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00:00It's one of the world's most remarkable cities.
00:07My grandfather, for me, if there is such a thing as a Singapore dream, it had to be his.
00:13Singapore was where things happened, bills were exchanged, money was exchanged.
00:18It was always the centre of business.
00:20But behind Singapore's modern exterior lies a rich history and a hidden past.
00:27It really transformed the entire view about what Singapore was like.
00:31It was, in fact, a flourishing urban centre for about 300 years.
00:35Now, of course, we have these beautiful streets which have been gentrified.
00:38A lot of the tourists and the youngest Singaporeans wouldn't necessarily be aware of what these places were before.
00:44Absolutely.
00:46How incredible that there should be something as fragile as coral reefs growing here.
00:51One of our best kept secrets, isn't it?
00:54One little area that we know is named after him today, the Namli Estate, and some of the surrounding roads,
01:01that land alone today would be worth, conservatively, 70 billion US dollars upwards.
01:08I'm Sharon Jute-Lail and I'm Singaporean.
01:11Join me as I discover the surprising secrets and unexpected paths of my remarkable city.
01:18Most people who visited Singapore know the story of the arrival of the British.
01:33Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles came here 200 years ago.
01:38As a Singaporean, I always understood that this was really where my city's history began.
01:45Singapore today is an important part of Southeast Asia.
01:52It's a successful financial centre and trade and services continue to create wealth.
01:59But historically, that wasn't always the case.
02:05Just a few hundred years ago, it was Indonesia with its powerful Javanese and Sumatran empires,
02:11and Malaysia with its successful seaport Malacca to the north that were the big players.
02:18The Portuguese and the Dutch were vying for the region's riches, predominantly its spice trade.
02:26In amongst all the battles for influence, the British saw their opportunity.
02:31Suddenly, this was Singapore's moment.
02:38A young and ambitious administrator of the East India Company, Raffles arrived in 1819,
02:44looking for a port in the region that wasn't occupied by the Dutch.
02:48He'd already gained a reputation as Lieutenant Governor of Java in 1811,
02:53where he had sought to institute reforms that were as short-lived as they were costly.
02:59Today, he is a complex figure.
03:02The popular narrative is one of him as founder of modern Singapore.
03:06Street names, shopping malls, luxury hotels, prestigious academic institutions
03:12all bear his name, but his reputation in Java wasn't untarnished.
03:18An exhibition to coincide with his arrival in Singapore 200 years ago
03:23aims to give a more balanced view of Stamford Raffles.
03:27We're not so much celebrating him as pointing him out as a complex, nuanced individual,
03:35exposing his warts so he isn't just a sort of whitewashed statue with no features and no personality.
03:44I think that's what we wanted to do, to sort of counter the idea of him
03:49as a sort of mythical founder, figure, hero person.
03:53Things were actually much more complex.
03:56But Raffles was far from the only arrival who was instrumental in shaping the city's success.
04:08Their stories are less well-known, but they are fascinating people from diverse backgrounds
04:14who left their mark on Singapore society and culture.
04:18One of them is businessman, justice of the peace and philanthropist, Tantok Singh,
04:30who also arrived in 1819.
04:33He is remembered by the hospital that bears his name and the temple he contributed towards.
04:39His five times great-grandson, Ronnie, is a custodian of his legacy.
04:44This temple was built during the period 1839 to 1840.
04:52Tantok Singh, with his fellow community leaders, established this temple.
04:57Not only to cater to the spiritual needs of his countrymen,
05:02but it serves as a social economic centre for the Chinese.
05:08At that time, he also served as a place where they settled disputes among the immigrants.
05:16Tantok Singh was a Straits Chinese born in nearby Malacca in modern-day Malaysia.
05:22He was unique amongst his community, having learnt English,
05:26and that enabled him to thrive during the settlement's early years.
05:30Because they had a mixture of the Malay culture as well as they were able to interact with the Europeans.
05:38So what was Tantok Singh's relationship like with the colonial masters at the time, the British?
05:45They were the early intermediaries between the local population and the British and Europeans.
05:51And that's how Tantok Singh actually made his fortune.
05:57He was able to speak English.
05:59The British were not able to control the local population.
06:04Because at that time, I was told there were about two or three policemen looking after law and order in Singapore.
