went to the CCC to ask the committee for assistance (Song, 1967:389). This shows that there are supra-dialect institutions that governed the Chinese. 4 Interestingly, the dialect segregation also had an unintended effect on commerce in Chinatown – business owners, either for the convenience of communication or the comfort of the familiar, would often hire workers of their own dialect. This eventually led to trades being dominated by particular dialect groups. Despite these differences between the various dialect groupings which saw them develop clan associations that differentiate them from the other Chinese dialect groups, these groups coexist cheek by jowl in the area demarcated, enjoying high product and service complementariity that affords Chinatown a cohesive if initially superficial imagined, essentialized uniform ‗Chinese‘ Identity3. While it is not a totally spontaneous congregation of an ethnic group in a particular place4, in many ways Singapore‘s Chinatown resembles the other Chinatowns in terms of its early beginnings and functions. Like Chinatowns all over the world Chinatown SG was engendered as an ethnic enclave whereby an ethnic identity bears strong spatial expression and is strongly grounded into physical space. In Niu Che Shui can also be found 3 The state‟s nation-building efforts in the 1960s saw education provision taken out of the hands of clans and private institutions (Wilson, 1978). This period of time also coincided with the sate‟s desire to clean up the appalling living conditions caused by a concentration of Chinese immigrants. Plans were then made to move people out and improve the overall standard of living. It is important to note as well that by this time, the Chinese as an imagined cohesive ethnic group has become the majority population in Singapore. 4 It must be noted that Chinatown is an essentialized entity for Chinese immigrants to Singapore co-habited with other immigrants, a point which is vividly illustrated in Telok Ayer Street where the Thian Hock Keng temple, the Nagore Durga Shrine and the Al Albrar Mosque are located right next to each other on the same street, denoting a multiethnic presence . 5 formations that plugged perceived gaps in service provision, social support and these are similarly engendered in and through the relations the ethnic Chinese have with mainstream society and those in power, and serve to alleviate the hardships of the early migrants and the often dire economic and social living conditions they had to endure. This narrative of resilience, perseverance and navigating a new environment through mutual help communities bears uncanny similarities to that of the Chinese elsewhere. The similarities however, end there as Singapore‘s Chinatown underwent a dramatic change in trajectory following a series of efforts carried out under the auspices of the state‘s vision of urban redevelopment in the 1960s that saw the clearing out of Chinatown businesses and residents and later in the 1980s a change of tack in ideologies couched in terms of conservation and heritage. These inconsistencies in policies have been frequently been said to account for the ―inauthenticity‖5, ―placelessness‖ of Chinatown SG today for it destroyed the quotidian rhythms of place that made it what it was, and these were often deemed culpable in transforming it into a space that is unrecognizable and ―that speak little of local identities and lifestyles‖. 5 This thesis adopts a constructivist approach to „authenticity‟, conceptualizing it as a continued lived in experience that can be either still enacted in place and remains meaningful because the community of users as a community of practice are able to agree collectively and validate the cultural experiences. 6 These themes constitute a leitmotif of lamentations that are echoed in the literature surveyed, the first being the notion of how Chinatown was and still is a product of the state‘s changing policies and ideologies; and second, that these changing ideologies have spatial consequences and problems have arisen out of having changes superimposed upon it, usually top-down, by external agencies; third, that because the people who make up this community have not been sufficiently consulted about their views and were largely passive, powerless and lacking a voice in the proceedings as they watched top-down, state-driven projects irrevocably change their lives, mutated their social lives and marched on relentlessly as the state negotiated what is popularly termed the ―conservation-redevelopment dilemma‖ (Kong & Yeoh, 1994; Yeoh & Huang, 1996) on their own with economic goals seemingly at the forefront of any decision-making and as something that is privileged over and above other factors as an overriding concern; with the result that fourth, the occurrence of the production of a ―manufactured sense of place‖ (Henderson, 2000) that has little resonance and fail to strike a chord with the people in general owing to its ―artificial prefabrication‖ of old buildings, with its newly embellished façade marked by a kitsch bright coat of paint and the eradication of traditional activities and tenants who used to reside there, destroying the very elements that made it a ‗place‘ (Yeoh and Kong, 1994) and by implication made it meaningful. 7 The notion that the state‘s ideologies has driven and still drives its conservation efforts; that state-driven, top down, economic-centered efforts at conservation was often carried out without consultation of the public was problematic and deemed a large contributing factor to its current ―inauthentic‖ form; that the state‘s efforts engenders questions of whom the conservation is really for; being ―themed and tamed‖ (Chang, 1997), rid of its ―social contamination‖ and other polluting influences (Yeoh and Kong, 1994) and become a kind of modernist caricature that has little resonance and as a consequence the creation of a dissonant, discordant and meaningless landscape (Chang, 1997: 47) and becoming a place in which locals have unwittingly become relegated to the position of an ―outsider‖; the destruction and creation of memories of place reflect that there is a general consensus that Chinatown has become a victim of sorts, victimized by the state‘s somewhat overzealous efforts at conservation and suffered as a result of the changing policies the state has employed over the past 40 years, which has robbed it of its potential, and installed in its place a freeze-framed theme park with little resonance for the locals and constitutes part of our dissonant heritage. However, these explanations while valid arguably neglect the fact that Chinatowns are socially contingent ethnic formations 8 and its forms and functions today actually tell us more about the prevailing social environment and the relevance and meaningfulness of an ethnic identity today for the inhabitants of that space. Further, they have always been constituted as a response to the relationships the Chinese have with those in power in mainstream society. These mean that the state can only be one part of the problem and the ‗Chinatown problem‘ is also in part the outcome of wider social changes that have occurred and shaped the meaningfulness and relevance of an ethnic identity which is a crucial component in ethnic place-making. Place elements such as restaurants, shops, markets exist because they are meaningful to the people who continue to consume these goods and services that still has resonance as part of their reproduction of their identities; and conversely to the business people who continue to inhabit it as a commercial space, who thrive because of that interdependence they share with place and with their customers. These elements embody identities that are produced and enacted in space, and powerfully draw together the place-ethnic identity dyad that is over time sustained by heritage undergirded by shared social memories that belie the expression of ethnic identity that continue to have currency today. Framed this way, this thesis argues that it is more fruitful to examine the evolution of elements and ethnic identity in Chinatown SG in contributing to its current configuration, relooking at the 9 state‘s role in this equation by incorporating considerations of a wider change in society and how that has impacted the relevance and currency of an ethnic identity and impacted the place-identity dyad that is so crucial for enclaves like Chinatown. This approach is premised on the genesis of Chinatown as a place that is ethnically significant, whereby activities enacted en site are ethnically symbolic, significant and emblematic of a reproduction of identities in place; where place and ethnic identity were mutually reinforcing and are produced and reproduced symbiotically in an interdependent quotidian fashion and kept alive through praxis. Our goal here is to look at how identities are represented in Chinatown SG today and Chinatown SG today is read as a spatial outcome of that expression of an ethnic identity today. 1.3 Why Compare and Why Yaowarat? A Note On The PlaceIdentity Dyad and Authenticity The story of Chinatown SG so far is one of destruction of the elements that make place. Because these elements have been removed, it is difficult to discuss how these elements have made place. To rectify this perceived issue, this thesis adopts a comparative framework with Bangkok‘s Yaowarat in a bid to identify and examine the elements that arguably are embodiments of ethnic identity and study the impacts they have on place. 10 Yaowarat thus constitutes a foil with which to inform our understanding of Chinatown SG. The relationship between place and ethnic identity (placeidentity dyad) have been a focal point of scholars of contemporary urban configurations. The earliest studies of Chinatown by Portes and others showed us indubitably that place and identity were strongly welded and constituted lived in experiences, that were ‗authentic‘ owing to its composition of ‗live‘ communities of cultural practitioners. Contemporary studies of these enclave formations over time however face the two-fold challenge of firstly distilling the elements that are central to making place (a task made more difficult as simultaneously social and physical change affecting the ways identity is expressed and anchored spatially as ethnic groups relate to the place differently today6 are ongoing); and secondly, in these ―ethnic enclave reconfigurations‖ (Luk and Phan, 2005), defining ‗authenticity‘ becomes difficult and contestations over what the term means today are rife since MacCanell (1973,1976) introduced the concept to sociological studies of tourist motivations and experiences two decades ago. With these in mind, this thesis conceptualizes place-making elements as food (Drucker, 2006), entrepreneurial activity as embodied in ethnic businesses (Valdez, 2002; Waldinger et. Al., 6 For example as people move out of Chinatown to create “ethnoburbs” (Li, 2009) or other satellite ethnic towns and as new immigrants from other ethnicities succeeding the physical space of their predecessors. 11 2009; Zhou, 2004), and places of community worship (Kong, 1994; Ho, 2006). These are cultural markers and are effective as markers because they differentiate and are commonly accepted by the Chinese community as powerful cultural markers. The subsequent chapters will flesh these out. This thesis also follows Bruner (1994) and adopts a constructivist approach towards authenticity. This is a view that asserts that authenticity is not a property inherent in an object, forever fixed in time. Instead it seen as a struggle, a social process in which competing interests7 argue for their own interpretation of history (1994:408). Conceptualized this way, this means that authenticity is dependent on the collective agreement of the users and their ―relationship with a place‖ (Sasaki, 2000) and authenticity or inauthenticity is the result of how one sees things and of his perspectives and interpretations. In this conception ―culture is always in process‖ and context is always in its purview. This is arguably the most reasonable approach in a study of changing social meanings in an enclave. This is because this user centric definition of ‗authentic‘ firmly locates the ‗authentic‘ in the ‗lived in experience‘ with ‗lived‘ alluding to being sustained by what we will term ‗a community of practice‘. 7 As mentioned in THESIS “STB is trying to create Chinatown as “living history” but it doesn‟t have the “local life” that convinces tourists. On the other hand, the authenticity that STB is creating in Chinatown is questioned by locals who do not always recognize what has been reconstructed in Chinatown as being “accurate” according to their own memories and experiences. 12 This is crucial as this allows for ‗lived in experience‘ to be anchored spatially in Chinatown while being simultaneously cognizant of the fact that the community of practitioners are not restricted to those living in the vicinity but bears a larger social footprint. This is meaningful in a study of ethnic enclaves over time as while concentrated celebrations of festivals like Chinese New Year and Mid- Autumn Festival continue be practiced en site in Chinatown and Yaowarat, and while practices tied to ethnicity continue to be performed regularly en site, it continues to contextualize the experience of these cultural markers in lived in experience through social memory in a way that Chinese living outside of it can also draw and partake in ethnic consumption and continue to be a part of the community of practice. Geraldine Lowe-Ismail‘s book on her Chinatown memories and the passionate debates captured by Kwok et al (2000) stand testament to that. This triadic relationship between place, ethnic identity and authenticity over time thus constitute the crux of the problematic this thesis seeks to explore in Singapore‘s Chinatown as studies and the mass media have often lampooned it as being ―inauthentic‖. A comparative framework is utilized here in a bid to shed greater light into the problematic. The place-identity dyad and how it is interlinked affects the authenticity of a place like Chinatown for its users (both within and without) and it is hoped 13 that a comparative analysis can offer us more insight into broader social changes that have taken place in the Singapore case and allow for a more nuanced and sensitive reading of Chinatown‘s contemporary configuration and perceived inauthenticity. Yaowarat constitutes an interesting case for it has as we shall see later evidently remained an ethnic stronghold, an enclave whereby a Chinese identity continues to have currency and import through the concentrations of ethnic businesses, food, temples, community foundations etc. It appears to still embody many characteristics that mark it out as different from the rest of Bangkok and clearly stands out as a place on which an ethnic identity is inscribed, where place identity and social identity remain congruent as a lived- in memory. As Van Roy noted, ―It is among the most successful in having adapted to the host culture while protecting and preserving its own ethnic integrity‖ (Van Roy, 2007:5) This is in marked contrast to the place identity in Chinatown SG that is no longer congruent with that experienced in reality that we have noted earlier to be inscribed, superimposed and seemingly unsustainable. Identifying and examining more closely the embodiments of an ethnic identity in Yaowarat is purposed towards allowing us to gain more insight into the evolution of the spatial expression of an ethnic identity over time there and use that as a reference point, a 14 spring board to provide a more broad-based, nuanced, textured explanation for Chinatown SG‘ s current configuration by reconstituting the state‘s oft mentioned heavy hand at urban redevelopment as a cause of Chinatown SG‘s ―inauthenticity‖, ―placelessness‖ becoming a space ―that speak little of local identities and lifestyles‖ rather than the state as the final arbiter of the dissonance of the Chinatown landscape today. It will also help us put a finger as to what elements are missing, how they embody an ethnic identity, and exactly how these are expressed and impact place identity. In other words, it looks at the state‘s interventions and heavy-handedness in Chinatown SG and asks instead what necessitates such interventions and why place identity appear to be ultimately unsustainable and requiring frequent resuscitation efforts by the state in enlivening it through deliberate ―festivizing‖ and embellishments. From this vantage point, the state‘s intervention is part of the cause but also appears to be a consequence of wider social changes that have taken place and arguably a cross-comparison can shed light on what these social changes can be, and how these changes have spatial impacts. Thus, this is a strategy aimed at exploring how place is made in Yaowarat and seeks to establish the elements of import in securing identity in place and how conversely the absence of which can potentially dislocate identity in place over time. Yaowarat constitutes a memory regime that is alive and constantly reworked 15 and current; and that departs from the hijacking of memories and identities we have seen enacted on Chinatown SG. 1.4 Methodology This thesis makes use of semi- structured quantitative surveys with a mixture of both closed and open-ended questions. This was the main method of data collection and is utilized in the hope of supplementing quantitative data with qualitative additions that can help us formulate a fuller picture of the site surveyed. With an initial conceptualization and cognizance of the fact that identity is closely tied to food consumption, livelihoods and community places, the target respondents were the hawkers on the food streets in Chinatown SG (Smith Street) and Yaowarat; the shopkeepers conducting businesses in Pagoda and Trengganu Street and Yaowarat Road and Charoen Krung Road and members of the temple and foundation hospitals. As this is a comparative study, the choice of streets to conduct the survey in were as closely matched in terms of function and location as possible in the hope of achieving parity. It should be noted that the definition of Chinatown SG utilized in this thesis are the boundaries delineated by the state and encompasses the four main streets of Pagoda Street, Temple Street, Smith Street, Mosque Street with Trengganu Street stretching the interstices flanked by the four streets. 16 Response rate varied widely between the two field sites with the best data garnered from the food street in Yaowarat where 38 interviews were conducted successfully out of 45 attempted (84.4%). On Smith Street, the response rate was 3 out of 15 (20%). The shops on Pagoda and Trengganu Street, the main thoroughfare in Chinatown SG garnered a response rate of 19 out of 30 (63.3%) attempted, whilst that in Yaowarat and Charoen Krung streets was 76 out of 90 (84.4%) attempted. 1.5 Conclusion In sum, the ultimate objective of this thesis is to offer an alternative, more broad based explanation of Singapore‘s Chinatown‘s current configuration. To fulfill this aim, Yaowarat is used as a contrast case through which to understand the constitution of place and identity over time and explore what varying strategies of memory say about the larger social context. It marries urban sociology with social memory and the sociology of everyday life in a bid to understand how place and identity is constituted and how reality in enacted in and through memory and with what kinds of repercussions for notions of identity and ultimately authenticity of a site like Chinatown that straddles historically contingent time-space-ethnic relationships that has 17 changed over time. We will start our interrogation of food in Chinatown SG and in Yaowarat before moving on to examining the other businesses there in Chapter 3, the temples in Chapter 4, community foundations in Chapter 5 and finally drawing the threads together in the concluding chapter. 18 Chapter 2: Making Place: Food, Memory and Identity 2.1 Introduction In the previous chapter I mapped out and explained the analytic framework that I will be using in this study of Chinatown; explained the rationale behind approaching the study of Chinatown SG through the use a comparative approach; and mapped out what I hope to achieve in viewing Chinatown from this vantage point. In this chapter I will embark on an analysis of the concepts laid out in the previous chapter and start examining ethnic identity in place over time through the conduit of food, to look at the ‗foodscape‘. Sociologists of food have long established the relationships between food and one‘s identity (Caplan, 1997; Narayan,1995; Searles, 2002) and also by implication memory (Holtzman, 2006). This makes food a useful analytical tool with which to study the embodiments of identity and memory present in Yaowarat and Chinatown SG today, allowing us to trace the social trajectories that place identity, ethnic identity and memory have undergone. Further, framed against an ethnic neighbourhood setting these relationships have a further element of being a part of place identity as well. The purpose of this chapter then is to look at what Susan Drucker (2002: 173) has termed ―enclave food‖ in relation to its meanings and representations today; with a view towards utilizing it as a foil from which to study identity formulations 19 in these historical enclaves today and as a tool that enables us to gauge its current contributions to place identity through understanding its complex influence on ethnic identity. The attempt at understanding the relations between food and ethnic identity and how it is enacted in place will be explored through ethnographic descriptions and discussions of the physical manifestations of food institutions present in Yaowarat and Chinatown SG today; as well as a through a selective crosssectional study8 of the social profile of the proprietors manning these. Simultaneously, to enable a more holistic, contextual understanding of contemporary configurations of food and identity in these traditional enclaves over time, these primary findings will be framed and understood against the backdrop of historical social trajectories the relationship between food and ethnic identity has taken over time in these two places as embodied in these food spaces and purveyors of food. Tracing these permutations will allow us to glean insight into the social ecology of these hawkers over time and allow us a contextualized understanding of the different constructions of ethnic identity over time in place in both Yaowarat and Chinatown SG respectively. After mapping out the social ecologies of food hawkers in the two sites over time the chapter will take another comparative 8 Because this is a comparative study, there is a need to juxtapose comparable manifestations against each other. Due to this consideration, the food street is profiled alongside its counterpart food street in Yaowarat. 20 turn and the two sites will be juxtaposed. The differences in the social ecologies of food hawkers in Yaowarat and Chinatown SG will then be discussed in a bid to look at what food represents in each enclave today and its impacts on place identity. This then forms the basis from which we conduct a discussion with regards to the contexts that give rise to memory conditions that contribute to the formation of a strong, accessible ethnic identity and hence place identity versus one that results in a weak, inaccessible, dislocated place identity. This chapter will then conclude with an extrapolation on what these differing constellations of food as a consumptive aspect of identity formation can inform us with regards to understanding the placelessness that has become synonymous with Chinatown SG, and allow us to examine/extrapolate on what is being consumed through food beyond identity in weak memory regimes. 2.2. Chinatown SG Chinatown SG offers an array of cuisines for the visitor to pick from. Available are Korean restaurants, vegetarian cuisine, Chinese food hailing from different parts of China, Thai food, local fare served in a kopitiam and other local snacks such as desserts and Chinese yam cake, mooncakes and other assorted Chinese biscuits interspersed between the various cuisines that also includes a German/Austrian sausage store with a gregarious 21 German proprietor who has been featured in local media forming part of the Chinatown SG food scene. The word ‗eclectic‘ comes to mind when trying to collectively describe the kinds of food available in Chinatown SG. There are no obvious concentrations of a particular cuisine or type of food, and one will be hard pressed to categorize a trademark cuisine synonymous with the place. The disparate nature/character of food in Chinatown SG is noteworthy and is a point we will revisit later in the chapter. Given this wide-ranging variety and apparent lack of definition in the kinds of food served in Chinatown SG, the only clustering of food stalls that is evident on Smith Street stands out as distinctly different. Clustering expresses a certain homogeneity or complementarity in function or is an expression of a set of relationships. It is hence from here that we will begin our discussion on food, ethnicity, memory and place identity, with the conscious knowledge that a food parallel food street exists in Yaowarat (organically) and will provide a basis for comparative cross referencing subsequently. 2.2.1 Welcome to The Food Street The food street (above) was inaugurated 10 years ago, the brainchild of the Singapore Tourism Promotion Board in 22 collaboration with the Chinatown Business Association (CBA) as part of a larger overall overhaul of Chinatown in a bid to rejuvenate it. The CBA itself was the brainchild of the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) who inaugurated the CBA to act on its behalf in matters pertaining to businesses in Chinatown. As part of this jointinitiative, the Food Street is a carefully coordinated establishment run by the CBA and hawkers who hope to conduct business there lease these stalls from the association. The Food Street then, can be inferred thus to be a joint effort between the state and its agents, as essentially a state sanctioned, organized effort deemed compatible with Chinatown land use9. One will realize that they have reached ‗The Food Street‘ by virtue of actual signboards that trumpet its exact location. Situated along Smith Street, the food street rolls out in a neat and orderly fashion. 9 The food street was mooted as part of STB‘s proposal for theme streets that was supposed to include market street, festive street, tradition street and bazaar street (Kwok et al, 1998:39). It was a plan that drew much criticism but STB put up a ―strenuous defense against fears that Chinatown is being developed into a theme park‖. That food hawking was singled out as part of the resuscitation efforts by the state is worth noting as the whole spectrum of wet market and night markets went hand in hand with food hawkers in the daily rhythms of those who inhabited Chinatown in the 1980s and before (Thoo, 1983) and yet only this cross section was singled out for re-manifestation. It is also worth noting that while the other proposed theme streets did not materialize, the food street went ahead despite objections from members of the public who were concerned that such a move to ‗thematize‘ Chinatown will compartmentalize it into functions, providing visitors a neat but simplified experience of Chinatown. There were also apprehensions voiced with regards to STB‘s attempts to provide an overarching theme to Chinatown, with fears that in so doing, it has ignored Chinatown‘s history and culture-that it has reduced the layers of meaning to one that overemphasizes an idealized or artificial kind of ‗Chineseness‘ (Kwok et al, 1998:39). This will be a point we will come back to later in the chapter. 23 Figure 1 The Food Street on Smith Street at 6 p.m. on a weekday. Consisting of 20 standardized-sized stalls lined up equidistant from one another on the pavement of one side of Smith Street, the food street operates daily officially from 6pm on till late. Patrons can either seat themselves on the row of wooden tables and benches running parallel to the stalls about two metres away from the stalls, or in the evenings dine alfresco seated on the tables and plastic stools rolled out on Smith Street itself, which closes to vehicular traffic after 6 pm to cater to the anticipated human traffic such an arrangement was designated to serve. Interestingly, lined up along Smith Street on both sides are two corresponding rows of restaurants with many offering a pantheon of ‗Chinese‘ cuisine from Tian Jin, Beijing, Shanghai, that 24 are run by Chinese nationals. Interspersed between these restaurants are institutions located in Chinatown under the Arts Housing Scheme that include the Harmonica Aficionados Community, Xin Sheng Poets Society and Singapore Association of Writers, Ping Sheh, Chinese Theatre Circle, Shi Cheng Calligraphy and Seal Carving Society, Er Woo Musical and Dramatic Society, TAS Theatre Company and Toy Factory Productions Limited. The food street is well lit at night with coloured streetlights zig-zagging their way along the street overhead in the alfresco setting. These are accompanied by red swaths of cloth artfully draped adorned with traditional Chinese red lanterns interspaced similarly, all zigzagging artfully above the street creating a distinct ethnic overtone. That these were installed by the CBA and not the hawkers themselves add to the notion of contrived, deliberate attempts to foster a, hyper-Chinese ambience that reeks of an ethnic overtone. Food sold on the food street include Chinese desserts such as ―ah balling‖ or flour balls with peanut or sesame filling served in a sweet soup and other desserts like ice-kachang, pig-organ soup, stir-fried and/or barbecued seafood with ‗sambal‘ chilli sauce, fried carrot cake, fishball noodles, fried kway teow, fruit juice, poh piah 25 or spring rolls, fried hokkien prawn noodles. These are often referred to as ‗local favourites‘. The food street hence appears to be an interesting mishmesh of local fare tinged with stylized Chinese street furniture, housed amidst a concentration of traditional Chinese arts such as opera troupes and calligraphy writing and fringed together with a new emerging pantheon of ethnic Chinese restaurants. Having painted the food street and described its physical composition, I will now turn to describing the people in and of the food street and how they relate to the food street. This will be a precursor before I launch into a discussion of the relationship between the former and the latter which will help throw into sharper relief and help us make sense of the scene just described above as well as that I am about to describe below. 