Unreal Estate

Securing Development

“Site ceremonies”—in which resident ghosts are appeased through sacrifice and negotiation—are not associated with a particular type of project, developer, or contractor. This fact differs considerably with their perception. Numerous informants told me with confidence that such practices are associated with “Chinese-speaking,” uneducated, or “lower-end” builders and are uncommon in properly modern developments. In reality, these are almost universally seen as necessary precautions and appear to have no class character or cultural affiliation. I have attended such rites in projects ranging from large to small, from luxe to comparatively humble. These were undertaken by corporate contractors and small jobbers, of varying ethnic origin, and were commissioned by developers of all of Singapore’s major religions (and secular individuals also). At the same time, these ceremonies are not associated exclusively with major environmental changes. Rather, we see similar rites—likewise understood as precautionary or appeasing—performed whenever an environment is in some manner subject to change or whenever a suspicious event has occurred in the course of work. Hence these are also deemed favorable when moving into a new home or place of work, just before or after redecoration, or when introducing a new resident or family member to a given home. Each change, no matter how minor, is assumed to cause changes to the spiritual environs—and thus to ask for a form of ceremonial address.

I describe here, in detail, one ceremony that was held on a site close to the west end of Orchard Road.18 It was held at 8:30 in the morning, on a date selected by consulting the Chinese astrological almanac. This is used by feng shui professionals to determine auspicious dates and times for different types of endeavors.19 A successful, Singaporean family–owned corporation was in the early stages of converting outmoded, high-density flats into large, triplex units under the name “8 Nassim Hill.”20 The new units were being created to compete in the ultra-high-end sector, with three-floor apartments retailing for approximately S$12–15 million each.21 The design was provided by celebrated modernist architect Chan Sau Yan, with components sourced from a range of European and Asian manufacturers. Tokyu, one of Japan’s largest construction and hotel conglomerates, had been commissioned to build the new structure, along with a submerged parking structure carved into the hill beneath.

Three weeks prior, an older condominium on the site was still partially occupied. By the time the rite began, it had been virtually erased. The building had been demolished, and even its subterranean structures—the concrete ground beams that lie beneath the soil—had been disinterred to make room for new excavation and piling. Early on the morning of the ceremony, the contractors erected a striped tent near to (but not directly on) the center of the site. This was to provide a base of activity for the performance of ritual components. The event itself was to be conducted throughout the site area, most notably at its geomantic middle and perimeter, as well as at past and future access points from the surrounding roads. The guests comprised members of the design team, structural and mechanical engineers, quantity surveyors, the client, and contractors. All gathered early to witness the proceedings. Chen, a senior project manager from Tokyu’s Singapore branch, and organizer of the event, was pleased by the high level of attendance. He observed that a large turnout was important and that representatives from all trades and consultancies should be present. In Chen’s understanding, the offerings and chants are principally about purifying the site and identifying possible problems. But they also, crucially, establish a sort of goodwill contract between any resident spirits and the living participants of the development process. Chen explained this as a strict requirement of the medium, Master Goh, who was to arrive later. The master later checked attendance and stressed that it was “most important” that client, contractor, consultants, and subconsultants all be present; if they are not, it is impossible to guarantee that they will be protected during the construction process or, on the other hand, that they will benefit personally or professionally from ghostly approval of the venture. Such success is a team effort.

The ceremony was likewise understood to be necessary by the many other parties involved, although differing reasons were offered as to why this should be the case. Beatrice, the daughter of a developer with the controlling share in the project—and the principal decision maker for the client’s team—felt that it was important for the climate of sentiment on-site. At the least, she feared that the failure to make offerings would be poisonous for morale. As a devout Methodist, Beatrice stood to the rear of the tent and demurred when the organizers asked for her participation in lighting incense or joining chants. She believed, however, that not performing the obligatory propitiations would cast a pall over the enterprise and would lead the workers to feel that their safety had not been given proper consideration. Mr. Shinbo, the Japanese managing director of Tokyu’s local office, felt that the blessings were to be respected as “local custom.” Shinbo noted, moreover, that most Japanese construction sites host similar rituals at various points in the undertaking: at the outset, when final structural framing is complete, and at the conclusion. Some guests admitted to being skeptical of the literal “truth” of the rites, though most agreed that it would be bad not to hold them. Even among the relative skeptics, there was a sort of Pascal’s wager in operation: although the whole thing might be mere superstition, there was nothing to lose in blessing the works.

Chen, by contrast, understood the ceremony in a much more explicit, and nuanced, manner. A believer and one experienced in spiritual matters on-site, he was not only convinced of its necessity but also able to read particular signs arising in the course of the ceremony. He was comforted, for example, that it was conducted during a brief torrential downpour (a clear sign of prosperity), and he broke into a broad smile when a bag of rice on the altar caught fire during one of the prayer cycles—this being a sign that the spirits had accepted the offerings.

