Transcript

[Music playing]

Jimmy
You’re listening to BiblioAsia+, a podcast produced by the National Library of Singapore. At BiblioAsia, we tell stories about Singapore’s past: some unfamiliar, others forgotten, all fascinating.

Welcome to another episode of BiblioAsia+, I’m Jimmy Yap, the editor-in-chief of BiblioAsia, a publication of the National Library. Today, we’re going to talk about the famous shrines on Kusu Island. Known in Malay as keramat, the shrines on Kusu Island made the news in April 2022 when a huge fire broke out and destroyed the structures around the shrines. Before the fire, author and researcher William L. Gibson had been doing some digging, not literally, on the people purportedly buried in the keramat. Along the way, he made some interesting discoveries. For example, while the story nowadays is that a certain Haji Syed Abdul Rahman is buried at keramat Kusu together with his wife and daughter, William found out that this story is of a relatively recent vintage. By combing through over a century’s worth of newspaper records, William has been able to trace the evolution of the story of the mysterious occupants of the shrines on Kusu. William has written about keramat Kusu in BiblioAsia recently, and he’s here today to tell us more about what he’s found. I have to clarify that the William Gibson who is with us today is not the same writer who pioneered the cyberpunk genre. Instead, this is William L. – for Lloyd – Gibson, a less famous but much more important author who wrote Alfred Raquez and the French Experience of the Far East, 1898–1906. William was awarded the Lee Kong Chian Research Fellowship by the National Library Board in 2022. During this fellowship, he studied various keramat in Singapore. So, welcome to BiblioAsia+, William.

William
Thank you, Jimmy. Thank you for having me here.

Jimmy
Okay, so let’s jump right in here. So, tell us, who exactly is buried at keramat Kusu?

William
Well, it’s an interesting question because likely the answer is no one. When you go to the island, it’s announced as Datok Kong. There’s a plaque on the island from 1917 which mentions a female Dato Nenek. These are figures within a Chinese tradition where they are nature spirits, earth spirits, which are given, or possess, I should say, a Malay identity. And that seems to be the origin of this shrine, and it’s still treated that way. Like I said, when you go to the site, the words “Datok Kong” and “Dato Nenek” are announced very prominently. And it would appear that the graves are actually shrine graves and not actual graves.

Jimmy
Ah, okay, that’s a relief. Well, I don’t really want to go to a cemetery all that often. When did these names – Haji Syed Abdul Rahman, his wife Nenek Ghalib and daughter Sharifah Fatimah – these names, when did they first appear in the historical record?

William
I first came across them in an article from 1948. That’s the first time those names appear – so basically after the Second World War. Prior to that, the names given are things, like Datuk Keramat. So when exactly these names came about, it’s hard to say but they first show up at least in the archival record after the Second World War.

Jimmy
So before that, they were just nameless?

William
Before that a lot of the descriptions in English just refer to Malay graves or the Malay holy man on the island. Chinese tradition refers to it as “Datuk” consistently before that. There’s one Chinese plaque there from 1923 that refers to her in Chinese – I don’t know the Chinese phrase, but the translation is “old fairy of Kusu”– as a kind of grandmother figure. So these Malay names came about later. It’s possible they were being used earlier. Abdul Rahman is interesting because that’s also a name that’s referenced at a second grave at Habib Noh. The name also showed up in another keramat: Kubur Panjang, which is a long grave keramat that was at Ringwood Road. When it was reinterred in 1994… That’s the name that appeared on the grave when it was reinterred at Pusara Abadi. Why that name shows up, I don’t know. It’s a fairly common Malay name, but why that one name has such power, I’m not sure.

Jimmy
It’s very interesting. So Haji Syed Abdul Rahman is apparently buried in three different places.

William
It’s hard to say if it’s the same saint kind of figure that’s being replicated, because you do see names repeated. There’s another Shaikh Ismail who shows up at several shrines throughout Singapore and Malaysia, Penang, Pulau Besar as well. As far as the mother figure, Nenek Ghalib… Ghalib is actually a male name in Arabic. But it’s very, very close to the word ghaib, which means when a holy person takes himself from the earth, they occlude themselves from this foul planet and take themselves into a kind of occlusion. That word is ghaib. And there’s a tradition of ghaib among wali and holy people.

