This is ninety: nine percent, invisible, I'm roman Mars Nineteen, fifty nine. After nearly a century and a half of british colonial rule, the people of Singapore. Took the first step towards their independence. They ve, to run their own internal government. Since british colonial was restored after the Second World WAR, a series of colonial administrators have food and water in our lives. Times have changed and worth Jerry, decided or running the abbess of Singapore. It was joyous moment, but they inherited a difficult situation, all about Better and fuller life, but arrives in the standard of living of our people cannot. I agree with that overnight Singapore was bombed heavily by Japan during the Second World war.

Again by the allies after Singapore, fell to the Japanese, Its infrastructure was in ruins, including the port which had brought foreign goods and a multi ethnic multi. Lingual population of people to the ILO For centuries, no port meant no job poverty was rampant. Most of the islands residents were living in uncommitted, makeshift houses crammed into added villages throughout the island. If you dont know the country Singapore is tiny today, the entire nation is really just one city. It takes less than forty five minutes to drive across the island with traffic, but in the nineteen fifties there were very Yes and those villages were known as campongs a local mullay word. That's producer, Katy, Thornton she's, a full right, National Geographic fellow and has spent the last four months in Singapore. Compunction. These were strong and close net.

The living wasn't easy: multiple families, my chair, one toilet or one kitchen, many of them I'm pungs relied on gas for lighting and cooking, and most houses were made of super flammable palm leaves or wood with roofs made of sheet metal. The government, to raise the quality of life for the people. They rebuilt the port and created factory jobs. They made all the kids, learn English, so that Singapore could feel united under one language, but the biggest undertaking of all was to get the people out of thatched roof huts and into modern house it and one of them these challenges would be doing it with extremely limited land space in ninety six they formed the housing and Development Board or HD b and just five years later they had housed, four hundred thousand people well overboard. Thousand people, water, Singapore's population, I've been be hotter in the last five years. In these bright, modern Flanders,

nowhere in the world, except in Russia with Germany is the re housing faster than in Singapore. The hd be achieved this pretty amazing feat. By going vertical when planning for a growing population. Most urban planners expand their cities outward boy but in land, Limited Singapore that is not an option two days imports. Tallest public housing buildings are fifty stories high, the tall in the world, but from the vote beginning the house. In Development Board went vertical the people Nepal, demand high standards of their governments and they are prepared to work hard and a cave high skill, but then the sky is the limit. Singapore. In writing the one whole mark of a great civilized communities, magnificent buildings plus comfortable workers, whose today, Singapore is the third richest nation in the world and eighty

percent of Singapore and still live in these tall cement. Hd be flats, there's about a thousand public housing buildings on the island and new flat. Are going up all the time. It's not that let's see, futuristic Singapore Skyline, you see and movies like crazy, rich Asians. The buildings are tall and cement with housing block numbers painted boldly down the sides, helping Napoleon's locate themselves in the monotonous sea of nearly identical buildings throughout the nineteen Sixtys and Seventys HD, be public housing development sprung up all over the country. Coo Ee, is a historian in Singapore. She was born and nineteen sixty six and has lived and HTTP flats for most of her life. She where's watching this housing crop up everywhere on the island. They weren't all designed exactly the same, but pretty close these I style these different, but

doesn't change, is basically everything become like a match box. So you're leaving in the little hole, incite concrete structure people moved into these drab concrete towers allotted amidst the vibe of their old communities. What they called the compound Spirit, There was a lot to like about their new homes like having their own bathrooms kitchens, with electricity and plumbing a place where they can have their own private, see a place where they don't get flooded every time it rains you know, and so people moved in and the government kept building and there beating just keep getting higher over the years. But despite the privacy, the architecture of forty can't didn't always feel alone. As a kid growing up in hd be flats, she remembers, seeing shadowy figures floating above her bed. She asked her mom about it. So when I was very young. I told my mom, I see why is it that is