06:12So they had to depend on all these leaders of various communities.
06:16That's why in 1844, he was bestowed a justice of the peace by the British.
06:21The first Asian to be given that honour.
06:24In this bicentennial year, the narrative is moving away from the popular one that revolved around raffles.
06:41But it's not without controversy.
06:44Why Singapore's government has chosen to market in the first place is a question many are asking.
06:51It's one I pose to the minister in charge of the commemorations.
06:55The important question to address was what would be the significance of the bicentennial.
07:02And so when we reflected on this important question, it was prominent in our minds that actually 1819 was not the start of Singapore's history.
07:17The island had been inhabited from as far back as 700 years ago.
07:22It was also very clear that from 1819, Singapore went on a very different trajectory.
07:30And if raffles had picked any other island, then the history of Singapore for the last 200 years would have been a very different one.
07:39The look and feel of the region would be quite different.
07:43I'm going to interject there and obviously ask the question that many critics have been asking about why that particular moment 200 years ago.
07:53Is this a way of celebrating our colonial masters and oppression that many of course felt at the time?
08:02So what was the rationale behind commemoration of something like this?
08:07Well, if it was the story of raffles, then one could be accused of putting colonialism at the centre of the commemoration.
08:19But this is not the story of raffles. This is the story of all of us.
08:23How we came from Singapore to Singaporean. The story of the different communities, the different individuals.
08:30It turns out that in 1819, it wasn't just raffles who came to Singapore.
08:35Tan Tok Singh came to Singapore. Another very significant person is Munshi Abdullah.
08:41He is credited with being the father of modern Malay literature.
08:47He also arrived in 1819. In fact, for a period of time, he was the scribe and interpreter for raffles.
08:55And then there was Narayana Pillai, who built Singapore's first Hindu temple that still stands today.
09:02Haja Fatima, she was not only remarkable in her philanthropy.
09:07She was remarkable for being a successful entrepreneur.
09:12Saeed Omar al-Junid is another of the early settlers that the city is recognising during the year's festivities.
09:27Originally hailing from Hadramut or present-day Yemen, Saeed Omar first settled in Palembang, Indonesia,
09:34before being lured by the promises of a free port in the new settlement.
09:39A wealthy landowner who bought tracts of land that the British first sold,
09:48he too has street-named schools and a part of the city named after him.
09:53What a special day. Thank you so much for inviting us.
09:56Today, his family has a strong presence in Singapore.
10:00His granddaughter many times removed, Zahra al-Junid, invites me to her home to meet many of his descendants during Eid celebrations.
10:10My father's mother is the great-granddaughter of Saeed Omar.
10:16When the British set up Singapore, I mean, as a new nation, so they need the capital, you know, to set up the country.
10:24So, a lot of the land that the British offered for sale were bought by the Ajindic family.
10:33Zahra al-Junid was also justice of peace.
10:36The British, you know, relied on him to, you know, help to manage the community.
10:43So, he represented the community, as many of them did at the time, to manage disputes and other things within the community.
10:51Zahra al-Junid and his son Zahra al-Junid also gave public wealth, also gave bridges for the public use.
11:00So, the Ajindic family lives on. You know, there's a whole area of Singapore called Ajindic,
11:05and there's, you know, the train station, the street names.
11:10What I'm amazed at is that you have still kept a lot of the Arabic traditions.
11:15You're serving amazing Arabic dishes here as well.
11:18But is there a sense that the family is Singaporean?
11:23Or do you still feel like there is this incredible pull towards the Middle East?
11:30Hmm. That is always the question that we will ask, eh, about whether you retain your culture
11:38or you assimilate into the society.
11:41Because that has always been, you know, something that people will question.
11:46You speak mostly in Malay today?
11:48Malay and English is a mixture.
11:52But when the forefathers came and made it into the local Malay community,
11:59so the language, I mean, it's easier to learn the language of the region, Malay.
12:06That's right, yes.
12:07So, your family has been here for 200 years.
12:11What do you identify as?
12:13Do you feel more Singaporean or do you still feel more Arab?
12:17I think it's because Singaporean is like a citizen, you know, a citizenship.
12:25While being an Arab is like your race, you know.
12:28So, I don't think it's competitive.