2.2.2 The Social Ecology of the Food Street At the time of research10, there were six stalls on the food street sporting A4-sized papers with ‗for rent‘ imprinted on them. Out of 14 hawkers, only 3 responses were gathered. The small 10 August 2008 26 sample set was the result of a combination of factors that include ‗survey fatigue‘11, the time the research was conducted12 (amongst those who declined to be surveyed many claimed to be ―busy‖). This may also be an apparent reflection of ownership patterns of the stalls on the food street. Many of the hawkers who preferred not to be surveyed claimed to be unable to answer questions of how long their stalls have been in business on the food street 13, claiming to not be the owners but merely stall assistants hired by the absent ‗boss‘. This is once again unverifiable and it is not certain if the response was reliable or was provided to deflect or evade questions regarding rents and profit margins and reasons for locating their businesses on the food street. There is hence a regrettable gap here in knowledge about proprietorship. However, this may be instructive in helping us understand the ownershipstakeholdership aspect of the food street. This response from many of the hawkers, including those who kindly participated in the survey suggests that the people who operate the food stalls are often not the owners, and are not related to these owners. There is a distinct emotive disconnect then between the people who man the food stalls with the food street itself. The fact that the stalls surveyed were there for one year (fishball noodles), seven to eight 11 The reason for not wanting to participate for some hawkers is that they have done many similar surveys before. This unfortunately cannot be verified and they cannot be persuaded despite the researcher producing credentials to prove that this is a school- supported project. 12 It was conducted at about 6 pm as the stalls are setting up for dinner 13 They tend to also not know how long the food street itself has been around. 27 years (Bak Kut Teh14), and the last respondent not being certain of the number of years (zhong zhong15) seem to reinforce this notion of an emotional distance or an apparent lack of stakeholdership evident between the businesses and the food street itself. This theme is perhaps further supported by the responses gathered for the reasons for location. Out of the three responses, all of them were unable to answer that question. If food was related to ethnic identity in an enclave, this is distinctly absent in this context. It was as if location on the Chinatown food street did not matter and that they could have chosen to set up their stalls anywhere else in Singapore16. This point seems related to the fact that the food sold here appear distinctly ‗local‘ i.e. Singaporean in nature and appear devoid of any perceivable ethnic marking17. The foods available on the food street are not uniquely ‗Chinese‘ but consist of local favourites that can be found in most hawker centres and coffee shops located island-wide. Fishball noodles, kway chap18, handmade noodles, bak kut teh, prawn noodles, steamboat and the like are all easily available and at much lower prices all over the island. 14 It is a clear, peppery pork broth with pork ribs. It consists of items such as prawn cakes, spring rolls, fish cake etc that are deep fried and served with sweet chilli sauce and stir-fried vermicelli. 16 This stands in marked contrast to the overt ‗Chinese‘ street furniture the food street is set up in. 17 Except that it is not halal. But this is not unique to this place. Most hawkers selling similar items are also often not halal. 18 Broad sheets of rice flour noodles served with savoury broth that is accompanied by braised condiments such as braised meat, pork intestines etc. 15 28 There hence appears little reason for Chinese Singaporeans to come to the Chinatown food street to sample ‗the best‘ local fare, because ‗best‘ is located island wide in a dispersed fashion according to the various food guides. Hence, it appears that if food, ethnic identity were in place in the past in the enclave, it is no longer the case. The higher than average prices are also reflective of the higher rents. Rents are reportedly cost up to SGD 5000 per month plus utilities, which is payable to the Chinatown Business Association who runs the place and are in charge of leasing out the stalls. Some of the stall owners when queried about the stalls that remained empty next to theirs report high turnover rates in tenants, owing to the fact that ―they cannot survive‖ because ―business is bad nowadays (it used to be better and late at night it can still be quote crowded on weekends in the past) and the rental here is very expensive‖. It appears then that customer traffic is often irregular and it was observed by one of the hawkers that ―it is worse nowadays because of the poor economy because fewer tourists‖. This seems to imply that while they claim not to know the reason for location, that they are aware that locating here will mean that a proportion of their patrons will be tourists and this is possibly part of the reason they are located here rather than elsewhere. The 29 notion that businesses are not doing well because of a drop in touristic arrivals seem to imply that in fact the income accrued from tourist patrons formulate a significant part of their income. This is corroborated from their response that half of their patrons are tourists and the other half locals who work in the offices around the area. That locals who patronize these stalls are from the offices in the near vicinity implies that convenience is an important consideration in their patronage, over and above possible factors such as taste, loyalty and the like. This seems to be supported by the low rates of repeat customers who reportedly eat at the stalls. It appears then that repeat customers are rare and customers tend to come from a diverse range. The reliance on touristic clientele and the diversity of clients and patronage based apparently predominantly on convenience seem to be factors that plague the food street. From the responses of the hawkers it appears that it is increasingly less viable to conduct their business there, because customer flow is not sustained and is erratic and it seems, declining. The lack of viability and sustainability appear to stem from a strong local base of patrons that can help the businesses ‗survive‘ through regular patronage that will help ensure regular income for these hawkers even when touristic arrivals are low. 30 The short time period the stalls are in business, the lack of knowledge about the food street itself, the lack of attachment to the food street, the lack of business viability, the over-privileging and reliance on a touristic clientele all seem to point to a lack of continuity from its enclave roots, an emotive disconnect between the locals and the food street, and a lack of invocation of an ethnic identity tied to place that can provide a business advantage for these hawkers. Ethnic identity appears to have little currency here although the food street is on the surface located at the heart of an overtly ethnic Chinese place of heritage, and is adorned amidst stylized Chinese street furniture such as lanterns. This disjuncture and dislocation between food and ethnic identity; and between the physical, explicitly expressed Chinese identity and the lack of social expression by the inhabitants of that landscape as evident from the observations so far bears further investigation. The state‘s role in this has been well –documented and studied (Thoo, 1983). The premise of this paper is that these disjunctures and contradictions need to be understood more holistically juxtaposed against Yaowarat‘s food street and it is to the description of observations in Yaowarat that I will now turn before delving into a comparative discussion in the hope of shedding new light onto the apparent disjuncture between food and ethnic identity, between the physical Chinese-ness of physical 31 space and a lack of social expression of that Chinese ethnic identity and how looking at these contradictions through food that can help to explain the ‗placelessness‘ that has been commonly associated with Chinatown SG from a different angle. 2.3 Yaowarat Unlike the experience at Chinatown SG, the moment one arrives on Yaowarat Road it is apparent that it is a Chinese stronghold. With respect to food, it is immediately noticeable that there are concentrations of particular food, with sharks fin and birds nest being synonymous with Yaowarat. That is not to say that these products are unique to Yaowarat and can only be found here, but as I am enlightened by my Thai friend, that if one wants to buy these products, or consume these, that Yaowarat is the goto place for quality assurances and competitive prices. The number of specialist shops selling these products and the observations that these products can be found in many provision shops as well as medicine halls seems to bear testament in support of her comments. Yaowarat is where everyday food coexists with festive, seasonal eats and it is apparent from the food found there. Below are some examples of the variety observed in Yaowarat. 32 Figure 2: Everyday essentials such as salted fish and other dried goods are on full display in the markets. Figure 3: The research period coincided with the Dumpling Festival and festive seasonal products such as these bags of bright orange salted egg yolks and 33 banana leaves are widely available. The sheer volume of these specialized items indicate that the shopkeepers perceive the selling of these goods to make good business sense, which in turn indicates that the Chinese continue to look for these as well as the more everyday items such as fish maw and other dried goods. This reflects culture in practice and bespeak of a cultural depth as these are ‗raw materials‘ for the end product i.e. the dumpling and the production process typically involves certain age-old family practices and traditions and time spent frying, chopping, wrapping and steaming. The fact that the Thai Chinese still make these themselves is hence culturally significant. Interestingly, this bountiful supply of ‗raw materials‘ is no longer seen in Chinatown SG and what is sold are typically the dumplings as a finished product for consumption, signaling perhaps a gradual obsolescence of traditional cultural practices such as slaving over the stove to make dumplings, and involving the family in these festive cooking events. Figure 4: One of the several stalls selling braised pork knuckle with rice. Note that the signboard is in two languages, Chinese and Thai. This is a characteristic of signboards observed in Yaowarat in general. 34 Figure 5: A roasted duck stall doing brisk business. Figure 6: One of the many stalls selling birds nest drinks and dessert. It is iconic and ubiquitous. 35 Figure 7: Teochew rice cakes or bee kueh. These are filled with stir fried glutinous rice and are flavourful savoury snacks. These add variety to the range and variety of the foodscape and are highly ethnically specialized snacks. 36 Figure 8: Chinese herbal teas brewed with typical Chinese favourites such as dried chrysanthemum flowers and lotus root. These are said to have ‗cooling‘ properties i.e. that these drinks help to maintain balance in the body, which is a distinctly Chinese medicinal concept. These pictures reflect the sheer variety of food available to cater to every need and displays how food incarnates into different uses i.e. as snacks, drinks and even medicine. The cuisines available here are markedly less varied compared to that in Chinatown SG as well and it is clear that the overwhelmingly dominant one is ethnic Chinese cuisine. Forming a substantial part of this Chinese foodscape is the number of restaurants offering sharks fin and birds nest. Palpably concentrated, these, together with some Chinese restaurants such as Shangarila and Hua Seng Hong have become synonymous with the Yaowarat landscape. Complementing these more formal dining options are food stalls 37 haphazardly scattered on the already pavements outside shop fronts in the mornings peddling an assortment of food consisting mainly of Chinese snacks such as chive dumplings, chwee kueh or rice cakes with preserved radish, bee kueh, a flat pink rice dumpling stuffed with glutinous rice amongst other tantalizing food products that are distinctly ethnic Chinese. Although these food institutions are spread out throughout Yaowarat, they are linked by a homogeneity in products proffered and also by product complementarity whereby within Yaowarat can be found a density of shops offering Chinese provisions and dried goods like dried shrimp and mushrooms soya sauce, tea leaves, and other condiments, preserved fruit, Chinese peanut or traditional cakes and the like along with wet market produce such as steamboat items like fish dumplings and bean curd skin all available under Yaowarat‘s metaphorical roof. This distinct clustering of similar functions and dominance of a particular cuisine in Yaowarat, the concentration of particular foods and the complementarity of the products hence stand as marked contrasts to the undefined foodscape observed in Chinatown SG. Because this is set up as a comparative study there is a need to find a basis for comparison. What is similar between the two places as alluded to earlier is a food street that is also a part of the evening Yaowarat foodscape, concentrating evening food activities in a manner similar to the one on Smith 38 Street. In the next section, I will describe the Yaowarat food street, and the social ecology of the hawkers there. I will simultaneously highlight the similarities and differences, setting it up for a comparative discussion in the final section of the chapter. 2.3.1 The Yaowarat Food Street The food street on Yaowarat is different from the one in Chinatown SG in many respects. While the food street in the latter is announced with much fanfare through well-placed signboards, there are no corresponding official signages proclaiming to the visitor that they have arrived at the food street. That is not to say that the food street is inconspicuous. Quite the contrary, the food street in Yaowarat is considerably larger in scale compared to the one in Chinatown SG. While the latter consists of twenty stalls lined up in a neat and orderly fashion, the former is a food enterprise that sprawls along both sides of Yaowarat, snakes into the side streets where stalls line up three rolls deep, obstructing traffic. Hawkers set up shop on the pavement and/or roadside in front of the shops that are mostly closed for the night in the early hours of the evening at about 6 pm19, constituting part of the 19 As an outsider looking in, the assemblage of the food street proves rather fascinating. The early morning anticipation and bustle transforms into the scorching lull of the slow afternoon and as light ebbs and subsides after 6p.m. and most of the shops pull out their shutters, roller doors, and you can almost feel their sigh of audible relief that their retail day is over, and for some, that another work day has gone by without event nor incident. The winding down after a day‟s labour is palpable and as the day draws to a close, that which permeates the air is a relaxed atmosphere. 39 sidewalk rhythm20 that is part of urban land use in Thailand (Dovey and Polakit, 2006:8). Unlike the formal standardization and fixity in store location in Chinatown SG, the hawkers informally arrange themselves in the sidewalk, streaming in to take their place on the street in an informally negotiated, seemingly organically derived order, armed with their wares for the night on their portable wagons 21. The manner in which the stalls are organized and are snaking along the street sprawling haphazardly with each stall‘s respective tables and chairs exudes a sense of casual spontaneity and fluidity that departs from the rigidity and highly mechanical constellation of the food street observed in Chinatown SG22. While both offering al fresco dining experiences, there appears to be little ‗contrivedness‘ in Yaowarat‘s food street in that compared to the bright lights and overtly Chinese street furniture put in place in Chinatown SG, the stalls in Yaowarat are light by 20 The food street in Bangkok comes alive at about 6 p.m. everyday except Thursdays. This set of hawkers constitutes the last leg of the sophisticated appropriation of space that give rise to sidewalk rhythm that (Dovey and Polakit, 2006) identified in their work which sees breakfast fast food stalls (6 a.m. to 10 a.m.), shops (10 a.m. to 6 p.m.) and a late night restaurant (6.p.m. till 11 p.m.) occupy the same piece of land in a negotiated yet seemingly ad hoc and seamless diurnal ritualistic transition from day time to nighttime activities. 21 This ranges from huge pots of soup and stock or roasted chestnuts to a lorry loaded with durians) and utensils such as multiple large woks that sit atop stoves that will be working in overdrive later on in the evening as the dinner crowd pulls in 22 Stalls selling bottled Chinese herbal teas and bottled orange juice can be found as well with some operating out of a little nook in between two closed shops on the pavement, with their Styrofoam ice boxes steeped in melted ice and water and chillers to keep the neatly arranged drinks nice and cold and using metal pots to keep the hot drinks at the appropriate temperature 40 street lamps and from the lights put in place by the hawkers themselves to showcase their wares. This unpretentious, fluid, loosely ritualized configuration implies a certain kind of autonomy that seems to rub off on the interactions between the hawkers and their patrons, as well as between the hawkers as the foodscape. Due to its sheer scale, there is a wider array of food available. Dinner options range from simple fare like rice vermicelli with fish balls, which was very popular and roasted meat and roasted duck noodles having very brisk business as well. There is also a shop selling kway chap, which is large broad pieces of kway teow in a bowl of dark savoury soup infused with spices and dark soy sauce to be eaten by an equally amazing spread of pig innards such as the large and small intestines, fatty belly pork, and assorted other side dishes such as preserved salted vegetables, hard boiled egg, fish cake and bean curd all darkened and well marinated from being braised for hours in the pot of spices and dark soy sauce, all of it being washed down and complemented with chilli sauce that the proprietors made23. These are arguably what can be termed ‗Chinese food‘ which is contrasted with the ‗Singaporean‘ food served in Chinatown SG. This seems to be corroborated by my Thai Chinese friend who chirped that, ―when 23 Besides these cooked food stores, there are several stores selling freshly roasted chestnuts with its distinct gently charred aroma, and lined amongst the other stalls are lorries will baskets of durian of all sizes, parked along the road which are transformed into mobile stalls from which a brisk and somewhat boisterous trade is run, and the unmistakeable and distinct pungence of the durian adds to the aromas and smells that waft along the road and tempts the dinner seekers palate. 41 you go to Chinatown you must eat, eat, eat; my friends and I do that all the time!‖ Besides the apparent wide variety of ‗Chinese food‘ there are also concentrations of certain types of food. In the survey sample there are shops selling Chinese desserts such as sweet potato soup, white fungus with gingko nut in a sweet soup, birds nest and assorted Chinese sweets; and braised sharks fins served in claypots. There are also more than a few stalls selling roasted chestnuts. These concentrations of food types are not present in Chinatown SG. Unlike the relative lack of business flow in Chinatown SG on a weekday evening, business is brisk at many of the stalls and as the hawkers served their customers with gusto, fully aware that speed is of the essence here, their customers were tucking into their nosh with equal enthusiasm and the conversations that flowed amongst after work crowd, many still in their work shirts creates a kind of ambience that is pulsating with calm. The warm lighting from the stalls, the still lit neon signboards of the ubiquitous gold smiths, the smells of cooking food, the layered murmurs and hum of conversations combine to make for a comforting tranquil bustling and a tapering tedium that is gently assuaged into a state of restfulness. This implies it seems that the food street is inserted as 42 part and parcel of daily life and eating rituals, implying a primarily local clientele. The food street in Yaowarat hence appears different in its more organic constitution, its distinctly predominant ethnic Chinese cuisine, its lack of overt stylized Chinese-ness, and its insertion at an everyday life level. Having painted the food street and described its physical composition, I will now turn to describing the people in and of the food street and how they relate to the food street. Again, the social ecology will be put in a descriptive comparative framework that juxtaposes the ethnographically observed and surveyed realities existing in the two places. This will prove useful in the subsequent discussion of the conclusions that can possibly be drawn through understanding these differences to help us understand our primary case and its dissonance through understanding the meanings food come to represent over time. Understanding the social ecology is hence instructive for our purposes and we will now focus on that. Ironically without branding ethnic identity is strong. 2.3.2 The Social Ecology of the Yaowarat Food Hawkers The response rate of the hawkers along Yaowarat pleasantly surprised me. I was filled with apprehension when I reached the food street that evening to conduct the survey. It was 43 sprawling and after 7 pm when all the hawkers are assembled, bustling with activity. I perceived it to be very difficult to get the hawkers to talk to me because they are busily plying their trade and may have little time nor desire to talk24 to a stranger from asking seemingly inane questions they may not think are meaningful to answer. These visions vanished when I embarked on my first survey. The stall owner, a young Thai-Chinese man in his early thirties was busy attending to his customers, but was also more than willing to help me with my survey (there is an obvious curiosity about my work and a certain novelty involved) after I explained where I am from and what my survey was about. It was interesting to note that as we conversed, it was palpable that we were being observed with curiosity and some suspicion. These suspicious eyes were cast from all the stall owners adjacent to this desserts stall as well as those located on the opposite side of the road. It is interesting as once the friendly young man acceded to my request, almost the entire row of hawkers to be surveyed acquiesced and similarly acceded to my requests and loosened up considerably. The sample size was hence encouraging and worth mentioning for it reflects an obvious sense of camaraderie amongst the street hawkers, a predominantly Thai-Chinese group, who it seems are ready to warn each other of ‗danger; lurking ahead. 24 I also expected reticence because these hawkers may be hawking illegally and may hence not be open to questioning about anything even if it is information that is not perceived to be sensitive on her part. 44 This initial observation of emotive connection between the stall keepers was not random. As I proceeded along the street, there was good-nature banter all around reflecting the good relations that the stall keepers enjoy. Figure 9: This friendly hawker bantered cheerfully with his neighbours and the sense of familiarity and ease is palpable. He helped the rice cake- selling lady (on the left) understand the survey question and had a laugh with her as well indicating good relations between them. 45 Figure 10: The cheerful kway chap storeowner and his wife who made this researcher feel really welcome despite their brisk business. Particularly memorable were the proprietor of the kway chap shop (pictured above) Though business was brisk and he was busy chopping up the food into bite-sized pieces for his hungry customers seated and waiting for their meal, he made time to talk to this researcher and engaged in good-natured banter and conversation with her asking her various things like where she is from and what her interpreter is doing. His wife was equally generous and she talked to us while her hands were busy scooping chilli sauce into small bags and then skilfully manipulating the contents into a neat little bag of chilli sauce for takeaway customers. When we marvelled at how skilful she was, she told us to give it a go and patiently showed us how to whip the chilli sauce 46 into the plastic bag step by step and we tried it with several bags before she was satisfied that we got it right and she smiled rather proudly when showed her our end product and she declared it satisfactory. This was the norm rather than an anomaly and we received the same hospitable treatment from most of the stalls we interviewed and were very grateful that despite the fact that they were so busy it being dinner time, they were not impatient with us and made time to talk to us. Essentially once the first stall owner, a young man who inherited his family‘s desserts shop selling sweet potato soup, bird‘s nest, and gingko nuts and other desserts agreed to speak with us, the rest of the food street eyed us and that practically constituted our go ahead and the rest of the interviews conducted were enjoyable. There was also a keen sense of camaraderie amongst the hawkers who teased one another good naturedly, interrupting our survey to rib the other person, or help explain terms that they don‘t understand. The foundations of these good relations appear to partly stem from the fact that the majority of the stalls are owned by the proprietor manning the stalls, implying a sense of ownership and stakeholdership that in turn implies a vested interest in the success of the food street. Many of these hawkers are second or third generation successors of their trade that have been in business for 47 more than twenty years having inherited the business and recipes from their predecessors who tend to be family members. Tellingly and unsurprising then the reason for location in Yaowarat for many of these hawkers is predominantly because of their inheritance that is perhaps tampered as well by the fact that many of them still reside in the vicinity. Interestingly, many of these hawkers also mentioned that part of the reason for locating where they are, is definitely because this is Chinatown, where they have and continue to successfully conduct their businesses. This indicates a confidence that this is where Chinese people will come for their wares which is an assertion that is supported by the data collected that shows that across board, the clientele the hawkers serve are predominantly Thai-Chinese (speaking language no longer significant) over and above the percentage of Thais or foreigners, with repeat customers coming mainly from the Chinese group (age was not significant) of patrons. This is interesting because it reflects two things. First, it reflects that the hawkers are aware that being Chinese is an important resource that still has currency in their business dealings today. It was obvious from the bustling and frenetic pace of business activities occurring in Yaowarat that this is a vibrant centre of commerce and business sustainability is not an issue 48 based on the steady stream of diners that throng the food stalls. Location was hence a strategic choice, an informed decision stemming from knowledge that they are able to ‗strategically essentialize‘ themselves in place (Veronis, 2007: 455), locating themselves to achieve a competitive advantage in a niche market and achieve business survival owing to this ethnic identity that it appears continued to be fostered through the food the ethnic group continues to eat as part of consuming their social identity. Second, it shows that clientele patronizing the food street continues to be mainly ethnic Chinese. This indicates that the food street is an endeavour by the Chinese for Chinese. Third, if food is a good indication of social identity then it appears that Yaowarat as a whole essentially continues to be by the Chinese to serve their needs and demands for services. All these point to the conclusion that Yaowarat as seen through the food in Yaowarat and the consumptive patterns of the patrons of these food establishments is still very much enclave like in a way that Chinatown SG does not based on the divergence and differences identified between the two food streets and their contrasting social compositions. In sum the differences between the physical (larger in scale and sprawl) and social (emotive connections to place, reasons for location, generational inheritance, profile of clientele) ecologies are important and I have discussed some of the implications of these and how they relate to the apparent success and lack of success of 49 the respective food streets in terms of business flow, finally speculating on the implications reflect about ethnic identity formation as evident through an analysis of food establishments in Yaowarat and Chinatown SG food streets. In this comparative discussion it is apparent that in Yaowarat, ethnic identity is strongly grounded in food consumption and food establishments in a way that is true to its enclave roots. The converse is true it appears in Chinatown SG where the food street seems to embody something else. The question then is if in Yaowarat the conditions remain such that place, ethnic identity and memory (continuity) are perpetuated in a manner that ensures that enclave food continues to represent a consumption of ethnic identity and through its self-reinforcing self perpetuating cycle perpetuate itself; in the absence of continuity, (a) what is being consumed on the Chinatown SG food street and more importantly (b) why is ethnic identity in place no longer sustainable? And finally (c) how do these help us understand the current state/ place identity of Chinatown SG as a whole. This will be the focus of discussion in the next and final section. 