Every few years, Ngee Ann City stages a ‘Thanksgiving Prayer Ceremony’. Who is it for?

Ngee Ann City, one of Singapore’s most iconic shopping complexes, stages an intriguing tradition every three years.

It is called the Thanksgiving Prayer Ceremony:

According to research, the Thanksgiving Prayer Ceremony is held around Qing Ming (in April) and has a regular feature since 2002.

The ceremony follows a unique cycle: it is held for three consecutive years, then pauses for three years, and this pattern repeats.

The ceremony does not promote superstition but rather serves as an extension of filial piety. The ritual honours the "collective ancestors" and also prays for blessings for the living.

Who are these “collective ancestors” that the ceremony honours?

Ngee Ann City’s history as a Teochew cemetery

You see, the land on which Ngee Ann City now stands was once part of a vast Teochew cemetery, Tai Shan Ting.

For decades, this burial ground was a resting place for members of the Teochew community, holding deep cultural and historical significance.

Early Chinese immigrants who travelled to Southeast Asia came in search of a better life. Some managed to return to China while others stayed here in Nanyang.

Those in the latter group lived out their lives here and died here. Some were too poor to have their land for a proper burial.

So, an association was set up among the Teochews to raise funds to purchase land for Teochew immigrants to use as burial grounds.

This association came to be known as Ngee Ann Kongsi.

Other dialect groups here, such as the Hokkien, Cantonese and Hakka, also pulled together funds to set up and manage their own burial grounds. For example, the Cantonese and Hakka communities founded their own cemeteries called Cheng San Teng and Loke Yah Teng respectively.

These associations were important because during a time when welfare systems were not well-established, these clan groups took on the responsibility of taking care of the most disadvantaged members of the community.

Tai Shan Ting was the first of the cemeteries set up by the Ngee Ann Kongsi.

It was opened in 1845.

Spanning 70 acres, an area bigger than 50 football fields, the cemetery was named after a Teochew plantation owner, Lin Tai Shan, whom the land originally belonged to.

Over the years, the Ngee Ann Kongsi went on to purchase more plots of land across the island—in Bukit Panjang, Bukit Timah, Changi, Serangoon, and more—for Teochew burials.

By the mid-20th century, however, Singapore’s rapid urban development and land scarcity led to the cemetery’s clearance in the 1950s and 60s.

While Ngee Ann Kongsi’s plots of land were requisitioned by the government, it did not dampen the association’s original mission of providing after-death services for the community.

It opened a communal Teochew cemetery at Sembawang Road, which later became the Teochew Memorial Park.

Years later, a modern funeral parlour at Ubi Road was opened to people outside the Teochew community.

Continuing the tradition of honouring ancestors

Back to Tai Shan Ting:

The cemetery was cleared in 1957 and a portion of the land was acquired by the government.

Many of the bodies that were exhumed then were relocated to the communal cemetery that become the Teochew Memorial Park.

It is said that the spirits of these remains are honoured during the Thanksgiving Prayer Ceremony at Ngee Ann City—a gesture of filial piety and honour that the Ngee Ann Kongsi carries out to this day.

The land was subsequently redeveloped in 1989 at a cost of S$2 million, eventually becoming the site for the sprawling retail and office complex that we see today.

Today, while shoppers bustle through its luxury boutiques and restaurants, few realise they are treading on land steeped in history tied to the early migrants of this country, where history and modernity coexist in an unexpectedly poignant way.

Who would have thought that the cemeteries set up in early Singapore to provide a resting place for overseas Chinese who died in a foreign land would be gone, but the organisations that oversaw them would continue to evolve with the times.

Keen to learn more interesting nuggets about Singapore Chinese history and culture? Check out Culturepaedia, a bilingual repository featuring articles by scholars and experts from academia and the wider community.

It will offer you an introduction to Singapore Chinese culture, and show you how it has evolved over the years.

All images via Culturepaedia and Ngee Ann Kongsi