12:30Yes, yes.
12:31I mean, I can feel as much a Singaporean as much, you know, being an Arab.
12:37So, you believe it's two distinct identities but they're still a part of you.
12:41Tantok Seng and Syed Omar al-Junid were just two of the early settlers who had to maneuver their way
12:54through the politics and business of this new settlement governed by the British.
12:59There's no doubt that Raffles and the man he left in charge, William Farker, the first British resident and commandant of Singapore,
13:07had a big role to play in this new settlement and its early development.
13:13Raffles himself didn't spend long here, even if he is credited with creating what became a successful British settlement.
13:21His life, in fact, was blighted by personal misfortune.
13:25All five of his children died young.
13:28Sam Goldsworthy is his fifth great-grand-nephew.
13:32Raffles was a visionary.
13:35He basically never went to a country without learning its language,
13:39without really immersing himself in the culture, both in language, in the arts, in the music.
13:45He lost everything in his pursuit to making sure that he had a legacy
13:51and that Britain in this part of the world was not looked at so negatively,
13:56I think perhaps as the footprint that it left in other parts of the British Empire.
14:01Raffles had already spent many years in the region.
14:04He played an important role in winning Java, now part of Indonesia, from Dutch-French forces in 1811.
14:12As Lieutenant Governor, he attempted unsuccessfully to end the slave trade
14:18and sacked Java's cultural capital, claiming many of its treasures for the British.
14:24And as Java fell into debt, he was stripped of his post and recalled to England.
14:30Raffles' legacy in Java, I'm sure, is contested.
14:34Everything that I have read and been told about was when he had a single-minded objective,
14:40which was to remove the Dutch oppression.
14:43Certainly, all the records that I have been party to, everything that I have read about his efforts in Java,
14:49have been one not about profit and loss, but one about binding communities
14:55and leaving good health and economy to thrive.
14:59You only need to look along the streets here, the plazas that are named Stamford Road or Raffles City or Raffles Place,
15:06to understand the meaning that he had to the founding of what Singapore represents today,
15:14as well as in the past, and no doubt the future as well.
15:18A contested legacy isn't just something that Raffles has had to contend with.
15:24William Farker, too, left in questionable circumstances.
15:29After four years governing the settlement, he fell out with Raffles after the latter became unhappy with how he was running things.
15:37But today, what may surprise many is that Farker left quite possibly the most famous descendant of all.
15:47The Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, welcome to Singapore.
15:52I'm Singaporean, and I'm told you've got a Singaporean link, too.
15:58Tell us a little bit about it.
15:59I can trace my ancestry right back to the very first resident of Singapore.
16:08It's a story that, for me, doesn't just highlight the connections between Canada and Singapore.
16:13It also highlights the advantages and the reality of diversity and multiculturalism.
16:19I wouldn't exist if it wasn't for multiculturalism, and I think that's something that also binds Singapore and Canada together.
16:27That's amazing. Now, tell us a little bit about how you found that out.
16:32It was really your mother who came to Singapore.
16:35She had a lot of help from the Singaporeans as well.
16:38In 2008, my mother was approached by a TV show that does a genealogical search.
16:45And they said, well, we'd like to trace your family history. Is there anything interesting?
16:48She says, well, I know there's some sort of connection to Asia, I think to Singapore, but I don't really know much about it.
16:54And then they did all the research and they tracked it down, and it makes for a great story.
16:59And at the same time, if you know your Singaporean history, there's a bit of a controversy as to whether Raffles or Farkar actually was the real founder of Singapore.
17:11And there's a perspective that has Farkar actually being more important for establishing.
17:20I'm not horribly biased. I will defend my fifth-time great-grandfather.
17:25But he was a lot closer to the locals and indeed when he was banished by Raffles after a few years for having been too close to the locals and allowing for gambling and allowing them to keep some more of their cultures and traditions than the British Raffles wanted.
17:47When he was banished, the harbour was apparently filled with little boats and people lining the shores to say goodbye to him in memory.
17:57So it's a neat piece of history.
18:02It was on this hill that Justin Trudeau's five-time great-grandfather first hoisted the Union Jack on February 6, 1819, marking Singapore's birth as a British settlement.