2.4. Understanding Chinatown SG Through Yaowarat The observed disjuncture between the physical and social composition of the food street in Chinatown SG stands in marked 50 contrast to the congruence and mutually reinforcing, intimately welded relationship between the physical and social composition of the food street in Yaowarat where there exists a particular kind of organic, symbiotic chemistry. The strong interconnections between ethnic identity, memory as manifest through food in Yaowarat appear to be grounded strongly in the strong bonds existing between these concepts The stilted, rigid, rather mechanical constitution of the food street of Chinatown SG hence appears by contrast to be due to the de-link between place, ethnic identity and memory. This apparent de-link between place, ethnic identity and memory in Chinatown SG, however, seems more complex. The dislocating relations between these concepts as evident on the food street need to be contextualized against an understanding of it as a manifestation of state interventions in Chinatown as a whole. It is against this backdrop that the food street can be better understood, and the disjunctures between Yaowarat and Chinatown SG food street will compared in this section bearing in mind this important aspect. This section will also utilize this fact to help us decipher (a) what is being consumed on the Chinatown SG food street, what food represents if it is not ethnic identity, and what are its impacts on place identity and more importantly; (b) why does ethnic identity 51 in place appear to be unsustainable organically which will be discussed with regards to the accessibility and power of social memory regimes and its impact on place identity; and finally (c) how do these help us understand the current state/ place identity of Chinatown SG as a whole. This will be the focus of discussion in the next and final section and it is to this endeavour we now turn our attention. 2.4.1 Consuming Identity vs. Consuming Nostalgia: Chinese Food versus Chinatown Food 2.4.1.1 Theming and Taming25 The Food Street Today: The State, Utility and the Ethnic „Themescape‟ vs. Autonomy The food street was mooted as part of STB‘s proposal for theme streets that was supposed to include market street, festive street, tradition street and bazaar street (Kwok et al, 1998:39). It was a plan that drew much criticism but STB put up a ―strenuous defense against fears that Chinatown is being developed into a theme park‖. That food hawking was singled out as part of the resuscitation efforts by the state is worth noting as the whole spectrum of wet market and night markets went hand in hand with food hawkers in the daily rhythms of those who inhabited Chinatown in the 1980s and before (Thoo, 1983) and yet only this 25 Chang (2000) 52 cross section was singled out for re-manifestation. It is also worth noting that while the other proposed theme streets did not materialize, the food street went ahead despite objections from members of the public who were concerned that such a move to ‗thematize‘ Chinatown will compartmentalize it into functions, providing visitors a neat but simplified experience of Chinatown. There were also apprehensions voiced with regards to STB‘s attempts to provide an overarching theme to Chinatown, with fears that in so doing, it has ignored Chinatown‘s history and culture-that it has reduced the layers of meaning to one that over-emphasizes an idealized or artificial kind of ‗Chineseness‘ (Kwok et al, 1998:39). It is obvious then that food is seen by the state as socially, ethnically significant part of Chinatown identity and a vital place making element under the state‘s purview, and it is perhaps even more interesting that the food street was remade under the state‘s mandate in a form that is heavily congruent with established protocols of hygiene and undergirded by principles of modernity and as an expression of a desire to ―re-package‖ Chinatown to contain its diversity under the rubric of a unifying ―simple theme of Chineseness‖ when ―many have pointed out that Chinatown has no one unifying character nor theme, and neither can it be divided into themes because such attempts will not have historical veracity‖. 53 The food street is hence inserted and recreated onto the Chinatown landscape based on these principles and intentions. As part of an ‗enhancement strategy‘ to revitalize Chinatown as a repository of Chinese heritage, new street hawkers now inhabit/ inherit this newly superimposed ‗themed‘ habitus framed by the vision of the state. The food street‘s sanitization, orderliness and disintegration from the other complementary food functions such as markets and its insertion outside of everyday life routines (as reflected in a largely insular customer base) must hence be read within this context. Food hence represents a concerted effort at locating identity. This is essentially a top-down initiative as indicated by the fact that most hawkers in Chinatown SG do not seem to think ethnic identity is an important aspect of their business and their clientele consisting of a large group of transient patrons also do not appear to surface that being Chinese has any bearing on the viability of their businesses or influences their food choices. The food hawkers in Yaowarat on the other hand as depicted earlier are part of a larger group of food purveyors sharing complementary functions, where ethnic identity continues unabated to be an important aspect of their economic transactions and those of their clients. 54 2.4.1.2 Food, Memory and Identity in Place vs. Recreating Place, Replacing Memories26 The vibrancy of the food street leaves little doubt that Yaowarat is primarily a place for commerce and place sustains business activities catering to the needs of the businesses in a symbiotic synergistic relationship. It is quite overt that the main aims of the businesses is sustainability in place and they seem to have found that in Yaowarat, conducting business as Chinese providing mainly the Chinese with services in a kind of strategic essentialism that is bottom up and grounded based on realities on the ground, where ethnic identity and business interest are inalienably intertwined and interdependent. This aspect can be observed from the distinct clustering of shops selling bird‘s nest and sharks fin in the day as well as on the food street itself; and is even more clearly drawn when we look at the survey results of the street hawkers. As the survey indicates, more than 80 percent of the hawkers (37; n= 45) who identify themselves as Thai Chinese have been there for more than twenty years, and of these over 90 percent (32 out of 37) are second or third generation hawkers who inherited the business and recipes from their parents. This reflects the apparent continuity and shows that the food street is undergirded, supported, and held together by 26 Chang (2005), Chang and Huang (2005). 55 an invisible web of subtle ethnic social relations that are generational and attributable to it is a kind of stable intergenerational transmission of memory located in place through inherited business practices, given ethnic quality by virtue of dealing with Chinese produce and catering to mainly a Chinese clientele. This notion of an inheritance is even more palpable when asked why they (2nd and 3rd generation hawkers) chose to locate there, they almost unanimously asserted that it is because this is Chinatown and that it is because they have always been here. From this we can see that inheritance and by implication transmission of memory as embodied in the intergenerational passing down of a family business is not simply individual but also embodies within it a kind of ethnic quality. It seems from this that it is not just the continuity of familial memories that are reposited in the business as it changes hands over the generations, but imbued in it, embodied within are memories of an ethnic identity that seems as indicated by the responses to still have resonance and currency in the contemporary moment though that relationship between ethnicity and business as we have seen at the beginning of the chapter was one engendered by virtue of being part of an enclave economy that was necessitated owing to social relations between the new immigrants and Thai society of that time. That is still has resonance also brings up another issue for in the choosing 56 to locate there for that long, it proves that the decision to conduct business there is a calculated move that appears premised on business viability as much as ethnic considerations. This means that Yaowarat continues to be a viable place for Chinese people to conduct business and it seems that this is still where most of the businesses congregate and concentrate because there are economies of scale to be accrued and they are aware that they are near their target markets. This can be inferred from clustering of several food types such as bird‘s nest and sharks fin which are popular ―Chinese food‖ and the fact that over 80 percent is able to identify27 and are privy to the reality that more of their customers are Thai-Chinese and these constitute their primary clientele (though when it comes to food) compared to the other categories of local Thais and tourists. Though time has evolved, it seems then that Yaowarat is still essentially a place by the Chinese for largely the Chinese. That is not to say that change has not occurred. While one may imagine that being able to speak Teochew28 and or Chinese would have been a distinct advantage in the past, the food street hawkers assert that Thai not Chinese is the lingua franca of the day to day wheeling and dealing there, and in fact some of them asserted that speaking English was important, no doubt in light of 27 28 Some of the hawkers claimed to be unable to make such estimates. Many of the earliest Chinese settlers are Teochew. 57 the food street being a popular tourist spot as well. This seems to indicate a savvy awareness that it is in the contemporary society impossible to be Chinese without being Thai as well, though Chineseness continues to be meaningful and valuable in their dealings. The apparent reflexiveness shown in the responses of the respondents reflects a kind of awareness of their dual identities as simultaneously Thai and Chinese and business viability proves to continue to be the main reason for their continued presence in Chinatown. Ethnic identity is tampered or partnered closely with sharp business acumen and instinct and it is quite clear that because being Chinese still matters, is still salient and has business consequences that the Chinese continue to conduct business there. This sense of an engendered place memory that continues to embody and perpetuate a sense of antecedent historically contingent ethnic identity arguably helps to make Chinatown and its ethnic place identity stable and sustained in memory as a lived in memory that continues to have cultural import in the daily lives of those who inhabit it in commercial activities and those who patronise it whom the respondents report are for a large part are still Chinese. All these observations gravitate towards a sense then that for these street hawkers, conducting business seems to 58 constitute a lifestyle, a way of life, powered forward by and simultaneously dependent upon a sense of history in a memory that is personal, familial and social ethnic at the same time, that continues to be drawn upon and utilized effectively and by implication sustainedly meaningful in daily life as constitutive of one‘s identity rather than being merely a livelihood driven by economic purposes alone, all in a fashion whereby place still matters, where ethnic identity and place continue to sustain a place imagery that is given changing yet persistent life through the daily commercial activities conducted within it. Change and continuity in Yaowarat is hence undergirded by an ability to draw into the pool of memory in which ethnic identity is embedded as a resource to reinforce that identity and enact it in place through food. The hawkers on Chinatown SG on the other hand are superimposed onto the landscape and are inserted retroactively en site as a ‗replica‘ of what things were or should have been; though in reality they are more of a superimposition and is like the food street that was created, part of a recreation and new set of memories. The food stalls here are not ethnically marked and it was clear from the responses of the hawkers and the profile of their clientele that being Chinese was not crucial in sustaining their business and in fact, business has not been viable. The food in 59 Chinatown it seems does not have an overt Chinese marker but are engendered owing to serving the demands of the clients (Geraldene Lowe, 1998; Thoo, 1983:11) who tended to be the residents who lived in Chinatown or in the area. This seems to indicate that the memories of hawkers in place is a highly placebased one rather than one that hinges on any ethnic overtones. This means that food and memory contribute not to an ethnic Chinese identity per se, but it seems, a Chinatown identity. The hawkers of old Chinatown featured in Thoo‘s 1983 study were relocated into hawker centres, and the fare available in Chinatown SG today are similarly not sustained on an ethnic identity because these foods have become widely available and are ‗localized‘. The lack of an ethnic element in the food of the food street yesterday and today seem to lend credence to the view that the food was Chinatown food and not Chinese food. This seems to help explain the reason for a lack of businesses sustainability, as the STB seems to be inserting an ethnic element to something that does not embody it anymore; and that business sustainability has always hinged on a localized clientele and is built upon those localized relationships the hawkers used to share with their clients. Essentially then that is a Chinatown memory, that has become dislocated and can no longer be drawn from as it was always contingent upon social relations built en site. It is hence a memory that has become distorted, 60 replaced and no longer has any life, and is inaccessible unlike the memories of a localized ethnic identity that is both in its abstract and concrete form utilized as a resource that perpetuates its sustained ethnic presence that continues to give place a distinctly engendered ethnic character, continuing to add to that memory through food. Arguably then, it is owing to a combination of superimposition of an ethnic character onto an element that did not embody that identity; and the dislocation of place-based memories, that together result in the overall dearth of memory reference to place that can be drawn upon for hawkers today. This emptiness of memory as a resource hence affects place identity for it neither finds resonance as Chinatown as lived, nor Chinatown the ethnic enclave. 2.5 Conclusion 61 In this chapter, we described and discussed the manifestations of the food streets in Yaowarat and Chinatown SG and compared the social ecologies of the hawkers and also simultaneously the profile of their clients. This is done in a bid to understand the relationships between place, memory and ethnic identity as embodied in food; with the larger aim of using this as a framework with which to understand the constituents of place identity in the two traditional enclaves today. The comparisons of the two sites showed that food hawkers in Yaowarat draw heavily on the advantages of locating where they are (where there are economies of scale to be accrued and enjoy product complementarity), and understand that ethnic identity is a crucial part of their continued economic success. Their businesses share a mutually reinforcing relationship with their clientele that comprises mainly of Thai-Chinese. This symbiosis and interdependence between the hawkers, their fellow hawkers and their environment; and the hawkers and their clients is fostered amidst a climate of remembering whereby ethnic memories tied to food are constantly kept alive and ethnic identity itself is enacted and re-enacted in the daily feeding rituals, inserted at the everyday level in the routines that one carries out in a diurnal rhythm, reproducing an identity that is tied to place, and at the same time, tied to more abstract notions of historical identity. 62 The opposite is true in Chinatown SG whereby place-based memory-identifications are inscribed by the state in a manner that lacks resonance. In the state‘s recreation, the place-based, localized relations are given an ethnic significance that social memories of the place do not correspond to. Hawkers are hence unable to leverage off any advantages that are accrued in Chinatown SG through sheer location and ethnic identity, and because of the overall lack of resonance (lack of emotive attachment to place and to customers) and inaccessibility of memories of place, Chinatown SG seems ‗soulless‘ and hawkers are unable to sustain their livelihoods. Place identity thus spirals downwards for it is not kept alive through the everyday enactment and re-enactment of identities embodied in the everyday routines for both the hawkers and their clients. This detachment to place and to the memory of place creates a distinct lack of access to a collective pool of social memory and is arguable the reason for the state‘s constant efforts at coming up with activities to resuscitate Chinatown SG. Without a memory regime that is constantly drawn upon and re-enacted and reproduced in the daily rhythms, place identity and ethnic identity becomes weakened and that is arguable what has happened in Chinatown SG, where the consumption of food is no longer tied to identity (both localized and ethnic). Remembering does not occur in a vacuum how things are remembered is a reflection of the social context. It is obvious that memory, ethnic identity and place identity are strongly linked 63 through food in Yaowarat, and social memory is kept alive through praxis. That social memory of an ethnic identity is still important reflect the continued enclave quality of Yaowarat today. In Chinatown SG, memory, ethnic identity and place are complexly related due to state action that saw the removal and subsequent partial restoration of a social habitat. This disruption cuts off the social memories that are place-bound in the 1980s, and seek to replace it with one that is ethnic and based on its enclave roots that by the 1980s do not seem to be strong anymore in its bid to restore it as heritage. These twin movements cut off the social memories, ethnic or otherwise that give place identity, delinking the otherwise close relations between place, identity and memory. It hence appears that social memories are important aspects in locating identity in place and it is the accessibility of these memories that determine place identities and its perpetuation. Hence because of the different configurations of these in terms of their accessibility, food in Yaowarat contributes as a place-making element and adds to that memory, locating it in space in a way that is absent in Chinatown SG. Chapter 3 Businesses and Ethnic Identity 3.1 Introduction In the previous chapter I described and compared the foodscapes in Chinatown SG and in Yaowarat. Using the food 64 streets found in the respective enclaves as tools with which to study and understand the relationships between place identity, ethnic identity and memory, I attempted to tease out the complex interrelationships that govern/belie place identity formation. This chapter replicates the approach adopted in the previous chapter and discussion will devolve in similar vein, revolving around an exploration of these recurrent themes. However, here we will turn our analytical lenses away from food, shifting our focus instead towards a systematic examination of the businesses located in the respective enclaves as embodiments of social memory and ethnic identities, Scholars of ethnic entrepreneurship have long noted the relations between businesses and ethnic identity and the Chinese in particular have been often identified as one of the more prolific ―entrepreneurial ethnic groups‖, characterized as ―entrepreneurial‖ because their rates of business-ownership participation far exceed that of other groups (Glazer and Monyihan, 1963; Valdez, 2002:2). The significance of businesses in this study is drawn even more sharply when contextualized in an enclave setting over time, the time element adding to the complexity of this business-ethnic identity dyad, by further overlaying it with the dyad of ethnic identity and memory. When contextualized against an ethnic neighbourhood setting, these form a complex triad with the notion of place identity as well. Hence businesses form an invaluable part 65 of our analysis and it is what this chapter will be devoted towards. The purpose of this chapter then is to explore the meanings and representations of businesses in these enclaves today with a view towards utilizing it as a foil that enables us to gauge its current contributions to place identity through understanding its complex relationship with ethnic identity. The attempt at understanding the relations between businesses and ethnic identity and how it is enacted in place will be explored through ethnographic descriptions and discussions of business institutions present in Yaowarat and Chinatown SG today; as well as a through a selective cross-sectional study29 of the social profile of the proprietors manning these. Simultaneously, to enable a more holistic, contextual understanding of contemporary configurations of businesses and identity in these traditional enclaves over time, these primary findings will be framed and understood against the backdrop of historical social trajectories the relationship between businesses and ethnic identity has taken over time in these two places as embodied in these spaces of commerce and their proprietors. Tracing these permutations will once again allow us to glean insight into the social ecology of these shopkeepers over time and allow us a contextualized understanding of the different constructions of 29 Because this is a comparative study, there is a need to juxtapose comparable manifestations against each other. Hence here, the shops along Trengganu Street are profiled alongside its counterpart street in Yaowarat Road. 66 ethnic identity over time in place in both Yaowarat and Chinatown SG respectively. Understanding the social ecologies will be a precursor to and facilitator of a comparative discussion where the manifestations of businesses in the two sites will be juxtaposed. The differences in the social ecologies of shopkeepers in Yaowarat and Chinatown SG will then be discussed in a bid to look at what businesses represent in each enclave today with regard to ethnic identity and its impacts on place identity. This then forms once again the basis from which we conduct a discussion with regards to the contexts that give rise to memory conditions that contribute to the formation of a strong, accessible, self-perpetuating ethnic identity and hence place identity versus one that results in a weak, inaccessible, dislocated place identity. This chapter will then conclude with an extrapolation on what these differing constellations of food as a consumptive aspect of identity formation can inform us with regards to understanding the placelessness that has become synonymous with Chinatown SG, and allow us to examine what is being consumed through businesses beyond identity in weak memory regimes. The assumptions that guide the approach replicated in this chapter are the same as that before. The central idea is that the everyday is often thought to be ordinary, private, taken for granted, 67 mundane, routinized, commonsense, obvious and unreflexive. Yet it is imbued simultaneously with great analytical potential social relations and memory is something whose ‗fragile power‘ (Schacter, 1996) in enacted in the daily mundane routines of everyday life. Premised thus, it is hoped that such a framework will illuminate how places come into being through praxis (Raffles, 2007), daily praxis (as opposed to the spectacular, the festive) and how daily practices help locate memory and is simultaneously an outcome engendered from that memory. Sociologists of memory have unveiled that memory is localized, malleable, contextdependent; how we want to be known to others (i.e. identity) is constructed through active, reflexive agency and is a process (which means it is always ongoing and un-finalize-able) that is selective and is also closely intertwined with and influenced by larger social structures and ideologies; how we manage or continually construct and reconstruct our identities/ narratives of self as we negotiate our everyday lives in place (which is a repository of our memories) can potentially unravel these larger social structures and ideologies. Memory is alive and animate or usurped and disrupted. Our concern here is with the notion of what memory says about the prevailing social context, impacts identity and place identity. The following sections will lay out the ethnographic observations in Yaowarat and Chinatown SG towards this end. This chapter is thus an elaboration of the thesis‘s main theme and premise of looking at 68 place, memory and (ethnic) identity as a triad of interrelated relationships and doing a ―sociology of place‖ (Gieryn, 2000:463) that frames identity negotiation as a process that is emplaced and has spatial outcomes that are dynamic, fluid and congruent with the times. 3.2 Painting the Field: Businesses on Yaowarat — Unity and Complementarity When one gets within range of Yaowarat, you become immediately aware of its difference from other parts of Bangkok. While the bustle is of the same intensity, the place itself assaults your senses and we all become sentients as we imbibe and take in the aura of the place. Visually, Yaowarat is demarcated as different because the vast majority of the shops spot signboards that are written in at least two languages, Chinese and Thai and some in English. Besides this congregation of Chinese signs and characters in one place, the roadside stalls selling all manner of trinkets such as traditional knots, old Chinese CDs, and Chinese cakes and religious paraphernalia such as candles, joss sticks and incense papers folded into elaborate coifs skillfully by the shopkeepers and their Laotian hired help, Chinese wedding paraphernalia shops, create a mixture of smells and create compelling visuals of 69 livelihood in the making and life that follows the ebbs and flows of the diurnal cycle. What is certain is that this is a place that is textually rich, and is undoubtedly a place of business, livelihoods and especially a place of the Chinese, that is palpitating with life. The density of activities in Yaowarat is captured in the images below30 Figure 11: Street scene: Yaowarat on a weekday. 30 These photos are used with permission of Dr Ho Kong Chong. 70 Figure 12: A Soi (side street) in Yaowarat: Note the density of commercial activities. One of the most striking features of Chinatown is its obvious concentration of several functions amidst other related, complementary ones. There is a palpable congregation of goldsmiths, medicine halls, provision shops and shops and stalls selling bird‘s nest and sharks fin sitting squarely in the midst of printing services, spectacle shops, shops specializing in photographic equipment, religious paraphernalia, clothes, all coexisting alongside wholesalers dealing with hardware, rice, soya sauce and other assorted services. 71 Figure 13: Toakang Jawaraj: One of the gold shops in Yaowarat with multiple offshoots along the same road or in adjacent Charoen Krung. Gold is iconic and ubiquitous in Yaowarat. 72 Figure 14 (above): The concentration of shops and medicine halls selling dried provisions, sharks fin and bird‘s nests makes it a go-to place for those seeking these products. 73 Figure 15: One of the many shops selling dried provisions such as dried fish maw, and dried shrimp. Figure 16: One of the numerous shops selling cooked sharks fin and bird‘s nest. The complementarity in products is displayed here as both dried and cooked forms of bird‘s nest are widely available here. 74 Figure 17 (above): Note the congregation of similar, complementary products along the same street. The shop on the left sells waxed smoked meats while that on the right sells bak kwa or dried barbequed pork. 75 Figure 18: The friendly proprietor of this provision shop says that she only started selling birds nest and sharks fin as customers started to demand for it, reflecting the demand-driven business sense that appear to guide many of the businesses here. These features appear to indicate firstly that there is a certain kind of unity in products and functions located densely within an area; second, it reflects that businesses here appear to display a high degree of product complementarity with a range of related goods (stalls selling dried sharks fin sitting alongside provisions such as rice and other condiments) and bears insertion at the everyday life level; and third owing to this concentration, complementarity and insertion of goods and services at the everyday life level, there appears to exist inherent in the businesses a high level of mutual interdependence. Understanding these constellations require that we address (a) what facilitates/ 76 enables/ sustains these concentrations, complementarities and interdependencies over time and (b) what can these in turn tell us about the relationship between place, memory and identity as embodied in the businesses and (c) its impact on place identity. It is towards this endeavour we now turn our attention. 