For a different kind of walk through the past, you might want to skip the historical district and take a stroll through the Bukit Brown Cemetery where many Chinese pioneers of Singapore were laid to rest. One of Singapore’s oldest cemeteries also contains one of the most diverse collection of tomb styles, many flanked with ornate statues. Despite the Malay-English name (Bukit = Hill in Malay, while Brown is the namesake of George Henry Brown, who bought the area in the 1840s and called it Mount Pleasant), the cemetery is the final resting place of many Chinese. yg explores how Bukit Brown Cemetery is considered a ‘Chinese’ cemetery.

the bukit brown cemetery was named after a british ship owner called george henry brown. he bought the area and called it mt pleasant. subsequently, the land was bought over by ong kew ho and the hokkien huay kuan. the government took over most of the land in 1919 and opened it as a public burial ground in 1922.

to the chinese, it is known as kopi sua (coffee hill). it must have been difficult for the locals to call it brown. in chinese, the colour brown is coffee. that was how it came to be called kopi sua.

Besides the Chinese name, yg remembers some burial traditions that are reflected in the tombs, such as the significance of red lettering and the differences in dating.