18:17It's called Fort Canning Hill now, but it's had many names, Government Hill and Bukit Larangan or Forbidden Hill, the resting place of ancient Malay kings.
18:28It was an archaeological dig here that uncovered a big surprise and it changed the idea that Singapore's success was linked to the British forever.
18:40Pottery, beads and other fragments unearthed from what was likely a Malay royal compound suggest Singapore's history went back much further than anyone thought.
18:52So, Professor Miksek, you were instrumental in the dig that essentially changed the narrative of Singapore as a sleepy fishing village before the British arrival to one that was really quite vibrant because, of course, you made this extraordinary discovery.
19:08There was no evidence since the 19th century that there had been any kind of earlier discoveries ever made here.
19:14So we just took our chances and we dug a few pits and we were lucky enough that a couple of them actually proved to have hit a soil layer which had been untouched for 700 years.
19:25Jessica, obviously, as a Singaporean, you got involved in these digs as well.
19:29How did you feel about how it changed the narrative of what we all know as Singaporeans, that somehow the British were responsible for turning this into a vibrant place, but in actuality it was vibrant before, many centuries prior?
19:41So it really transformed my entire view about what Singapore was like.
19:45Because when I was studying from the secondary school onwards, it's always been the British studying in 1819, Singapore was a sleeping fishing village, there was nothing here, and literally I read about one paragraph on pre-modern or pre-colonial Singapore.
20:00So by joining the dig, I learned a lot more about what Singapore was like. It was, in fact, a flourishing urban centre for about 300 years.
20:09Archaeology is an amazing thing, isn't it? Because it does open a window to the past to some extent.
20:14So from all of these things, what kind of, you know, picture does it paint of Singapore and the society Singapore was at that time in the 13th century?
20:24For me, the most interesting thing is that it shows that Singapore was very close to being what it looks like today in terms of its cosmopolitan population,
20:32wide range of activities, the use of money in everyday life, and it was also a centre for trade and for maritime navigation.
20:41There's one Chinese source that does say that in Tamase, ancient Singapore, that's a place where passengers could come and change ship.
20:49So what I like also is that it suggests that there was an actual specific Singapore identity already 700 years ago.
20:56Singapore grows exponentially as a free port. Ships come from near and far, bringing wave upon wave...
21:03The discovery of such a rich history that predated the British arrival has changed the narrative.
21:09On Fort Canning Hill, visitors are being taken on a journey to the past, bringing to life some of the discoveries of the archaeologists.
21:21Setting Singapore in this new historical context is making many of us question what we were once taught, including playwrights and academics.
21:29Haresh Sharma, Nabila Saeed and Nazri Barawi have written and dramatised the topic of colonisation this bicentennial year.
21:38I guess some of us may not know about it when we were growing up or reading about it in school, but later on, you know, as writers or academics, when we do more research, we discover that, you know, colonisation is also about capitalism.
21:51And, of course, that has affected us in a lot of ways, you know, growing up today in terms of the language that we speak, the main language being English, of course.
22:02Research has shown that there were, before the coming of Raffles in 1819, two other periods in which Singapore was part of a bigger, kind of vibrant cosmopolies.
22:13And one of those periods was between the 13th and 14th century.
22:17And another period was during the late 16th, early 17th century.
22:22The narrative of that sleepy Malay village may not hold true, I think.
22:26And this is something that we, I think, in the younger Singaporeans are kind of asking questions about that.
22:33So this is a bicentennial year and we are technically commemorating the arrival of Sir Stanford Raffles.
22:39But, of course, as you say, we've since discovered there's a much richer past to Singapore.
22:44A lot of recent discoveries have found evidence of those empires that you talk about.
22:48So how important is that for us as Singaporeans to realise actually the past here is much richer than we knew?
22:55We actually look at or think about or talk about identity a lot.
22:59And I think it's because it's so hard to pin down.
23:02And now that we are kind of like looking back like 200 years, 700 years, whatever that starting point is,
23:08it's just helping us kind of piece together what it is.
23:11What does being Singaporean really mean?
23:13Like, does it mean being multiracial, multireligious?
23:16Does it mean speaking English or speaking other languages?
23:20So I think that for me that's kind of like how it is.
23:26What do you all think of Sir Stanford Raffles?
