Chinese Cemetary Haunts

The Avatar Trees of Bukit Brown Cemetary

by Meg Sine

Bukit Brown is a place in Singapore that perhaps many residents of the Garden City do not know about. It’s a sprawling Chinese cemetery on forested land sandwiched between the Pan Island Expressway (PIE) and the Lornie Highway just south of MacRitchie Reservoir. This cemetery operated for half a century between 1922 and 1973. Today, many of the cemetery's ornate stone grave sites are being overtaken by dense vegetation but there are still plenty to see and explore. Here is a snapshot of the history of this unique place and how this deathly quiet landscape hides a secret that is beyond the graves…

Chinese cemetery graves

History of Bukit Brown Cemetery

In the early 1900s the land of Bukit Brown was purchased by wealthy entrepreneurs from Xiamen, China, to become a residential area for the poor members of their Chinese clan. This land was located on a hillside named after George Henry Brown. Mr. Brown, who came to Singapore in 1840, opened a trading business and built a home on Mt. Pleasant Road adjacent to the hillside that came to bear his name. See Singapore Infopedia.

Bukit Brown: Heritage Property or Critical Land Resource?

A large section of this property was purchased by the municipal government in 1918 to serve the need for Chinese burial sites. Bukit Brown is the resting place for many prominent Singaporeans, including the ancestors of Lee Kuan Yew. In 1965, over 230 graves had to be exhumed and transferred to another cemetery due to the construction of the Lornie Highway. In the last 15 years, many redevelopment plans have been advanced by Singapore’s LTA (Land Transport Authority) to use this critical land resource for additional highway construction and housing estates.

How to Get to this Secret Place

There are several access points to gain entry to Bukit Brown to wander the shaded, gravel roads and pathways on foot or mountain bike. The cemetery’s access road along Kheam Hock Road, on the right side, about halfway up the hill after the PIE underpass, is a good place to start. Walk about half a kilometer until the end of the gravel road. Along the way you will pass grave sites, some decorated with colorful Peranakan tiles, Gurkha guards, and remnants of a kampong inhabited by caretakers. Continue along a muddy path, ducking under vines and walking between tall vegetation on both sides of the path.

Gravesites guarded by Gurhka statues

An Alien Landscape

The path leads to an area where the shady forest opens to the drama of a big sky and massive trees with outstretched branches totally clothed by a canopy of hanging vines. It’s an amazing and captivating landscape that is labeled on Google Maps as the “Avatar Trees of Bukit Brown.” I visited this site with a photographer and her Singaporean friend, Clara, (see the lady in red in the photo) who grew up in Singapore and had never heard of or visited this site. It’s fun to try and capture photos that breathe life-like characteristics into these other-worldly-looking natural organisms. The place feels like a movie set for the planet Pandora and of course must be experienced in person.

What planet is this?

The Uncertain Future

Unfortunately, the last time I visited Bukit Brown last month, there were teams of caretakers with weedwhackers mowing through the undergrowth to uncover graves. Maybe the authorities are getting ready to exhume more graves and move the remains? The noise and raw cuttings were a wake-up call that unique natural landscapes such as this have a finite lifetime in Singapore amid the infrastructure demands of a modern city.

Bukit Brown Avatar Trees

Meg is AWA's Communications Director. Contact her at communicationsdirector@ awasingapore.org