Analysis Of The Upper Serangoon Road

The Upper Serangoon Road is a major road connecting the city centre to the north-eastern part of Singapore. Little would have known that the Upper Serangoon Road was once a corridor that was brimming with communal and cultural activities. The current Upper Serangoon Road, once a cauldron of bustling activities, is a far cry from what it used to be in the 1960-1970s. Despite the redevelopment of the area, various buildings that evoke memories of the past still stand tall.

My interviewee is my maternal grandmother, Madam Lim Ai Buoy. She is 92 this year and she was born in文昌县 砊头村 (Wenchang Province) of Hainan Island, China. She has a younger sister and a younger brother, but her sister has already passed away. In order to earn much more money
Such activities build up the “kampong spirit” and a close relationship with each other. Those were the days where villagers could get together and participate in activities such as basketball, playing Chinese Chess, as well as going to the Community Club to watch television programmes. “There are two cinemas that I frequent – 国华戏院 (Kok Wah Cinema) and 星光戏院 (Xing Guang Cinema). The price of the ticket ranges from $0.50 to $1.50 and most of the movies shown are 武侠片 (Martial Arts Film). On every Friday, there would be makeshift food vendors setting up their stalls on the streets, selling dessert, peanuts, kacang puteh. Not only that, there are vendors selling medicinal balm and street performances as well”, as Madam Lim recalled5. For children, they would enjoy a game of kite flying, with its thread made from boiling thread with glass shards. The objective of the game is to cut the thread of other children’s kite. These leisure activities were mostly communal and less individualistic as compared to the activities people does these
Madam Lim and my mother were surprised to see the building still standing tall after all these years. The assembly ground still looks the same as it was in the past. Although the building is now replaced by Pertapis Children Home, it still brings back many memories that my mother had. Other places that still stood tall are Upper Serangoon Shopping Centre, Dou Mu Temple, Haji Yusoff Mosque, St. Paul’s Church, to name a few. Indeed, events, buildings, people, can evoke memories of fear, excitement, grief, anger. But for Madam Lim and her daughter, the remaining surviving structures of the Upper Serangoon Road evokes fond memories as well as the many activities that happened along the fifth milestone in the past. It could be said for her fellow villagers of the kampong as