23:29The name has a kind of prestige to it.
23:32But I think the strength of the bicentennial and the recognition of the alternative histories of the past
23:38also allows us to think about Raffles in a different light.
23:43What do Raffles do to gain control of Singapore?
23:46He wasn't all honest about it.
23:48You know, he did some political manoeuvring as to recognise the kind of like rival king,
23:55such that that rival king gives him the credential to then set up a port here.
24:01So I think that idea of multiple Raffles and not so much the prestigious Raffles that we've come to know for the longest time,
24:07it's really interesting.
24:09At the end of the day, the real privilege is that man.
24:13You know, because almost everything of, you know, prestige is named after him from school to hospitals to, you know, shopping complexes.
24:23That can be seen as a problem because then do we not value our own people and our own histories?
24:29And by value, I don't mean just putting them on a pedestal for a year and then after that, getting rid of them.
24:37Moving forward, we keep talking about this future of Singapore.
24:40And of course, Nabila, I'm conscious of the fact that you are the youngest amongst us
24:44and you are probably most representative of that young voice.
24:48So how do you see the future of Singapore?
24:51For me personally, I feel excited that we can kind of like shape the future.
24:55And we are not like looking at the past and just like complaining and then like not doing anything about it.
25:02Questioning the past is already something that I think people didn't used to do back then.
25:07Like, or rather, like when I was younger, my friends and I, we never talked about politics, the history of Singapore even.
25:13It wasn't a thing that you talked about.
25:15But I think nowadays our conversations have gotten a bit more matured and there's a lot more information around it as well.
25:22So there's no kind of excuse to be ignorant.
25:25For me, I'm quite hopeful that it will lead to a better kind of like future for Singapore.
25:29As long as the youth are empowered to kind of dictate or decide for themselves what they want and what kind of information they want.
25:37Singapore's multicultural heritage is now best exemplified in how the early immigrants once lived.
25:57In the shadows of the skyscrapers that dominate the skyline is a rich and largely hidden history.
26:04Jane Eyre is an award-winning tour guide who tells of the stories of the first settlers and their struggles in places that still exist in the city.
26:14So tell us about the shop houses because I guess for people who aren't familiar with them, what are they all about?
26:20It starts off around about 1840, so about 20 years after Raffles comes here, with very simple little shop houses.
26:27Usually two windows downstairs, a door, two windows upstairs.
26:30Basically it's a design that came from China and the idea was that you would have a shop downstairs and the family living upstairs traditionally.
26:40Of course some of the shop houses in some parts of Singapore became the home to many, many different families all sharing quite a limited space.
26:47And they really were built all the way through to about 1970, so 130 years worth.
26:52We've got thousands of them in Singapore.
26:57Bukit Paso Road is known as the Street of Clans.
27:00And this particular building dates from the 1920s.
27:03It used to have a whole lot of nefarious uses like most of the buildings around this area.
27:08This was a red light district.
27:10Latterly it was a hotel.
27:11And then just over a year ago it became this private club.
27:14But tell us about the clans, why this reference to clans?
27:17Bear in mind a lot of people came from China from around about 1821 onwards, just after Raffles arrived, a couple of years after.
27:24If you came from a particular village or for a particular family group, then you would be looking for somebody here from that village or from that family group to help you settle in.
27:34Help you find accommodation, help you find a job and so forth.
27:38And so these were sort of self-help groups, if you like, that were formed.
27:41And they were known as clan associations because often they referred to a particular clan name.
27:46Now some of them, of course, sort of morphed into secret societies because we had lots of secret societies in Singapore in the day.
27:55Secret?
27:56Absolutely.
27:57They were sworn to secrecy.
27:58They had all kinds of rituals they went through when they swore their allegiance to the secret society.
28:03They'd go into the jungle quite often and cut themselves and swap blood and so forth.
28:07Oh, yes.
28:08It was all quite…
28:09But what was their purpose?
28:10They were triads?
28:11Yes, they were like triads.
28:12I mean, many of them were actually involved in criminal activity of one kind or the other.
28:16Yeah.
28:17So there was a sort of subtle difference between a clan association, which had largely benevolent purposes,
28:22and secret societies, which, you know, were not quite so benevolent, should we say.