3.2.1 Concentrating on Yaowarat: Economies of Concentration (Unity Complementarity) and Its Relations to Cultural Continuity and Business Viability The clustering of a particular function in an area usually denotes that there are economies of concentration to be accrued through sheer proximity of location to other similar functions. The congregations of goldsmiths, medicine halls and provision shops within Yaowarat imply then that these economies exist for these trades. This observation is lent credence/ is confirmed when the shopkeepers were almost unanimous in their responses when asked why they chose to locate in Yaowarat that it is because ‗this is the golden road‘ (goldsmiths), and ‗this is where people come to buy these things‘, ‗this is Chinatown‘ (provision shops and medicine halls). Such unequivocal responses reflect the shopkeepers keen awareness that their products are unique, ‗ethnic‘ and are sought after in place and that they cater to a very specific clientele that is 77 reportedly predominantly Thai- Chinese. Their matter of fact pronouncements/ acknowledgement that this is the go-to place for these clearly ‗ethnic‘ products also implies a certain perception and understanding of the importance of their ethnicity and product complementarity (Thoo, 1983: 124) governed by proximity to other producers peddling complementary (and simultaneously competing) products and complementarity from being sought after by the same largely Thai-Chinese clientele in the viability of their businesses. This in turn expresses an unspoken interdependence between the proprietors peddling the same items as well as an interdependence between the proprietors and place itself, with which the products appear to be synonymously aligned. Location hence appears to be guided by good strategic business sense and proximity to similar functions and a ready clientele. At first glance, these are neither remarkable nor unique traits but makes rather typical business sense. However, when contextualized against the backdrop of reaping the same economies located over time in a traditional enclave, it expresses a sense of sustained viability guided by cultural continuity. Location is not arbitrary or because of one‘s de facto Chinese identity. It is because it still makes good business sense over time and viability which is in turn dependent on a still resonant and meaningful cultural symbolic exchange that has been sustained over time, 78 beyond the initial leveraging and mobilizing of ethnic resources that characterized early ethnic enterprise. The fact that they are continuing to thrive implies that consumers share the same sentiments, sustaining these businesses with their continued patronage, essentially consuming and reproducing their ethnic identities together in Yaowarat. This means that businesses represent a larger socio-cultural footprint and have cultural significance beyond a mere provision of goods and services. How this footprint is sustained over time and its impact on place identity then become interesting questions to explore. Arguably then this is the dynamic of culturally guided consumption that underlies much of the robustness of the ―enclave economy‖, sustaining this robust commercial space over time. What is being consumed here is clearly then an ethnic identity. A meaningful interrogation of the businesses here is hence imperative for us to fully understand what Yaowarat represents for both the businessmen and their patrons today; and how that memory is sustained over time in place, embodied in the business rituals that are enacted en site; and ultimately the impacts of these on place identity. 79 3.2.4 Gold and Being Chinese: The Construction-Consumption of a Chinese Identity The goldsmiths in Yaowarat are owned and operated mainly by Chinese proprietors and most have been family businesses for more than two generations. The shops are often bright and clean, with showcases filled with gold bracelets of varying thickness, amulets, frames for Buddhist pendants and even Buddhist pendants plated in gold. Business is brisk and especially on weekends, the crowd can be sizeable. Gold is obviously serious business here and most of the goldsmiths interviewed are selfproclaimed members of the goldsmiths‘ association that are involved in the setting of prices and quality control. That Yaowarat is heralded as the place for gold and the fact that such an overwhelming majority of the shops are run by Chinese proprietors makes this an interesting point to begin our interrogation. 80 Figure 19: The density of gold in Yaowarat: The signboards all belong to gold establishments. Note the dual language signboards that are characreristic of most of the shops found in Yaowarat. They exemplify the straddling of dual identities by the Thai-Chinese today. 81 Figure 20: Photos of generations in interaction with Thai royalty carefully framed and proudly displayed in Tang Toa Kang one of the oldest and most reputable gold businesses in Yaowarat. Figure 21: Photographs of its founder Mr Tang Toa Kang and his wife. These pictures of one‘s ancestors are sometimes seen in other shops as well, reflecting an inheritance, a legacy and a kind of generational memory transmission. This is 82 arguably the kind of memory regime alive in Yaowarat today. These were displayed in the private ‗museum‘ located above the shop. As mentioned earlier, many of the shopkeepers when asked why they chose to locate in Chinatown, point out that it is Chinatown, which is also known as ―the golden road‖. This response mirrors that of the hawkers also mentioned that part of the reason for locating where they are, is definitely because this is Chinatown, where they have and continue to successfully conducted their businesses. That some goldsmiths have multiple offshoots along the same road or in an adjacent street further attest to their confidence in the viability of plying their trade here. All these point to an evidently informed confidence that this is where Chinese people will come for their wares; which is an assertion that is supported by the data collected that shows that across board, the clientele the goldsmiths serve are predominantly Thai-Chinese over and above the percentage of Thais or foreigners, with repeat customers coming mainly from the Chinese group (consisting of a larger proportion of customers over the age of fifty) of patrons. That their customers are mainly Thai-Chinese, their business counterparts are predominantly Chinese and has been over sustained periods of time would mark gold in Yaowarat out as a distinctive culturally significant symbolic ethnic good. Arguably then, if consuming gold represents a consumption of one‘s ethnic identity the goldsmiths and their patrons are in a tango of 83 consuming and trading ethnic symbols and identities, both of which are produced and reproduced in these daily business rituals enacted en site in Yaowarat ensuring it remains a place by the Chinese for the Chinese. 3.2.4.1 The Dance: Strategic Essentialism As Zhou (2004) and others have noted, ethnic entrepreneurs often leverage off their social capital and are observed to use their ethnic networks to mobilize resources and opportunities, which in turn contribute to their above-average rates of business- ownership (Light, 1972, 1982; Light and Bonacich 1988)31. That almost 90 percent of the gold here is Chinese-owned clearly indicates then the strength of ethnicity as a resource that is strategically leveraged upon. How then is ethnicity strategically employed as a resource by the gold merchants and how this plays out vis a vis their clients in the enactment of both the consumptive and productive aspects of one‘s ethnic identity32? It is clear from the data that the business confidence of the goldsmiths mirrors that of the confidence the consumers have in the goldsmiths. The regular clientele reported by the goldsmiths reflect an element of trust. This trust is evidently built upon an 31 See also Light and Karageorgis 1994, Light and Bozorgmehr, 1994; Portes and Bach 1985; Waldinger et al. 1990; Waldinger 1998). 32 Explaining the network of gold merchants is beyond the scope and aims of this thesis, and here, I will focus instead in the exploration of how as ethnic businesses 84 emplaced ethnicity embodied in the businesses over time. This fact is evidently not lost on the astute business people who have inherited the trade from their forefathers. This is so when it is observed that the shopkeepers are very cognizant of the fact that positioning oneself as Chinese is important for the merchants Hence being Chinese is an important ethnic resource and shopkeepers are keenly aware of that with many of the shops retaining the Chinese characters on their signboards, and many reporting that being able to speak Chinese or a dialect like Teochew whilst not crucial in conducting business, posited ―an advantage‖. This consideration of business viability indicates that the businesses are highly attuned to economic and the decision to locate in Chinatown is governed by business acumen and driven by the profit motive. This means that the move is strategic rather than de facto the outcome of being Chinese, but is because being Chinese was a clear advantage. This point is further illustrated by some of the newer goldsmiths that similarly chose Chinatown as a place to conduct business by virtue of an available market. In other words, the location of their businesses is founded on the premise that gold sells in Chinatown, which is a business concentration that effectively links ethnicity to place. It can be inferred from these responses that being Chinese is not the sole 85 reason for their setting up their business there but more prominently, the location of the shop was given due consideration from the angle of business viability. Most of the shopkeepers were highly attuned to the label of Chinatown as the place to buy and sell their gold, with prominent official attention lauding it as the place where one gets the best buy back rates and quality control as most of the goldsmiths here are part of the business association for goldsmiths which engenders and injects a sense of trustworthiness that further cement its status as a gold hub that has been around for generations which further lends it currency and business authority and ensures that the memory of Chinatown as an optimum place to deal in gold is kept alive through the daily enactment and reenactment of rituals of selling, embodied within which are allusions to an overriding ethnic identity. The fact that some of the goldsmiths have multiple offshoots and branches in the same vicinity seems to further attest to the veracity of this view. This reflects that the shopkeepers are enacting a certain kind of strategic essentialism. That is they are utilizing their ethnicity in strategic, purposeful ways in order to garner the gains that accrue from such a stance and social positioning. Hence the production of ethnic identity in and through gold by the goldsmiths mirrors the apparent consumption of a Chinese identity through gold products for their customers. A crucial 86 component of this symbiotic relationship is the fact that this patronage is built on the notion of trust and reputation built over the years, where drawing upon the memories of quality gold trading can be drawn and standards and reputations are upheld for these customers, ensuring their continued patronage. Thus both the merchants and their customers are able to draw from antecedent social memories, and through them consume and reproduce their identities through the rituals of buying and selling gold, and undergirding these perpetuated exchanges is a powerful social memory of trading quality, trustworthy gold products from reputable Chinese merchants, who continue to cater to the needs of their primary clientele and through these business practices and rituals perpetuate and constantly reenact that ethnic identity that is crucial for their business success, with ethnicity serving as a de facto stamp of approval that is synonymous with quality, trust and the simultaneous consumption of an ethnic Chinese identity. This is interesting because it reflects two things. First, it reflects that the shopkeepers are aware that being Chinese is an important resource that still has currency in their business dealings today. It was obvious from the bustling and frenetic pace of business activities occurring in Yaowarat that this is a vibrant centre of commerce and business sustainability is not an issue based on the steady stream of customers that throng the shops. Location was hence a strategic choice, an informed decision 87 stemming from knowledge that they are able to strategically essentialize themselves in place, locating themselves to achieve a competitive advantage in a niche market and achieve business survival owing to this ethnic identity that it appears continued to be fostered through the products the ethnic group continues to utilize meaningfully as part of consuming their social identity. Second, it shows that clientele patronizing these shops continues to be mainly ethnic Chinese. This indicates a by the Chinese for the Chinese element that is all the more amazing as it is organically engendered. Third, if ethnic businesses are a good indication of social identity then it appears that Yaowarat as a whole essentially continues to be by the Chinese to serve their needs and demands for services. All these point to the conclusion that Yaowarat as seen through the businessscape in Yaowarat and the consumptive patterns of the patrons of these establishments is still very much enclave like in a way that Chinatown SG does not based on the divergence and differences identified between the two business scapes and their contrasting social compositions. While gold trading was traditionally a province of the Chinese and shops have a history ranging from 30 to more than 100 years, it seems that while the initial encounter between the client and shopkeeper was based on a mutual sense of trust by virtue of being fellow countrymen, this has molted and evolved to a rather different kind of enactment of and leveraging off identity 88 /ethnicity. Now, the earliest memories of Chinatown and gold are concretized and made visible and delivered to the public at large as a brand of sorts, though this branding is one that stems from and is rooted strongly and grounded in empirical experience, i.e. the brand was a formalizing of a once informally grounded creation and is something that seeks to describe that reality, that was bottom up rather than being a top down effort at inscription. In this way the memory of goldsmiths is perpetuated, through the repeated patterns of the business rituals that are enacted daily in place and this has arguably helped sustain memory and ethnic identity in place and is not an insignificant force and have rather important empirical outcomes for place: it makes it relevant in business terms and conjures up memories of it as a Chinese marketplace, continuing to link the traders to their trade which is a linkage that has become emblematic over time. It is apparent then that in Yaowarat, ethnic identity is strongly grounded in gold, medicine consumption and similar establishments in a way that is true to its enclave roots. It appears that in Yaowarat the conditions remain such that place, ethnic identity and memory (continuity) are perpetuated in a manner that ensures that enclave businesses continue to represent a consumption of ethnic identity and through its self-reinforcing self perpetuating cycle perpetuate itself. The relationship between gold and ethnic identity thus resonate strongly for both the businesses 89 and their clients, ensuring that the memory continues to live in place, grounding place identity. Hence, because of this currency, goldsmiths as a business community continue to help make place; and by virtue of its synergistic and symbiotic relationship with place i.e. the best place to buy gold is in Chinatown and the best place to sell gold is in Chinatown, the relationship between history, memory, place and ethnic identity are thus solidified and memory powerfully grounded through the fragile and unquantifiable quotidian rhythms of trade that are stable, yet constant, and most importantly living memories that bespeak of an ethnic identity located in place, and is still very much a place by the Chinese for the Chinese. This is evident from the fact that most of the shops dealing with products imbued with cultural significance in Yaowarat estimate that more than 50 percent of their clientele is Chinese. This concentration of goods and services that are repositories of an ethnic Chinese identity continues to offer an array of goods arguably not assembled at such a scale outside of Chinatown and hence continues to attract local Chinese to partake in its reproduction as a living memorial and tribute to a Chinese ethnic identity that is perpetuated and constantly reinforced with the interdependence between the shopkeepers and their physical and social environment; that is further bolstered by their largely Chinese clientele who appear to 90 consume that same ethnic identity through the purchase of gold products within which memory and identity is embodied. The medicine halls and the provision shops present very similar profiles and they will be discussed in greater detail in the next section. 3.2.5 Embodying Chinese-ness: Medicine Halls and Provision Shops The strategic utilization and manipulation/capitalization of ethnic identity to safeguard or shore up business advantages find similar expression in the owners of medicine halls and provision shops. Like the goldsmiths, the proprietors of the medicine halls and provision shops selling dried goods such as dried shrimp, mushrooms and other condiments common in Chinese cooking such as wine report similarly report an awareness of the economies of scale to be accrued from locating in a place where there is a concentration of similar functions and product complementarity. The answer to the reasons for location is predominantly that ―this is Chinatown and this is where people come to buy these‖. Almost unanimous in asserting that they are here because this is where their clients are, ―this is a place for Chinese people‖ is a refrain that is often encountered by this 91 researcher. That many of the shops in Talat Kao33 have been there for more than 50 years, and continue to have purely Chinese signboards further reinforces the notion of a culturally undergirded viability. That this is another classic embodiment of an age-old Chinese identity is instantly illuminated in these responses that also paralleled that of the goldsmiths: that many inherited their family businesses, that they have been in business for more than twenty years, that their clientele include a high percentage of people who tend to be Chinese and are usually more than 50 years old. However, Chinese and dialect, while being an ‗advantage‘ for the goldsmiths was claimed by some of the respondents to be ‗important‘ and this is very telling as to the kind of legacy Chinese medicine as embodied in these medicine halls. As mentioned by several medicine hall proprietors, ―prescriptions are often in Chinese and hence we need to be able to read and write Chinese characters‖. That is not to say that English is not important as well. This is so because most of the medicine halls have both Chinese and Western medicine counters, and have had both kinds for many years as they cater to customers‘ needs. 33 It is called „Old Market‟. Many of the shops there are uniformly inherited businesses and have been in the same location for over thirty years. 92 The notion of catering to their clientele is even more sharply drawn when queried as to why some of these halls actually sell items such as sharks fin and dried scallops and birds‘ nest. The shopkeepers offered that it was down to simple pragmatism, simply because ―customers asked after these things so we just decided to sell some of these so that they just get everything here‖. The acute practical element and sensitivity to making a livelihood and hence selecting options that make sound ‗business sense‘ once again highlights the point brought up earlier about the gold shops, whereby economic viability was one of the main concerns of the shopkeepers in terms of locating their stores. This pragmatism and openness to change reflects the organic nature of identity expression and shows that it is fluid and evolving with the times. This shows that memories are constantly referred back to and have ethnic character but are not inert, and the shopkeepers are not averse to adding new elements to that identity. This seems to provide further evidence that social memories in Yaowarat are ethnically and place-based at the same time in a manner that is open to change, and ethnic identity, language merely are foils, tools to achieve the ultimate purpose of business survival, that are readily played up when there is an advantage to be gained, but not invoked as a static entity. 93 This flexibility and manipulation of an ethnic identity evident in Yaowarat bears testimony to the assertion that memory of an ethnic identity is alive. It also stands testament to the fact that strategic essentialism is a hallmark of identity construction amongst the shopkeepers. 3.2.6 Concluding Notes From Yaowarat While choosing to highlight the more noticeable concentrations of products such as gold and provisions, it must be said that other goods and services such as watches, opticians, religious periphernalia, traditional cakes are not less important. In fact they are the cornerstone of the complementarity that we have spoken at length about earlier, ensuring that Yaowarat remains self-contained. Many of these have also been around for generations. Besides the more abstract kinds of ‗memory community‘, the sentiment on the ground is that these are businesses that run in the family over time. There are provision shops for instance right next to another that are owned by a pair of brothers, the proprietor of a religious paraphernalia shop speaks of her sister-in-law who has a shop in the next street. In fact she mentions that should she run out of a certain product a customers wants, she can simply go to her neighbours who have surplus of the product and get it. This seems to mirror some of the camaraderie observed on the food street though it is less clear 94 amongst the individual shopkeepers. Arguably this sense of ‗comradeship‘ is engendered from being concentrated and sharing the same clientele, and even sharing the same memories. From the forgoing discussion, it is clear that there are concentrations of certain functions located in Yaowarat. For the goldsmiths, Chinese provision shops and medicine hall proprietors, location is based on economics of concentration enjoyed for over twenty years, a legacy of inheritance, the knowledge that they are peddling products that their Chinese clients go to Yaowarat looking for, with an awareness that should they desire these produce, Yaowarat has traditionally been, and still is a bastion of Chinese ethnic identity consumption. It is very clear that ethnic identity is employed strategically only when it made business sense as evident in their knowledge that speaking Chinese or Teochew may be an advantage, and also through their willingness to speak other languages and incorporate other languages on their signboards, diversify their products to better cater to their clients. Strategic essentialism is thus at play here and is identity is arguably more sustainable because it is a bottom up construction that is sensitive to the realities on the ground For instance, many of the goldsmiths have signboards that contain Chinese characters, English alliterations of their names in Teochew and also in Thai. This is evidence that shows that in Bangkok it is impossible to be Chinese 95 without being simultaneously Thai and increasingly a global citizen as well. That means that a Chinese ethnic identity, the memory that is steeped in the legacy of their trades and embodied in the products they trade are only played up when it made business sense to do so. This implies a conscious and strategic application of identity drawn from memory and that ethnic identity is a purpose-driven one that is open and fluid. This also implies that memory and ethnic identities are negotiated at an everyday level 34 and are inserted in the interactions between the shopkeepers and their clients, as they produce and reproduce their social identities in place35. This cannot be further from that in Chinatown SG and it is to that we now turn. 3.3 Chinatown SG Chinatown SG differs from Yaowarat in several aspects. For one, Chinatown SG on a weekday afternoon is almost devoid of 34 In my chats with the shopkeepers, it is palpable that they are family businesses as in the shops usually are the old patriarch or matriarch together with the younger generation who have taken over the business. 35 It should be noted as well that the other shops located in Yaowarat share a high degree of complementarity in products and services in that though they may not be selling ethnically marked goods, they are part of the same community who speak the same language, celebrate the same events, go to and contribute to the same temples and shrines. They locate in Yaowarat to enjoy the benefits of product complementarity as well as access to a pool of. 96 human traffic, appearing rather somnolent and sedate compared to the bustle observed at Yaowarat on a weekday. Figure 22: Chinatown SG on a weekday afternoon. Note the yellow and red umbrellas that are sponsored by the Chinatown Business Association. Emerging from the Pagoda Street exit of Outram Park MRT station to street level, two rows of shops selling items such as bak kwa, cameras and film come into view, greeting the visitor together with multiple tailoring outfits, a coffee shop, a medicine hall peddling large vessels of liang teh or traditional Chinese ‗cooling‘ teas and the Chinatown Heritage Museum and Restaurant. Amongst these on Temple and Terengganu Street are other shops 97 carrying an assortment of Singaporean touristic paraphernalia, Chinese knots, calligraphy and other ostensibly ―Chinese‖ decorations such as red lanterns and porcelain trinkets of ornamental elephants and tortoises. Figure 23‖ Street Furniture: These ‗lions‘ sit outside the colourfully repainted shophouses that house beauticians and massage services. With this initial foray into Chinatown SG, we will delve into analysis proper to describe and discuss how Chinatown SG compares with Yaowarat; and what businesses here can tell us about the relations between place, memory and ethnic identity. This will be the focus of the next section. 