As the collected group milled under the tent, a troupe of twelve others arrived carrying crates and plastic shopping bags and began to unpack the many components of the rite. All were dressed in matching white polo shirts and khaki trousers. This caused a distinct reaction (amusement or perhaps slight discomfort) among some of the assembled guests, as these informal cerements were almost identical to the famous uniform worn by the People’s Action Party during reelection campaigns. With a wry smile, Chen pointed to the heavens and said, “Don’t worry, they work for their party.” Some of the polo shirts bore the logo of a regional cigarette brand. This later appeared oddly appropriate, given that smoking—as well as the burning of paper in multiple forms—was a habit of the master, and a repeated theme across the ceremony’s ritual stages.

The men and women in white, who composed the altar and participated in the prayers, represent a loose association of Buddhist charitable volunteers. Most hold secular jobs or are supported by their families. They are disciples of Master Goh who understand themselves as working for the greater spiritual good. They are a community that undertakes these sorts of blessings in the public interest, ameliorating energetic environmental conditions. Some, such as a young woman named Lily, chose to follow the master after he was able to heal her long-standing physical ailments arising from an autoimmune condition. There are similar “fellowships” in Singapore that, in the organizational guise of Buddhist social foundations, care for the elderly and the terminally ill or teach meditation, tai qi, and feng shui to novices. Interestingly, Goh identifies himself as neither Buddhist nor Taoist but as open and unaffiliated—as do many others in Chinese popular faith, which is more of a syncretic spectrum than an organized sect.

The master describes his approach as a sort of spiritual pragmatism, used for the betterment of everyone. His services are in high demand, as buildings with bad energetic distributions tend to be both dangerous and heavily devalued. This emerged in public debate in 2007 when one old condominium complex, Farrar Court, was said to have very bad feng shui. As a result, a spate of incidents was reported: ill health, poor marks on school exams, suicides and accidents, and an inability by younger married residents to conceive children. The complex was up for collective sale to a developer, who spread the rumors to local news outlets to encourage some unit owners—holdouts opposing the negotiated price—to liquidate quickly.22 This was a fraudulent practice, but it shows quite clearly what contractor Mr. Ong and other industry informants describe as a climate of extreme religious sensitivity surrounding houses and offices. By contrast, Master Goh observes that skillful work with the energies of the site, through chants and offerings, will not only avoid these problems but create the opposite effect. He explains that it is

because of the energy. I work on it, it becomes comfortable. People will come in later, pay even 20 percent above the market price, because, you know, just feel comfortable, relaxed there.

Master Goh is quick to qualify that this should not be done merely to “add value” but must be taken on in good faith by all parties in the development process to ensure that positive energies are invested in the venture. Here again, we encounter the concept of economic success not as self-interested but as a positive-sum enterprise that is to everyone’s benefit. For the site ceremony, Chen tells me, there is no fixed fee; the client pays the organization voluntarily, by means of a large ang pao (“red gift packet,” containing cash).23 A portion of these payments subsidizes the modest room and board of the medium himself.

Goh has nearly three decades of experience in these matters. He assumed his role at the age of thirty—considered rather old in Taoist tradition, where mediums tend to first experience ecstatic possessions and trance states in their teens and even earlier. Prior to this, he was, by his own description, a “lazy” young man, uninterested in and unaware of the numinous conditions surrounding him. After a seizure, however, he began performing site ceremonies and healings weekly, as well as teaching his disciples the methods of chants and the use of qi. Master Goh has been working with Tokyu Construction for over twenty years.

Chen recalls that their first collaboration “was at a project in Tampines. A very big project with a very deep basement for parking, so we had all the heavy machinery and we were beginning the sheet pilings, using a concrete vibrator. Big work. So, on the site they had the Japanese RE.24 He was there to oversee all the works from the contractor’s side. And he was standing there, and you know, the vibro collapsed. It fell right over and just missed him.” Chen noted that “this doesn’t just happen, OK? The vibro is clamped on with a metal clasp; it is tied, and there is a backup tie. So we knew, OK, we had to do something.”25

Work was halted until a ceremony could be performed. The “vibro” incident was not the only problem; the Tampines site was plagued with an unusually high number of dangerous occurrences. Mr. Chen realized that “we cannot just get a monk to chant and solve the problem. Have to get something stronger.” At the appointed time, when Goh began his work, one of Tokyu’s visiting directors from Japan began behaving oddly. “It was very strange,” Goh says, “like something took over him.”26 The young man had wandered away from the altar and the tent and had started weaving across the ground and performing spasmodic dancing motions. Master Goh recalled, “I had to sort him out. I asked later, and he said it was like arms were grabbing him, pulling him this way and that.”