28:27And there was widespread use of opium.
28:29Oh, yes.
28:30How big a problem was that?
28:32Extremely hard to stamp out.
28:33And actually, it was a major source of revenue for the East India Company in the day.
28:38So it wasn't just that the poor coolies and the labourers were being addicted to opium and they had terrible lives as a result.
28:46But actually, it was a huge earner for the traders at the time.
28:51What point in Singapore's history did we finally see opium being stamped out?
28:56Well, really not until…
28:57Yeah, absolutely.
28:58Well, it was not until about the 1960s or even…
29:00As recently as that.
29:01Yes, really as recently as that, yeah.
29:03But yes, it was certainly one of the few pleasures in life for the labourers in the day.
29:08Who had a very, very hard existence, obviously.
29:10Very hard existence, yeah.
29:11I mean, we use the term coolie and it literally means bitter labour.
29:15So 100 years ago in Singapore, we were looking at really hard lives.
29:18Very hard lives.
29:19Nothing like the lives that many Singaporeans enjoy today.
29:21Oh, absolutely.
29:22It's very, very different.
29:23Now, of course, we have these beautiful streets which have been gentrified and they're, you know, full of little sort of interesting shops and restaurants and coffee shops.
29:33So a lot of the tourists and the younger Singaporeans wouldn't necessarily be aware of what these places were before.
29:39Absolutely, yeah.
29:40This is a title deed of freehold land in different parts of Singapore, so it was always…
29:50Many of the early settlers may have been poor, but for others Singapore was a land of opportunity that enabled them to reap rich rewards.
30:00One of them may well have been among the first crazy rich Asians, like a character from the book and Hollywood movie in which Singapore has a starring role.
30:12Paul Supramaniam is a descendant of the man who may have been Singapore's wealthiest and one of its most talked about inhabitants more than a century ago.
30:21Hailing from Ceylon, today's Sri Lanka, he had trained as a surveyor.
30:26Your great-great-great-uncle, Anna Malay, he was also somewhat scandalous, wasn't he?
30:33Yes, he was colourful.
30:36He was a gentleman in many senses of the word and, you know, he lived well.
30:45He never married.
30:47What we know is that he had a series of mistresses here.
30:52He was a man about town.
30:53Grand carriage.
30:54He was buying land, bidding against the British.
30:57He was showing them, you know, he was not afraid to compete with them and showing he could be as good as them.
31:02We've got a drinks cabinet, which was ordered from France, in which he kept his fine cognac.
31:12So, he's a man who liked his drink.
31:14He was a man who enjoyed the turf.
31:17And he never had children of his own.
31:19Now, that's surprising with four mistresses.
31:21So, it's often regarded as, you know, maybe there was a little bit of a curse.
31:26So, he was somebody who was colourful, but I think he was also a man of the world.
31:33So, this is a time where we are commemorating the past, the history, to try to learn how that's kind of defined us as Singaporeans and how we move forward from there.
31:44So, tell us, what did we learn from Anna Malay's legacy?
31:48Anna Malay came from Jaffna, from a place called Watakote, which is where the British set up some of the earliest educational establishments.
31:57He came here in the 1870s, and it was as a private surveyor that he's recorded to have surveyed 70 to 80% of Singapore's land.
32:07He was quite prescient in seeing the way trade flows, outflows of people, would then start realising sort of value with land as Singapore got more developed.
32:20But he also believed, I think, in Singapore's future.
32:23So, at that stage, he was one of the largest landowners in Singapore?
32:27Yes. At one stage, he owned well over two square miles of Singapore.
32:32He was the largest private landowner in the country.
32:35Just one little area that we know is named after him today, the Namli Estate, and some of the surrounding roads,
32:42that land alone today would be worth, conservatively, 70 billion US dollars upwards.
32:48That excludes some of the other land he owned.
32:55His massive estate may have been broken up, but Singapore's development is not just about advancing trade and economic growth.
33:03Here, amongst these amazing structures, it's also about safeguarding Singapore's natural assets,
33:10the city's immense biodiversity may be one of its best-kept secrets.
33:21I've been studying this for over 25 years, until today, I'm still in awe.
33:25Whenever I dive on a reef in Singapore and I see what's there, I'm always amazed at the resilience that our reefs have.
