Answer revealed! Right after I visited the Singapore Discovery Centre in the morning yesterday accompanied by a lunch, I went to explore the Yunnan Garden and Chinese Heritage Centre in the afternoon. They are both part of the campus for Nanyang Technological University (NTU). I do came to this campus before few years ago to check out a very interesting building called ‘The Hive’ which is a learning hub for the university. The architecture of the building is very unique as it resembles very much like dim sum baskets.
Yunnan Garden was built in the 1950s and is an integral part of the campus. The historical arch gate ‘Jurong West Antah’ which has served as a symbolic entrance to Nanyang University in the past is located in this garden. By the way, Nanyang University was founded in 1956 and later merged with University of Singapore in 1980 to form the National University of Singapore (NUS). Currently, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) occupies the site.
The garden also features manmade waterfall (was not fully turned on during my visit unfortunately), pathways in geometric patterns, pavilions in traditional Chinese architecture, beautiful greenery, waterscapes and other heritage landmarks. I also quickly checked out the connecting Nanyang Lake. After that, I walked across over to the Chinese Heritage Centre to visit two exhibitions located in the second floor of the building. The building also houses a research centre and a library. The main facade of the iconic building is under renovation though, hence not a good time for an exterior picture.
The current exhibitions taking place in the centre are the ‘Chinese More Or Less Exhibition’ and the ‘Nantah Pictorial Exhibition’. Through the first exhibition, visitors are probed into thinking such notions of ‘How Chinese am I?’, ‘In what sense am I Chinese?’ and ‘What does it mean to be Chinese?’. Three interesting sections make up this exhibition – Self, Other Self and Other Than Chinese. This particular exhibition indeed gave me some interesting insight and identity awareness as I am an oversea Chinese myself and on top of that, I can’t read or write Chinese characters (can only speak basic Chinese).
The second exhibition is much smaller and it tells the history of the founding of Nanyang University (shortly known as Nantah) and its development over the years until the 1980 when it merged with University of Singapore as mentioned earlier. Still it is very informative and nice to know more about this university. By the way, admission to the exhibitions is quite strange here; you to have to pay a deposit of SGD50 to obtain the access card to get into these exhibitions. Once you are finished, you hand in the card and you can collect back your 50 dollars. I was the only one visitor during my entire tour of the two exhibitions that took about one and a half hour. Time to head home right after and it was raining as expected.
So by now, I have visited the Indian Heritage Centre, Eurasian Heritage Gallery and the Chinese Heritage Centre. I have to wait for two more years when the Malay Heritage Centre is reopened for me to complete my visit of the heritage centres of all the four main races in Singapore. The Malay Heritage Centre is closed since 2022 for major revamp works and will only be reopened in 2026.