The types of ceremony Goh performs vary. Some, as at 8 Nassim—where no haunting or incident had been reported—are held prior to the inception of digging for foundation works. He insists that this is the most important moment if an accident is to be avoided; at ground breaking is when the disturbance of a site is most likely to manifest in negative consequences. This is the period when the “original owner” of the property may make their prior claim felt. It is a time when the “laws of the site” must be carefully observed. As he told me, “when you want to buy a site; you want to develop, they got laws. Must go to authorities, make application, get license, all of this. Site also got laws; different laws. These laws are not the same. You can follow Singapore laws, also have to follow site laws.” He observed, with a smile, that he had done this many times for buildings housing the state’s various bureaucratic ministries. “The government is very strong,” he said, “but still, they have problems, they have to call me.”

A haunted place is often addressed by bringing a Buddhist monk or a Taoist medium to the site to chant.27 Master Goh and Mr. Chen feel that this is typically ritually formulaic and does not address the actual problems of a given space. Goh explained,

A monk is like a policeman. A policeman comes, can chase you away. But after the policeman gone, what happens? You come back. Monk comes in and chant, and they can chase spirits away, but later they will come back. You must know the logic of the energy, cannot just chant. So when I chant, it’s like I talk with them. I say, what do you need? Money? How much, is this enough? This? You need a passport, you need to go away somewhere? I help you. This way the site can be made all right.

Through his cycle of chants, but also his amalgamation of mediumship and geomancy, Master Goh works to “buy back” the site from its prior owners and enable their safe passage to a new home. In the same procedure, he identifies and works to rebalance local energies and elements.

This is done using an array of gifts, tools, and paraphernalia. At 8 Nassim, these centrally included food offerings—a bag of Thai rice, a one-liter plastic bottle of water, and small plastic cups (approximately the size of thimbles) containing cold tea and shots of brandy. Two large gold platters and a silver saucer held fruit, principally sweet pineapples and oranges. Two blue-and-white china vases contained marigolds. In addition, there were white jasmine flower petals in a clear plastic sack, later to be scattered on the ground, and an array of yin zhi notes. In addition to these rather standard ritual elements, there were a number of specialized geomantic implements, including a “sacred” hammer (wrapped in red ribbon) and wooden stakes. These allow key points to be marked on the earth, in a process not unlike civil preconstruction surveying.

Master Goh stood at the perimeter of the proceedings for some time while the items were arranged on the altar—a folding table skirted in red cloth, with a central bolt of white linen laid beneath the offerings. He smoked constantly and occasionally approached the altar to make small adjustments to the offerings, incense, and tools. This chiefly included occasionally picking up and examining one of his wooden stakes and inscribing Chinese characters (one of the four cardinal directions and a number) on their sides with a red Sharpie. In contrast to the elegant image of the Buddhist monk, Goh presented himself with notable ordinariness. Prior to the ceremony, he wore a white singlet, and there was an untidy air about him. He was overweight, with multiple tattoos and scars, and chain-smoked between trance cycles.28 Goh’s exceptional, charismatic body is the means by which the spirits can make their presence and desires known. It is also, by all accounts, a sensitive receptor of energetic flows. But as is common in Singaporean mediumship, it is also abused and exposed with a casual disregard. The cigarettes were smoked quickly and with deep, aggressive drags; when not in the master’s mouth, they lay on the bare earth next to the piles of burning paper.

At 8 Nassim, the setup took place for nearly an hour and a half, while the client grew visibly impatient. Master Goh briefly left the site and reappeared with a locked metal attaché, of the type seen in espionage films. He opened the lid and removed a series of instruments held within foam packing. First was a modified luo pan compass, used to locate the site within cardinal directions. Goh uses these to intuit the spirit field—yin and yang energies, in particular, which must be balanced by locating the eight directions, as well as the “center.”29 These inform the placement of the wooden stakes, which are driven into the earth by various project team members, at specific locations relative to the site and to each other.

The ceremony began not with a dramatic opening gesture but rather with a gradual coherence of chanting voices. The recitations were begun, in fact, while the table display was still being finalized, a practice that lent the start an informal flavor. While a cycle of chants took place, joss sticks were lit and placed on the fruit platters, into the sack of rice, and into bowls of sand and ash. The prayer cycles proceeded for approximately fifteen minutes. While the troupe continued to chant, Master Goh led the members of the construction team to the earth in front of the tent, to the pyres of spirit money. In contrast to typical ghost-offerings, these bills are burned in specific configurations. They are separated sheet from sheet, as burning in stacks or clumps is thought to devalue the offering. At one point, Goh and Chen became angry with the contractor’s younger employees, who were dropping large wads onto the flames. Some yin zhi are folded into tight geometrical knots symbolizing Chinese ingots. Others are doubled over, corner to corner, and placed in a polar array that appears like a rosette—one of the many moments in the ceremony in which money is arranged in cyclical forms. Goh explained that this represents a kind of inclusion, the drawing together of all living and dead collaborators into the construction venture. At the same time, it signals reciprocity: the “wheel” is a cycle of gifted value that, as we have seen, goes into the spirit world and returns.

