Chinatown - Rituals and Traditions

Bev and I are at Starbucks now, working on our project. We make quite the team, I think. Not sure how she feels about that though. LOL. We're supposed to be doing our Zine but it's 1030am and no shops are open for us to buy a thumb drive for printing, so I figured I'd write.

Yesterday:

Chinatown was hot. We first entered the Chinatown Heritage centre. Spooky. The exhibits were surprisingly realistic, and creepy. It sent shivers down my spine, looking at the living conditions of Samsui women, seamstresses, etc. It did evoke many memories of when my parents would tell me stories of how Gramps sewed clothes and scrubbed floors for a living. Sometimes, I do wonder how it'll be like, living in the past- whether I'll like it or not, or if I'll be able to cope with the lack of technology. 

Because it was so quiet, we silently weaved through the levels, snapping photos within half an hour. That's where the bulk of mine came from. I really do want to say that what we saw at the Chinatown heritage centre was extremely interesting, but I think most of the excitement stemmed from our shopping spree there. We bought old school gadgets for drawing, really cheap wrist bands ($0.80 for leather straps btw), and henna. Ok, we were mainly attracted to the stores. But I think that there's where the interaction between people of different cultures and backgrounds really happen. It's fascinating to people watch. I enjoy seeing how tourist react to MGS girls in school uniform walking around, doing surveys. They're the most friendly bunch. Singaporeans will definitely walk away from them. It makes me sad to think that that's how we roll, sometimes. Singaporeans are so guarded and we adhere to strictly to our motto of "Don't talk to strangers". Obedient. Too obedient.

Cultural Vernacular:

So if you want to take it literally, most of the spoken "vernacular" was conversed in Mandrin, or dialects that I'm only guessing would be Cantonese/Hokkien/I'm not sure. Which brings me to the point: The tradition of conversing through dialects is fading. For me, the older generation doesn't speak to me with them so I hardly ever hear them.

Another thing that intrigued me was the community of elderly congregated under this particular pavilion playing chess. We rarely see a handful of people gathering around to play games anymore because everyone is so self entertained - also known as anti social  (be it through handphone games/ipads/computers/internet). Speaking of which, the bulk of the locals that reside in Chinatown also happen to be the older generation. Even shop keepers are in their mid 50s and above. Does this mean that because the younger generation is so involved in the world of technology that they forget communal interaction and preserving our heritage?

Local Flavors :

Sadly, the only other time I've seen Roasted Chestnut vendors was in Macau (not even in Singapore). The rarity of this delicacy is somewhat depressing.

Local vendors substituted by Old Chang Kee.

Ok. These are so pretty. We just had to buy the ruler to play with it hahaha

Fruit juice prices went up a lot.

Graphic Design/Design Language:

There wasn't much sense of design used for promotional sign boards (no design elements, more of just simple text). They would either be in a written form or printed in simple fonts with jarring complimentary colours to attract customers' attention.

Rituals and Traditions found:

1. Make Shift Pop Up Stores for vendors along the street side selling nick nacks and food.
2. Bargaining for goods
3. Festive mood decorations
4. Architecture: Low shop houses with fancy colours
5. Diversity in language/dialects spoken
6. Shops open fairly early
7. Mainly locals tending stores

On a side note, I just had to take a selfie @ Chinatown and send it to my Family Whatsapp Chat because mum was nagging at us to go to there during CNY period and all of us strongly detested the idea. She must have been laughing at me so hard for ending up there.