33:31And I think we are lucky today, we are on this last stretch of natural coastline in Singapore.
33:35Right ahead of us, we have seagrass area, a seagrass bed, and then when you go further out, it's the coral reef.
33:41And that's typical. You need this interconnectivity of habitats because they support each other.
33:46I'm Singaporean, I have to admit, I never knew there was coral reef here.
33:50I just assumed it was just too busy a waterway, too polluted.
33:54And, of course, corals are such fragile creatures.
33:57They are fragile, but at the same time resilient.
33:59I mean, you can imagine, corals have been around longer than even the dinosaurs.
34:04They've been here for a very, very long time, so they have longevity.
34:08So, how much have we lost over the 200 years since, obviously, industrialisation and everything else that came along with that?
34:16Well, there are a couple of reports. So, if you look at some of the scientific literature that we have,
34:22we've been studying coral reefs in Singapore for about 30 odd years.
34:25And the literature basically shows that we have lost close to about maybe 60% of our reefs.
34:30And that is something that we only started realising in the last couple of decades.
34:36So, but since then, we're trying to see what do we have left.
34:41And, surprisingly, we have lost reef area, but we don't think we have lost that much of our biodiversity.
34:47So, we still have a diverse reef community.
34:50So, of course, for us, the strategy is to see how can we protect what we have left and enhance it where we can.
34:59It's such an industrialised urban environment.
35:02I mean, here we have a big shipping port, Singapore being, of course,
35:05one of the biggest shipping ports in the world.
35:08How incredible that there should be something as fragile as coral reefs growing here.
35:14One of our best kept secrets, isn't it?
35:16It is.
35:17So, you need certain conditions for them to thrive.
35:20You need warm waters.
35:21You need suitable substrate for them to settle on.
35:24You need good oxygen.
35:25You need good water, water flow.
35:27And we have all of that.
35:28It's always been part of our natural heritage in Singapore.
35:31That's extraordinary.
35:32Of course, there was a lot more 200 years ago when the British first arrived with Sir Stamford Raffles.
35:38So, what must have the environment been like then?
35:41Interesting you mentioned.
35:42I was just reading this book.
35:44One of the best information, and recently I've been enjoying reading that, you go to all the logs,
35:50all the journals of the captains and the people who lived here, because they document what happens.
35:54So, I was reading this little log by a doctor.
35:57It's a surgeon.
35:58His name is Richard Little.
35:59And he was studying malaria in Singapore.
36:01And he thought it originated from the coral reefs.
36:04So, I think it was, if I'm not wrong, it was 1846.
36:07He did an exploration to the southern islands.
36:09And there's one little segment of what he mentioned.
36:13So, he went to Sentosa, which at that time was called Pulau Blakang Mati.
36:17And he was saying, you know, at low tide…
36:19Island behind death.
36:20Island behind death.
36:21Because people were dying from malaria-related disease.
36:23So, he was saying, if you go at low tide, you know, he says, you walk out to the edge,
36:29and almost like a kid, you know, standing on a line on a block looking down.
36:33He says, when you look into the reef, you know, you can see down.
36:36He said, I think he said, what, seven to four to nine fathoms,
36:40which is about maybe seven meters to 18 meter clarity at that time.
36:44He says, amazing coral, you know, colors that you can't even imagine and replicate on land,
36:49you know, with fish moving around.
36:50So, you can imagine this was an account from 1846.
36:53That's what our reefs were like.
36:55For the descendants of the men who travelled on these waters,
37:00these ships have been bringing things here for more than a century.
37:05Pepper, tea, spices, rubber, tin.
37:12Singapore was where things happened, bills were exchanged, money was exchanged.
37:18It was always the center of business.
37:21I love the one next to it.
37:22Iqbal Jumaboy has fond memories of his grandfather,
37:26who arrived here more recently than the others,
37:29but was lured here by what they had created, a successful and thriving port.
37:35From India's princely Kutch region of Gujarat, he made the long journey across desert and sea to arrive in Singapore.
37:45If there is such a thing as a Singapore dream, it had to be his.
37:49He didn't quite come here as a coolie or as an indentured labour or anything.
37:55He came to join his brother in business at a very young age.