Master Goh then assumed a Buddhist posture to enter trance. He held an upright prayer hand to his solar plexus and continued to chant over the money, his voice an increasingly slurred rumble. The assistants echoed this in a slow crescendo, over a period of twenty-five minutes, creating a rather hypnotic effect. After the offerings had been burned completely, a silence fell, and Goh stood. High-ranking members of the project team were led from the tent into the middle of the bare site. The master’s body language showed a heightened concern for the ground—he walked with a downward gaze fixed on the surface of clay and construction waste. Moving one bare foot forward, he made a series of hesitant, exploratory gestures before taking a quick step. Chen, Shinbo, two engineers, and the client’s project manager followed in a slow, single-file procession. At each stop, a representative of the development team used Goh’s hammer to drive a stake into the ground, under his guidance. These were distributed in the form of an elongated octagon. A final gift of money and fruit were placed in the middle and set alight. Subsequently, Master Goh explained that the center of the site had been “rediscovered,” and its axis—a crucial geomantic entity requiring particular treatment—was reopened through the offering. It is the tendency of successive layers of building to block these important apertures, and the work of the ceremony is in part to restore these to prominence through demarcation. Not unlike acupuncture needles, each stake is understood to ease the passage of energies trapped within the ground at a particular point.30

Having established the center, the work of the group then turned to the perimeter. Again, accompanied by the project team, the apprentices walked the property line while continuing to chant, their hands in prayer position. This is performed barefoot, as both the medium and his assistants must maintain continual contact with the ground. The latter appeared distinctly dangerous, with its shards of waste and rusting metal fragments, but Master Goh claimed that this activity presents no risk. When performing a rite for Tokyu at a former Coca-Cola plant in 2005, he recounts, his team walked many rounds atop broken bottles without a single cut. At Nassim, each participant made a complete circuit. This is a ritual norm of geomantic ceremonies, which typically attempt to reinforce the perimeter using human prayer energy. Sites that are rendered incontinent—through axial alignments of doors and gates, for example, or the incorrect placement of water elements, which can allow unregulated flows in and out—are considered dangerous to their inhabitants. In particular, it is dangerous for their money, which is understood to find such openings and flee, like water from a leaky vessel.31

Particular attention was paid to the northeast and southwest corners of the parcel. In contemporary schools of feng shui theory, these are known to be gates in and out of the physical realm. Ghosts are drawn to these apertures, because this is where they may gain easiest access. There is a tradition of keeping children below the age of eight or sick and disabled adults away from these corners—as previously discussed, such individuals are seen as energetically low or compromised and attractive prey for spirits. “Floating” objects, like curtains and fish in tanks, are also said to call in ghosts and should be kept out of these areas. Of more immediate concern to Goh, these also should not be magnified by standing water, ponds, or other fluid elements.

The process of defining central and peripheral points, and of marking these through prayer and offerings, was understood to create a “stable” ground for the new development to proceed. During the proceedings, one excavator was positioned near the center of the empty site, having been towed into place earlier that day. It was encircled by fires throughout, and its steering wheel and gear levers were “protected” with knots of red ribbon. After some two hours of chants, trances, and pacing, Master Goh entered the excavator and pressed a button to start its engine. The ceremony was over, and 8 Nassim was officially under way.

Other Sites, Other Ceremonies

The preceding description is of a single ritual. There are many approaches to the ceremonial form, however, which has no prescribed content or sequence. The chanting cycles, the objects and foods offered—even the presence of the medium—all are variable. In fact, it is not clear whether two site blessings represent, strictly speaking, the same ritual; the differences can be very great. For example, some appear to involve a precise geomantic assessment, with a repertoire of acts addressed to the ground and to qi “phases” of earth, water, metal, and wood.32 Spirits are not, here, at the center of the proceedings.33 Rather, the center is the site itself, as an environment that is balanced to benefit living and dead. In other instances, the focus is more heavily on offering and prayer, with the greater objective being ghostly appeasement at a given moment. In the former cases, the distribution of joss sticks and sacrificial accoutrements assumes a more architectonic role. They are used to locate and reinforce the cardinal points, axes and accessways, low and high ground, and natural features. When offering to gui, these specific particularities of a plot are often treated as less important. Any nearby open space or grassy patch may serve for mass burning, as in seventh month events at building works. This is because the ghosts are assumed to be largely foreign and migratory; they are released from hell and find their way to unstable and imbalanced places where risk is afoot. What is addressed is thus not a specific location but a dispersed traffic.

Most rituals seem to mix these two tendencies. I saw this at another site, where the protocol embodied an approach different to Master Goh’s. There, offerings were intended to protect the workers and proprietor of a new house on Belmont Road, in well-heeled District 10. This is a sprawling building that is, today, the developer’s own home.34 Though this was not a speculative product, its standing with the spirits was understood to affect the owner’s other projects—not to mention his own well-being and that of his family. Uncanny incidents at a given property are seen to directly affect not only the construction crew but also the fortunes of its proprietor more broadly.