he'd, thou images above me and then she said silly girl. This used to be a cemetery of the four apartments e who has lived in two of I have been on old cemeteries that might seem bad luck but in Singapore, where land is scarce. It's now an unlikely for apartment buildings to be built on land. That was graveyards not too long ago. Building on top of a graveyard, has its complications and in one cemetery called Peck scenting. The new housing development disrupted more than just the dead it disrupt, a way of life. Yes, I am a pond Kuan Yew King, going up in this these and Sixtys Mr Klein was a city boy, but his dad would bring him eight miles from their home near Singapore's, growing city centre to the overgrown rain forest of Peck hunting cemetery to pray at the graves of their family and friends, When I was a kid, I was young boy

wandering around the hillsides walking through the grass. We we say prayers. We may offerings mister on family was chinese and they believed that if the data were well taken care of it not only meant peace for the departed, it could also bring direct benefits, the descendants so Mr Kwan kept going ass. He got older than going to amateur it wasn't just a family affair. It was a community funds chinese migrants to Singapore said social service organisations to help take care of their community from the cradle to the grave and beyond MR quantities. Friends, would wander the untamed hillsides to the graves of their long dead community members. There they burn incense and fake paper money things they thought but the dead might need in the afterlife and then they just hang out at the grave. So after the or the prayers I said, and done Lovely meal of roles, park rose doc

and so on, and it before even I've been weak is look to defend. Actually, when you hear, MR and talk about going to the cemetery. You start to get why he enjoyed it. Isn't the change from the congestion and cement of the city, It wasn't just a natural scenery that was impressive. The tombs or amazing people would spend it fortune on big, elaborate memorials with stone, lions and meticulous carvings pixels. Hang cemetery was sprawling with these huge ornate, tombs lease at least thirty mucus, but they meet this brought. This issue is about thirty. Three yards Thirty metres wide, a two might that could easily a bigger than a three bedroom hd be apartment today and Mr Kwan describing just a single family grave. On top of that text, something had a lot of shared graves, one big tombstone. What like a huge area where members of a professional or social group or buried together at Peck, something

replied for all sorts of groups. We have elected the Palace Association, the pop sellers associate the uprising. As a the man, you name it, ideal. Chinese tomb is supposed to be on a hill so that the fortunes of the deceased can run down to future generations in China, in the chinese diaspora towards hill. And cemetery were pretty much interchangeably San of pack some thing means: Hill, the names as late to pavilions on the Jade Hills, a reference to the graveyard, twelve covered structures where visitors could. Best and eat after making offerings at the graves missed Khan remembers these pavilions well, but that doesn't mean His way around the graveyard, but salvos grand tombs, The cemetery was enormous. Three hundred twenty four acres, that's about four times the size of Disneyland and a country, half the size of our sometimes,

the driver of the bars or the lorry bringing stable Lucy's. We did you turn around in a circle. We have to get something. Religious, cultural and guide us when, Mr One says they would get villagers to come out and guide them. He doesn't mean people from a nearby village. He means people lived in the graveyard, so people work living among the tombstones is incorrect. Yes, yes, yes, tat! Something was, in fact a cemetery full of life. It was a sign sufficient village that began almost a hundred years before Mr Kwan started visiting on members of Singapore is growing. Cantonese community realized they needed more space to bury their dead. They put this land on what was then the edge of town and as the cemetery grew so did the village and active graveyard meant there were jobs to be had graves had to be dug tombstones. Carved refreshment sold to mourners. So people built that drive home.