Jimmy
Ghaib is an Arabic word?

William
I believe it’s an Arabic origin word, but in local context it means to remove yourself like this. The name Ghalib given to the mother is a male name traditionally. So maybe there is a kind of very close relation between those two.

Jimmy
Can you help us understand how has the story of the occupants of the shrine changed over time?

William
Initially, it seems like there was only one male Datuk there. In the earliest records, it’s singular; there’s not a reference in plural. In 1917, we find a plaque that was given. The shrine was built to the female, the nenek, which means grandmother, by Baba Chinese, because she brought a child to this man’s house. The relationship between this family shifts over time. Sometimes the females are the sister and the mother, sometimes it’s the wife and the mother, etc. So that’s a little unstable as well. There are a lot of stories of how they came to be on the island, which ranged from… He was a Malay fisherman who wound up dying there, along with a Chinese fisherman, which explains why there’s a Chinese shrine on the island as well. In other cases, he’s said to have been a man who was a hermit and went there to meditate on this rock out in the sea. There’s no one kind of background story to the character. To me, that doesn’t diminish the authenticity of the site. It kind of adds to it because it shows the oral traditions that have been carried on. The story that’s this prominent now is really close to the idea of racial harmony, where you’ve got a Chinese fisherman and a Malay fisherman who were shipwrecked on the island and then starved to death, etc. In some cases, they escaped due to a sort of supernatural means. But either way, there’s this idea of sworn brothers, which becomes important. The two, the Chinese and the Malay, kind of being together. And that chimes well with postcolonial ideas of racial harmony, and that’s now on a plaque at Kusu. You get off the boat, it says, you know, that this is the story. And that’s becoming kind of the official version of it. But if you look in the records, there are many, many other maybe more interesting versions that come out of it.

Jimmy
So the names – Abdul Rahman, Nenek Ghalib and Sharifah Fatimah – these start appearing, and at some point the story stops evolving. It solidifies, isn’t it?

William
Yeah, it does. This is a good point. It starts solidifying, I think, as the island becomes more of a tourist attraction. The internet doesn’t help with this. Because once these stories get kind of set, then they become cut and pasted again and again and again. And they become accepted as the main story. For this one as well, it shows up in various books about the island and things like this. Is that a good or bad thing, I don’t know. It certainly helps with the appearance of this being the grave of a particular individual in this family, as opposed to being a Datuk shrine. I think, given the fact that mostly Chinese visit this shrine, and that’s been true for a very long time, it seems to be this kind of Datuk element is still the prominent one. But when you talk about keramat as a Malay phenomenon, then the Malay aspects of this keramat come to the fore. In previous studies of keramat, it’s treated as any other Malay keramat you would find in Singapore and not just Datuk Kong. However, in studies of Datuk Kong, it’s treated as Datuk Kong.

Jimmy
For people who don’t know what is a Datuk Kong and what is a keramat, just tell us a little bit.

William
This gets really murky really fast. There’s a tradition in Malaya of these Datuk spirits as I was saying earlier who were nature spirits, and they take on Malay identities, or they possess, they come with, Malay identities. A keramat may develop, which would be a shrine grave, which then is treated as you would the grave of an actual living keramat. There’s a tradition of holy men in a Sufi tradition. Holy men who are also known as keramat. And their graves then become keramat graves. Distinguishing between a Datuk Keramat grave, which is a grave shrine, and an actual grave of a wali is almost impossible over time, because often they’ve changed. And the stories about them might alter a bit, but the fact that it looks like a grave and there’s a name associated with it would lead most people to observe it, to think it’s a grave. It’s really hard to pick those apart in historical record, unless it’s clearly a grave like Habib Noh, we know it’s a grave.

Jimmy
What’s a Datuk Kong?