The main contractor, Mr. Choo, is Singaporean, with a good reputation in his field. The scale of the works was far smaller than at Nassim, the participants fewer. Choo did not believe that the efficacy of the ceremony would be undermined by some economy, and the event was liturgically simpler than that undertaken by Tokyu. It was held during Ghost Month, after initial demolition work had concluded (and, as such, was doing a kind of double duty).35 Hell money and yin zhi were burned rapidly in large piles, rather than sheet by sheet, as Master Goh and other mediums insist on doing. Moreover, the mode of interaction with the spirits was notably different. No priest or medium was hired to lead the proceedings. Prayers were conducted in a flexible and improvised way, and a few of those participating knew the words to conventional chants. The majority of the laborers were migrants from South and Southeast Asia who followed the lead of their older, Mandarin-speaking colleagues.

Another difference, at Belmont Road, was the understanding of what was being blessed. Goh’s geomantic approach places an emphasis on the site and the earth. Here the half-completed architecture was the focus and the stage upon which offerings were set. Rather than being placed directly on the soil, joss sticks and small pyres of ghost-money were used to demarcate the elements of the building’s avant-garde form—at edges, apertures, stairwells, and transitional spaces. The architect had designed the house across multiple floor levels, platforms with stairs between, to negotiate the sloping plot. To address this peculiar condition, joss urns were placed on the edges of the unfinished slabs. The largest pyre, and ceremonial center, was positioned at the end of the building’s central axis. Here a folding table was erected to hold plates of banquet foods—roast duck and suckling pig, Styrofoam packets of fried rice and ngoh hiang—alongside Choo’s stacks of hell notes and yin zhi.36 In addition, the building’s angular geometry seemed to call for address. Clusters of incense were placed at the apices of its sharp projections, as these are thought to radiate bad energy (known as poison arrow qi due to its intensity).37 Tang, the foreman, explained that “the angles look [stylish], but not so healthy.”38

Choo is Christian, and his feelings about site ceremonies resemble Pascal’s wager. He told me, “I don’t directly believe in all of these things, but I do feel that it is quite bad not to do it.” Choo did not feel that unpropitiated spirits were likely to cause site injuries but felt that “skittish” workers may well do so. Choo claimed that the offering was an expected practice and that something would be considered amiss if it were not to be held. This is the context in which “accidents happen.” Choo claims that this is even the case with the large number of foreign workers who compose his team—hailing from Bangladesh, South India and Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Cambodia. Clearly the local Hokkien-speaking tradesmen would be expecting the offerings to be made. However, Choo told me that the foreign workers who have worked on Singaporean sites also come to feel that avoiding the ceremony is inauspicious.

Representatives from another contractor, Low Keng Huat, described yet another procedure for their own works. Two project managers, Chu and Yap, agreed that ceremonies are essential at project inception as well as during Ghost Month. However, it is not their habit to perform geomantic rituals involving a medium. Their standard practice involves purchasing a Taoist altar and statues from a temple. As long as the construction work is under way, the statues remain in place. As earth god, Tu Di Kong is very important to construction projects; Chu and Yap approach the ground with the same reverence described by Master Goh, Mr. Chen, and Mr. Ong. As foreman Johnny noted, the presence of Tu Di Kong is “very common because we believe that this god is in charge of all the earth and the ground. So, if you own a shop, a factory, you need him to protect you—protect your ground.”

Chu and Yap noted that project managers from Low Keng Huat will also erect a second shrine, specifically for Toa Pek Kong. On construction sites, this deity is expected not to protect the workers but to bring good fortune and favorable outcomes.39 As Johnny described to me,

Chu showed a phone camera image of a shrine at another project that had been concealed to look like an electrical distribution box. Its front doors would be closed when the developer, who was evangelical, drove his Mercedes past.

When a project is complete, it is the job of the contractor’s representatives to make a final offering to deities and ghosts and to “inform [them] that the job is finished, and that we have to move your home out from this site.” The shrine will then be relocated to a temple. If there is no desire to adopt the effigy, the contractors will customarily leave it under a tree near the temple, with some apologetic brandy and joss sticks. Before this relocation can take place, indeed, before the contractor can consider the job finished, a representative must da xin bei, or use divining rods, to receive word from the gods that it is acceptable to conclude (the same method is used to determine whether ghosts have “eaten” food offerings). If divining rods are not available, Chu says that the xin bei will be performed with a coin toss. Heads must come up three times in a row, times three, or in nine tosses total, for Low Keng Huat to vacate the site.41 It should be noted that the conclusion of works—and the beginning of the “defects period”—is another key moment in the development process. During this time, the architect and tenants will recall the contractor to make small corrections and improvements. More significantly, though, it marks the moment when inhabitants move in and the ownership of the new building moves into the hands of a tenants’ management committee.42 At long last, the developers’ possession of the project is converted to liquid capital, once again.