3.3.1 The Shopkeepers of SG 98 If the business scene in Yaowarat is characterized by (a) a unity in products and product complementarity; (b) business continuity and viability and (c) a consumption of culture, ethnic identity, and social memories that are organically emplaced, the scene in Chinatown SG takes on a distinctly different tone from that observed in Bangkok. (a) Unity in Products and Product Complementarity Like in Yaowarat, along the two streets surveyed, there are perceptible concentrations of particular trades here. Massage services and body therapies for one are well represented, with a dizzying array of ‗authentic‘ Thai, Javanese, Swedish and Chinese tuina and foot reflexology massages. Many of these simultaneously offer ear candling and assorted beauty, aromatherapy and facial services, with one even offering phyto organic skin care; all housed above and amongst shop fronts selling a hodgepodge of items ranging from boutique clothes with loud Hawaiian flowery motifs to frozen organic vegetarian food amongst other businesses. Occupying some of the shop fronts are a hairdressing outfit, a few karaoke pubs, and nightclubs, shops selling cameras and other beauty services with men as their target clientele, and a German sausage and bread shop. Amongst these arguably more ‗new age‘ offerings are Chinese medicine halls, shops selling incense, tealeaves, traditional cakes and snacks, Chinese and Indian 99 tailors, a goldsmith, glassware, jade, Chinese desserts, restaurants such as Yum Cha. Given Chinatown SG‘s positioning by the state as an ―ethnic quarter‖, the constellation of goods and services available here appear oddly discordant from the notion of ―ethnic‖. Aromatherapy massages and new fangled organic skin care and food strike a distinctly discordant note and make odd bedfellows with the traditional tea, incense, medicine halls and arts groups that coexist alongside these establishments and they arguably do not complement one another as well. Overlying this lack of concordance, however, a unifying chord can be found: An ostensible number of postcards, tee shirts proclaiming ‗Singapore is a fine city‘, other tee shirts sporting Merlions, bearing slogans of how Singapore is a ‗fine city‘, cotton pants and T-shirts bearing Chinese characters denoting ―courage‖ and ―tolerance‖ which are much cherished Chinese virtues dot the Chinatown business scape. These touristic paraphernalia are almost ubiquitous within the parameters of official Chinatown SG and in fact are spotted even at the tailor‘s and moneychangers. They are in turn complemented by the faux Chinese trinkets such as calligraphy scrolls printed on cheap bamboo, Chinese water colour paintings, Chinese knots and other knickknacks such as porcelain elephants and turtles, porcelain trinkets with ‗oriental‘ 100 prints and other China that are best described as Chinese kitsch found in a few shops, devoted to these ‗traditional‘ crafts, that are poor quality renditions of the originals and other ‗Chinese‘ decorations such as the iconic red lanterns that are emblematic of so many Chinatowns all over the world as well as palpable concentration of arts and theatre troupes and groups. This simultaneous discordance and apparent complementarity between the ostensibly (and even a little ostentatiously) ethnically marked trinkets and decorative ornaments and that of the traditional cakes, snacks, medicine halls and arts troupes however bear closer examination and the state‘s intervention in Chinatown which was discussed in Chapter Two will be examined here in relation to its impact on the business scape and subsequently the sense of place in Chinatown SG. Choreographed vs engendered (b) Business Continuity and Viability The state‘s hand in the constitution of Chinatown SG has been well documented. Henderson cogently maps out the initial eradication in the 1960s and retroactive turn towards conservation 101 initiatives in the late 1980s by the state (Henderson, 2000), the development-conservation dilemma (Kong & Yeoh, 1994; Yeoh & Huang, 1996) the state faced in relation to Chinatown SG and the overall turn towards harnessing a heritage that was overall marketable as ―Uniquely Singapore‖ and ―New Asia Singapore‖ (Chang, 2005) for a slice of the global tourism pie. The changes on the Chinatown SG landscape wrought by these policies have been cited as the main reason for Chinatown‘s ―demise‖ and placelessness, and blamed as the root cause of its identity as a theme park that lacks resonance with Singaporeans at large. These critiques are not unfounded. The easy business continuity, confidence and symbiotic relationships between the shopkeepers and the patrons who sustain them in place through drawing upon a shared pool of ethnic social memories as a resource that is emblematic of the trades in Yaowarat are clearly not enjoyed by many of the shopkeepers here. 102 Figure 24: Lau Choy Seng: One of the oldest ‗survivors‘ with 60 years in Chinatown SG. It is also the only one selling glassware in the vicinity. Out of the 23 shops surveyed, only three— Kwong Onn Herbal Medicine Hall (60 years, 4th generation), Nam Supplies (third generation) and Lau Choy Seng which sells containers and glassware (60 years, 2nd generation)– have been inherited family businesses with proprietors who are second, third and fourth generation inheritors of their ancestors‘ trades, whose decision to continue to locate in Chinatown SG despite the oft mentioned ―high rents‖ because their businesses are still supported by their clients whose profile largely mirror that of their counterparts in Yaowarat i.e. most of their business consists of repeat customers who are locals, with whom they have meaningful personal relationships with and with whom there is an element of trust incorporated. For these 103 shops and their clients, location and patronage are not arbitrary but carefully selective and beyond the merely transactional. This is so because these shops do not sell items that are unique to Chinatown SG but are easily found in all housing estates and ―new towns‖. And the relationships between the shopkeepers and their customers was keenly felt when I approached the proprietors for the short questionnaire I have prepared. Figure 25: Nam Supplies, one of the last remaining shops of its kind in Chinatown on Trengganu street dealing with incense and other religious supplies. At Nam Supplies for instance which has been in business for about 80 years, Peter the affable proprietor, and third generation inheritor of his family business can be seen vivaciously and enthusiastically serving the customers that throng his shop on the Thursday afternoon. Together with his wife whom the 104 customers also seem happy to banter with they man his joss paper and incense supplies business. While I was in the shop talking to Peter, customers of various demographic groups (―I watched some of them grow up‖) stream in and his sense of familiarity with them was palpable. There were earnest greetings that reeked of familiarity and knowledge of each other, light-hearted discussions of what they are buying, enthusiastic conversations about what the products are to be used for, a sense of trust in Peter‘s recommendations of products, and warm friendly chit chat and banter about life in general. It was obvious immediately the personal relationships Peter shares with his customers. This scene observed on an unremarkable weekday afternoon appears to be a good snapshot of the profile of Peter‘s customers. He reports that about 80 percent of his customers are regular patrons and out of these about 30 percent to 40 percent he estimates to be over the age of fifty. He banters good-naturedly with his customers in mainly Cantonese reflecting his assertion in the survey that speaking Mandarin and dialect is important for his business, especially ―in relationship building‖. For him then these are the people his business caters to and is sustained by, less so the occasional tourist who purchases the incense out of novelty and curiosity. Peter is conversant in Mandarin, English and Cantonese but the lingua franca that makes most business sense appears without doubt to be Cantonese. It was the marker of an 105 insider and the customer who speaks it is inducted into that inner circle of friendship. These are people he knows and have established interpersonal connections with that are beyond the merely transactional whose continued patronage is valued and sustains Nam Supplies, ensuring its viability. Such conviviality was also encountered over at Huang Yao Nan Medicine Hall36 (90 years, 3rd generation)37 which was also bustling with life with many a grey-haired customer seated leisurely bantering in Cantonese and Teochew with the proprietors across the counter who were pounding, scraping, slicing, measuring out, putting together the various herbs, whipping them skillfully with practiced deft movements into neat packages. The familiarity and warmth is again undergirded by regular patronage and the ensuing trust that is developed over the years. For these shops there is little doubt that their continuity and viability relies upon their clients who continue to patronize though there are other alternatives should they require joss paper and incense, and even Chinese medicine and even more so, plastic and glassware which are easily available island-wide. What is clear from this then is the fact that despite bearing very similar traits and customer profiles to many of their counterparts in Bangkok, there is 36 There are also other old establishments such as On Cheong Goldsmith and Tai Chong Kok cake house, which are not included in the survey. 37 As one of the oldest establishments in Chinatown SG, it is interestingly not in the list of „heritage brands‟ that is drawn up in the official touristic literature. 106 a departure from them in that unlike the culturally inscribed goods located in place, emblematic of place with attendant guarantees of high quality, full variety and assured pricing that ensures its continued viability in place that is drawn from shared memories of an ethnic identity that is still salient and relevant today in Yaowarat, the notion of being an ―ethnic‖ good is not so clearly inscribed in these goods and service that have ―lasted‖ in Chinatown SG over time. While speaking a dialect remains a business advantage for these shop owners, given the wide availability if the products and services they carry, it is reasonable to conclude that the relationships shared between the shopkeepers and their customers are localized everyday place-based ones where an ethnic identity is not overtly relevant in place. This unlike in Yaowarat, is not ―the place Chinese people come to buy these things‖ and though location was informed by notions of inheritance, the shopkeepers did not once mention the importance of being Chinese for their business location, reflecting that while there are relationships between them and their patrons, it is a more personal rather than ethnic identification. This is perhaps not surprising given that the majority of Singaporeans are ethnic Chinese, and ethnic identity has become diffused islandwide rather than concentrated in place like in Yaowarat, where ethnic identity, memory, livelihood are anchored in place and remain welded together in organically engendered interdependent 107 relationships that continue to guarantee business viability and perpetuating continuity in an exchange of cultural symbols in place. This observation of a localized everyday memory regime is corroborated further perhaps through Peter‘s notion of having ―lasted‖ in Chinatown over time and being one of the ―sole survivors here‖. Being a sole survivor implies the collapse of other similar business functions. Further probing about the kinds of establishments unveils that ―there used to be about five or six shops‖ like his in the vicinity. When prompted further about what trades used to be here given that he has been here for such a sustained period of time, he observes that and there were more ―tailors, jade sellers, people selling flowers, barbers, now they are all mainly new‖. Arguably, if these products and services are uniquely concentrated in Chinatown SG, and have any ethnic cultural significance, they would have thrived despite the high rents because then it will be the go to place for these products, in the way Yaowarat is for the Thai-Chinese consumers and businessmen. The fact that they were driven out cannot be attributable to the high rents alone, and by implication no longer through state destruction alone. This appears then to support the argument that Chinatown SG has moved away from being the ethnic enclave it once was, and was being sustained through the everyday livelihoods and daily routines of the business people and their customers, that are embodied in the mundane routines, where 108 an ethnic identity was downplayed. There is little illusion to Peter and others it seems that they are sustained by their regular customers who come back to them despite the availability elsewhere. What the state appears to have done then was to inscribe and superimpose through their heritage efforts an ethnic identity on a place in a way that is not congruent with the lived realities and memories of the inhabitants, thereby inadvertently forcing businesses out with the high rents. The notion of an overriding ―Chinese‖ identity was a resource that Peter and perhaps others are unable to tap into, has little currency as it does not resonate with their experience on the ground nor their memories as they negotiate their everyday lives in place. Business continuity in Chinatown SG then stands in marked contrast to that in Yaowarat where there is a coherent, engendered sense of place undergirded by an ethnic currency that organically and symbiotically supports the enterprises found there, locating memory In place, solidifying place identity in the process. Having said that, If the older establishments were unable to identify with the retrospectively inscribed place identity of Chinatown, the lack of resonance affecting their viability, forcing them out, and with some of the other unmarked services such as camera equipment shops bemoaning the ensuing lack of business 109 flow due to a lack of vibrancy as a commercial space, with new establishments such as massage and facial salons locating themselves ―because it is a central location‖, there appears to be simultaneously a movement toward ―hyper Chinese‖ products that are filling the void left by enterprises forced out by the disconnect between the physical (overtly Chinese) and social (local) composition the state has inflicted on Chinatown. If ethnic identity is no longer salient to these shopkeepers and contributes little to business continuity and viability, what is being consumed in Chinatown SG again? (c) Consuming Nostalgia vs. Consuming Identity: Theming and Taming, Recreating Place, Replacing Memories If ethnic identity continues unabated to be an important aspect of their economics transactions and those of their customers in Yaowarat, and place sustains the needs of businesses with whom they enjoy a synergistic symbiotic relationship, where ethnic identity and business interest are intertwined with a bottom-up strategic essentialism, the concentration of shops selling what is best describe as Chinese kitsch offers an interesting contrast in the way ethnic identity is invoked as a strategy for business success. 110 Many of these shops are new additions on the business scape and it is quite apparent that these overtly ethnically marked ‗Chinese‘ goods are paddled for tourists who appear to be privileged in the landscape given that postcards and other touristic paraphernalia can be found even at the tailors and moneychanger‘s premises. This observation is lent credence when most of these shops surveyed when asked why they chose to locate in Chinatown SG, report that they chose the location in a bid to tap into the tourist market. Tourists hence constitute a large proportion of their clientele, usually making up more than half their customers. Because their clientele consists mainly of tourists, there are correspondingly few repeat customers, and being able to speak Chinese or a dialect do not provide a business advantage for the lingua franca for business here is predominantly English and there is mention that ―English helps unless you meet PRCs‖, reflecting both the importance of English as the main business language and reinforcing the fact that the main clientele consists of tourists. This stands in marked contrast to that observed in Yaowarat earlier whereby speaking Chinese remains a business advantage for the functions concentrated there, and where the Thai-Chinese populace constitutes the vast majority of their patrons, many of whom are customers they have developed relationships with and who in turn invest their loyalties, and inform their decision regarding the feasibility of location and are the cornerstone of their continued business viability and confidence. 111 Like their counterparts in Yaowarat, these entrepreneurs are using their ethnic identity as aids towards their business endeavours. However, ethnic identity it seem is applied here superficially, given that the products they sell are distinctly noneveryday items but can be classified as Chinese Kitsch that is veering towards tackiness. This ‗hyper-Chinese orientation and pragmatism though similarly rooted in economic pragmatism and business viability is distinctly in contrast to that in Yaowarat where the business scape is marked by change and continuity, and ethnic identity was reflexively positioned as an extension of one‘s social identity over time in place in order to keep up with the times, and is rooted in one‘s inheritance of both the family business and one‘s ethnic identity. In fact, some of the stalls and shops selling Chinese art pieces and stone engravings are owned and operated by new Chinese immigrants from the People‘s Republic of China (PRC), together with many of the restaurants along Smith Street serving a showcase variety of ‗Chinese‘ cuisine e.g. from Tianjin and Sze Chuan province, which supports the notion that being Chinese though similarly a resource, is one that is applied in a manner detached from lived memories emplaced, that it‘s currency is derived from an ―ethnic succession‖ not unlike the concept of ‗ethnopole‘ that Laguerre (2000) discusses. If the state‘s inscription was not congruent with lived in memories, then this appears to 112 encourage entrepreneurs who take advantage of that inscription and conform retrospectively to that new ethnic theme slapped onto Chinatown SG. Ethnic identity then becomes an element used deliberately loosely by business people (new immigrants) with little attachment to place beyond how the inscriptions of place can benefit them, owing to a distinct ‗other‘ orientation. This point is brought home even more starkly by the disparity in treatment locals get from the Indian tailor one meets as they exit Chinatown MRT Station. Locals like this researcher got pretty much the cold shoulder as he enthused in friendly banter with the foreigners, cementing and confirming then the notion that many locals have expressed, that Chinatown SG was not for them. (d) “Dying Trades” The notion of consuming nostalgia however, is a complex multidimensional issue. The foregoing has shown how a lack of congruence in memory regimes has affected the businessscape, resulting in a disruption/ destruction of the initial businessscape through inscribing an ethnic identity resulting in many shopkeepers‘ inability to access both the localized place-based memories which are lost as trades move out; and also an inability to tap into the new ethnic identity that is superimposed on the landscape to gain business advantages as new ―ethnic Chinese‖ trades take up the slots left empty by their predecessors. 113 As Peter notes when prompted further about what trades used to be here given that he has been here for such a sustained period of time, he observes that and there were more ―tailors, jade sellers, people selling flowers, barbers, now they are all mainly new‖, further adding that his is fortunately or unfortunately one of the ―dying trades‖38. This sentiment is acknowledgement and echoed by the lady proprietor of the Tea Shop who observes that ―young people these days know very little about tea leaves, they rather have coffee at the new cafes!‖ What this implies, in the same way goods and services that used to be unique to Chinatown are no longer so, is that social change has occurred as well. The Chinese are no longer a minority cloistered in Chinatown but are in fact the majority in a population of about five million. This seem to help explain the reason for a lack of businesses sustainability as the STB seems to be inserting an ethnic element to something that does not embody it anymore; and that business sustainability has always hinged on a localized clientele and is built upon those localized relationships the hawkers used to share with their clients. Essentially then that is a Chinatown memory, that has become dislocated and can no longer be drawn from as it was always contingent upon social relations 38 Peter‟s son is studying overseas and will probably not take over the business, like many of the shopkeepers mentioned to me in Yaowarat. 114 built en site. It is hence a memory that has become distorted, replaced and no longer has any life, and is inaccessible unlike the memories of a localized ethnic identity that is both in its abstract and concrete form utilized as a resource that perpetuates its sustained ethnic presence that continues to give place a distinctly engendered ethnic character, continuing to add to that memory through food. Arguably then, it is owing to a combination of superimposition of an ethnic character onto an element that did not embody that identity; and the dislocation of place-based memories, that together result in the overall dearth of memory reference to place that can be drawn upon for hawkers today. This emptiness of memory as a resource hence affects place identity for it neither finds resonance as Chinatown as lived, nor Chinatown the ethnic enclave. Being the majority of the population also means that the need to mobilize ethnicity as a resource is drastically reduced. All these arguably contribute to the current state of Chinatown SG. 3.4 Conclusion: The Business of Remembering In this chapter, we described and discussed businesses in Yaowarat and Chinatown SG and compared the social habitat of the shopkeepers and also simultaneously the profile of their clients. This is done in a bid to understand the relationships between place, memory and ethnic identity as embodied in business practices and consumption; with the larger aim of using this as a 115 framework with which to understand the constituents of place identity in the two traditional enclaves today. The comparisons of the two sites showed that businesses in Yaowarat draw heavily on the advantages of locating where they are (where there are economies of scale to be accrued and enjoy product complementarity), and understand that ethnic identity is a crucial part of their continued economic success. Their businesses share a mutually reinforcing relationship with their clientele that comprises mainly of Thai-Chinese. This symbiosis and interdependence between the businesses and their environment; and the businesses and their clients is fostered amidst a climate of remembering whereby ethnic memories tied to consumption and livelihoods are constantly kept alive and ethnic identity itself is enacted and re-enacted in the daily consumptive rituals, inserted at the everyday level in the routines that one carries out in a diurnal rhythm, reproducing an identity that is tied to place, and at the same time, tied to more abstract notions of historical identity. The opposite is true in Chinatown SG whereby place-based memory-identifications are inscribed by the state in a manner that lacks resonance. In the state‘s recreation, the place-based, localized relations are given an ethnic significance that social memories of the place do not correspond to. This concentration in place in Yaowarat hence stands in direct contrast to the dispersion 116 in Chinatown SG, and accounts for the strength in ethnic identification and identity in place in the former versus the dissonance once again palpable in the latter. Chinatown SG seems in this purview to be once again deemed placeless owing to the fact that with the destruction of place-based memories and placebased trades, it then tries to insert upon the landscape an ethnic identity that social memories of the place do not correspond to and cannot support today and has no resonance. Shopkeepers today are hence unable to leverage off any advantages to be accrued in Chinatown SG through sheer location and ethnic identity and because of the overall lack of of resonance (lack of accountability to customers) and the inaccessibility of memories of place. Chinatown SG seems ‗soulless‘ and businesses are unable to sustain their livelihoods. Place identity thus spirals downwards for it is not kept alive through the everyday enactment and re-enactment of identities embodied in the everyday routines for both the businesses and their clients. This detachment to place and to the memory of place creates a distinct lack of access to a collective pool of social memory and is arguable the reason for the state‘s constant efforts at coming up with activities to resuscitate Chinatown SG. Without a memory regime that is constantly drawn upon and re-enacted and reproduced in the daily rhythms, place identity and ethnic identity becomes weakened and that is arguable what has happened in Chinatown SG, where the consumption of food is no longer tied to identity (both localized and ethnic). 117 It is palpable from the discussion in this chapter that businesses are a cornerstone that continues to locate ethnic identity in place over time in Yaowarat. Both the shopkeepers conducting their businesses there together with their clients are able to, owing to the legacy of inheritance and continuity, constantly draw from a still relevant, resonant pool of simultaneously ethnic and place based social memories that continue to have currency for both the business proprietors and their clients. In Chinatown SG, place-based memories are destroyed and replaced by a superimposed ethnic based one that is not supported by social memories, meaning that both the shopkeepers an their clients are unable to draw from it to construct a coherent identity resulting in the dissonant heritage that has become a hallmark of Chinatown SG, which increasingly cannot sustain itself and requires the state‘s constant efforts at sustaining it. Inheritance and continuity alone however does not help anchor an ethnic identity in place. It is because of the concentrations of ethnically marked products such as sharks fin, gold and Chinese medicine that together with that legacy and inheritance continue to lock identity in place and makes place relevant to the ethnic community. This contributes to Yaowarat‘s strong ethnic Chinese character, where place, ethnic identity and 118 memory are strongly grounded and explains the apparent ‗placelessness‘ of Chinatown SG. The point to note here though is that this concentration of ethnic produce facilitates ethnic identity reproduction and contributed greatly to the ethnic positionings allowing for a continued ethnic constructing-consumptive pattern in place and is evidently as observed in Yaowarat, a crucial part in sustaining place identity. The ethnic character of these products and the fact that they are concentrated in place over time ensures that both the proprietors and their clients are able to draw upon antedecent social memories and continue to perpetuate them as lived in memories, continuing to sustain the viability of these businesses, ensuring then that through their proprietary consumptive practices that are undergirded by an overriding ethnic logic, the businesses remain in place, hence strengthening ethnic place identity. Remembering does not occur in a vacuum how things are remembered is a reflection of the social context. It is obvious that memory, ethnic identity and place identity are strongly linked through businesses in Yaowarat, and social memory is kept alive through praxis. That social memory of an ethnic identity is still important reflect the continued enclave quality of Yaowarat today. In Chinatown SG, memory, ethnic identity and place are complexly related due to state action that saw the removal and subsequent 119 partial restoration of a social habitat39. This disruption cuts off the social memories that are place-bound, and seek to replace it with one that is ethnic and based on its enclave roots that do not seem to be strong anymore in its bid to restore it as heritage. These twin movements cut off the social memories, ethnic or otherwise that give place identity, delinking the otherwise close relations between place, identity and memory. It hence appears that social memories are important aspects in locating identity in place and it is the accessibility of these memories that determine place identities and its perpetuation. Hence because of the different configurations of these in terms of their accessibility, businesses in Yaowarat contributes as a place-making element and adds to that memory, locating it in space in a way that is absent in Chinatown SG, contributing to its placelessness. Having described and discussed the relationship between place, memory and ethnic identity through an analysis of the more consumptive aspects of identity formation, we will now turn to look 39 The delink between place, memory and ethnic identity as embodied in the businesses needs to be contextualized against a backdrop of state intervention. Besides relocating the hawkers (Thoo, 1983), part of the initiative of development also saw the systematic, continuous and massive destruction of three out of four sides of the Chinatown landscape and the removal of residents from their shophouses which were then conserved in a bid to harness Chinatown as heritage for tourism and nation building. Tearing down the residences and revamping them physically altered the landscape, and post preservation, residents were forced to move out as rents skyrocketed. Less compatible uses were also phased out of Chinatown SG. These changes created massive upheavals to the social fabric of place and destroyed the place-based relationships between the businesses (Huang and Teo, 1994) and their patrons and it seems replacing them with ethnic-based, “themed and tamed”, “sanitized”, “dissonant” ones. 120 at other anchors located in place and discuss their impacts and influences on place identity and memories. Chapter 4 The Temples In the previous two chapters we mapped out the ways in which an ethnic identity manifests itself in Yaowarat, continuing to find embodiment in the goods, services and daily business routines that are enacted en site. We observed that because these continue to embody an ethnic Chinese identity and that an ethnic identity appear to continue to have resonance and currency for both the businessmen and their clients, these businesses persist in locating there over time, helping to engender the distinct unity in ethnic products and also product complementarity that is a hallmark of self-contained successful commercial spaces and also ensuring business continuity and viability that is consciously welded with cultural continuity as ethnic identity is consumed, produced and reproduced in the daily rituals of commerce in Yaowarat. Juxtaposing these observations with that in Chinatown SG draws out the fact that an ethnic identity does not have the same kinds of currency and we argued that these differences appear to bear spatial expressions that are etched powerfully onto the respective ethnic landscapes, engendering vastly different spatial outcomes, 121 making place in Yaowarat and it seems, breaking place in Chinatown SG. Having described and discussed the more material, consumptive embodiments of ethnic identity that is expressed in commerce, this chapter seeks to provide a more well-rounded and holistic analysis of place by turning to examine the role religious institutions such as temples may have in contributing to place identity formation over time. Religious institutions are highly symbolic edifices on which ethnic identities values and beliefs are inscribed. Further, these institutions often have intimate relationships with the spaces they occupy. For these reasons they are potentially fruitful areas through which to analyze the evolution of ethnic identity over time in these enclaves and hence in this chapter I will examine the religious institutions in Yaowarat and in Chinatown SG, singling out the most iconic and emblematic religious institutions for comparison to draw out larger themes that recur in Yaowarat and Chinatown SG, and the implications these have for place identity. In this purview, Wat Mangkorn Kamalawat and The Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum will constitute our analytic foci in this section and it is to and it is to this endeavour we now turn. 4.1 Wat Mangkorn Kamalawat: Leng Nei Yee 122 Wat Mangkorn Kamalawat is Sampheng‘s largest and most important Buddhist temple and was for many years the residence of the patriarch of the Mahayana Order. It has a southerly orientation, a propitious direction in Chinese but not Thai tradition with its main entrance at Charoen Krung Road. It was built on land provided for by King Chulalongkorn in 1873 and its construction was financed by a group of Chinese merchants and government officials. 