Right there among the graves, this action, happened in a lot of big cemeteries, sprawled across the tiny island, the living just kind of lived belongs the dead but Nineteen seventies, Peck, scenting village had almost two thousand resonance. There was a large chinese style gate at the entrance to the village, the village at its own clinic. Mean in stores with that and ten ruse there was a popular coffee shop and a some injury and, and Many of the theater worked at a under sauce factory in the village, livestock was reared kid. Residents worked at a soy sauce factory in the village livestock, was reared kids were born and families raised, among the graves say one that buy toys that I use Hang around a coffee shop run around play, play with models gamble. That's Mr Lee he'd just goes Lee and he grew up and pack something village,

kids anywhere else on the island. He climbed fruit trees and played hopscotch with his neighbors. His house was just a few houses over from the nearest gravestones leave wasn't afraid to be living so close to the dead, but he did here go stories. You now yet Thou London, bad tallow. It does, but we are worse use. I was entirely, but my older people said to sell it. Every one of them said obviously got here. Goes there everywhere, you golf clubs. Are we about quickly? Have dollar There was a shallow well at pavilion, three where it was rumoured. Many people died, pulled under by what Lee calls water ghosts, a tumor prevailing five boasted. Two large stone. Lions and villagers would always complain that they came to life after dark and ate their chickens, but to me, and other villagers packs Tang was home, however,

Life in a cemetery was about to change. As the hd be built more and more housing forcing a poor growing population, they realized they needed more land. The prime minister explained it will be done it. Not lend while leaving the debt must give way to the living in nineteen. Seventy three: the government said there being no more ground burial at over seventy cemeteries, including Pakistan thing by nineteen. Seventy four of those who died could only be buried at the single. More sterile government run cemetery, sixteen miles from the city centre or for a fraction of the price they could be cremated their ashes scattered or stored in a small earn. These a huge cultural changes, not everyone was happy, but after the war and the nations independence, the lot of Singapore clients were willing to make sacrifices for the country's development. They knowledge that burying peep

in big graves, just wasn't sustainable monotony island, also, they kind of had to go along with the changes Singapore, has really limited freedom of speech. So when the government tells you to do something, you don't have much choice and seventy eight had happened, the text Hang Cemetery Association received a letter from the government saying a new high rise. Public housing development was going to be built on the cemetery. Their land was being reclaimed. Remember there, These two groups of people at Texan thing, the dead and the living and both were all that for years to clear out the people living in packs Antin were mostly relocated into new government housing nearby, but it took a while a lot of villagers weren't happy to leave and they state as long as they possibly could sometimes years ass the deadline the government gave them to move, as for the day and the Association of family members who represented them. They weren't

to move either the association wanted to find a way to keep a piece of their land, but not the law was pretty strict no more lamberto means no more than beryl food. That was there so they hired a lawyer and pleaded with the government to let them keep just thirty acres of their original three hundred twenty four enough to have a temple and summoned minute fraid of buildings and to cremate the dead, build a column barium a building made to hold earns little house then one fine day receive a letter. We wanted the acres and they rode back to us and said, or we can only spare you acres, through the committee, met and decide it because better than Norway, Chris eight acres was more than most cemeteries got. At least there would be for a column barium. In a couple of other buildings. Still thousand bodies would have to be dug up from the cemetery. It was a huge

daunting task be put advertisement teaspoons in the newspaper telling On this common clear, the soldiers it is a weapon basically there to assume tat grace I wrote letters to the families asking them to remove their dead loved ones from what was about to be a construction site. But as the deadline approached only about half of Pakistan things, one hundred thousand graves had been on earth. The association members were at a loss as to what to do with the nearly fifty thousand body still on the ground, who would pay to dig up the graves cremate the bodies and give them another resting place. The association explained their predicament the housing and Development Board, who agreed to help M deal with the lingering dad which which is affecting after all, little retreat. Twenty four because allow land dizzy. The aid GB and the Cemetery Association hired people from the village to dig up the bodies. People like Mr Lee, the guy who

up in the village. Accepting these mom in brother all dug up graves Lee would walk behind carrying their spades and tools he studied how they remove the heavy soil from the grave and carefully broke the coffin, led then, He was ready to do it himself and I get the pillow one way to calculate how come you're, calling the bones have sunk into the earth would be with you. Then you have to scrape scraped scrape with states to find a bonds, sometimes when their work is easy. We spend, above all in all we are working on a Tom Brady, these a hard job. You may take us from three to four hours, while attempting color you joy data at First Lee was dared to dig any of the bodies were only just starting to decompose, dimmed, dizzy, less up