Danger, Spirit, and Speculative Process

It remains to ask, what does all of this symbolic work, these particular rites with their own symbolic emphases, address? What specific social concerns make them necessary? As I have argued, site ceremonies have much to do with transformations of places and the manifold dangers that are expected to result. This was very clearly the case at the 8 Nassim project. An unease lingered over the morning of the ceremony. This was quietly voiced by Jessie, the lead structural engineer of a London-based firm. She gestured toward the blanket of finely pummeled building waste that covered the earth. It was powerful evidence of destruction, residue of what went before. Shards of tile, hammered from the walls of kitchens and bathrooms, covered the ground. An atmosphere of violence resonated here, a shattering of the intimate and the familiar. In Singapore, such waste has traditional associations with potential physical and spiritual pollution. Such materials are thought to be channels of contagious conditions: illness, death, bad luck. This is especially true in those zones where resident spirits remain unreconciled with the ongoing rush of progress. In discussions with informants involved in the industry, I have heard repeatedly of worksites as loci of great hope and aspiration—but also of sickness and haunting, as forms of opportunistic contamination that prey upon them or find ecological niches within them.

Interestingly, there are layers of more mundane truth to this. As rain fell at 8 Nassim, those shards of ceramic and concrete were poisoning the earth. The landscape architect bemoaned the fact that this would leech salts and chemicals into the soil. The upper layer would need to be completely replaced before anything would be likely to grow. The puddles and rivulets forming amid the waste provided some concern for Goh, as damp and wet ground is imbued with yin qi and prone to ghostly infestation. For Chen, these are also breeding grounds for mosquitoes—a topic of some concern, as partially built parcels in the tropics are known to become hot spots for dengue, chikungunya, and, more recently, Zika. These are slow, invisible forms of site accident and are in fact more common and deadlier than more spectacular forms of physical trauma.

For the developer, these shards were also a disquieting reminder. The demolition of the former building represented the erasure of immensely valuable fixed capital: in this case, a condominium complex worth S$500 million. It is a form of destruction that is largely procedural and necessarily takes place before new value can be realized. Regardless, the moment at which work on the new building begins is also one of great risk. Although large sums have been paid out, the project has not advanced far enough that sales can begin. This is the period of greatest risk from financial leverage. Large changes to the market—such as those that befell the 8 Nassim Hill development in 2008—will leave the owner holding fixed assets that are not easily fungible in a sluggish market. Money invested in land and building contracts and materials cannot be banked and cannot accrue interest. The ceremony thus took place at a moment in which the equations of profitability contained the maximum number of unresolved liabilities.

In the peculiar business of real estate development, these are the most unreal moments, the instants of transformation in the developer’s capital. What began as a series of financial instruments—bank loans, shareholder and profit-sharing agreements among investors and landowners—has suddenly become an investment in physical assets, that is, a building that has been destroyed and now cannot be resold. Those like Master Goh and Chen can understand, and articulate in the religious idiom, this problem. For them, the ritual moment is one of vulnerability precisely because it is an instance in which something has been destroyed and something else has yet to be built. Goh’s own narrative uses energetics to describe this acrobatic moment: the uncertainty of the site, the immanence of its eradicated histories, and the as-yet-unrealized presence of a new object to anchor and shape the flows and forces of the place are precisely what make it potentially toxic. He translates, into ideas of elemental liquidity, in the freedom to move of spirits that are potentially problematic, an analogue of the financial situation that concerns the stakeholders. It is a moment in which ghosts, ancestors adrift, can interrupt the intended flow of monies as they prepare to move from one medium to another.

The ceremony, as well as those by Mr. Choo, Chu and Yap, Johnny, and others, addressed the anxieties of this moment on a number of levels simultaneously. Where Buddhist and Taoist practices draw on a rich conceptual vocabulary in dealing with concerns of the cyclical, of creation and destruction—and of moments and media of transformation—they are very much in sync with a mode of capital that prepares to reincarnate among past and future commodities, old buildings and “hot” properties, and oscillations of proportion between abstract finance and fixed investments. For this reason, the material practice of Goh’s troupe replicates in its interactions with the spirit world the cycle of speculative capital. Master Goh “invests” objects with his blessings—paper money, rice, and food. These are used, or alienated, in the pursuit of a balance between the human world and the afterlife; this, in turn, is thought to bring profits, excesses, and surplus.43

Certainly these rites also address questions of “the becoming-past of places.”44 Ceremonies are not employed merely to secure monetary flows. Master Goh’s language also addresses the problem of a certain vacuum created through near-instantaneous razing of sites. This vacuum is, as the phrase goes, “abhorrent” to spirits and energies as much as it is to nature and to a febrile human imagination. Certainly there seems a continued demand, even on the part of those who make their fortunes via the process of transformation itself, for a moment of restitution and reflection. The tools of the trade (the spirit compass, for example) work to address a larger field of spatialized history and to make certain acknowledgments prior to the endless re-creation of novelty for profit.

So much for the process, then. What about the product?

