High above the glossy malls of Singa­pore’s busiest shopping belt, a pink-necked green pigeon spots a tree. It is an acacia, a towering evergreen that sticks out of a dense canopy the size of three football fields.

A stone’s throw away on the pavement lining Orchard Road, mynahs squabble for crumbs and shoppers jostle for space in the overcrowded street.

But here, in the overgrown no man’s land bordered by Orchard Turn, Orchard Boulevard and Orchard Link, there is only the brief fluttering of wings and swaying of branches.

It is a curious space: a rare parcel of prime real estate, left untouched since the 1950s, in a country where liminal spaces are often pulverised by pragmatism.

It is not a park. Nor is it an active cemetery. There is no one fighting for it, no one using it and, apart from the occasional forum post asking “Why until now still no developments yet?”, hardly anyone pays attention to it. Even the multimillion-dollar makeover intended to transform Orchard Road into a lush green corridor that connects Singapore’s historical green spaces passes over this secondary forest, for which the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) has other plans.

Perplexed but intrigued, I do a preliminary Google search, but do not get very far. A blog post here, a throwaway mention in a decade-old article there.

I even contact the Ngee Ann Kongsi, which used to own the plot of land, to ask if it could tell me anything about its history, but am told by a friendly but apologetic employee that there is not much to add.

“If you find out, please let us know too,” she says, putting an end to our brief phone call. Still, I want to know how this forest came to be, why it remains untouched, what lies inside and what fate awaits it.

This is the story of my trip down that particular rabbit hole and how I end up in the lushest, most mosquito-ridden part of Orchard Road, squinting at a pink-necked green pigeon. Before acacias sprouted up and creepers carpeted the ground, this section of Orchard Road was studded with tombstones.

A Teochew cemetery, Tai Shan Ting, sprawled over the expanse currently occupied by the forest, as well as Ngee Ann City, Wisma Atria, Orchard Cineleisure and Mandarin Gallery.

The about 28ha plot of land was acquired from the East India Company by Ngee Ann Kongsi in 1845, establishing Singapore’s first Teochew cemetery on the site. For the island’s Teochew community, this was a welcome – and long overdue – move.

“Many of the early Teochew immigrants who settled in Singapore were labourers who arrived alone to make a living. They lived in poverty and had little hope of returning to China to spend their final days,” says Dr Lee Chee Hiang, an associate professor in the Department of Chinese Studies at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

“For these immigrants, looking for a place for burial after dying in a foreign land became a pressing concern, as there were very few public cemeteries established by the colonial government of Singapore at that time.” Many cemeteries then were owned by Christian or Muslim organisations, which made them inaccessible to Chinese immigrants who were not Christian, Catholic or Muslim.—

Published in Dawn, January 20th, 2025