Bishan Then .
Bishan over two decades ago was a plot of land in Singapore where the tens and thousands of dead people were buried in a resting place, rest in peace. Buried under the ground, and their tombs were seen on the surface.
The descendants will pay their respect every year during the traditional Qing Ming for prayers and offerings to the ancestors of Singaporean Chinese.
During every Qing Ming, my family and I to follow the same tradition to pray and offerings as filial piety duties to my parents. However, my late parents were not buried on land.
They were cremated at the Kong Ming San Buddhist Temple and their ashes were kept in their respective urns, located with addresses like those in apartment blocks and unit numbers and identified with each of them a photo displayed on the urn at the crematorium.
While travelling past Bishan each time, I wondered how much Bishan has transformed in physical appearance in space and time.
On this blog to express as I rambled, observations from a personal perspective:
Why is land not grown on earth the way flowers, fruits, vegetables and plants could be planted from seeds?
The first rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis)was successfully transplanted in Singapore Botanic Gardens in 1877, from seedlings taken from Brazil to the Kew Gardens in the UK. Ironically, it was Malaysia, not Singapore which became the world's biggest producer of rubber. Singapore do not have more land as natural resources than Malaysia. Wasn't this "foreign" plants which we don't have enough land for rubber industry for Singapore's economy assets.
Land is God created. Land is wiped out from earth by various natural disasters and calamities ...e.g. tsunami, flood, tornado, hurricane, volcanic eruption, earthquake, heatwave, or landslide. The distribution of land is allocated in unequal sizes to each country, big or small.
Land utilisation is man-made for the benefit of the masses, for the people and the country. In economic terms, "the basic relationship between scarcity and choice"
Only if more land could be "planted" or "manufactured" in Singapore...
One way by "land reclamation from the sea" and another to recover from existing cemeteries to use land development for building houses, roads and transportation and other urban redevelopment projects. In other words, the "dead for the living" to give way to sacrifice in land scarce Singapore.
