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Commemorating Our Ah Gong with tanpiaheng.blogspot.com

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This week, we honour the birthday of our Ah Gong - the Patriarch of our Bedok kampong house, and the grandfather whose life continues to shape ours in ways both seen and unseen. Born in 1878, he purchased our kampong home in 1954, giving our family a place we would cherish for the next twenty years. Ah Gong was a man of quiet discipline and unwavering duty. His work ethic was exemplary, and his service as a volunteer corps member during World War I remains one of the most meaningful chapters of our family history. His name appears in two published books documenting the early contributions of the Chinese community in Singapore. Within those pages sits this 1907 photograph - a proud moment capturing his marksmanship as part of a rifle ‑ shooting team, a testament to his skill, commitment, and sense of responsibility. It took us several months to piece together a blog that tells his story - how he stood for the defence of Singapore, how he contributed to its economic life in those e...
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A Home That Stays With You - at Jalan Greja kampong

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A home is not simply a place you stay. It is a place that stays with you. For Marhamah Sapandi and Saadiah Ahmad , and their families, seeing this 1987 photograph taken by their granduncle Tok Noh, affectionally called ‘Atok’ by family - who revisited their former house to witness this demolition (the late Tok Noh would cycle over after Friday prayers each week despite having moved away)   - felt like watching a chapter of their lives being unstitched before their very eyes. The places where sunlight once fell into their rooms, the corners and sitting areas where they rested and dreamed, the kitchen where the aroma of meals cooked over gas stoves with tanks from Chop Bun Siong drifted through the air, the garden and open spaces where children played and laughed, the evenings when hush and stillness made everyone feel safe - all these carried the imprints of decades of memory that now yielded to a quiet kind of grief. Yes, the families - and all those from Jalan Greja and ...
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The corner Coffee Shop at Bedok Corner

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At one end of the row of shophouses - closest to the small access road that once led into the homes of our Bedok kampong - stood a coffee shop that held a treasury of memories for so many of us who lived there. Facing the open carpark of the Bedok Rest House and the old Long Beach Seafood restaurant, the coffee shop sat shoulder‑to‑shoulder with a mama stall that sold the familiar snacks and sundry items of kampong life. It even rented out and sold books and magazines - the humble predecessor of what later became Jodhi Book Store at Marine Terrace. For TJ Puar , this place was more than a neighbourhood landmark. His late father rented the entire coffee shop - believed to be No.   6 Bedok Road - from 1974 to 1983. TJ was just fourteen then, watching the rhythms of kampong commerce unfold from the inside. The stalls within were sublet to various hawkers: a distant relative who sold bao , and an elderly couple who ran a porridge stall at the front. But the star attraction was unm...
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Our Grandfather's clock - going strong still in 2026

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In 1954, when our family first moved into our Bedok kampong house, our grandfather brought this Junghans pendulum clock and hung it in the living room - its Westminster chime becoming part of the daily rhythm of kampong life for the next twenty years, chiming every 15 minutes. When we moved to our new HDB flat in Marine Parade in 1974, the clock followed us, carrying his quiet presence into a new home. The wooden body was replaced in the 1970s after powderpost beetle infestation, but the original movement still beats faithfully, despite some rust here and there. This week’s wind up proves it again: seventy two years on, the chime still rings true - steady, bright, and strangely soothing. To this writer it gives a feeling that all is well. A simple object, perhaps. Yet for us, it remains a living thread to our grandfather, to the old house, and to the soundscape of a kampong long gone but never ever forgotten. What have you in your home now that still reminds you of your treasured pa...
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A Bedok Girls' and Boys' School Teachers' Day Tribute

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November 1962. PSLE had just ended, and our cousin - then 12 - was preparing to leave her alma mater, Bedok Girls’ School , after six formative years. On her final day, her form teacher, Mrs   Bandara , handed her a small personal photograph, accompanied by a tender handwritten note on the back. It was a simple gesture, yet one filled with affection and sincerity. Our cousin has kept that photo ever since - more than six decades later - a quiet testament to how deeply it mattered. That gentle act speaks volumes about who Mrs   Bandara was as a teacher. She was not someone who viewed teaching as merely a job. Instead, she embraced it as a calling - guiding, mentoring, and caring for the girls under her charge, sending them off from their primary‑school “ nest ” with hope and encouragement as they stepped into the wider world. This Teacher’s Day 2026 , we honour all former teachers of both Bedok Girls’ School and Bedok Boys’ School - especially Mrs   Bandara - who devoted thei...
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Circa 1950 - Upper East Coast Road, Singapore

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Built in   1902 to link Katong and   Bedok , this laterite stretch of East   Coast   Road - later aptly renamed Upper   East   Coast   Road - hugs the shoreline in a coastal scene lift. The swaying coconut palms lend the scene its gentle coastal rhythm, evoking the serenity of Singapore’s seaside roads before reclamation reshaped the land. Captured around   1950 by Tony   Holt of the   RAF   Changi   Association , this photograph brings to life the road that once led toward Bedok   Corner , now lovingly colourised in soft mid‑century hues . We are deeply grateful for the permission to share this image with our followers and readers — a glimpse of the calm we cherish in our Bedok   heritage   memoriam .
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A Document Kept Through Time

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We recently came across a beautifully handwritten Jawi note dated 30 August 1946, tucked inside our grandfather’s old folder from our Bedok kampong house - a folder our late father continued to keep long after we moved away. None of us had ever seen this document before. It surfaced only after Dad’s passing, as though it had been waiting quietly for its moment to be remembered. The text appears to be a formal Islamic legal declaration, likely touching on matters such as inheritance, guardianship, or the transfer of rights. Its B.M.A. (British Military Administration) stamp places it firmly in the immediate postwar period, confirming that it was officially recognised at a time when Malaya was rebuilding its civic and administrative structures. We do not know who the individuals named in the document were, nor how this paper came into our grandfather’s possession. But its survival feels meaningful. The document has now been donated to the National Library Board’s Archives, where it can b...
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