THE PAST IN THE PRESENT : THE CASE OF KEONG SAIK ROAD

Abstract

Chinatown is a place of contradiction. It is always in a flux, where everything seems to be in a transitory state. It is perhaps apt to call Chinatown a liminal area, whereby everything is neither here nor there, from the status of the immigrant people staying there, to the shophouses in the middle of conservation, to the informal sector that finds a type of political space in Chinatown. Indeed, Chinatown "communities" are also in a state of flux. Due to space-time compression, people are getting displaced in time and space. In this, communities find their social-glue in more abstract terms like the nation-state or the common remembrance of an old-way of doing things. There is a move away from the territorial communities, the extreme end of long-term, place-based communities to the other extreme end of short-lived, spontaneous communitas. Social relationships change as a result, with relations moving from face-to-face relationships to "imagined" relationships. Inherent in this is the idea of alienation where people start to feel nostalgic about the "good old days". As Chinatown is deemed to be a site of common heritage, it is packaged now as a place for the consumption of nostalgia.