William
So you have a tree or a rock that has a spirit within it, which is this Datuk spirit. And “Datuk” just means grandfather; kong means grandfather in Hokkien. So it literally makes no sense: it’s “grandfather grandfather”. But this spirit becomes popular within the community usually because it grants some kind of wishes, often to do with prosperity, things like lottery numbers, or the granting of a child, helping with ill health and this kind of thing. Over time, that shrine may develop certain accoutrements, which would make it look like a grave. The local Chinese may refer to it as Datuk Keramat. Whereas local Malay, or the local Hindu population, might look at the exact same shrine with a slightly different perspective, and it takes on different characteristics. And that happens again and again – in my research, at least – in different keramat that used to be in Singapore. These tended to be roadside shrines that were destroyed as development occurred. Kusu has been kept intact, largely because it’s not in the way of anything; you’re not gonna build a car park on top of the island. And it was decided when the island was redeveloped in the ’70s as a kind of a resort destination that they would keep the shrines because it would help with the tourist attraction. But if you want to try to say this is very clearly Datuk Keramat, this is Muslim keramat – you’re going to get sticky fast.

Jimmy
Keramat Kusu is actually quite old, isn’t it? Tell us a little bit. You’ve alluded to some of this, but how far back do we know Keramat Kusu has existed?

William
Yeah, at least to the 1840s.

Jimmy
Wow.

William
Yeah, quite some time. There was an attempt made in the 1870s to use it as a burial ground for the quarantine station that was on St John’s Island. And in the 1870s, what we call Lazarus Island was called St John’s. There was a St John’s 1 and a St John’s 2. That’s now shifted, and that’s caused some confusion in later commentators. But the idea was they were going to take people who died in the quarantine station from infectious diseases and bury them on Kusu. Why Kusu is an odd choice: there wasn’t a lot of land at the time; it was basically a granite dome. Where you would have those burials is unclear, but apparently they began taking place. And the local Chinese community protested this because it was polluting the sacred space. A letter was published in The Straits Times: a man wanted to purchase that island to protect it. He wrote a letter saying that we’ve been going there for the last 30-odd years, which would put it back to the 1840s, and he alludes to both the Datuk Keramat and the Tua Pek Kong temple as being present. So at least to the 1870s when he wrote the article and the 1840s if he is to be believed.

Jimmy
Wow, okay, so that’s pretty old. So, tell us, for the people who’ve never been to Kusu Island, what would they see? What can they expect when they land on the island?

William
The Kusu you visit today has been radically changed. In the 1970s, it was surrounded by landfill, and it increased in size by more than two-thirds. It used to just be this granite dome, a kind of mudflat and a rocky kind of projection, which is where the Tua Pek Kong temple is. And then the shrine, the keramat, at the top of the dome. Now when you show up, much more space has been added. They’ve tried to turn it into a kind of holiday destination or a day trip place with little cabanas located around artificial beaches, and it functions that way. I’ve gone there and I see, especially foreign tourists, I think, coming in and going as a kind of offshore beach resort day trip. [The shrines] are completely open – you can go in and visit them. During the ninth month, which is usually around October time in the Gregorian calendar, there is a major festival that happens there. And it’s very, very crowded. It’s probably an interesting time to visit but it’s also the most crowded. Usually when you go there, it’s completely empty.

Jimmy
When people go to the shrine, do they first stop at the Tua Pek Kong Temple and then go up to the shrine? Is there an order?

William
There is. Traditionally, you visit Tua Pek Kong first and then go up to the shrine on the top of the hill. And that completes the circuit.

Jimmy
Is it significant that it’s on top of a hill?

William
Yes. That’s important for the Ninth Festival because traditionally, one, you visit your ancestors’ graves and, two, you would visit a high place. This is coming from the mainland, a very old tradition. The topography here in Kusu has that, so you could visit the Tua Pek Kong, which is basically at sea level, and then ascend to the keramat, which is a nature spirit, the Datuk Keramat at the top of the dome, before coming back down, and kind of completing the cycle. This pattern happens elsewhere in Singapore – at Pulau Sajahat, which used to exist off of Pulau Tekong, which is now part of the landfill there. Same situation: it was a granite dome. And there was a Tua Pek Kong temple and a Malay keramat, which shows up in old maps. Interestingly, it happens at Habib Noh. There’s a very old Tua Pek Kong temple near Habib Noh going back at least to the 1820s. And then there’s Habib Noh, which is on top of a hill, right next to it. And that used to be right on the coast, before the landfill happened. Even the British were putting in landfills. But in the old days, that was right on the sea. Also, all three of these would have been both navigation marks and shipping hazards, which is another interesting connection, because it would show that propitiating these sites may be a way both to mark them in a kind of oral mapping tradition as a sea mark, and also to remind people that they’re dangerous – you know, ships can crash there. So all of these traditions kind of begin to overlap.