beyond this disease, a few to job to handle a shame to say it and he threw criteria to be in this job. First, you have to have the Gatt Sally, will second enjoy the strength and to the skill. So if you no guts. That's the way you can do this job after going work on the hill day and out. He got the guts who those working again who had been when you aren't. You alone is futile to be frightened. You need to fulfil your obligation. Even if I'm frightened and alone, I still need to complete the job and he dead. After years of digging the one huh thousand bodies were all removed. The half that we're on aimed were cremated together and scattered at sea and a solemn ceremony, Like many other living members of Peck Send thing Lee his family were re housed in a nearby hd be estate from

the villagers. The transition was an easy sure, housing was taking care of you, couldn't have a form and high rise or a tombstone carving business. Without burial Lee was lucky. He found work digging up other nearby cemeteries that were also get repossessed hack, something had unable to hold onto eight acres it- was more than most people got, but wasn't much going from Afar hundred twenty four acres cemetery to an eight acre complex, but the temple in ten minutes. Nation building in a calm barium for earns meant space had to be maximized There is also the issue of design aesthetics for most Chinese. The tradition was to bury in grand tombs, like the ones that picks and thing when it came to build, in the column barium the house, the earns there was no real model to hark back to column. Barium were novel structures, because the whole practice of cremation was pretty new to a lot of chinese Singapore lions.

Twenty years earlier, only ten percent of the country's chinese population was cremated, but by the time Peck slanting wanted to build their column. Ariane. That number was almost seventy percent without by way of architectural precedent for the column barium, the pact, Thing Association took a gamble. They chose a somewhat controversial architect to cut his teeth, designing brutalized superstructures, a modernist, taking soon. That project was an interesting moment for me, because I've been thinking about the problem of how do how do you modernize and yet respect the the traditions and the history and the understanding of the boss. Mister T didn't want to build a warehouse for the dead that he said would be antithetical too quote: nature loving and flung sway oriented ethos of chinese burial, but there are those problems how to accommodate the number four and then there had to be entered

within the cumbersome, and so just cite the singing development board dead when faced with the issue of overcrowding, Mr Tape, built up from the outside. It almost looks like any other new multistory construction for the living before the common barium opened in nineteen eighty six, one news paper said it could easily be mistaken for a flashing new condominium, but the inside was different. Mr Taylor, Color Miriam stretches up over about nine different staggered levels: the building rises gently in a series of cascading stories and half stories forming cement hills like national chinese tubes, the large windows and scarlet corridors made it's funny and airy burns line the walls from floor to ceiling there was a waiting list of over twenty thousand earns from the cemetery ready to move into pecks Antin column, burial.

But nearby housing units for the living world, so quick to get sold as promised HTTP France we're going up all over the grounds that were filled with dead bodies just a couple years earlier. They called the development, be Sean, Amanda inversion of the cantonese Peck, San or Jade hills. The new be shown development had everything the hd be imagined, people needed they open a train, stop what Singapore calls Mass rapid, transit or MIT. There were schools all entertainment and easy access to the city. In other words it was night, Your place to live, except for one thing, the ghosts papers, wrote about, go sightings and be shown. The new our tv station? There was no one to be hunted by goes from a cemetery. Like apparently was this common knowledge doing here, historians he was well known throughout the whole of the peace on amortization. Everybody title of white, getting