From a ghostly perspective, architecture appears to retain a problematic status. It is just as common—in fact, more so—for Master Goh to be called in to completed buildings when strange events take place. I have given an account of his visit to the Central Intelligence Department, a case in which troubles during construction led to others later. Finished structures live on as environments, which attract incidents by virtue of their own particular imbalances, orientations, locations, and adjacencies. Architectures of state, as bureaucratic centers of transformative violence, are major attractors of haunting. Speculative structures likewise deal with turmoil that extends to different owners and users after the initial profit models have been safely actualized. Certain typologies, like hotels, appear to be in a continual state of spiritual upheaval—due, perhaps, to their association with alienation and ill event, and their deeply contradicted conflation of public, commercial, and private spaces. Older informants, such as Hilda and Hua, exemplified a common belief that “hotels are haunted because you have no idea what happened there.”45 Harry, who works for a corporation that develops and manages hotel property, likewise noted that “ghosts in hotels, there are a lot. . . . If you believe in ghosts, in hotels there will be ghosts.”

As noted, the assumed nature of the ghost appears to address two key concerns in the spectropolis. The first involves the status of the building as a spiritual-geomantic fact, with deep implications for luck and prosperity. Here architecture and site, as material things, cannot be ontologically extricated from their histories as environmental disturbances. There are no “accidents”: fate and ecology are conjoined. The second question is that with which we began this chapter: the problem of the building as a commodity, as an economic operation sitting uncannily at the core of the lifeworld. The resolution of these, for Chinese popular religion, lies in the fact that they are one—that the environmental and the pecuniary can be shown to be deeply embedded within each other and mutually constitutive.

As an intervention in a spirit field—which quickly becomes part and parcel of that same res extensa—the work of architecture carries implications extending far beyond both domestic harmony and value or, rather, which give these a rather greater role and significance. Here Singaporean Chinese folk practices sit within a heavily Taoist and geomantic worldview, in which a given building stands within the expansive notion of da zi ran (greater nature). The principles ordering the universe imbue the new structure, just as the latter creates localized effects in the world that preceded it and which surround it. The environmentalism of this tradition remains, in a powerful way, immanent in its conception. The whole of the universe is in the site; in it, all things are connected. We, as humans, influence nature in ways that in turn influence us.

And while many contemporary Asian feng shui practitioners reject “black hat” or other traditions that emphasize money magic, it is nonetheless an essential aspect of this tradition that luck and prosperity are energetic matters responsive to the precise location, orientation, and design of a house—and not least with the dangerous fluidity of yin energy, which can wash out wealth as easily as it can carry it in. For this reason, Master Goh was heavily preoccupied with areas of ponding, with drains, and most of all with the location stipulated by the Singapore Land Transport Authority for the main gate and drop-off at Nassim Hill Road. Streets, from a geomantic perspective, are rivers: aqueous channels of energy. They are thus major sources of volatility—both dangers and potentials. Here, also, we see another world of associations with the ghost. Like streets, spectral beings are yin. Their appearance on a site does not merely threaten misbehavior or aggression. Rather, their very energetic basis is associated with a possibly negative liquidity—with literal fluids—and suggests the outpouring of the developers’ investments into the surrounding network of drains and byways.

Crucially, this affects everyone. There are fears, all the way down the line, about the building as an economic operator, as a successful product and venture but also as a space that will be lucky for those who inhabit it. This is what underlies Goh’s claims in transforming the “energies” of a building and the resulting jump in prices. There is encoded, here, a sense of the home not merely as a capital investment but as a determining factor in one’s economic fortunes. This again goes back to the conception of both landscapes and constructions as, essentially, spirit ecologies. The safety of the workers, smooth construction, and the profitability of the venture all indicate that the project has been carried out correctly with respect to numinous influences of energy and spirit. This benefits all—capital, workers, contractors, suppliers, and designers. By the same token, the failure of a project is also seen to have a contagious effect, and so the venture affects everyone for the worse. This explains why it was so important to Goh and Chen that all parties join the ceremony. It is a broader social contract, and the project’s ultimate production of value plays a double role: as evidence that relations with the netherworld were handled properly and as an investment that will benefit the spiritual-geomantic condition of the place going forward. It will bolster the residents’ prosperity and that of everyone who worked on the job. This makes sense of a curious fact about Singaporean construction, which is the heightened care of the workers for the success of a project that offers them no additional benefit. This explains, also, another unexpected phenomenon: although gossip within the construction industry is a perennial fact, most contractors will jealously guard knowledge of paranormal incidents within the team, as if the developer’s vast profits were their own.