Jimmy
Why do shrines flourish on Kusu Island?

William
It’s hard to say. It becomes difficult to talk about Datuk Kong completely separate from Tua Pek Kong. The actual forms of devotion are very similar. The kinds of offerings that are made are very similar. There have been studies of Tua Pek Kong that relate it to the Earth God. There’s some belief that he was based on a real person who was in a triad in Penang, but there’s a clear relation between Tu Di Gong, which is a Chinese Earth God, and Tua Pek Kong, and the Prosperity God. Tua Pek Kong’s kind of in-between. He has elements of the Prosperity God and Tu Di Gong from the Earth God become part of that. And it’s very common to find Datuk Kong near Tua Pek Kong, often within the same temple complex or sacred space. If you look at those three examples I was just mentioning, Kusu’s probably the best. Why would you have earth gods here, and what relation to the sea? If you think of travelling on the sea, safety is the earth. The sea is the risk, the sea is the hazard, the earth is the safety. And propitiating the Earth God to protect you at sea actually makes a lot of sense. There was a story that in the old days, Chinese junks in this region would have two idols on them. One was the Queen of Heaven, and the other one was always a Tua Pek Kong. So if you look at something like Kusu, which was a navigation mark as well as a shipping hazard, putting a Tua Pek Kong temple there then makes a lot of sense because it becomes a kind of safe harbour. Over time, it develops. Again, this idea of being connected to the Prosperity God: it connects to good luck, prosperity. Good luck while you’re travelling at sea, for those who don’t travel at sea, it just becomes a point of prosperity. This is then connected to Datuk Kong: it’s there as a kind of localised nature spirit, whereas Tua Pek Kong is a more generalised nature spirit. At least that’s my reading of the situation.

Jimmy
I grew up in Singapore. I never knew that Tua Pek Kong was actually like a Singapore/Malaysia phenomenon.

William
He’s completely unique. He doesn’t exist in mainland China. Unlike Mazu or the other imported shen (gods), he arose in the 19th century in Penang. There have been a lot of studies on that because of the uniqueness of it. Datuk Kong is also unique to Malaya. You would need both the Chinese and the Muslim traditions merging to create Datuk Kong. Whereas Tua Pek Kong is this merging of a kind of localised spirit: the Tu Di Gong and the Prosperity God. A very famous Tua Pek Kong temple in Loyang, near Loyang Valley… There’s a Datuk Kong shrine grave within that temple, next to Ganesha, which gets a lot of attention because of, again, the multicultural issue and the kind of syncretic religion happening. And they’re a good example of that going on.

Jimmy
Is it true to say that Singapore has more than its fair share of these very syncretic traditions. You have, for example, near Waterloo Street. You have the Hindu temple and Chinese temple next to each other, and the Chinese people sort of hop over to the Hindu temple and there’s an urn for joss sticks. This syncretism – is that unique to Singapore and Malaya?

William
No, it’s not unique, I think, to Singapore and Malaya, but this particular mix is what makes it unique. You get the Islam, Taoism and Hinduism coming in, which have a lot of overlapping – traditional Islam, I should stress, the kind of Sufi Islam that first came to this part of the world – between modes of worship. As far as shrines, nature shrines, local holy men, the graves of local holy men… You find this in India, you find it with Muslim traditions that come through India, you find it in Taoism, with animism being very prominent. These things, put close together, kind of naturally blend. It’s understandable why that would happen, and it makes it interesting. Because it comes from the ground up. Whereas the main religions that kind of create the grounds for that come from on high… Very structured hierarchical traditions, you have people who are in positions of power, whether they’re imams or priests of some kind. Whereas the shrine is a community event: it happens on the ground, there may be a caretaker, there may be multiple caretakers; you have people from all the different religions who may view it slightly differently. But the tree, let’s say, remains sacred whether you’re a Hindu, a Muslim or a Taoist. Eventually, people build shrines that start taking on elements of each other.