This is especially the last train and night ever report of a ghostly woman who boarded the last night train out be shown and without fanfare, took off her head and put it on the seat next to her some passengers were known to cast. No reflection on the train windows. Many Of the residents who did move in didn't want the additional reminders of their neighborhoods macabre history, but one tangible piece of evidence remained one of them cemeteries, covered pavilions stills, near the new train station entail the text Thing association got a call from the housing and Development board about shadows the food. The rest is having completed, that they see shadows and light around the pavilion creevy ghostly shadows. What shadows are they talking about? I would like to stay. One lay dead then see what other shadow that

there's Camilla really we will provide a good anal vehicle of coffee and stay one. May there we happy the redistribution of the aid to be told and the pavilion would be demolished The association knew they had no say the government already on the land they had to oblige. Even if some of them are happy, they demolish you wasn't pics on. They will certainly the last remaining structure of big something to be done polish and with that all the physical remnants from the graveyard were gone from the landscape, the cemetery, It was no longer a cemetery, it was a huge, urban development with a maltese or a column barium that people could easily avoid if they wanted to, and people forgot

with time be shown- became an appealing place to live. We chinese every pragmatic people, I think the economic demands or rice, the spiritual, deep hot, so to speak, ivory. Let's put it that way. People this forget that this was the same three before many of the younger generation in law of big something sent, tree really. It was still leaving with cemetery Lamb, many many other singaporean live on old cemeteries, whether they know it or not. So many other cemeteries were cleared for development and is still going on right now the cemeteries has forced a total one, eighty and how a lot of Singapore lions think about dying various government crematorium opened in the early sixties. They did about four cremation a week now more than eighty percent of Singapore Jansky cremated when they die, so Stanley more than in the? U S where that number is just over fifty percent.

All of those traditions that people like Mr Klein did burning offerings and having a feast at the grave they ve had to be. A downside to fit into the tight hallways of the column, variance today: Nepal has for government run, column burials, but calm barium also don't meet everyone's needs because they only House cremated remains Chinese are the ethnic majority in Singapore, seventy five percent of the population and that count is hindu. Community has long been. Discrimination, but most of all, countries, large Millay community practices, Islam, which doesn't permit cremation So in two thousand seven, the Singapore government implemented their new crypt burial system. It's a prefabricated series of interlocking concrete walls like a duck, the grid assembled above ground and then sunk into the earth, but you only fifteen years in your own grave, and then you have to be consolidated up to sixteen bodies per grave,

rearranging the dead, has been a painful change for a lot Singapore science, but there was also a widespread understanding that something and give in order to get so many people their own homes on such a tiny island- and let us be practical- I mean cemetery duty huge led space and then led space in my opinion, must be sacrificed and the Singapore and people did sacrifice not ass, the land but centuries of rituals and traditions for their dead all to get homes for the living

this cultural shift happen without a lot of resistance from the Singapore in people, but that is changing. I will to Katy Thornton, about that, after the break, we often don't think of winter as a time of growth or creation. But if you think about it, it's the perfect time to create your own website, cooped up your thinking about being productive and now square space can help you do it with squares. Based can take your cool ideas, you ve creative content, your services, goods, and you can turn them into a beautiful website in just a few clicks. Does it because there is to use templates, are created

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there's a lot of infrastructure for the living. There are only a few historic cemeteries left in the entire country and all all of them are isolated to be developed, oh ok, so like it's still, there are still. Trying to take as much of that landers as possible yeah totally so late. There's one other cemetery that has actually been getting a lot of attention lightly. It's called book it back on and at another chinese cemetery, alot of permanent prominent early chinese singaporean business, people and philanthropists are buried. Advocate Brown. A ton of those big ornate tombstones, like the one Mr Kwan described in packs hunting at this site, and what are we gonna do propose in two thousand and eleven the government announced that they're gonna exe and a highway right through the cemetery and that highway opened earlier this year. They, to remove four thousand graves and a lot of the tombstones were thrown away and just like that