1879 marks the completion of the temple and its formal consecration as Wat Leng Nei Yi, the largest Mahayana Buddhist temple in Thailand. King Chulalongkorn accorded it the Thai royal name of Wat Mangkorn Kamalawat (the dragon and lotus temple, equivalent Leng Nei Yi in Chinese. Wat Mangkorn has been headed by a series of abbots with six of the first seven having served as the patriarch of the Chinese Mahayana Order in Thailand40. Because of the reputation of Wat Mangkorn, I expected to be able to find it easily, anticipating that it would be highly opulent and conspicuous. I was really surprised then to find it unassumingly tucked away somewhere in the main thoroughfare of 40 In 1978 the senior monks of the Chinese Order in Thailand and the members of Wat Mangkorn‟s lay committee invited King Rama IX and Queen Sirikit to attend the opening of the nine-storey monastic school erected over the temple‟s main gate. It was an edifice that originally contained a museum and a religious school. In 1990, it was converted to the Mangkon Kamalawat Withayalai School, a monastic secondary school taught by a complement of 15 Chinese monks, with capacity of 200 student places primarily intended to serve the temple‟s novices though it also admits lay students from the surrounding community. It was the first such school established by the Chinese Mahayana Buddhist Order in Thailand. 123 Charoen Krung Road (above), the only indication that it might be there being the sudden concentration of shops peddling religious paraphernalia such as incense paper and other related offerings. Were it not for the ornate temple gate fronting Charoen Krung Road between the shophouses, Wat Mangkorn would be quite inconspicuous behind the multi-storey buildings lining the lively thoroughfare. The overall interior décor also reeks of a certain humility and it comes across as unpretentious (as opposed to ostentatious). Figure 26: The narrow, inconspicuous entrance to Wat Mangkorn 124 Figure 27: Patrons on a weekday afternoon That this is a textually rich, extramundane place comes into view in the initial survey of the people observed in the temple on a weekday afternoon. As I entered the temples, there were a good mixture of young and older folks going about their rituals, offering incense, prayers and donations. There were also a smattering of tourists with their cameras mingling in their midst, who are told politely that they are not allowed to take photographs within temple grounds, though that did not deter many who still try to sneak in a few shots whilst the staff are not looking. This mixture of localforeign, everyday and foreign seems to coexist very comfortably. There is a sense of non-intrusiveness and harmony between life as 125 lived and life as observed by the foreign eye, through a foreign lens from which the everyday is an object of fascination. That this is a living quotidian space, owned by the locals was palpable, and it appears that it is understood by the ‗outsiders‘ in their unspoken compliance to the rules of engagement, set informally by the inhabitants of this ritualistic space that is imbued with much meaning for their users. Newcomers to this space are creatively engaged it seems, and are attracted here owing to the presence of people and practices that continue to sustain and relate to this space and reproducing its meanings in their daily rituals and patterns of behavior that has roots in history, and owing to its constant reinvention on a daily basis, constitutes a living memory. 126 Figure 28: The resident young monks at prayer. In Thai culture, serving a stint in a monastery is a rite of passage in a man‘s Buddhist life. This is corroborated by Edward Van Roy‘s observations, in which he describes his own observations in Wat Mangkorn, He further observes that, The open area in front of the ordination hall is crowded each morning with visitors offering alms to the resident monks. As the day wears on, the stream of visitors seeking spiritual guidance, personal catharsis, or simply a moment‘s contact with the extramundane grows thicker. Many merit makers offer donations at the desks manned by elderly lay volunteers near the various devotional chambers. Others offer symbolic alms… Each day the 127 temple is crowded with worshippers who have come to express their devotion to the various altars. In addition to being Sampheng‘s best- known Buddhist centre for Mahayana Buddhist religious rites, Wat Mangkon is a renowned landmark for many visitors from overseas who simply come to experience ―a bit of the exotic east‖ or more tellingly pay fleeting homage in hope of gaining good fortune for themselves and their families. This further illustrates its straddling of both the local and the foreign, the everyday and the unique experience of the new and importantly that it inserts itself as an icon that belongs to both touristic literature and marketing, while at the same time unwaveringly belongs to the local community and the Chinese community at large without confining itself to either mould, continuing to stay true to its early missions of helping the poor and fostering Buddhist studies and precepts. This reinforces the assertion that in Wat Mangkorn, proceedings are simultaneously mundane and extramundane, or more precisely mundanely extramundane, for these are rituals that people appear to repeat as part and parcel of their daily and religious lives. This view is further supported by the fact that the majority of the shopkeepers (69 out of 76) surveyed report that they frequent 128 the temple, with some asserting that they visit it up to twice every week, and donate to the temple to make merit and pray for divine blessings for both themselves and their businesses. This is a significant finding because shopkeepers as discussed in the previous chapters are crucial agents that enact and reproduce ethnic identity in place over time, and purvey largely ethnically significant goods and services, and share symbiotic relationships with place. That their commitment and relationship to Yaowarat is grounded even more strongly in religious precepts that are further captured and locked in place by Wat Mangkorn seems to inflect that ethnic identity is further cemented and entrenched in physical space. The linkages between place and identity are hence clearly drawn here and appear to be intertwined in this religious institution and are powerfully reinforced through it and undergirded by it. 129 Wat Mangkorn: The Community Icon from Below Figure 29: The patrons of the temple (above). It is clear that Wat Mangkorn has both a community footprint as well as a larger social footprint and is a Chinese religious icon. This makes Wat Mangkorn a sort of community icon. Van Roy for instance further notes that, This notion of being a community icon is brought home further by the temple secretary‘s41 revelations that the donations from patrons go towards funding the monastic schools in Mangkorn as well as for general maintenance of the temple grounds and subsistence needs of the monks. 41 Interview conducted 10 June 2008. 130 The young temple secretary also notes that previously the temple provides scholarships for the poor to study in external schools, but have recently built one within the temple ―so that poor people who cannot afford secondary school education can come here‖. He tells us that the purpose of running the schools, in which curriculum is supplemented by ―moral classes‖, stems from the desire to ―build a strong community so that they (the graduates) can go out and make a good society‖, to ―go out to society to teach others‖. This notion of paying it forward and giving back to society through funds gathered by virtue of the strength of bonding between place, memory and a Chinese (plus more general religious) identity over time and the physical building of institutions that manifest this relationship i.e. it is cemented in the school built can then be inferred to further locate place, ethnic identity, memory in Wat Mangkorn, drawing on references that have traditionally existed, yet adding nuance to it by adding new elements to constantly update and reproducing the relationships between place identity in new configurations that develop from the preexisting bulwark of memories that are already steeped in Wat Mangkorn. This arguably helps to sustain its status as a local community icon as it ensures it remains relevant today, and continue to resonate with its ‗clientele‘. Interestingly, the monk lets on that there is a kind of ‗old folks club‘ formed by old people ―who have little to do‖, ―who have 131 money but no friends and no society‖ who gather from all over every month to pray together and have vegetarian meals together and when needed come together to donate and raise funds for the temple. The fact that this is a haunt the caters to emotively attach old people to one another appear to further reflect its openness to reinvention which in turn indicates that it is truly a space by the people for the people, where older and new functions develop next to one another and build on that antecedent good will and memories, and truly opens itself up to the people who need it42, who need community, emotive attachments today. This is further evident from the huge amounts of money the temple collected for victims of natural disasters overseas such as the victims of cyclone Nargis as well as those adversely affected by the Sze Chuan earthquake, and the special section set aside for donating money specifically for the purchase of coffins for the poor who cannot afford to bury their dead relatives. Another important overlap that further cements its status as a community icon is perhaps Wat Mangkorn‘s everyday functionality as well as its being the congregation place in which festivals are celebrated. Van Roy‘s observations again prove instructive here, 42 The temple collects donations of coffins as well for people whose families are unable to afford them. That is not to say that they donate caskets, but their donations come in the form of monetary goodwill that the temple has discretion to utilize. The notion of mutual trust is also evident from this. 132 The annual cycle of events associated with Wat Mangkon comes to a peak during the seventh lunar month with the ―basket discarding‖ festival when rice and other useful consumer staples such as clothing and blankets are distributed to the needy, and the ninth lunar month when the vegetarian festival brings to the temple hoards of visitors in search of savoury vegetarian dishes to mark their abstinence from animal products. Wat Mangkon today is considered an especially important temple by both Theravada and Mahayana Buddhists and even by many Thai-Chinese Christians who continue to recall their preconversion rituals. Van Roy‘s observations are corroborated by data collected from speaking to the temple secretary at Wat Mangkorn, who also reflected that the Vegetarian Festival and the Hungry Ghosts Festival are events that bring the crowds to Wat Mangkorn as people from all over the city come together in celebration of these events. That the festive and the everyday coincide43 as a matter of course is arguably yet another indication that the temple is strongly rooted to place, memories, identities and the wide-ranging people and purposes they serve. Having described and discussed the positionings of Wat Mangkorn in the Yaowarat landscape, I will now juxtapose this with its equivalent in Chinatown SG. 133 4.2 The Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum (BTRTM) Figure 30: The ostentatious building that houses the BTRTM. Note the man and the woman standing in front of it. The close- up is at Figure 31 below. On the Singapore Tourism Boards Uniquely Singapore website, the Buddha Tooth relic Temple was described thus: The Buddha Tooth Relic Temple & Museum is a living cultural monument in the heart of Chinatown housing what Buddhist leaders regard as the Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic in a magnificent Relic Stupa composed of 420kg of gold donated by devotees. Everyday the inner chamber will be unveiled at stipulated timings in a ceremony conducted by resident monks and the public can view the Relic Stupa. The Temple is dedicated to Maitreya Buddha. Entering the breathtaking 27 feet high main hall of the temple, visitors can see the beautifully carved wooden Maitreya Buddha image. From the grandeur and fine detail seen in this hall alone, visitors can appreciate the work of dedicated craftsmen who contributed their skills to the building of this Temple. The architecture, interiors and statuary, are inspired by the Tang Dynasty, an era where Buddhism flourished in China in a golden age of artistic and cultural vibrancy. Other highlights of a visit to the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple & Museum include the Buddhist Culture Museum, Eminent Sangha Museum, Tripitaka Chamber, Exhibition Hall where exhibitions relating to various facets of religious arts and 134 culture of Singapore will be held regularly and a Theatre for cultural performances, talks and films. On the roof, visitors can admire the pure elegant blooms of the Dendrobium Buddha Tooth, an orchid species specially named after the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple & Museum. Visitors can also rest and enjoy refreshing tea and healthy vegetarian snacks in the cozy Lotus Heart Tea House on the 2nd floor or visit the Dining Hall in the basement where free vegetarian meals are distributed daily. A shop on the ground floor allows visitors to purchase offering items, including the Dendrobium Buddha Tooth orchid and a range of books, CDs, handicrafts and commemorative souvenirs. The BTRTM was built to much fanfare and was officially opened in 2007. That this was such a recent addition in the Chinatown landscape, built right in the area officially conserved by the state is noteworthy. This is so because land use is rather strictly regulated to and limited to purposes congruent to the state‘s goals and visions of what Chinatown means and should be. In fact the land it is currently standing on is under the purview of the Singapore Tourism Board44 (STB), and hence from its successful inception to its construction to its current existence means its utility is approved by the state as represented by the statutory board the STB. The website provides comprehensive data on the events and vision of the Temple and we shall scrutinize them more carefully and see how this may be more a spectacle, a spectacular icon rather than a community icon and how this once again reflects the state‘s efforts in Chinatown which can be summed up as one of fossilization and 44 It was stated on the Temple‟s official website that on January 14, 2005, a land lease agreement was signed with the Singapore Tourism Board. 135 attempts at strategic essentialism (why this is so will be picked up in the final chapter). 3.2.2 Edging for A Closer Look at the Buddha Tooth Figure 31: The close- up shot. Tourists seeing a photo opportunity at the entrance of the BTRTM. This reflects its novelty as opposed to being part of the everyday. Contrast this to Figure 34 which shows that THK has closed for the day. The photographs are taken within the same half-hour (6pm-630 pm). Wat Mangkorn similarly closes at 6pm daily. First and foremost, what is striking about the Temple is the language it is described in. Notions of ―highlights‖ imply a certain 136 kind of experience and people who go there are called ―visitors‖; and the mention of pure elegant blooms of the Dendrobium Buddha Tooth, an orchid species specially named after the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum‖, meant that the nationalistic, touristic overtones are well and alive. The fact that thee ―visitors can also rest and enjoy refreshing tea and healthy vegetarian snacks in the cozy Lotus Heart Tea House on the 2nd floor or visit the Dining Hall in the basement where free vegetarian meals are distributed daily‖ further implies a desire to mix viewing with comfort. Finally ―a shop on the ground floor allows visitors to purchase offering items, including the Dendrobium Buddha Tooth orchid and a range of books, CDs, handicrafts and commemorative souvenirs‖. This makes it almost unmistakable that this is an establishment closely tied to tourism and is a place people ‗visit‘, not patronize as faithfuls. This is obviously not a community temple, a community icon but once again seems like a statesponsored one that seeks to weld the religious elements (temple) with the secular (tourism). This fact is perhaps even more clearly evoked in the mission and objectives of the Temple. The stated vision, mission, and objectives of the Temple as found on the website are as follows, Vision 137 In accordance with The Great Compassionate Vows of The Maitreya Buddha, Buddha Tooth Relic Temple (Singapore) seeks to be the best Buddhist cultural complex in the region. Mission To promote and impart the Teachings of Lord Buddha. Objectives 1. To develop a new Chinese Buddhist cultural complex to venerate the Sacred Buddha Tooth and Relics; 2. To promote and showcase Buddhist, Chinese, Chinatown and Singapore culture 3.To provide Buddhist Education and Research; 4. To support other Voluntary Welfare Organisations; and 5. To provide welfare services to the sick, poor and needy, regardless of race or religion. In seeking to be the ‗best Buddhist cultural complex in the region‖, it seems to exhibit a desire to create a social footprint beyond the nation‘s oft conceded narrow boundaries. The building of this latest addition to the landscape seems to attest to the fact that the Singaporean government is highly savvy to the impacts that iconic structures have in defining place identity (Marshall, 2003; Newman and Thornley, 2005), indicating an awareness that in an increasingly competitive world, place promotion is a critical activity of city governments (Doel and Hubbard, 2002) that has to be undertaken in order to differentiate it from others. The state‘s 138 other similar endeavours exemplifies the dominant ideology and highlights clearly a distinct ‗other orientation‘ that is a sentiment that has actually been lamented often by locals in the forums of newspapers i.e. that these additions are not for them, and a concern that Chinatown SG was not for them. It is in this sense then that the Budhha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum appear to be a kind of iconic trophy building that is utilized in place marketing and as part of Singapore‘s campaign in the inter-city competition for the tourism dollar. The construction of iconic structures, ―conspicuous high-profile buildings‖ (Olds, 1995: 1713), the development of ‗managed attractions‘ (Henderson, 2000) of which conservation of heritage as a resource for tourism is a part (Henderson, 2003) is arguably as old as the Singapore Tourism Board, whose very existence marked the birth of attractions development here. Contextualized against the state‘s typically interventionist hand in tourism promotion and development, the overt purveying of touristic paraphernalia and choreographed religious rituals seems less schizophrenic. However, having said that, the claim to seek to ―promote and showcase Buddhist, Chinese, Chinatown and Singapore Culture‖ is still equally confounding and jarring. As a nascent addition to the Chinatown SG landscape, how is it supposed to showcase ―Chinatown Culture‖? This also stands in contrast to the claims that 139 they have recreated Chinatown ―as it once was‖ because this is something totally new and did not exist prior to 2007. These manipulations appear to further support the notion that this is cultural showcase given life by state initiatives as what it seems to showcase is contemporary, present day Chinatown; and reflects the desire to link religion, ethnicity and place in the present moment. That contemporary inclination is well encapsulated in its clockwork schedule of rituals and events and its aforementioned privileging of the ‗visitor‘. Overall then it seems that there is a very presentist inclination here and the fact that the link between ethnicity and place is captured in another iconic building, and another museum, begs the question why it is done this way 45. That it is new and its patrons are but nascent ones who do not have a time-tried nor place-based investment to it, that its rituals are largely formalized and large-scale, that it partakes in festivals like the lantern festival and is surrounded on all sides by the 12 zodiac signs all point to its primary function as an iconic spectacle. 45 Providing Buddhist Education and Research is rather interesting for the state has traditionally shunned religious affiliations, but this can be read in the frame of the stated objective of wanting to be the best Buddhist cultural complex in the region, with all its attendant trappings. Singapore is trying to be a hub for several things and this is perhaps part of that initiative. Providing support for those in need is a function that religious institutions have often stepped forward to fill and there are numerous ways to donate. Arguably this is the most „community‟ element of the temple whereby there is a notion of social amenity passed on to larger society, to those who are in need of handouts. However, this element is dwarfed in comparison to the very clear and overriding top down vision of the place. 140 Figure 32: The light fixture in the shape of the zodiac sign of the monkey, that sits outside the BRTRM. This is not distinctly related to the temple nor Buddhism but is added to make the temple appear more interesting. This stands again in contrast to Wat Mangkorn and Thian Hock Kheng‘s plain-ness, functionality and lack of ostentation. This is clearly an effort by the tourism board. 141 Figure 33: The lantern decorations at the BTRTM during the mooncake festival in 2008. These colourful Japanese inspired lanterns adorn the temple grounds, creating colourful, spectacular hues reminiscent of the equally brightly painted refurbished conserved shophouses. The STB claims that this ―is a living cultural monument‖ but what it is propped by is arguably largely the hand of the state. Its place as a festivalscape is undeniable and is a new spectacle and is it seems the latest and most ostentatious piece of street furniture for Chinatown SG that contributes to that alienating notion of Chineseness that the state has inscribed. The iconicity of community buildings, such as schools and churches are different from buildings of the private sector or state. Iconicity is understood as the ability of a building to be meaningful to a wider group of people. Built with the support of a particular 142 community, community iconic buildings derive symbolic values by reflecting shared memory, identity and solidarity of a society. The Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum hence cannot be categorized as such46 and at the moment it appears to be but an icon instituted from above, a way through which the state tries to link place, memory and identity of Chinatown being a place for the Chinese, who tend to be Buddhist. Hence, unlike in Yaowarat, the links between the temple, Chinatown and the Chinese are not engendered but are conferred. If iconic buildings also have the effect of grounding identity in place, such a spatial outcome is evidently missing in Chinatown SG with this relatively new addition onto the landscape. It does not have the strong relations Wat Mangkorn has with business people within Yaowarat and the social environment beyond. If Thian Hock Kheng is still functioning, it also begs the question why there is a need to install a new religious icon to help makes place. It is to this we now turn. 143 4.3 The Creation of New Memories: Overlooking Thian Hock Kheng The Original Icon From Below Figure 34: Emplaced: Thian Hock Kheng in Telok Ayer Street, Singapore's oldest temple, which had been the centre of worship for the Fujian Chinese. It is closed for the day at 630 p.m. Once the temple was a focus for the community, as well as containing ancestral tablets. As with most other Chinese temples, it was built on principles established since the Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220). Symmetrically aligned courtyards and walled compounds are key elements. Geomancy (feng-shui) dictated the alignment of buildings with natural features of the landscape. The temple here originally enjoyed an excellent location in these terms, facing the sea to the front and with hills to the rear. Before the twentieth century the hills and the sea had disappeared from site as reclamation and development proceeded. The roof is supported by cantilevered structures supported by pillars. Roof ridges are swept up at the ends in the 'swallow tail' manner, with a pair of cavorting dragons facing each other at either end. These symbolise the male 144 and female principles of yin and yang. Their eternal conflict represents the quest for perfect truth. Colours play an important role too. Red represents fire and blood, symbolising prosperity, good fortune, virtue and the male yang principle. It is typically used on walls, pillars and decorations. While there is clear indication that BTRTM is supported mainly by the long arm of the state there are a number of temples that grew out of efforts of members of society. Many of these have disappeared, become defunct or have followed their main clientele who have been since relocated to HDB estates all over the island or have been demolished. THK is one of the exceptions and its location in the vicinity of Chinatown SG and its roots as an effort by the Chinese community of yesteryear and given that it names Tan Tock Seng, a prominent businessman and philanthropist as one of its earliest founders47. This is an initiative to meet the religious needs of the community that is led by the Chinese business community who played an instrumental part meant that a closer examination may prove fruitful for our purposes here given its close mirroring of Wat Mangkorn‘s roots. It is noted by the author that, ―The Thian Hock Kheng temple represents a continuity over time in Singapore, and beyond Singapore to China. But outside the temples the temper and function of whole streets changed dramatically over time‖. It is quite interesting that the same website that gave such a 47 http://infopedia.nl.sg/articles/SIP_118_2005-01-22.html 145 glowing appraisal of the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum, Thian Hock Kheng was introduced to prospective tourists as follows: The more well known temples and mosques in Telok Ayer are Tak Chi Temple, now restored as a museum, the Thian Hock Keng Temple, the Nagore Durga Shrine, and the Al Abrar Mosque. The difference in treatment is palpable and can be keenly felt. Whereas the former was shrouded in terms bespeaking of promise and grandeur as discussed above, with clearly expressed missions that seem very congruent with that of the STB, the latter appears in comparison to be glossed over, as part of a series of religious monuments. The blasé attitude towards the latter is curious because arguably, this is the one temple that can be heralded as a community icon of yesteryear. 4.4 Thian Hock Kheng and Wat Mangkorn: Emplaced Religiosity In fact according to an employee at Thian Hock Kheng who declined to be named and refused to provide further details about himself, Thian Hock Kheng sees a fair share of patrons who are repeat visitors who tended to be ―people who work around the area in the offices and also visitors from all over Singapore‖. This group is estimated to be ―about fifty percent of the visitors to the temple, 146 the rest are tourists‖. This reflects that Thian Hock Kheng is a part of the everyday lives of its patrons just like Wat Mangkorn though its patrons have become office workers48. However, an important point of departure is that most of the shopkeepers surveyed in Chinatown SG reflect that they are either not Buddhist or even if they were they did not patronize either of the temples in Chinatown SG but tended to gravitate towards the more famous Kuan Yin Temple in Waterloo Street and also the Koo Chye Bah Shuang Lin Si. This means that the patrons tended to be not those who operate shop front businesses (who as a group has shown to have a higher tendency to harness their ethnic identities as a business advantage), but those who worked in offices in the area which includes law firms, theatre groups amongst other massage and spa services, whereby an ethnic element of their identities tended to be less palpably expressed as a form of business advantage (a central location tended to be the main reason for location in Chinatown SG). This implies that there is a lack of emplaced-ness in the enactment of religious rituals in that convenience appears to be the order of the day for many of its patrons over and above localized place affiliations to Chinatown SG as a place of significance and attachment. There is also a palpable sense of religious differences. 48 This reflects that „emplacement‟ is not a static concept. Wat Mangkorn though has managed to remain emplaced by the place community while THK has seen an evolvement. 