Jimmy
It’s fascinating. You’ve been to Keramat Kusu both before and after the fire. When you went after the fire, what kind of damage did the fire do? What did you see?

William
It was catastrophic. There was footage available on local TV of the shrine before it was cleaned up immediately after the fire. The fire basically destroyed everything that wasn’t concrete or brick or stone. There had been decades of material built up: various caretakers adding to it. It was very jerry-built, unusual for Singapore. You see this kind of thing in Malaysia and Indonesia, but in Singapore everything is very structured and regulated and all that. This space really had a kind of improvised kind of sense to it.

Jimmy
You mean, like, shelters?

William
Yeah, canopies and stairs and just different elements like this that were built out of wood, clearly scrap wood that people had brought out. It was all painted yellow; it was very lovely. There was also a lot of accoutrement, like cloth coverings, flags. You had a lot of burning incense sticks and candles and things. There are monkeys on the island. It seems almost inevitable at some point that a candle would get knocked over and it would ignite. And the thing just went up like a torch. There were reports of explosions. I believe the caretaker had a little kind of space behind the shrine where he would hang out, and he may have had a propane hot ring back there to cook noodles or something. And those propane tanks probably were what explains the explosions. And they put the fire out fairly quickly – it was a rainy night, thankfully, that helped. It destroyed all that material that had built up over the decades that were there, and it left the pieces that had been made of concrete, like I said, and brick and stone.

Jimmy
Are we able to see new stuff because of the fire?

William
Well, we were able to see old stuff which had been hidden by the layers of accretion that had built up over the years. Unfortunately, the 1917 plaques, which were in Jawi and Baba Malay, were very badly damaged. And they’ve been kind of poorly restored. Fortunately, we have photographs of them – but before they were wrecked – because they’re important. The 1923 plaque in Chinese, I think, was of a sturdier material like marble, as opposed to chunam, or granite, maybe. That’s actually maintained fairly well; it’s been restored fairly well. What the fire really showed you was the shrine that was built a hundred years ago in that 1917, 1921 restoration. The concrete altar spaces at the heads of the graves, the chimney for burning joss paper, which we see in photographs from the ’20s and is still there – that survived it. The pillars that were holding up the canopy all survived. And they’ve all now been rebuilt. They vowed that they would get the thing rebuilt in time for the Ninth Month Festival this year, which I think gave them about seven months. Given that timeframe, and given the fact – keep in mind, this is on state land and it’s funded by donations. So given all those constraints, they actually did a great job rebuilding it. Essentially, it is a replica of what was there before, but without all of this extra material that had built up over time. So you can see into the back of the altars. And what you can see on the female altars – there were two of them especially – are these stones, these mounds, that were there, which are very common in Datuk shrines. We also came across a batu nisan, a gravestone, in the back of one of these altars, which I had not seen before, because they’ve been covered with cloth and kind of curtained away, basically. And that was now very open. There’s a photograph of that in the BiblioAsia article. After making correct offerings and propitiation, I lifted the cloth on that gravestone and found an inscription on it in Jawi, which matches the description that had been on the plaque. It says “The Grave of Dato Nenek”, which kind of confirms that this is indeed a shrine grave that was built there.

Jimmy
But do we know how old that one was?

William
Well, if it’s as old as the plaque, it goes back to 1917. There’s no way of knowing when that stone was placed. And there’s the stub of the foot. Malay graves have two stones: one at the head and one at the waist. And the stub had been broken off maybe many, many years ago. But you can find the stub of that now as well, which had also been covered previously. So that was very exciting. And it wouldn’t have happened had it not been for this horrible fire. And it’s still being rebuilt. There was a temporary marquee put up for cover from the sun during the ninth month. A lot of the burnt debris, especially the metal debris, which would have to be carted away, has not been. It’s just been kind of pushed down to the hillside. So clearly there’s more work that needs to be done to complete the rebuild. But the shrine opened while I was there recently. A Chinese family came through and made offerings. A Malay couple came through who were sightseers and seemed a little mystified by what was going on. I chimed in, tried to explain to them this was Datuk Kong and all this, and it’s not really a Malay grave. And the husband said, ‘Well, that’s really disappointing.’ You know, oh well.

