Dear subscribers, friends and history enthusiasts
citizen historian is updated for August! We have a wide spread of articles for your reading pleasure this month. =========================
This year, Singapore is the City of Possibilities. Sarah Ismail speculates about the possibilities in the Singapore Story, after watching the Dim Sum Dollies and Gentarasa tell their versions of Singapore… »
by Sarah Ismail
How many ways to tell the story of Singapore?
It’s August again, and it’s National Day Parade time, where the obligatory reference to Raffles, the Japanese Occupation, and Separation are made. In the later years of the NDP, Sang Nila Utama started making an appearance – possibly because Malay costumes are more… »
by Sarah Ismail
Just who is that woman on the wall?
The play Georgette begins with this question – appropriate enough for a woman whose early life is relatively unknown. Georgette Chen is mainly known as a pioneering Singaporean artist and one of the few women of that time. As a result, it is Georgette Chen’s arrival… »
by Dinesh Sathisan
One of my passions is travelling. Whenever I travel to places like Paris, London or New York (amongst others), I never do what Lonely Planet has advised tourists to do, but rather love taking the off-beaten track in exploring these cities or learning about its people and culture. And the highlight of my… »
by Dinesh Sathisan
Over the summer vacation, I spent two weeks at the British Library (BL) looking at microfilm reels of old Tamil newspapers published in Malaya in the 1930s. This was a memorable trip because the day after I arrived in London, the police had found two cars with bombs set to explode at the… »
by Fumihito Yamamoto
One of the bigger obstacles for non-Japanese historians researching in Japan is language. Although I have seen many non-Japanese researchers researching Japanese archives, most of them are fluent in the Japanese language. It looks that people who have high ability at Chinese language and also minimum Japanese language ability can do historical research… »
by Minami Orihara
One of my favourite things to do in my free time is reading random women’s magazines from Japan. Lately however, these magazines actually got me thinking, instead of helping me to unwind from my work. Along with news on latest fashion trends, movie reviews, cooking recipes, and tips on relationships, many of the… »
by Ng Eng Ping
In 1975, Mao Zedong was having a conversation with one of his secretaries on Sima Guang, the famous Song historian, noting that his Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government – which traced the chronological history of China from the Fifth Century BC – ended just before the foundation of the Song Dynasty… »
by Lim Cheng Tju
The king is dead. Long live the king. 16 August 2007 marked the 30th death anniversary of Elvis Presley, the king of rock ‘n’ roll. Not much is made of his passing in Singapore. Last year’s date was only marked by a weekend performance by the Singapore Elvis Alt-Country Meetup Group at… »