something that government said that they had to come and clear out the graves or the remains would be scattered at sea. But people actually got pretty upset like this. This is one of the only remaining cemeteries in the entire country. Bunch of anti historians advocating for the preservation of decide their leading tours and academics got involved and documenting the space and. They spoke to people like Grumman. Do you remember Ian? Yes, is the the person that was in the peace that was historian, but she saw goes when she was a kid yeah. Totally but she just mentioned, like very casually nights, actually wasn't a historian when the highway was announced and she had this job. Time is written for fear. Company into is doing a lot of travelling around and sometimes when she was traveling, she'd go and visit, big famous destination type of cemeteries and when

around was announced. She was like hey I've never been to book at Brown. Maybe I'll check it out. I mean it's my own back yard and then she went, and it was like cut Seen change, she'd totally changed her career her and why was this thing that really really made her want to change it. I think what is she care so much For some reason, it just didn't really sit well with her that people who never planned on being cremated and thrown into the sea might end up there. So she just wanted families to know if they had ancestors buried at book at Brown, because a lot of people had lost track run. So she but her job and she put together all these family trees and then she'd, cold, cold. The descendants and tell them a grave of say. Their great grandmother was going to be dug up whenever raves where she was like so sure that you could find the descendants that she would talk to the gun. Men and Billy, please wait, wait like don't dig up this tomb, yet I can find a family and then

It would and she'd stay in touch with them and help them throughout the hope, process- should stand alongside the families as they dug the bodies up and move them elsewhere, she's still doing at length, even after the open earlier this year she still working to document. Space she's been living off her savings for eight years to do the work, because is worried that the rest is a cemetery is going to be developed and all of this we will be lost, but she does think that there was a time where maybe it made sense to develop over the spaces to get living people's needs man, but the times a little bit different. Now I asked her. I asked you about tax hunting and I'll pay you a little bit a tape about what she said. Yeah apply at that point in time. Definitely I mean, you you you, you would go for ever the high rise beauty to house the people rather than to have cemetery for the dead.

Yes. I got that time. She definitely saw it as an exchange of the rector stained between the living and the dead, but she feels, like times are kind of different. Now, like my might be possible to preserve some of the, You old spaces on the island so again like this is what she said about that there was a need for it before his death. Do that need now. You know so is like it is like if this is gone and erase is not replaceable an irreversible we're talking about retaining a patch of our heritage. You know did your opinion about the role of cemeteries in life change. Cemeteries. Are these interesting and complicated historic sites, their kind of an opportunity for people to inscribe their history,

onto the landscape. There certainly like rife with exclusions as well. People have been excluded from some Terry Space is based They re space on their religion based on there, ass in their inability to access a large tombstone. But I think it's there Also present kind of an interesting opportunity to complicate has because they're kind of more accessible archives than a lot of our historic archives? yeah. Ninety nine percent. Invisible was produced this week by Katy, Thornton and edited by Katy Mingle UK mixing tech production by Sharif use of music by Sean Rio Kirk

instead is the digital director thrust, the team is senior editor Delaney Hall, Avery, Travelin, Vivian, lease opiate cluster Emmett Fitzgerald, Joe Rosenberg and me roman Mars. Key Thornton is a Fulbright national, geographic, digital storytelling fellow who makes audio and writing about how and where we remember the dead in a changing world. Her project is called death in the digital age and you can find it online and its Katy Thornton dot com or on Instagram at its Katy Thorn this week on Instagram shall be posting. Some images from in and around Peck send thing and sharing stories from Singapore. Changing memorial landscape voice over by MIKE Go from ageless Theatre, especial thanks to coo Ee Hoon. For his Rico guidance you're a project of ninety one point: seven k a w in San Francisco and produced on radio row in beautiful, downtown Oakland? California,

Ninety nine percent, invisible as a member of Radio Tokyo from Pierre acts of fiercely independent collective of the most innovative shows in all podcasting find more. Radio Toby Donovan You can find the show enjoying discussions about the show on Facebook and Twitter me at Roman, Mars and the show and ninety nine p. I work one Instagram and read it to, but we have a car, on burial full design stories, both audio visual and money. P, I dot org radio do.