Jimmy
I’ve never been to Kusu Island during the major festival. I mean, I went to Kusu Island as a kid, but I’ve never been there during the major festival. Does it get really crowded?

William
Yeah. I haven’t been there during the festival either. I wanted to go this year. A friend of my family traditionally goes, and this year they chose not to. I was going to tag along with them. But, yeah, it’s remarkably crowded and always has been. There are photographs going back to the ’50s, at least. You can see just these massive amounts of people crammed onto the island.

Jimmy
For neophytes among us, tell us what are the rules about going to Kusu Island. Do you have any recommendations?

William
If you’re going on a pilgrimage to the shrines, then there are people at the Tua Pek Kong Temple who can guide you through the correct stations that you need to offer. There are numbers posted there. The same is true at the keramat: there are numbers posted. You can leave a donation in the donation box and take the incense and just offer it in the correct order. As far as any rules… No, again, what’s attractive is the kind of folk religion. And I think you can kind of do it your way. If you’re a Taoist, you’re gonna follow Taoist rules. That’s a sight. If you’re a Muslim who believes in visiting keramat, and not all Muslims believe this is correct behaviour, but if you are, then you’re going to treat it like a Muslim shrine and follow those kinds of things. If you’re someone like me who comes in as both a foreigner and not a Muslim nor a Taoist, I light incense and I think good thoughts, and that seems to be okay.

Jimmy
And people when they go to these keramat, they’re usually asking for something, aren’t they? What typically do you ask for?

William
Usually this one was known for granting children. So women who couldn’t have children and families that wanted more children would go to the keramat and ask for a child. I don’t know if that still happens actually. It’ll be an interesting study to find out if people still do that. Now it’s known for 4D numbers.

Jimmy
There’s a picture of this yellow rock with 4D numbers. How does that work?

William
I don’t know how it works, man, but people say it does. Datuk Kong is known for being good places to get luck with 4D numbers.

Jimmy
So you have a number, you write it down, and then you light incense or whatever, and maybe you’ll get lucky.

William
Maybe you’ll get lucky. I’ve tried and not been lucky. But came close. One number I got was one digit off. I was one digit away from being marginally more wealthy.

Jimmy
You need faith.

William
I did it wrong, clearly. You see, I should have followed whatever rules I’m supposed to follow.

Jimmy
Let me ask you: you’ve been researching keramat for quite a while now. You’ve written about the German Girl Shrine on Pulau Ubin for BiblioAsia. And you spent your fellowship with the library researching 50 shrines around Singapore. Where did this interest in shrines and folk religion come about?

William
All my life, I’ve been interested in kind of weird and esoteric things. And folk religion is especially attractive. I think because there’s an element of folk religion. This is true all over the world. One, I grew up in southern California where there’s a lot of Central American folk religion, which is a Catholic base that picks up local deities, not that dissimilar to what happens here. The attraction is a kind of street sensibility that comes from these things, an almost punk sensibility. It’s not an alternate to larger religious systems. And it’s not given as a kind of opposition, like a kind of Satanism or something, which is intentionally going the opposite direction. Rather, it picks up a real kind of folk tradition, which is resistant to these larger systems, I think. It gives a space where people can ask for these things from a higher power without necessarily subjecting themselves to the hierarchy that exists within more structured religions. So that’s very attractive to me. The other thing that’s attractive is just they’re exotic and weird and wonderful. And that’s true for the Catholic shrines where I grew up as much as here. It’s not an Orientalism kind of fascination. It’s just really fascination with this kind of mysticism that exists.

Jimmy
You’ve written books, you’ve done your fellowship. What are you working on now?

William
My fellowship, really, was foundational. It was not meant to be definitive, even though it was huge – it’s over 190,000 words, over 1,000 manuscript pages. It’s a massive study. It’s the biggest study of keramat ever undertaken, I think, anywhere as far as I’m aware.