147 This stands in stark contrast to the scene surveyed in Yaowarat where Wat Mangkorn stands as a revered meaningful, powerful symbol of a Buddhist identity that has currency and a social footprint that is powerfully anchored in the business inhabitants of Yaowarat who powerfully harnessed their ethnic identity in place through their businesses as well as observed in Chapter 3, and who importantly appear to be homogeneously Buddhist in religious orientation. This homogeneity is observable as well in the altars found in the shops. Figure 35: This is an altar in an incense shop in Yaowarat. The owner kindly allowed the picture on request though she has a sign on that says ‗no photo‘, interestingly written in Thai and English. Altars are seen in the majority of the shops surveyed, indicating religious homogeneity that has proven to be important in anchoring ethnic identity in Yaowarat. What this means is that essentially, in Yaowarat ethnic 148 identity embodied in the businesses and both are perpetuated over time, undergirded by a religious homogeneity that appears to be anchored in place in Wat Mangkorn. Wat Mangkorn hence further anchors ethnic identity over time in place, in a kind of emplaced religiosity that is interlaced with businesses and ethnic identity owing to Yaowarat‘s current perpetuated status as an ethnic business stronghold. Arguably it is an important cornerstone of emplaced ethnicity, and has undeniable currency to the inhabitants of the commercial space that is Yaowarat. In contrast, the relative lack of an emplaced religious homogeneity compounded by a lack of ethnic currency are the hallmarks of Chinatown SG and arguably, if the practice of emplaced religion by the local business folk is another anchor towards solidifying place identity over time, then conversely, this element is evidently missing in Chinatown SG and it is plausible to infer then that this lack is potentially a large compounding part of the reason for Chinatown SG‘s lack of identity. The installation of an ostentatious and almost monumental new temple in an area gazetted as a place of heritage and conservation, and the sidestepping of an age-old temple that though has a place as part of the everyday lives of people in Chinatown SG is not a strong arbiter of ethnic nor place identity appears to be an admission as such to the void that is perceived in the Chinatown SG landscape, and a bit to add soul and showcase Chinese tradition, though once 149 again this sense of Chinese tradition is not engendered, but installed and superimposed as it fits the overall theme of the park. 4.5 Concluding Notes The objective in drawing out a comparison between the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum and Thian Hock Kheng is neither to document the demise of community organizations, nor to demonstrate how a powerful state has exerted its influence through control of land nor on how the existing social organization was eroded by the new organizations that came about with state formation. Rather it is to highlight (a) the fact that community icons have become disregarded, neglected and destroyed in the social memoryscape that the state seems to be painting for Chinatown. This strategy appears to be congruent to what we have observed so far with regards to its strategy of remembering Chinatown i.e. it is a strategy that seeks to steep Chinatown SG in a freeze-framed ‗timeless‘ or decontextualized, impersonal, irrelevant, inscribed, ethnic Chinese tableaux with the overall effect of fossilizing and museumizing (with a new icon) from the top, rather than allowing for actual community icons to have a voice in the memoryscape that is Chinatown SG. The other aspect highlighted is (b) the fact that the relationship shared between the inhabitants of a space and the religious institutions in that space can have important placemaking import. As reflected in the observations made, this 150 potentially is one aspect that has contributed to the strength of place identity in a particular locale as apparently evident in Yaowarat, which in comparison is plausibly an aspect of placemaking that has been under-explored in understanding the placelessness in Chinatown SG and been overlooked in explanations of Chinatown‘s lack of resonance. If as mentioned earlier ―iconicity is understood as the ability of a building to be meaningful to a wider group of people‖, ―built with the support of a particular community, community iconic buildings derive symbolic values by reflecting shared memory, identity and solidarity of a society‖ the Thian Hock Kheng is a much more emblematic symbol but it seems to have been cast aside, its significance undermined in some part and appears to have been dismissed and relegated to a secondary role though it did and was a symbolic religious building inaugurated by the earliest Chinese immigrants. Its architecture intricacies and that fact that it was mapped out as a landmark in the Chinatown landscape but seems side-stepped in favor of a more spectacular state-invested building seems to imply just as what Ho (2006) has observed in his work on community buildings in Singapore that ―the redefinition of state – society relations (in this case state control over religion in general and religious buildings and the movement of residents out of Chinatown SG) has affected the symbolic value of the architecture towards the community‖. THe state‘s actions can be said to have a 151 part to play in dissociating the local society. However, while this (the state‘s clearing out of Chinatown residents was to have played a part) is part of the reason for the lack of resonance of Chinatown SG, the building of the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum simultaneously appears to be testament to a perceived lack in the ability of religious institutions to make place which is an aspect of place-making that is powerfully demonstrated in Yaowarat. Building a new iconic temple in the heart of Chinatown, and by implication adopting such a strategy of locking identity and place through the apparent creation of new memories while side stepping the older more established ones appears to then be a reflexive response to harnessing the power of religious institutions to make place that is so well showcased in Yaowarat. Wat Mangkorn as a community icon powerfully makes place because it is ―underpinned by social and civic relations of locals‖, and helps ―ensure greater cultural diversity, participation and the reproduction of life spaces‖, and most crucially that it is undergirded by a set of religious precepts that are enacted in place, and have clear connections to place. Arguably is only possible owing to the religious homogeneity amongst the inhabitants of Yaowarat, a still largely ethnic Chinese commercial space where ethnic identity is powerfully reproduced in daily business rituals and continue to have currency for both the 152 Chinese business people and their clients who share the same ethnicity, religious beliefs and overall attachment to place as they reproduce their identities symbiotically in mutually reinforcing ways. Layered on with religious precepts anchored in place and enshrined in Wat Mangkorn, it makes place formidably, drawing together expressions of both ethnic identity in commerce with that of religious beliefs to Yaowarat, further strengthening its identity. In Chinatown SG religious institutions do not enjoy that complex layering of ethnic identity in place and clearly that lack is expressed spatially, giving rise to a dissonant landscape that lacks resonance for the locals. Chapter 5: Other Anchors 5.1 Introduction In the previous chapter we moved discussion away from the material, more consumptive aspects to look at religious institutions and its role in the place-identity dyad, which has so far proven to be crucial in place identity formation/sustenance. We explored the 153 role of temples in the two Chinatowns and saw how Wat Mangkorn subtly anchors ethnic identity in place and has significant import amongst the business people who patronize it, powerfully emplacing ethnic identity, commerce and religion in Yaowarat, contributing crucially to place identity as it rides on the strength of an emplaced religiosity in ways that the BTRTM and Thian Hock Kheng were unable to replicate owing to cultural-specific, socially contingent factors such as a lack of religious homogeneity. If an emplaced religiosity (Kong, 2000) powerfully links businesses and religion and increased the strength of emplacement of ethnic Chinese identity in place in Yaowarat, these linkages are arguably even more sharply drawn if we examine community foundations. Here, we will describe and discuss the work of three foundation-hospitals in Yaowarat — Thien Fa, Kwong Siw, and Hwa Chiew-Poh Teck Tung – in relation to how it manifests the tension between place and ethnic identity, a tension that have shown has contributed in important ways to Yaowarat‘s strong place identity as an ethnic space over time. These social formations will be discussed without a direct parallel in Chinatown SG as the two community initiatives identified that mirror the foundations in Yaowarat – Tan Tock Seng Hospital and Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital and Nursing Home— have been relocated from 154 the Chinatown SG area49, which means they have in some sense already been displaced. Arguably, despite their displacement, they are nonetheless worthy of closer examination and tracing the evolution and trajectory they have taken over time from their initial ethnicChinese community roots may be instructive and through these contemporary evolutions offer interesting insights into the influence and confluence of ethnicity and religion in affecting/engendering spatial outcomes, which is our main objective in this chapter. As immigrant societies, community foundations often constitute the first outpost from which the new migrant receives help. The provision of social amenities in an enclave is possibly what encourages congregation of a particular ethnic group in a particular area in the first place. As initiatives that began as being by the Chinese for the Chinese in situ, looking at how this has evolved over time will help shed light on the strength of ethnic identity and whether it still has resonance and currency today, as well as how the Chinese relate to place today through these institutions. Temples and Foundations are also often symbolic and that symbolism is place-bound as people attach meanings to them. Thus it is hoped that an examination of these institutions may allow 49 http://www.kwsh.org.sg/abt_history.htm 155 us to gain further insight into the intangible affective aspects of identity in Yaowarat and Chinatown SG. These constitute the aspects to be examined in this chapter and it is to the foundation-hospitals we now turn before we expound on and draw our conclusions in the final chapter. 5.2 Yaowarat: A Word About Hospital-Temple-Foundations As mentioned earlier, foundations are institutions put in place by the early Chinese migrants as self-help mechanisms to plug the perceived gap in amenities and social safety nets as new migrants move into Thailand often poorly connected and unemployed. They are interesting because (a) these were strongly place-ethnic based elements that were built by the Chinese for the Chinese community, as a pay-it-forward kind of social exchange and its perpetuation over time in place it seems has engendered positive spatial outcomes and hence require greater analysis; (b) these social exchanges and provision of social amenities for the less fortunate appear to be underpinned by religious overtones and donation practices are largely congruent with and attributable to both Buddhist and Confucian ideologies and precepts of ‗making merit‘, once again reflecting a link between ethnic identity and religion ; (c) these foundations partake in the practice of Chinese medicine that is the distinct province of the Chinese. The interrelations between the apparent continued existence of these 156 ethnic- business- help communities; the initial observation that giving behaviors appear to be enshrined in religious precepts; and lastly the fact that these institutions continue to provide a specialized ethnic service are hence intriguing and will be analyzed more closely in the next section. 5.2.1 Social Exchange Today: Thien Fa, Poh Teck Tung and Kwong Siw Of the three foundations, PTT is perhaps the largest and most established. It owns Hwa Chiew Hospital, which is a fully private hospital that caters to the ‗wealthy Chinese‘. It is a wellorganized outfit with 20 departments and is involved in a wide range of functions that include accident rescue and international disaster relief ―such as collecting donations for victims of the Sze Chuan earthquake, and those affected adversely by the Typhoon Nargis‖ in neighbouring Burma. It has a fleet of ambulances and is reputed to be more efficient in accident rescue than the government agencies, often being the first to arrive en scene of such events. In fact because they are so involved in relief missions that they have become almost synonymous with unfortunate mishaps, with the Thais privy to the fact that ―if you see a Poh Teck Tung vehicle, that means something bad has happened‖. 157 Figure 36: Kwong Siw Association, which like Hwa Chiew and Thien Fa consists of a shrine, a hospital/clinic and a foundation office. Figure 37: The donation centre at Thien Fa. 158 While Thien Fa and Kwong Siw are relatively smaller in scale of operations, they provide similar services and also collect donations for victims of natural disasters, sometimes using these donations to purchase rice as part of their relief efforts. At all three foundation-shrine-hospitals, there are counters for the collection of these donations for international victims, as well as a counter that collects ―coffin money‖, that is money that a temple faithful donates for the purpose of purchasing coffins for the poor who cannot afford to bury their dead or for the homeless who have no family to bury them after their passing. All three foundations also report that they make donations to schools both in Bangkok and in the provincial areas. This is part of ―merit making‖ which is a recurrent motif that is constantly reiterated by the three informants, bestowing upon it a religious cum Chinese Confucian overtone. 159 Figure 38: The shrine at Poh Teck Tung. This is the counter where collections of money for coffins for the poor take place. The Thais believe that making donations is merit making. The fact that the picture is taken on a weekday shows the power of belief and practice in the everyday lives of Thai Chinese. The provision of social amenities to fellow countrymen who cannot afford basic provisions such as food and medical services has appeared then to be a continued, modern day legacy based on the interviews conducted with personnel from these foundations in which an estimated 80 percent of whom are Thai-Chinese. At all three institutions it is reflected that a large percentage of their committee members are wealthy Chinese businessmen. Mr. Zhang50, a director at Thian Fa and himself a businessmen 50 Interview conducted 10 June 2008. He was very kind and was very generous in sharing. He took me on a walking tour of the compound, showed me with great pride the new wing that is being built, the new air-conditioning and other improvements such as computerizing the database and setting up a web platform. Most importantly he showed great heart when he brought me to the 7 th floor, the only non air-conditioned floor that 160 awaiting retirement for instance lets on that the temple was started by businessmen more than a hundred years ago as a paying it forward kind of gesture ―because they are very grateful that when they were poor and had no food to eat, fellow countrymen who were benevolent and generous provided them with a bowl of rice and helped them survive‖. Hence being ―very grateful‖ they were eager to ―give back and pass on the kindness to others who are poor and make merit‖. This finds concurrence in Kwong Siw and PTT who report similarly that their board of directors tended to consist of wealthy ThaiChinese businessmen, some of whom ―have businesses in Chinatown or have expanded out of Chinatown‖. According to Mr. Zhang, there are overlaps and ―members on the committee at Thien Fa may also be a committee member at PTT‖. When queried as to whether the patients at Thien Fa are Chinese, he asserts, like the director of Kwong Siw that ―all are welcome, especially if you are Chinese‖ and that ―we just want to help poor people who cannot afford treatment‖. Donors according to the directors at Kwong Siw and Thian Fa tended to be Chinese though both assert that it is ―increasingly difficult to differentiate housed resident patients who are old and twisted, who are mentally ill or have other disabilities, people who are abandoned by their kin. He looked at them with sadness and with much compassion. The passion he has for his work is palpable and it touched this researcher so much she felt the impulse to give the man a big hug before she left. 161 between the kun jin and the kun Thai‖51 with the intermarriages. Hence while the estimate that a large part of the donations ―come from Chinese people‖, they are not able to ascertain or are possibly unwilling to divulge or unable to share data about the proportion. 51 Indeed it may be the case that many middle class Thai people have Chinese ethnicity but as Tong and Chan (1995) reminds us, “While the Chinese elite in Bangkok continue to nurture and manage their relationships with the Thai in the form of alliances, agreements and contracts, most Chinese in Thailand speak both Thai and Chinese, worship in both Thai wat and Chinese temples and join Chinese as well as Thai associations. However, one also “witnesses the tenacity and survival of a primary Chinese identity: Chinese schools and associations persist, and Chinese customs and religious rituals are still being practiced daily.” (Tong and Chan, 1995:36) This also supports the case this thesis is making that following Harney, enclaves are powerful sites as they were and can remain the symbolic heart of in this case a Chinese ethnic identity where rituals and cultural practices are reenacted and reproduced and consumed by both inhabitants and visitors. This reinforces the earlier point that it would be unfair to say that residence is a prerequisite to place making in ethnic enclaves. 162 Figure 39: These photos of the early founders of the PTT Foundation. These displays are likewise observable in Thien Fa and Kwong Siw, which reflect a historical memory that is still relevant today. The business committee has continued to be a pillar of these foundations today. These observations are noteworthy as it reflects firstly that the guardians of these ethnic community foundations continue to be pillars of the Chinese business community and while some have moved out of Yaowarat, the motivations and sentiments that prompt continued patronage remain attached to memories of place and are place-bound and still heavily contingent upon ethnicidentity. Second, as an extension of the previous point, prevailing donation and patronage patterns indicate that these enterprises have to a large extent remained an effort by the Chinese for the Chinese people though its outreach efforts have evidently expanded beyond Yaowarat to incorporate the urban poor, the provincial areas (PTT), other temples such as Wat Plabahtnampu the HIV temple (Thien Fa) and even encompass international victims of natural disasters such as those incapacitated by the Tsunami, Sze Chuan earthquake and Typhoon Nargis (PTT, TF and KS). The statement ―all are welcome, especially if you are Chinese‖ perhaps best captures and encapsulates the essence of the enterprises. Third, there is a distinct correlation between the religious notion of ―merit-making‖ (note also building of shrines that are attached to the foundations) that undergirds this charitable work and appear to have similar impacts like that observed earlier with Wat Mangkorn, where giving behavior is tied to one‘s religious 163 beliefs about karma. The link between religious homogeneity, businesses, ethnicity and giving is once again drawn here. These three factors (place-bound ethnic memories, ethnic based donation and patronage patterns and religious homogeneity) appear to work together in perpetuating the continued survival of these foundations by ensuring that ethnic identity is constantly evoked and find expression in the enactment of donation and patronage practices available at these institutions. These continue to be outlets that expressions of ethnic-based charitable acts find justification and resonance, and arguably contribute powerfully to its perpetuation over time as the feelings of gratitude of being blessed continue to be important as karma is constantly evoked in the background. Also, if Chinese businessmen both in the area and beyond are at the helm of these enterprises, then it means that there is constant motivation to do good because in some sense this paying it forward is an attempt to ensure continued business success brought forth by accumulation of good karma. These considerations hence appear to have the overall effect of holding the foundations in place as viable, sustainable units. 164 Figure 40: The patrons who help to anchor the shrines in place. While religious precepts appear to have great impact on bringing about consistent giving behaviors, which is one aspect that keeps these foundations in place, its physical manifestation in shrines attached to these foundations arguably also bolsters its presence in the same physical space. Shrines are religious places invested with much symbolic value and meanings and uprooting of religious sites are usually bring about a loss of meanings for the patrons and typically brings forth much dissent (Kong, 2000). Given the strength of patronage of these institutions by people with ostensible connection to it as an ethnic and business space and bolstered by a religious symbol in its grounds, it is palpable the kinds of meaning embedded and embodied in its physical location. 165 This makes it plausible to conclude that in Yaowarat the influence and confluence of ethnicity and religion in affecting/engendering spatial outcomes in these foundation-hospital-shrines, and that once again there is a certain kind of emplaced religiosity powerfully underpinned by ethnic identity. It is clear then that ethnic identity is a very important aspect of donation patterns and from the profile of patients, (the vast majority are Chinese though while the percentage hovers at more than 80 percent for Thien Fa and Kwong Siw, it is about 60 percent for PTT which owing to its larger scale, is able to cater to a larger external group) it appears that help-seeking behavior is also heavily ‗ethnicized‘. This is perhaps due to the fact that all three foundations are the main bastions of Traditional Chinese Medicine, which is the distinct province of the early Chinese with Hwa Chiew at the forefront having an extensive wing devoted to TCM. Spending about twenty minutes on a weekday afternoon standing at the entrance of the wing it was clearly observed that most of its patrons are elderly Chinese over the age of 50. Thien Fa and Kwong Siw also have Chinese in house physicians, areas for the collection of free or subsidized prescription herbs and even have an area where elaborate brewing and concoction takes place. Like the medicine halls in Yaowarat discussed earlier, it is perhaps not 166 surprising that so many of their patients are Chinese as Chinese medicine is a culturally ascribed philosophy of treatment52. Figure 41: The Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) clinic at Thien Fa. Treatment is either heavily subsidized or free. Having said that it should be noted that though all three foundation hospitals have TCM, they simultaneously also have Western medicine wings. As the director if Kwong Siw53 deadpanned, pointing to an old lady strolling into the clinic, ―she is an old lady but she wants an injection!‖ This is an interesting 52 Which is not unlike Ayurvedic medicine, both of which are systems steeped in tradition and in the words of the director at Kwong Siw, are not well-researched nor supported with “scientific hard proof” and are usually thought of by non-believers to be “unreliable”. 53 Interview conducted 10 June 2008. Another interesting man who spent time talking with my interpreter and me. He dished out advice and stressed the importance of being filial to our parents, to fulfill our obligations to them while they are still healthy, which are principles with very Confucian and simultaneously linked to religious precepts. 167 comment because it reflects that these institutions and practitioners of TCM are sufficiently self- aware of the changes that have taken place with modernization and the ascent of western medicine that claims scientific proof. The director at Kwong Siw, like Mr Zhang at Thien Fa, is fully cognizant that TCM has been overtaken by western medicine and that TCM ―cannot cope with all the diseases now‖, that the age-old practice of taking one‘s pulse for diagnosis will eventually become obsolete as ―most people do not want Chinese medicine‖. This view seems to be further exemplified by Thien Fa‘s modernization efforts that include the acquisition of electromagnetic acupuncture needles, a new machine that measures blood pressure (which he proudly made me try out) and spending ―10 million baht to buy a laser machine‖. While Hwa Chiew appears to continue to uphold the TCM tradition with the hospital where an accredited Chinese wing for the practice of TCM exists together with the ―university that trains students in TCM54‖, Kwong Siw and Thian Fa have scaled back markedly on their TCM operations. For instance, according to Mr Zhang, ―(Thien Fa) hospital started out only providing TCM treatments and served mainly the Chinese and the hospital can see up to 1300 patients a day then. However, as 54 The Robin Hood mentality is at work here in It is said that while the fees for the rich remain high while for the poor, the fees are offset from that accrued from the rich. In that sense the idea is to serve all social classes but there they „separate them so that the rich will come but the poor benefit‟. Doctors reportedly receive a reduced salary and give back to the hospital anything beyond their basic salary. 168 times have changed and as the Chinese became more affluent, western medicinal treatments are also made available and treatment is made available to all who come to their gates for help regardless of race or nationality and the clinic and hospital see about 200 patients daily.‖ While these are signs of change, with these foundations, it is still palpable from donation patterns, the fact that adjacent to these foundation hospitals are religious shrines and the fact that Thien Fa spent ―30 million baht to build the new wing‖ 55 that there is also a lot of continuity that continues to lock these foundations in place. Scaling back TCM operations and updating equipment reflects an awareness of modernization and sensitivity to what a Chinese identity means today and responding accordingly. Arguably, this reflexivity makes an ethnic identity stronger rather than weaker and improves its enduring power. If donation patterns are because one‘s ―first meal was provided by PTT so they have been donating to PTT for generations‖, it is clear that ethnic patterns of donor-ship and help-seeking behavior continue to help ground these foundations in place and keep its memory alive. 55 Based on data collected on 10 June 2008. 169 5.2.2 The Foundations of Ethnic Identity: Concluding Notes From Yaowarat It seems then that today, Thienfa, Kwong Siw and PTT continue to display much of the earlier characteristics it started out with and continues to carry out many of the functions and serve the tasks it was pledged to carry out by their founders who are respectfully commemorated in their halls. Servicing the needs of the underprivileged countrymen was the main activity targeted by the early founders and in that sense there appears to be continuity as medical treatment continues to be meted out to meet the needs of the community, which still consists largely of the ethnic Chinese, though not exclusively leaving out others who seek relief. While there appears to be continuity on this front, it has also moved on with the times to include western medicine in its range of treatment of patients, indicating that change and continuity was moving on hand in hand, in tandem with forces of modernity. Started by the Chinese, these foundations continues to be sustained with largely Chinese funds, continues to serve mainly the Chinese though are not limited to just this group, that there is obvious evidence to suggest change and continuity and resilience, that a Chinese identity is important in sustaining the efforts through networking amongst Chinese businessmen and that these are all undergirded by religious precepts of merit making. These are all 170 agencies that had ethnicity localized in space and they have all continued that legacy with changes that prevents it from becoming obsolete while being supported by a strong network of Chinese business activity and philanthropy and continuing to be located in that physical space while looking out to reach other frontiers. The self-reflexive attitude towards negotiating social change is a reflection of a constant evaluation of social memory of practices of yore and because of this, and perhaps because of the kinds of generational legacy the businesses along Yaowarat seem to have, place and ethnic identity continue to have import and continue to constantly touch base with that pool of social memory which keeps it alive and locks ethnic identity in place, anchoring it in the present in Yaowarat. 5.3 Community Hospitals in Singapore There are three main hospital categories in Singapore namely public or general hospitals, private hospitals and community hospitals. Out of these, of interest to us here will be Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital and Nursing Home (KWSH), as well as Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH). These institutions are interesting as they were both charitable/ philanthropic initiatives of early Chinese settlers and businessmen and used to locate in the vicinity of the wider Chinatown area (Pearl‘s Hill). This makes them good comparative case studies for the foundation-hospitals in Yaowarat 171 for they are similarly constituted by successful businessmen and were previously similarly located in Chinese strongholds. However, the similarities end there as despite their initially strong ethnic roots TTSH has evolved to become a general hospital over time and KWSH has been officially awarded community hospital status and they have since been relocated to Novena and Serangoon Road respectively. There has also been a marked shift in terms of the respective hospital‘s vision and mission, a shift in their clientele and patronage patterns. Hence a look at the trajectory these two initiatives have taken over the years and what its current configuration and location informs us about place identity in Chinatown SG compared to Yaowarat will be analyzed in the next section in a bid once again to shed light on what makes place in Yaowarat and how that potentially affects Chinatown SG. 5.3.1 Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital and Nursing Home (KWSH) and Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH)56 On its website KWSH‘s history and heritage was introduced as, Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital (KWSH) is one of the oldest charitable healthcare institutions in Singapore, founded in 1910 by a group of Cantonese merchants, 56 Through the Kwong Wai Shiu Free Hospital Ordinance, a 6-acre piece of land, along with 3 colonial-styled buildings, was parcelled off from Tan Tock Seng Hospital and given to KWSH to run a hospital for 99 years, locating both in Pearl‘s Hill. 172 whose aim was to provide Cantonese immigrants from China with free in-patient and out-patient services. Although outpatient services have always been available to all races, inpatient facilities were initially only for Cantonese people. In 1974, the Constitution of KWSH was changed to allow people of all races to be admitted. While we preserve our proud legacy of compassion and care, we will keep up with the evolving healthcare needs of the nation and position ourselves to serve Singaporeans better. From the foregoing, it is clear that KWSH had strong ethnic business underpinnings and like the foundations started out to cater to a very distinct ethnic group (here the Cantonese). The changes that have occurred since 1974, culminating in its official award of the status of community hospital in 2007 appear then to move it away from its ethnic roots, with its constitution changed to accommodate ―people of all races‖, a change that is justified as a part of modernization and of contemporary healthcare needs. Importantly, these changes are often couched in terms nationhood, ―the needs of the nation‖ and ―Singaporeans‖, which is a concept that privileges one‘s national identity over one‘s ethnic identity57 and dialect affiliations. KWSH‘ s mission and responsibilities are now to ―patients who come from the lower-income families whose hospital charges are subsidized by KWSH and the website asserts that ―We are therefore heavily dependent on the public's support 57 It should be noted that race (CMIO) is often privileged over ethnicity in SG. This removes one pillar of the ethnic community in SG, which is an important pillar propping up the Thai Chinese community and their institutions today. 