Making Tracks: Tanjong Pagar Railway, Heritage and the Human Heart
Last week, I had lunch at Plaza Batai, at the Chinese hawker place on the corner. A few years ago, there were two kopitiams on this stretch and one of them, in particular, was well loved for its char kuey teow, pork noodle soup and wantan mee.
Since Plaza Batai has been redeveloped, the popular kopitiam in the middle of the street has gone and some of the hawkers moved to the corner lot. The corner shop itself has been “upgraded” to look more like the rest of the modern restaurants and cafes that are now installed on the row: the ceiling is painted black and hung with elegant little lights, the plastic tables replaced with wooden ones. But it’s stuffy and dark inside: a strange setting for char kuey teow.
In KL, the landscape constantly yields to time and money. You get used to it, and some losses are easier to bear than others. After all, we have to pick our battles. Imagine the city as a used VHS tape: fast-forwarding or rewinding shows us scratched images, fuzzy absences. From entire parks to lunar peaks, the city is marked by what is missing.
Recently, I wrote a story for the Guardian about Tanjong Pagar railway station in Singapore. Along with the entire 24km former railway route, Tanjong Pagar station will be redeveloped over the next decade in a project that seeks to balance its history with modernity. Now that there is no more rail service, the station will instead become a new node of the MRT network as well as a “multi-functional community space”. As a national monument, the railway station’s 1930’s architecture will be retained.
To Malaysians who care about heritage, such projects may draw reactions of wide-eyed wonder. After all, we’ve seen so many historical places in KL replaced by shopping malls, or else simply left to disintegrate. It’s been up to community groups to salvage information and scrape photos together, finding a way to remember.
Yet, Singaporeans too have their complex relationship with heritage. Although colonial era buildings across the causeway may be better maintained, there have also been complaints of “facadism” there— a practice where the outer shell of a building is maintained but the use of the space makes no reference to its past.
The Rail Corridor project, as it is known, has stirred passionate debate. While researching my story, I was struck by an editorial piece published in the Straits Times, about the planned linear park that is envisioned to run along the old railway route:
“There is much to fire the imagination: rock-climbing walls, outdoor yoga spots, a linear forest near homes, observation towers, multi-recreation centres, event spaces, a multi-function community building, some 122 access points compared to the present 23, paved paths, mobile apps for users, toilets, resting points, water points, shower facilities, bike rental kiosks, restaurants… The list could grow. How rustic will it all be then?” (emphasis added)
The fear that the park would become “too slick” was echoed elsewhere during my research. (The Urban Redevelopment Authority responded to the editorial, pointing out its efforts to engage the community for feedback on all the plans).
Currently, the 24km stretch of land — now empty of railway tracks save for one or two areas — is a kind of rare wilderness in Singapore. One auntie I spoke to told me excitedly that she had seen wild chicken eggs there. It’s become a route for walkers, joggers and cyclists. You could argue that there is already a linear park there — but that it is unplanned.
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That seems to be the crux of the matter. Singapore is not a place for the unplanned. Things cannot be chanced. The political, social and commercial significance of the land is too great to be simply… left alone.
Right now, Tanjong Pagar station is the closest it will ever be to “how it was”. There are empty ticket offices in the main hall, the shells of immigration kiosks. It is open for public holidays and sometimes there will be activities like bazaars. Other times — like the day I visited — nothing is happening, but people still come.
They come to take photos, and to sit at the edge of the platform, and to walk along the railway tracks that now lead nowhere. They come to reminisce about old railway journeys and to show their children a place that pre-dates their youth, and indeed the country’s existence.
Perhaps the future changes have stirred up more enthusiasm for the station now than ever before.
Perhaps, after the redevelopment is complete, people will still find their memories here.
Perhaps they won’t.
In Singapore, as in in Malaysia, heritage is a complex matter. But it also increasingly something that people want to talk about. The National Library at Stamford Road, which was demolished in 2005 in order to build a traffic-easing tunnel, is still fresh in the minds of many Singaporeans. The destruction of the 1960's brick building was met with a public outcry at the time, and people haven’t forgotten.
Neither has the government, it seems. The Rail Corridor seems to mark a sort of turning point. The land that is now under Singapore’s control was hard won — it took the government 20 years to negotiate the handover. But all this while, people had already begun to claim the land and its meaning. There have been public consultations, and the officials from government agencies have emphasised that the plans presented by the winning architecture firms are not final.
Such consultations are to be welcomed. The redevelopment of the station is bittersweet for some, exciting for others. But the conversation is worth having.
The concept of “heritage” is like a shadow: felt, without always being seen. If you turn and look at it directly, it can shift, and take on strange shapes. In Malaysia, we’ve seen this complexity in places like George Town, where “heritage” has been traded in many ways: to protect beautiful buildings, to promote tourism, and also to justify a shameless chauvinism (in the case of the ban on foreign workers cooking at local hawker stalls). Likewise, we’ve seen how lightly heritage can be treated elsewhere — anyone for a ferris wheel on a skyscraper in Kampung Baru?
For Singaporeans, this year is the last opportunity to see Tanjong Pagar railway station before it’s redeveloped. After December, it will be closed until 2025.
Hopefully, the conversation will continue even when the people stop coming. Cities may revolve around time and money, but they are built on so much more than that.
Ling Low is the editor of the anthology Stories From The City: Rediscovering Kuala Lumpur. @sweetnlowling
With thanks to Mahen Bala and Jeffrey Lim for the photos. Find out more about Projek Keretapi Kita here.