37:59So, he came to Singapore now over a hundred years ago in 1916.
38:04He built a considerable business in what is, you know, you could call it trading.
38:12Today, I think the upmarket word is commodities.
38:15Rajabali's Singaporean life wasn't all easy.
38:19The fall of Singapore in 1942 during the Second World War meant he had to flee with his family to India.
38:27He also witnessed the independence of Singapore, first from the British and then from Malaya in 1965.
38:35These were tumultuous times in Singapore's recent past, with racial strife and riots,
38:41as the newly independent city struggled to go from third world to first.
38:46Along the way, he formed the Singapore Indian Chamber of Commerce and made other contributions to the city.
38:54What are some of the, maybe, life lessons that he imparted on you?
38:59You know, he was, as I said, discipline, integrity, very, very important to him.
39:10But something he didn't talk about, gratitude.
39:17There's a story about him and an old lady who lived in the house with us,
39:23an old Chinese lady whom we called Amatoa.
39:26Growing up, I didn't know who she was or why she had this exalted place in the house.
39:31And it was because in the Second World War, when he had to evacuate Singapore, he had to leave Singapore,
39:39she gathered up anything of value, hid it and kept it.
39:45And the day he returned, she said to him, here it is.
39:49And as a consequence, she lived in our house for the rest of her life.
39:54And he never said anything about it.
39:56So there was a lot to learn.
39:58I think the other things I would say are service and commitment and loyalty to what you are.
40:09And he was really clear about what we and our family are.
40:15We are Singaporean.
40:17He believed in this, the Emporium of the East idea of raffles, the melting pot before the word became used.
40:30Nobody will disagree that Singapore is a success.
40:34But let's remember Fishing Village.
40:37Let's remember in my lifetime growing up poverty, slums, farms, the fact that we had racial riots, we had religious riots.
40:53We had a country at independence without a viable hope of success, of survival.
41:03If you remember all of that, you know where you don't want to be again.
41:06Tucked away in the most unlikely part of the city, Ronnie Tan has taken me to see another part of his ancestors' story.
41:23This is an incredible place. It is truly a secret of Singapore.
41:27Nobody knew that one of the founding pioneers of Singapore, Tan Tok Singh, has his grave literally just here on the side of a hill essentially overlooking a road.
41:39This area used to be an old cemetery, a complete cemetery, and today all the graves have been exhumed except these two graves on Othram Hill.
41:51And you had to rescue these graves. They were going to build a road through it and exhumed this as well in the 60s, you said.
41:56Yeah, in the 60s.
41:59He came to Singapore to do some form of business.
42:06In fact, his early business was in food supply, knowing that Singapore had nothing to supply to this population, which was about, there were about 5,000 people already in Singapore at that time.
42:20So it was a growing population with no vegetables.
42:23Right. So he brought vegetables, fruits, poetry, all from Malacca to come down to Singapore to supply the hungry population in Singapore.
42:35At the same time, also helping to establish a hospital to cater to the poor and needy, who actually, at that time, quite widespread.
42:46You would see people suffering and dying by the streets of early Singapore.
42:50Yeah.
42:51But Tan Toxing came in to land ahead. In fact, if you were to read the March 1850 copy of the Singapore Free Press, you would have read that during the last six years or seven years of his life, he had actually bought the expenses of the funeral expenses of more than a thousand of his countrymen who died by the streets in Singapore.
43:17Yeah. So he has actually contributed a lot.
43:20Obviously, we know his legacy. The hospital now bears his name. But aside from that, what was he like as a man? Are there any sort of writings that suggest what sort of person he was?
43:34So overall, if you were to read the newspapers and reports, he was a very generous man, very kind man, and always very sympathetic to the poor and needy.
43:44Now, the story of the city's pioneers is the cornerstone of the city's rich history.
44:03They all came from different places, from different cultures, but it's this cultural and ethnic mix that gives this place its strength, and one can argue its success.
44:15The discovery of a rich history that predates the British arrival changes our understanding of this city's past.
44:25This vital mix coupled with a determination to survive has made Singapore quite possibly one of the world's most successful cities.
44:34It's given it an identity, one that I and many others here are proud to claim as our own.
44:42For a long time I think this Think of Dr.
45:04Hope is created by Spamil.
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