History
Established in 1822-1823, Ying Fo Fui Kun is the oldest clan associations in Singapore. At a time when development in Singapore was in its infancy, Ying Fo Fui Kun's clan house was amongst the first buildings in Telok Ayer, where the island's earliest Chinese settlements were located.
Ying Fo Fui Kun began life as a temple, serving the needs of Hakka immigrants from Jia Ying prefecture in Canton. Its founder, Liu Runde (劉潤德), envisaged Ying Fo Fui Kun as a public institution that would not only provide welfare services — the conventional role of a clan association — but also act as a kinship bridge between the Hakka community in Singapore and China. Ying Fo Fui Kun looked after the welfare of its members, finding accommodation and jobs for newly-arrived Hakkas and making funeral arrangements for deceased clan members. In 1905, Ying Fo Fui Kun opened what was then considered a modern Chinese school.
In 1887, the Ying fo Fui Kun bought over a piece of land from the British government to meet the burial demands of the increasing number of association members. The Ying Fo Kuan Memorial was built, and an ancestral hall was built next to it, which was called the Shuang Long Shan Wu Shu Ancestral Hall (Twin Dragon Hills).
Read more about this topic: Ying Fo Fui Kun
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All things are moral. That soul, which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)