In this sense, we might understand the purpose of the spectral incident and the site ceremony as performing ritual work familiar from classic anthropological texts. As ritual, it gathers a provisional social collective into a common defense against risks, real or perceived. No wonder that this should occur at times when such dangers appear to be at their most acute; nor, in Singapore, that the rite should have a capitalist spin, providing not only numinous insurance but the potential for an amplification of value. We may recognize in the alleged haunting one of Max Gluckman’s “trouble cases”: threatening events that provide an opportunity for reaffirmation and renewed affiliation.46 In this same moment, the problematic relationship of the ghost to the construction industry’s many migrants is adressed. While beyond the scope of this book, it is a long-standing assumption in Singapore that foreign workers are understood as particularly susceptible to possession and spectral encounters.47 While I have not found this to be a particular discursive focus of incidents on job sites, it is nonetheless true that contractors and foremen are very careful to make sure that foreigners are included in the rituals.48

This ghost-culture of architecture has one final notable effect. This study is concerned principally with the influence of ghosts on speculative building. The notion of a da zi ran embodied in each architectural instance, however, introduces forms of perceived risk that extend beyond profits and loss. Many individual futures are influenced by the production of new towers and houses, of which the sale price is seen more as an indicative measure of broader fortunes and exchanges. In this cultural understanding, all Singaporean buildings are speculative—in that they are thought to have direct and uncertain effects on the futures of those linked by association with them.49

This might, at first, contradict their oddly “thin” appearance. These seem to be homes only incompletely: there is a sense that such structures exist in an alien zone of exchange and “at two” with presence or function. Here design leaves telltale traces. The profit motive disincentivizes the use of actual stone, brick, or wood. Developers typically opt for plastered and painted concrete instead, rationing the budget for decorative features at areas of high visibility and traffic. The anemic character of Singapore’s industrial-productive economy means that “real” volumetric substances, like solid wood, are difficult to acquire and too costly for budgets premised on profitability. Instead, structural frames are pasted up with laminated cladding made optimally thin: from paint to ceramic tile to veneers that create a clever imitation of materiality.50 Through innovative factory processes, these may be made to asymptotically approach depthlessness—a process by which the real house for the Singaporean and the paper one for the ghost gain a striking resemblance. Both are understood to have an existence in thrall to delayed forms of surplus-value. Both, likewise, represent temporary vehicles that must be destroyed to release value and capture it anew; like gui, Singaporeans (indeed, all of us) live in houses made of money, actualized through creative destruction.51

However, we should not identify this merely as the wasting effects of alienation or the failure of a “real” or authentic being. Rather, we might now imagine a wholly different view of such architecture: as a temporary instantiation of value, as a transmitter of forces that link home life with Greater Nature’s fluid dynamics. Ghosts, after all, are energetic forms that interact with others and have qualitative effects. Happiness, health, social harmony, fertility, good grades—the whole aspirational-affective world of middle-class life—do not and cannot separate themselves from value. That which would stand in absolute contrast to the monetary, to the speculative, is here frankly and fundamentally conjoined to it via the concept of prosperity. Understandings of matter, energy, and spirit dramatize and recoup this odd contradiction at the center of the architectural commodity. Those of the Chinese faith do not simply ignore its central “theological” contradiction. Nor do they merely put up with its unheimlich aspect. Rather, the discourse of value as energy, and its role amid balances of forces that intimately affect human lives, works to reconcile the equivocal nature of the house-as-property with the house-as-home. Exchange-value exists in a building but functions as a down payment on futures and outcomes. This is produced through an influx of investment, which works to improve sheng qi (growth/prosperity energy) and also, in money, is used to strike a bargain with its unseen residents. The price of a property is not a source of alienation but a lever of numinous agency, both acting on lives and interpreting their ups and downs. As in Hua’s example, concepts of devaluation, personal power, comfort, and luck become entwined via the unknown specters of an old house.

Moreover—and of no small consequence for the ephemerality of local buildings—value must be put in motion. Undoubtedly, deep discomforts arise from the disturbance of environments. But there is also an understanding, embedded in the logic of Taoist assumptions, that the value instantiated in architecture needs occasional release, either through reconstruction or by the partial bloodletting of “upgrading.” Old buildings, especially ones without perceivable heritage-value, are often viewed with a kind of suspicion. They are “run down” in the sense that their inherent value is trapped and stagnant. Peggy, a realtor in her forties, joked to me that many bungalows from the early 2000s are a pain to sell because “people think they’re so old, haunted already.” These are assumed to attract ghosts for two reasons: first, stagnant energy leads to imbalance, which acts magnetically, and second, they are the site of prior human event and emotion, themselves having energetic consequences. This is why older hotels are treated with fear and distrust and why so many “listed” buildings in Singapore are alleged to be haunted. The process of construction is both anodyne and dangerous in this respect. It can clean the slate but also must reckon with the fact that older events and energies, and the ghosts that they draw in, do not go away easily. Regardless, a collective sale on a condo complex is described by its proponents as a fresh start, and the decrepit character of older architectures is always central to discourse of justified demolition. Here we can see an evident contradiction. On one hand, transformation of places is a source of disturbance; on the other, the built and natural environments must be disrupted for the “natural” flow of value to occur. Here, again, Chinese cosmology à la Singapore is brought into alignment with a capitalist ethos—the shibboleth of creative destruction.