Dragon mural removal in Tampines breaks wrong HDB ‘rules’, leaves no room for friendly compromise

IN FULL disclosure, the Toa Payoh Dragon Playground has long been something of an obsession. It’s a children’s playground that actually hurts children. I like that. Growing up in the UK, I only knew dangerous playgrounds. If slides and climbing frames didn’t come with rotten timber frames and tetanus-spreading rusty nails, we weren’t interested.

But the Toa Payoh Dragon Playground goes one better in its sadomasochism. Its slide is made of concrete. I never fully understood the indomitable power of Singapore’s pioneer generations until I first attempted the slide and removed the underside of my scrotum.

That’s no ordinary slide. That’s a vasectomy in a sandpit.

Throw in the playground’s wonderfully original design, which stands at odds with modern Singapore’s utilitarianism, and there’s literally nothing not to like about the old dragon. We should cherish and protect her, in all her quirky guises.

So a Tampines couple had the right idea when they paid homage to the Toa Payoh icon in the early hours of February 3, putting up a mural at the lift lobby of Block 640B Tampines Street 62. According to reports, they wanted to celebrate the Year of the Dragon and offer a kind greeting to their new neighbours, as they’d only recently moved to the block. The mural was made with stainless stickers, easily applied, easily removed and cheered up the legendary blocks from The Shining.

Oh, yes, it’s those blocks, the ones with the red floors and walls in the lift lobbies which made headlines last year for their spooky vibe. Presumably, the BTO project was going for the lucky colour of wealth and prosperity, rather than a cross between the Bates Motel and a brothel. But there was always a sense that knife-wielding twins were waiting at the lift.

Eventually, common sense prevailed, the relevant authorities intervened and some of the walls and ceilings were painted white last year. But there was less common sense applied this time around. What do you think happened to the cheery – and temporary - dragon mural outside the lift lobby of Block 640B Tampines Street 62? If you think the artwork was revered like a Banksy and then displayed at the National Gallery as an example of organic street art, then I’ve got a harmless slide for you to try in Toa Payoh.

Failed to recognise secret ingredient behind HDB success

The mural was removed. In two days. Of course it was. According to reports, the town council said a cleaner was “following cleaning and maintenance protocols”, because that’s how Singapore’s unsung heroes speak. Whenever I chat with the guy who sweeps my corridor, he’s always telling me that he’s “following cleaning and maintenance protocols”.

When a story has a whiff of negativity, there’s nothing like throwing a cleaner under the bus is there? But it wasn’t his or her fault. And it wasn’t Tampines GRC MP Baey Yam Keng’s fault either. He’d heard about the “sweet” and “nice” mural from pleased neighbours and didn’t seek its removal during the Chinese New Year festivities. It was the creators’ fault, apparently. They hadn’t requested formal approval. There are by-laws to comply with.

And at this point, it’s easy to lapse into Singaporean caricature; the Orwellian wet dream, Disneyland with the death penalty and all the others from the average western academic’s checklist. Here’s another example of the heavy hand of government, micromanaging every aspect of residents’ lives and denying all aspects of artistic expression.

But we do live cheek by jowl, piled together in our utilitarian boxes. If there isn’t an element of compromise, the fragile social experiment fails. There must be lines that cannot be crossed, otherwise dragon murals today become giant penises tomorrow. And we don’t want any of them. We already have one. It’s called the Toa Payoh Town Park observation tower (and we’re not allowed to use that either).

Of course, there must be rules and regulations when thousands of families are living under the same roof. But the removal of the dragon mural exasperates because it fails to recognise the secret ingredient behind the HDB success story. Our housing estates endure not through the mythologised kampung spirit, as such, but through the wonderful "close one eye" culture.

Close one eye, see the bigger picture

Littering is not allowed on an HDB estate, for example, unless the litter is a full-size snooker table, in which case, it should be left around the lift lobby bins for someone else to take. (I did this when I lived in Block 122, Toa Payoh Lorong 2. The snooker table disappeared within half an hour.) We close one eye to this thriving, upcycling initiative among residents, which existed long before the climate crisis made it fashionable.

Similarly, leaflets and official notices must be placed only in designated areas and with the relevant approvals, unless the block is brand new, in which case, the temporary plywood walls of HDB lifts can be plastered with services offering interior design, air con maintenance and extra special services for singles living in one-room flats. We close one eye because this improvised, entrepreneurial system benefits the greater good.

The same could be said for shrines during religious occasions, food left out during the Hungry Ghost Festival or spontaneous football matches on void-decks for kids starved of free playing spaces. We close one eye to facilitate the kampung spirit. A little tolerance for the raggedness around a housing estate’s edges makes the living experience smoother for everyone, ideally, and perhaps even fun.

The removal of the dragon mural wasn’t so much about nit-picking bureaucracy as it was a failure to close one eye and see the bigger picture. The temporary artwork cheered up the neighbours and did no damage to public property. Official approval hadn’t been granted, sure, but if we sought approval for every aspect of human existence within a housing estate, honestly, how efficient would daily life be? Where would we put our shrines? How would we find air-con guys in our new homes? Who would take my unwanted snooker table?

So we channel our true kampung spirit. We close one eye. That’s the Singapore way.

Neil Humphreys is an award-winning football writer and a best-selling author, who has covered the English Premier League since 2000 and has written 28 books.

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