173 and donations to meet our annual operating expenses of about S$16 Million‖ (emphasis mine). With a mission statement that says ―KWSH is a charitable organization, established to provide health care services to the needy in Singapore regardless of race, language or religion, a phrase that mirrors that of the Singaporean pledge, and having as its patron Minister of Home Affairs Wong Kan Seng, who is not a prominent Chinese businessman seems to further align KWSH to a national agenda, free of specific ethnic or racial reference. This overall nationalization of an ethnic project finds expression in TTSH as well. Like KWSH, TTSH, was built with donations by early Chinese settlers, the most notable of which was by Tan Tock Seng, ―a businessman who contributed generously to charity and became a renowned philanthropist amongst the Chinese‖, in 1844. Like the founders of the foundations in Yaowarat, Tan ―was known to provide burial costs for the Chinese poor‖ though religion was not mentioned in the sources as a reason for his seemingly purely altruistic deeds. That TTSH then was Tan‘s bid to help the Chinese settlers in Singapore was palpable in that the hospital was initially named ―Chinese Pauper's Hospital‖, and was only later named after him in 1849. TTSH has evolved to become a general hospital that does not discriminate (used loosely here) patients based on race/ethnicity as well and like KWSH purports as its mission the provision of medical care to add ―years of healthy living to the 174 people of Singapore‖ and ―building on our tradition to reach out to the community‖. Once again there is an eradication of any mention of ethnicity and it is evident that by ―community‖ it meant a national imagined community rather than the overtly ethnic one it also set out to be. The state is the main purveyor of healthcare services and it is perhaps unsurprising that these early initiatives have become subsumed under the state‘s ambit as well. Further, the state has often utilized the siege mentality in its dealings with Singaporeans, often emphasizing the importance of racial and religious harmony and meting out swift and stiff deterrent punishment to perpetrators who violate or threaten to upset that painstakingly crafted semblance of stability and of carefully choreographed58 images of harmonious living (Heng and Devan, 1995 in Ong and Peletz 1995). Civil society is something that is carefully outlined and almost neurotically, overzealously guarded (Rodan, 2006) and these changes in directives in these two traditional ethnically constituted charitable hospitals need to be contextualized against that in order to be fully understood. Further, it should be noted that in SG, the Chinese constitute the majority of the population and hence any overt sign of favouring the Chinese as a group can be misread and the state has generally steered clear of these complications by focusing and using the gambit of nationhood in 58 Housing Development Board (HDB) racial quotas determined the racial ratio in each HDB block. 175 any important political discussions. Hence in SG unlike in Yaowarat, there is a distinct whiff of state interventions and while we saw how the shopkeepers and patrons in Yaowarat reflexively modernize and evolve that Chinese identity and straddle that duality of simultaneously being Thai and being Chinese, that identity is hijacked and transfigured (Goh, 2004) complexly into a nationalistic, ethnically undifferentiated one. Having been stripped of its ethnic affiliations through nationalization59, these establishments were also displaced from their places of inception, effectively destroying the place-bound memories in these places. If place-bound ethnicized memories of gratitude were important in sustaining the giving behaviors that in turn ensure the sustenance of the foundations in place, this is effectively disconnected with relocation. Cantonese businessmen who aspired to provide much needed healthcare services to their fellow countrymen located TTSH and KWSH in Pearl‘s Hill to be near their target help group. With this relocation, the relationship between place and service provision and other affective attachments to physical space are erased just as the symbolic meaning behind these institutions have become neutralized and desensitized from its conceptual roots. Place-based gratitude patterns are virtuous circles that remind the Chinese business people of their common history, and that potential in Chinatown SG 59 It should be noted that while the „public‟ are now called on for donations, owing to the fact that majority are Chinese, it is likely that the donating profile will be similar to that of the past. 176 is disrupted with state intervention as help patterns are nationalized and are no longer differentiated based on ethnic identity. Instead help and healthcare falls under the purview of a social contract that the state utilizes to maintain its legitimacy. The power of donation efforts is also no longer mobilized and organized according to ethnicity with nationalized donation drives. With this change in social profile and physical severing of memory and place, ethnicity is downplayed and evidently less important in the SG context. However, if ethnic identity continues to be an important component of donation patterns and help seeking behavior that sustains the foundations in Yaowarat and ensures they stay viable, and undergirded by religious homogeneity gives birth to an emplacedness and link between ethnic identity, religion that is also tied to place and memory, these are distinctly missing in Chinatown SG with the displacement of these institutions and with a change in their missions. Hence once again, what appears to ground ethnic identity in place in Yaowarat, in its absence appear to be the unraveling of Chinatown SG. 177 Chapter 6: Conclusion The comparative approach adopted so far has yielded observations that provide indication that what makes place in one context, the absence of which breaks place in the other. The juxtaposition with Yaowarat‘s strength as a commercial and 178 culturally significant place has hence provided interesting insights into the possible explanations for Chinatown SG‘s sense of ‗dissonant heritage‘. Yaowarat has so far proven to be where ethnic identity is strongly embodied in the food, businesses and religious practices enacted and reenacted en site everyday; and by implication, where ethnic identity has continued to an important albeit reflexive arbiter of the continued business success for the inhabitants of that commercial space. Importantly, these embodiments of ethnic identity are also powerfully emplaced in Yaowarat and appear to share the heavy spatial dependencies reminiscent of that engendered by their ancestors out of necessity and culminate in positive spatial outcomes in terms of reinforcing that spatial expression of ethnic identity over time in place. They exist in reinforcing, symbiotically interdependent virtuous relationships with place, ensuring that both place and ethnic identity continue to be mutually salient, intertwined, and thriving, with often tangible contributions to the perpetuation of business sustainability and successful entrepreneurship in Yaowarat for the descendents of some of the more enduring businesses that have left behind legacies spanning up to four generations, effectively cementing Yaowarat‘s continued legacy as an ethnic stronghold with a strong ethnic flavour. In contrast, in Chinatown SG there is a perceptible disconnect between ethnic identity and business capabilities, an 179 observation that coincides with lamentations of palpable alienation between community and place which has long incited comments of a dissonant inauthentic heritage and a certain placelessness in Singapore‘s Chinatown. The comparative discussion so far has thrown into sharper relief the fact that that if ethnic identity is a crucial component of place making in Yaowarat, it finds little expression in Chinatown SG where ethnic identity has a marked lack of currency, relevance and import and was not an important part of business wheeling and dealings, owing to a set of distinct social circumstances. This arguably contributed to its current configuration. The findings observed in the material, more consumptive repositories of ethnic identity are complemented in a closer study of religious institutions and its role in place identity formation/sustenance, discussing the role of temples in the two Chinatowns. We saw how Wat Mangkorn subtly anchors ethnic identity in place and has significant import amongst the business people who patronize it, powerfully emplacing ethnic identity, commerce and religion in Yaowarat, contributing crucially to place identity as it rides on the strength of an emplaced religiosity in ways that the BTRTM and to a lesser extent Thian Hock Kheng were unable to replicate for cultural-specific reasons such as a lack of religious homogeneity as well as a top-down inscription that 180 does not benefit from the development of place-based affective connections that are developed over time. If an emplaced religiosity powerfully links businesses and religion and increased the strength of emplacement of ethnic Chinese identity in place in Yaowarat, these linkages are arguably even more sharply drawn in the community foundations, which we have shown to be powerful in relation to sustaining a place identity. These social formations have largely been co-opted and taken over by the Singaporean state under a nationalistic spell cast by the state. The influence and confluence of ethnicity and religion in affecting/engendering spatial outcomes they was so successfully engendered and supported by a strongly relevant and resonant ethnic identity was unable to be retroactively reengineered on the Chinatown SG landscape though there are undeniable efforts at inscription and these differences as we have reiterated throughout this thesis have important impacts on engendering vastly different spatial outcomes in Yaowarat and Chinatown SG. All in all, this thesis sought to show that the reasons for Chinatown SG‘s dissonance are multi-faceted. In looking at the meanings of food in Yaowarat, it was clear that food was a commodity in which ethnic identity was embodied and marked. It was ‗Chinese food‘ that was unique in its concentration and it was congregated meaningfully in place through family-based 181 inheritance that invokes a place-bound ethnic affiliation for both the purveyors of this ethnic good and their patrons who arrive at Yaowarat with the intent of finding exactly this that is not replicated elsewhere. By contrast food on the food street in SG while touted to be unique and a reflection of the old days, are actually ubiquitous all over Singapore in the estates now, and does not bear the distinctiveness of an ethnic Chinese identity but a rather localized Singaporean one. It was a misplaced ethnic identity on what was arguably ‗Chinatown food‘ which coupled with the apparent reduced relevance of an ethnic identity in the conduct of business meant it does not have the same anchoring power in the sense that ethnic identity is not enacted in place and not in the perpetuation of an identity that is kept alive through praxis. It is akin to an empty signifier compared to the full active sign that is Chinese food and businessmen in Yaowarat. Similarly, the congregations of products such as Chinese medicine, provisions and gold in Yaowarat is engendered out of economies of concentration and the fact that once again these are unique and that Yaowarat guarantees the best quality available and these merchants have built up trust over the years and have built up a place brand that is locked by a shared cultural identity, language and perpetuated with inheritance. Chinatown SG is not anchored this way because of state intervention e.g. introduction of rent control and again the fact that these medicine halls are not 182 unique and good quality is not synonymous with Chinatown SG in the way that it is in Yaowarat. With temples and foundations, a lack of religious homogeneity meant that the strong spatial expression found in Yaowarat in Wat Mangkorn is not replicated and because of this weak religious underpinning foundation-hospitals in Singapore do not have the same drawing power and its relocation further decimates and negates the legacy of Chinatown SG as an ethnic space. These reasons are not discrete and a recurrent motif threads through them. It is clear that in Yaowarat, the strength of an reflexive, resonant Thai-Chinese identity rooted in inheritance and memory enabled that anchoring of identity in place; while in SG, a contrived hijacked identity finds little expression in a place that is fully inscribed with an ethnic identity that no longer mirrors reality, that it can no longer sustain. In Chinatown SG ethnic identity has dissipated from place and has infused wider society. In some sense this meant that Chinatown SG‘s current configuration is the consequence of a myriad of interrelated factors undergirded by the main theme, which is a flagging relevance in ethnic identity. Prologue 183 The story is not bleak for Chinatown. nterestingly, lined up along Smith Street on both sides are two corresponding rows of restaurants with many offering a pantheon of ‗Chinese‘ cuisine from Tian Jin, Beijing, Shanghai, that are run by Chinese nationals. Interspersed between these restaurants are institutions located in Chinatown under the Arts Housing Scheme that include the Harmonica Aficionados Community, Xin Sheng Poets Society and Singapore Association of Writers, Ping Sheh, Chinese Theatre Circle, Shi Cheng Calligraphy and Seal Carving Society, Er Woo Musical and Dramatic Society, TAS Theatre Company and Toy Factory Productions Limited. The food street is well lit at night with coloured streetlights zig-zagging their way along the street overhead in the alfresco setting. These are accompanied by red swaths of cloth artfully draped adorned with traditional Chinese red lanterns interspaced similarly, all zigzagging artfully above the street creating a distinct ethnic overtone. That these were installed by the CBA and not the hawkers themselves add to the notion of contrived, deliberate attempts to foster a, hyper-Chinese ambience that reeks of an ethnic overtone. This attempt at re-ethnicization or re-sinicization of Chinatown SG may be deemed inauthentic by the community of users today, but how the relationship between place, ethnicity and authenticity will develop remains to be seen as Chinatown SG sees 184 a new group of users equally capable of creating their own memories in place. Bibliography Aldrich, H., Jones, P. J., and D. McEvoy (1984) „Ethnic advantage and minority business development‟, In R. Ward and R. Jenkins (eds.) Ethnic Communities for Business: Strategies for Economic Survival. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 189–210. Aldrich, H. and Waldinger, R. (1990) „Ethnicity and entrepreneurship‟, Annual Review of Sociology (16) 111–135. Bailey, T. and R. Waldinger, R. (1991) „Primary, secondary, and enclave labour markets: A training systems approach‟, American Sociological Review, (56) 432–445. Bell, D. and Jayne, M. (eds.) (2004): City of quarters: urban villages in the contemporary city, Aldershot: Ashgate. Bruner, E. (1994) „Abraham Lincoln as Authentic Reproduction. A Critique of Post Modernism‟, American Anthropologist, 96(2): 397-415. Caplan, P. (1997) „Approaches to the study of food, health and identity‟, in Food, Health and Identity (ed.) Pat Caplan, Routledge: London, 1-31. 185 Chang T.C. (1997) „Heritage as a tourism commodity: traversing the tourist-local divide', Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 18(1), 4668. Chang, T.C. (2005) „Place, memory and identity: imagining New Asia‟, Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 46(3), 247-253. Chang, T.C. and Huang, S. (2005), „Recreating place, replacing memories: creative destruction at the Singapore River‟, Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 46(3): 267-280. Chang T.C. (2000) „Theming cities, taming places: insights from Singapore', Geografiska Annaler, 82B(1), 35-54. Doel, M. and Hubbard, P. (2002). „Taking World Cities Literally: Marketing the city in a global space of flows.‟ City 6(3): 351-368. Drucker, S. (2002) „Ethnic Food and Ethnic Enclaves‟, in G. Moser et al (eds.) People, Places and Sustainability. Bern: Hogrefe & Huber Publishers, 173-183. Gieryn, T.F. (2000) „A Space for place in Sociology‟, Annual Review of Sociology, 26:463-496. Goh, Daniel P.S. (2004) „The transfiguring monumentality of transnational capitalism: Singapore‟s Raffles Hotel from colony, nation to empire‟, Mobile City Singapore Workshop. Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. Glazer, N and D P. Moynihan (1963) Beyond the melting pot: the Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Henderson, J. (2000) 'Attracting Tourists to Singapore's Chinatown: A Case Study in Conservation and Promotion', Tourism Management, 21(5): 525-534. Henderson, J. (2003) „Ethnic Heritage as a tourist attraction: The Peranakans of Singapore‟, International Journal of heritage studies, 9(1): 27-44. Heng, G., and Devan, J. (1995) „State Fatherhood: The Politics of Nationalism, Sexuality and Race in Singapore‟, in Ong, A. and Peletz, M., 1995. Bewitching Women, Pious Men: Gender and Body Politics in Southeast Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ho, K.C. (2006) „Where do community iconic structures fit in a globalizing city?‟ City, 10 (1): 91-100. Holtzman, J.D. (2006) „Food and Memory‟, Annual Review of Anthropology, (35): 361-368. 186 Hummon, D.M. (1996) „Community attachment, local sentiment, and sense of place‟, Qualitative Sociology, (19): 283–299. Jensen, L. and A. Portes (1992) „Correction: The enclave and the entrants: patterns of ethnic enterprise in Miami before and after Mariel‟, American Sociological Review 57(3): 411-414. Kong, L. and B.S.A. Yeoh (1994) 'Urban Conservation in Singapore: A Survey of State Policies and Popular Attitudes', Urban Studies, 31: 24765. Kong, Lily L. (2000) „Value conflicts, Identity construction, and urban change‟, A Companion to the City (eds.) Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson. Blackwell Publishing: USA. Kwok, K. W., C.J. Wee Wan-Ling and Karen Chia (ed.) (2000) Rethinking Chinatown and Heritage Conservation in Singapore. Singapore: Singapore Heritage Society. Kwong, P. (1996) The New Chinatown. New York: Hill & Wang Laguerre, M.S. (2000) The Global Ethnopolis: Chinatown, Japantowan and Manilatown in American Society. Palgrave. Light, I. and E. Bonacich (1988) Immigrant Entrepreneurs: Koreans in Los Angeles. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Light, I. (1972) Ethnic Enterprise in America: Business and Welfare Among Chinese, Japanese and Blacks. Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press. Light, I. (1984) „Immigrant and ethnic enterprises in North America‟ Ethnic and Racial Studies, (7) 195–216. Light, I. and E. Bonacich (1988) Immigrant Entrepreneurs: Koreans in Los Angeles, 1965-1982. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Light, I. and Karageorgis, S. (1994) „The ethnic economy‟, In N. Smelser and R. Swedberg (eds.) The Handbook of Economic Sociology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 647–671. Light, I., Sabagh, G., Bozorgmehr, M., and C. Der-Martirosian (1994) „Beyond the ethnic enclave economy‟, Social Problems (41) 65–80. Logan, J and M. Zhou (1990) „Adoption of Growth Control Measures‟, Social Science Quarterly 70: 118-129. Logan, John R., Richard D. Alba, and W. Zhang. 2002. "Immigrant 187 Enclaves and Ethnic Communities in New York and Los Angeles" American Sociological Review 67 (April): 299-322. Lowe-Ismail, G. (1998) Chinatown Memories, Singapore Heritage Society: Singapore. Marshall, R. (2003) Emerging Urbanity – Global Urban Projects in the Asia Pacific Rim. Routledge. Narayan. U. (1995) „Eating Cultures: Incorporation, Identity and Indian food‟, Social Identities 1(1): 63-86. Newman, P., and Andy Thornley (2005) Planning World Cities: Globalization and Urban Politics, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Olds, K. (1995) 'Globalization and the production of new urban spaces: Pacific Rim mega-projects in the late 20th century', Environment and Planning A, 27: 1713-1743. Polakit, K. and Dovey, K. (2006) „Slippery urban characters Thai-ing down Place Identity‟, in 4th Great Asian Streets Symposium: Reclaiming the City, 2-12. Portes, A. and R. Bach (1985) Latin Journey: Cuban and Mexican Immigrants in the United States. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Portes, A. and Leif Jensen (1989) „The Enclave and the Entrants: Patterns of Ethnic Enterprise in Miami Before and After Mariel.‟ American Sociological Review 54: 929-949. Portes, A. and M. Zhou (1992) „Gaining the Upper Hand: Economic Mobility among Immigrant and Domestic Minorities‟, Ethnic and Racial Studies 15 (4): 491-522. Portes, A. and R. D. Manning (1986) „ The Immigrant Enclave: Theory and Empirical Examples‟, from Competitive Ethnic Relations, S. Olzak and J. Nagel (eds.), in The Urban Sociological Reader, J. Lin and C. Mele. Rouledge: Taylor and Francis Group. Portes, A. and R. G. Rumbaut (1990) Immigrant America: A Portrait. Berkeley: University of California Press. Raffles, H. (2002) In Amazonia: Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. A natural history. Rodan, G. (2006) 'Neoliberal globalization, conflict and security: new life 188 for authoritarianism in Asia?' in Vedi R. Hadiz (ed.) Empire and Neoliberalism in Asia, London: Routledge, 105-122. Sasaki, K. (1999) „For Whom is City Design: Tactility versus Visuality‟ in M.Miles, I. Border and T.Hall (eds.) The City Cultures Reader, London:Routledge. Schacter, D.L. (1997) Searching for memory: The brain, the mind, and the past. HarperCollins. Searles, Edmund. (2002) „Food and the making of modern Inuit Identities‟ Food and Foodways, 10:55-78. Tong, C.K and Chan, K. B. (2001) „The Chinese of Contemporary Thailand‟. Times Academic Press. Thoo, M. L. (1983) „Hawkers in Old Chinatown‟, Academic exercise-Dept. of Geography, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, National University of Singapore. Valdez, Z. (2002) „Ethnic Entrepreneurship: Ethnicity and Economy in Enterprise‟, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies and The Center for US-Mexican Studies, Working paper 63. Van Roy, E. (2007) Sampheng: Bangkok’s Chinatown Inside Out. Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand. Veronis, L. (2007) „Strategic spatial essentialism: Latin Americans‟ real and imagined geographies of belonging in Toronto‟, Social and Cultural Geography 8(3): 455-473. Waldinger, R. (1989) „Structural opportunity or ethnic advantage? Immigrant business development in New York‟, International Migration Review 16: 111-135. Waldinger, R., Howard Aldrich, Robin Ward and Associates (1990) Ethnic Entrepreneurs: Immigrant Business in Industrial Societies. Sage Publications: Newbury Park. Waldinger, R. (1998) „The spatial structure of urban ethnic economies‟ Urban Geography 19(6): 489:501. Yeoh, B.S.A. and Kong, L. (1994) „Reading landscape meanings: state constructions and lived experiences in Singapore's Chinatown‟, Habitat International, 18(4), 17-35. Yeoh, B.S.A. and Shirlena Huang (1996) „The conservationredevelopment dilemma in Singapore: The case of the Kampong Glam historic district‟, Cities 13 (6): 411-422. 189 Zhou, M. and J. Logan (1989) „Returns on Human Capital in Ethnic Enclaves: New York City‟s Chinatown‟, American Sociological Review 54: 809-820. Zhou, M. and J. Logan (1991) „In and Out of Chinatown: Residential Mobility and Segregation of New York City‟s Chinese‟, Social Forces 70 (2): 387-407. Zhou, M. (1992) Chinatown: The Socioeconomic Potential of an Urban Enclave. Philadelphia, Pa.: Temple University Press. Zhou, M. (2004) „Revisiting Ethnic Entrepreneurship: Convergences, Controversies, and Conceptual Advancements.‟ International Migration Review, 38 (3): 1040-1074. 190 [...]... problematic The place-identity dyad and how it is interlinked affects the authenticity of a place like Chinatown for its users (both within and without) and it is hoped 13 that a comparative analysis can offer us more insight into broader social changes that have taken place in the Singapore case and allow for a more nuanced and sensitive reading of Chinatown s contemporary configuration and perceived inauthenticity... deliberate ―festivizing‖ and embellishments From this vantage point, the state‘s intervention is part of the cause but also appears to be a consequence of wider social changes that have taken place and arguably a cross-comparison can shed light on what these social changes can be, and how these changes have spatial impacts Thus, this is a strategy aimed at exploring how place is made in Yaowarat and seeks... broad-based, nuanced, textured explanation for Chinatown SG‘ s current configuration by reconstituting the state‘s oft mentioned heavy hand at urban redevelopment as a cause of Chinatown SG‘s ―inauthenticity‖, ―placelessness‖ becoming a space ―that speak little of local identities and lifestyles‖ rather than the state as the final arbiter of the dissonance of the Chinatown landscape today It will also help... Yaowarat and Chinatown SG today; as well as a through a selective crosssectional study8 of the social profile of the proprietors manning these Simultaneously, to enable a more holistic, contextual understanding of contemporary configurations of food and identity in these traditional enclaves over time, these primary findings will be framed and understood against the backdrop of historical social trajectories... (above) was inaugurated 10 years ago, the brainchild of the Singapore Tourism Promotion Board in 22 collaboration with the Chinatown Business Association (CBA) as part of a larger overall overhaul of Chinatown in a bid to rejuvenate it The CBA itself was the brainchild of the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) who inaugurated the CBA to act on its behalf in matters pertaining to businesses in Chinatown As... places, the target respondents were the hawkers on the food streets in Chinatown SG (Smith Street) and Yaowarat; the shopkeepers conducting businesses in Pagoda and Trengganu Street and Yaowarat Road and Charoen Krung Road and members of the temple and foundation hospitals As this is a comparative study, the choice of streets to conduct the survey in were as closely matched in terms of function and. .. ultimate objective of this thesis is to offer an alternative, more broad based explanation of Singapore‘s Chinatown s current configuration To fulfill this aim, Yaowarat is used as a contrast case through which to understand the constitution of place and identity over time and explore what varying strategies of memory say about the larger social context It marries urban sociology with social memory and. .. available on the food street are not uniquely ‗Chinese‘ but consist of local favourites that can be found in most hawker centres and coffee shops located island-wide Fishball noodles, kway chap18, handmade noodles, bak kut teh, prawn noodles, steamboat and the like are all easily available and at much lower prices all over the island 14 It is a clear, peppery pork broth with pork ribs It consists of. .. identity in weak memory regimes 2.2 Chinatown SG Chinatown SG offers an array of cuisines for the visitor to pick from Available are Korean restaurants, vegetarian cuisine, Chinese food hailing from different parts of China, Thai food, local fare served in a kopitiam and other local snacks such as desserts and Chinese yam cake, mooncakes and other assorted Chinese biscuits interspersed between the various... Sociologists of food have long established the relationships between food and one‘s identity (Caplan, 1997; Narayan,1995; Searles, 2002) and also by implication memory (Holtzman, 2006) This makes food a useful analytical tool with which to study the embodiments of identity and memory present in Yaowarat and Chinatown SG today, allowing us to trace the social trajectories that place identity, ethnic identity and ... Street) and Yaowarat; the shopkeepers conducting businesses in Pagoda and Trengganu Street and Yaowarat Road and Charoen Krung Road and members of the temple and foundation hospitals As this is a comparative. .. 13 that a comparative analysis can offer us more insight into broader social changes that have taken place in the Singapore case and allow for a more nuanced and sensitive reading of Chinatown s... day‟s labour is palpable and as the day draws to a close, that which permeates the air is a relaxed atmosphere 39 sidewalk rhythm20 that is part of urban land use in Thailand (Dovey and Polakit,