The Origin and Evolution of Chinese Settlements in Yishun, Singapore (1819-1991)

Ni, William

Abstract

The kampong spirit is regarded as the foundation of Chinese culture in Singapore, and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has repeatedly emphasized the importance of “reshaping the kampong spirit” for Singaporean society. The “Kampong Spirit” was born in the early Chinese settlements in Singapore, and it is also the product of comprehensive factors such as specific history, geography, humanities, and political environment. From the unique perspective of historical settlement geography, combined with maps and archives, this paper uses the theory of man-land relationship to discuss the origin, basic characteristics and development of Chinese settlements in modern Singapore by taking the representative Chinese settlements in the Yishun area of Singapore as a case in the early days. Evolution. The origin of early Chinese settlements was based on the background of the relationship between people and land in the Seletar River Basin at the end of the 19th century; the southward immigration wave and the Raffles business policy since the opening of Singapore were also important macroenvironmental supports for the origin of the settlements; the unique physical geography of the Yishun area Resources stimulated the vigorous development of planting economy, and the superposition of these factors promoted the development of immigrant settlement areas, and finally formed Chinese villages that combined blood, geography, industry and dialect ties. Before and after Singapore's independence in 1965, due to the acceleration of urbanization and the double influence of the ruling party's policy of “ home ownership" ” to benefit the people, traditional Chinese settlements were gradually replaced by modern HDB communities, thus completing the temporal and spatial evolution of settlements. Keywords: Singapore Chinese, Yishun area, rural settlements, temporal and spatial evolution

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