Bishan-Toa Payoh Town Council (Bishan Office) - Bishan-Toa Payoh Town Council (Bishan Office)

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The name Bishan originates from a Chinese cemetery known as Kwong Wai Siew Peck San Theng (广惠肇碧山亭; Guanghuizhao bishanting) established in 1870 on the site of what is now Bishan New Town. Peck San Theng was originally built by a community of various clan associations collectively known as the Kwong Wai Siew to serve the burial needs of Cantonese and Hakka immigrants from China’s Guangdong province. The cemetery was later opened to the wider Chinese community. “Peck San Teng” means “pavilions on the jade hills”, in reference to the 10 pavilions that once dotted the sprawling grounds of the burial site. The large burial grounds were partitioned into 10 sections, each with a pavilion that provided shelter for visitors. The numbered pavilions also functioned as locality markers, helping family members identify ancestral graves in the thick undergrowth during the annual Qing Ming Festival, when the Chinese pay respects to their ancestors by visiting their graves. This iconic feature inspired the distinctive pitched roof seen on some HDB blocks in Bishan. By the 1970s, Peck San Theng had become the largest Chinese cemetery in Singapore with over 75,000 graves spread across a 121-hectare area. The cemetery stopped accepting new burials in 1973, and the land was acquired by the government six years later for S$4.95 million for the development of Bishan New Town. The Kwong Wai Siew retained 3.2 ha of land, where a temple and a new columbarium with at least 70,000 niches were built in the mid-1980s. Exhumation of the estimated 100,000 graves took place in stages between 1982 and 1984 paving the way for the construction of Bishan New Town in 1983. Today, Peck San Theng still remains in operation, although it had since been converted into a columbarium. Bishan New Town became the first in Singapore to depart from the brutalist design seen in most previous Housing and Development Board (HDB) towns. Instead of slab-like residential blocks that were built in uniformed rows, apartment blocks in Bishan varied in height and were often dislocated. Flats within the town also featured pitched roofs which have since become closely associated with the skyline of Bishan. The town is also home to two of Singapore's most prestigious educational institutions, Catholic High School and Raffles Institution.