Renaissance City Plan III Heritage Development Plan - MICA

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Heritage Development Plan 32 ENGAGING MINDS, INSPIRING HEARTS Mothers of the expat World take note At the start of the summer holidays Rosie Milne shares her secret of keeping the Little Darlings occupied. I take a laissez-faire attitude to bringing up my children so it’s rare that I ever feel inclined to offer anybody parenting advice. However the summer school holidays have now arrived, and on the very first day I hit on a such an unexpectedly successful means of keeping my Little Darlings – more accurately, my Little Draggers – occupied that I feel I would be doing a disservice to mothers everywhere if I didn’t share it. Stamp collecting has always struck me as irredeemably anorak but I was wrong to be so sniffy. “Darlings,” I trilled, in my most ingratiating voice, “I know we’re not actually going anywhere this summer but why don’t we pretend we’re somewhere exotic? Golly! I know! Why don’t we pretend we’re in Vietnam? Gosh! We can eat Vietnamese food all week! ... In the meantime, why don’t you go on the Internet and prepare speeches about Vietnamese culture? Daddy and I’ll take you out tonight for Vietnamese noodles, and you can give your speeches over dinner!” Wow! How exciting! My children are not complete idiots and I had little hope they’d actually fall for this research-is-fun lark. I expected rolled eyes and point blank refusals. But, astonishingly, they thought mine was a simply wonderful idea. They both spent the whole day busily making notes: The Beloved Son on the Viet Cong; The Darling Daughter on Tet – Vietnamese New Year. As bribed, The Banker and I took them to a hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese noodle joint for dinner. Here they delivered their speeches with such loud enthusiasm that I’m sure half the other customers hoped we’d be chucked out. So mothers of the expat world there you have it: set your Little Darlings schoolwork if you need a bit of peace and quiet. And the pretending-to-be-somewhere-you’re-not works quite well, too. We did indeed eat Vietnamese food all week: fried tofu with five spices; beef with lemon grass; rice paper rolls with mango, avocado, cucumber, mint, coriander and spring onion, and so on and so forth. In case you want to try something similar we used Authentic Recipes From Vietnam, by Trieu Thi Choi and Marcel Isaak, as a starting point. My choice of Vietnam as our pretend location was not casual. Singapore happened to be in the midst of a Vietnam Festival, enabling locals and tourists alike to catch Vietnamese films at the National Museum, marvel at Vietnamese artefacts at the Asian Civilisations Museum, admire Vietnamese art at the Singapore Art Museum, explore Vietnamese stamps at the Philatelic Museum, and view a rare collection of Vietnamese film posters at the National Archives. I had a cunning plan to take the offspring to as many of these exhibitions as possible in our Vietnamese week, but, in fact, we only made it to Viet Nam! From Myth to Modernity at the Asian Civilisations Museum, and Journey Through The Land Of The Lotus at the Philatelic Museum. At Viet Nam! From Myth To Modernity, I asked each child to pick his or her favourite artefact. The Beloved Son, who is mad on frogs, chose a miniature bronze drum, decorated with three frogs, which could have been as old as the sixth century BC. If I understood all right, the drum might have been thought of as the reincarnation of a frog, and it could have been used in rainmaking rituals, as frogs were thought of as the sprits of water and of rain. Apparently, some Vietnamese sources cite the toad as “the uncle of the heavenly god” whose croaks bring rain. The Darling Daughter does not share her brother’s frog obsession, and she chose a stone banister carved in the shape of a mythical lion-dog called a Sau. This came from a staircase in a royal palace, and it dated from the 11th-13th centuries AD. The Sau was depicted with a ball in its mouth and its claws outstretched. It had an extravagant mane, and a flowing tail. It was wearing a collar, with a bell attached, and, rather charmingly, it had a lotus flower on top of its head. As for myself, I particularly liked some of the blue-and-white ceramics, especially a 15th century dish decorated with dragons. Apparently, it might have been a diplomatic gift from the Vietnamese to the court in East Java. Meanwhile, our visit to Journey Through The Land Of The Lotus was our first to the Singapore Philatelic Museum. I’d been reluctant to attend this temple of stamp collecting, since said stamp collecting has always struck me as irredeemably anorak – an attitude clearly
Heritage Development Plan ENGAGING MINDS, INSPIRING HEARTS inherited by The Beloved Son, who informed me, as we set off, that he’d never had any interest in stamps. However, we were both wrong to be so sniffy. The Museum turned out to be great fun, with lots of hands-on and interactive activities – if you’re ever in Singapore with children, do consider paying it a visit. A series of galleries explore how stamps are made, and used. The permanent collections include a comprehensive survey of local stamps dating back to 1854, and also stamp oddities, such as stamps impregnated with fragrances, and stamps that glow in the dark. We, of course, had come to see the Vietnamese stamps. These were presented along with a selection of postcards that traced the history of Vietnam from French colonial rule in the early 1900s up to the present day. Vietnam has 54 minority groups, and various ethnic costumes were also on display, many of them lent by The Vietnam Women’s Museum in Hanoi. Other ethnic costumes were represented on a delightful set of dolls, also lent by the Women’s Museum. After we’d explored the exhibition, we went to the shop where, for about 75 pence, The Darling Daughter bought a set of stamps depicting Vietnamese flowers, and The Beloved Son bought a set depicting those well-known cultural artefacts, Vietnamese hot air balloons. Our Vietnamese week is now over. The children are debating where we should pretend to go next: Italy, or Mexico? Since we’ve just got back from The Philatelic Museum I can’t resist the obvious joke: I’ll keep you posted. Reproduced with permission from Telegraph UK website at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ global/main.jhtml?xml=/global/2008/07/31/rosiemilne.xml Viet Nam!: From Myth to Modernity Exhibition at Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) as part of Vietnam Festival © National Heritage Board 33
Page 1 and 2: Renaissance City Plan III Heritage
Page 3 and 4: CONTENTS FOREWORD BY NHB CHAIRMAN 3
Page 5 and 6: FOREWORD BY NHB CHAIRMAN Entrusted
Page 7 and 8: NATIONAL IDENTITY AND THE SINGAPORE
Page 9 and 10: Heritage Development Plan Strategic
Page 11 and 12: HERITAGE VISION: A DISTINCTIVE GLOB
Page 13 and 14: Heritage Development Plan HERITAGE
Page 15 and 16: Heritage Development Plan C: COMMUN
Page 17 and 18: UNIQUELY SINGAPORE: CREATING DISTIN
Page 19 and 20: Heritage Development Plan UNIQUELY
Page 21 and 22: Heritage Development Plan nHb’s H
Page 23 and 24: PUTTING SINGAPORE ON THE WORLD STAG
Page 25 and 26: Heritage Development Plan CHA Gao X
Page 27 and 28: Heritage Development Plan PUTTING S
Page 29 and 30: ENGAGING MINDS, INSPIRING HEARTS: E
Page 31 and 32: Heritage Development Plan ENGAGING
Page 33: Heritage Development Plan B: STAGIN
Page 37 and 38: AT HOME WITH HERITAGE: ENGAGING COM
Page 39 and 40: Heritage Development Plan AT HOME W
Page 41 and 42: Heritage Development Plan The Inter
Page 43 and 44: ATTRACTING TALENT AND BUILDING CAPA
Page 45 and 46: Heritage Development Plan C: DEVELO
Page 47 and 48: RELISHING AND RESTORING HERITAGE RE
Page 49 and 50: Heritage Development Plan B: DEVELO
Page 51 and 52: FROM HARDWARE TO HEARTWARE: TOWARDS

Renaissance City Plan III Heritage Development Plan - MICA

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