Jimmy
If someone’s interested in reading this, where can they find it?

William
It is available as a PDF, both at my academia.edu site. There’s another available version from the Urban Explorers of Singapore who’ve posted it to their Facebook page. So I think if you try to find it online, it’s not that hard to get to. And it’s available freely. It’s supposed to be, because, again, it’s foundational: I want feedback and I want people to correct things. Maybe I missed a source, maybe a date is wrong. Maybe there are other versions of a story that I wish should be included. So it’s good that it becomes foundational in this way. What I’m doing now is I’m extracting from that to publish in articles like BiblioAsia, my work on Kusu. My work on Radin Mas I’m trying to get published elsewhere. I’m eventually looking to getting this packaged as a book. I think there has never been a book-length study of keramat in Singapore. There’s been just unpublished dissertations and things, but never a book. And I think it’s worthy to put it out, as more keramat are disappearing.

Jimmy
And you’re a writer. You’ve written about Alfred Raquez. Obviously, you research as well. But you also write fiction.

William
I do. There were three. There’s a trilogy of noir, set in the 1890s in Malaya. Each book has a lot of local mysticism in there. I tried to bring in folk religion into my fiction as well. Those are available from Monsoon Books. The last one was published, I think, in 2017.

Jimmy
How would we find them?

William
You can get them on any online bookstore, the big ones – Amazon, etc. For a while they were for sale at Kinokuniya in paperback.

Jimmy
What are their titles?

William
Singapore Red, Singapore Yellow and Singapore Black. I call it the Malayan trilogy; I might be the only person calling it that, but it sounded good to me. The publisher is Monsoon Books, so you can get it on the Monsoon Books website as well.

Jimmy
Thank you, William. We’ve now come to my favourite part of the podcast where I ask very stupid questions. And I don’t want to give you any time to think about the answers. So, very quickly: which historical figure would you like to have dinner with?

William
Farquhar.

Jimmy
Because we can make fun of Raffles all night. What do you think is the most underrated or intriguing period in Singapore’s history?

William
For me, the 1890s, the very end of the 19th century, is a very interesting period because it’s moving into a kind of modernity, as far as technology and a lot of what we consider as kind of the modern world, as far as telcoms, electricity, automobiles start showing up in the 1890s. And you can really see a transition from a kind of frontier experience here to the kind of modern cosmopolitan world that we associate with it.

Jimmy
What books are on your nightstand right now?

William
Right now, I’m reading the third book in William Burroughs’s Cities of the Red Night trilogy. It’s called The Western Lands. It’s a novel.

Jimmy
Wow, okay. I’m gonna say a word to you. You’ll have to respond very quickly. Neuromancer!

William
When I was in college, because of my name… I had a professor who studied postmodern science fiction, and I liked him. He was a good professor, but he was just merciless with me in class because of my name. But I like it, I like William Gibson’s novels. I mean, he’s fantastic.

Jimmy
History is…

William
Old.

Jimmy
Okay, all right. BiblioAsia is…

William
Underrated. It’s gotten better over the years, and I think as it’s moving into this kind of digital era, it’s going to improve. It fills a very important niche in Singapore, which is looking at history without coming from a kind of exclusive heritage position. It gives a lot of room for exploration of these historical topics, without necessarily shoehorning them into this kind of master narrative, which is a kind of superficial narrative, which is put forward a lot. It’s impressive that BiblioAsia is allowed to function in this way.

Jimmy
And that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do. I mean, I haven’t been able to say it, but that’s exactly [it]. I haven’t been bashing about blindly. I had a plan, and you have just stated out that plan. Thank you.

William
Let the foreigner take the bullet, my friend.

Jimmy
All right, William, thank you very much for joining us on BiblioAsia+. You can read William’s article on Keramat Kusu and German Girl Shrine, and check out his great photos, on the BiblioAsia website at BiblioAsia.nlb.gov.sg. And if you want to read more about what William has been up to, you can go to his website, which is at WilliamLGibson.com. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast and the BiblioAsia newsletter. Thank you for joining me on BiblioAsia+.