In 1958, after the British colonial office
sealed off the last kampong near Tiong Bahru,
16yearold Li Mei sneaks into the Urban Renewal
Department’s basement storage — her father’s old
ID card still works, thanks to his silence. The
building’s air smells of damp paper and kerosene.
She’s not here for salary. She’s here because
her mother’s ghost still walks the old banana
leaf path behind the nowdemolished opium den,
and no map shows it anymore.
The new HDB masterplans, stamped “CONFIDENTIAL —
MERDEKA EDITION,” don’t just rehouse people.
They erase lineage. Every kampong name is
replaced with a number: Block 103, not “Kampong
Pekan Siam.” Every ancestral shrine, every
shared well, every tree where elders told ghost
stories in Malay, Javanese, and Hokkien — gone
from the records. The rule bites: if it’s not on
paper, it never existed. And the Ministry’s
clerks burn the old maps every Tuesday at 4pm.
Li Mei doesn’t cry. She steals the original
inked survey maps rolled in oilcloth, hides them
under her school uniform, and walks past the NS
conscripts training in the new estate’s empty
voids. On Friday night, she lights the maps in
the courtyard of the new Block 29, where her
grandmother used to sell satay from a bamboo
cart. The fire doesn’t rage — it curls like
smoke from a joss stick. Neighbours watch. A
woman from the Malay kampong whispers, “That’s
my auntie’s house.” A Chinese uncle nods. An
Indian man crosses himself.
The next morning, the Housing Board finds the
charred fragments — but not all. One map corner
survives, tucked inside a tin of kaya. It shows
the old well, the fig tree, the spirit altar. By
noon, the same well is marked “PROPOSED
COMMUNITY GARDEN” on the new blueprints. No one
dares remove it. No one dares rename it.
The Minister’s office calls it “an unfortunate
accident.” The clerks who burned the maps are
reassigned. Li Mei is expelled — but not
arrested. Her father never speaks of it. At the
new HDB void deck, children now play near the
concrete rim of the old well, painted green,
labelled “Community Memory Spot.” No one
remembers it was once called “Pond of the Silent
Ones.”
She starts school again. She still wears her
uniform crooked. But when the teacher asks who
built Singapore, she raises her hand — and no
one silences her.
