Places Of The Heart: Banyan co-founder Ho Kwon Ping’s family ties to Labrador Park
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Banyan Group founder Ho Kwon Ping at his Bukit Timah home on May 16.
ST PHOTO: GIN TAY
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Mr Ho Kwon Ping, 72, is the co-founder and executive chairman of home-grown hospitality company Banyan Group. The hotelier and property developer owns and manages more than 80 properties globally, and is expecting to launch its 100th property in Singapore in 2025.
His late parents were Mr Ho Rih Hwa, a businessman and diplomat; and Madam Li Lienfung, a prolific writer, philanthropist and arts champion. The younger Mr Ho is married to Banyan Group co-founder Claire Chiang, 73. They have three children – Ren Hua, 42, Ren Yung, 39, and Ren Chun, 30 – and five grandchildren.
“There are two places in Singapore that have left an indelible mark: Labrador Park and the Rail Corridor.
I like Labrador Park’s World War II gun emplacements because they bring back memories of my time in the Singapore Armed Forces when I was an engineer platoon commander.
In the early 1970s, I spent nine months on Pulau Blakang Mati (now Sentosa) as the last batch of national servicemen to train there. My platoon had to jog daily from one end of the island to the other. Back then, the island was like a fortress, with gun emplacements similar to Labrador Park’s.
Labrador Park was also my mother’s favourite walking grounds, as she loved views of the sea. Even when she used a wheelchair in her later years, my family and I would wheel her by the seaside promenade.
She died in 2011, 12 years after my father did.
Writer and philanthropist Li Lien Fung in a photo taken on Feb 3, 1998. She is the mother of entrepreneur Ho Kwon Ping.
PHOTO: THE BUSINESS TIMES
The same park has more recent happy memories, where I played “personal trainer” to my daughter, Ren Yung, about four years ago when she was expecting her second child.
She was quite overdue and to help speed up her labour, she jumped up and down and ran around the park, with me as the anxious but earnest exercise buddy in tow.
Thankfully, she gave birth to her son shortly after.
The Rail Corridor is just a hop and skip from my home, which was built about 30 years ago in the Bukit Timah area.
My children and I often cycled alongside the abandoned train tracks. My youngest son had such happy memories of our outings at different parks that he wrote a prose poem, Cycling With My Father. It touched on our cycling and its deeper meaning for us.
Here is an extract of his ruminations along the Rail Corridor and West Coast Park:
Visitors at the Hillview node of the rail corridor (north), a 6.3km segment which runs from Kranji to Hillview, on Feb 10, 2023.
ST PHOTO: KEVIN LIM
“Looking out at that sea, I knew I had many more miles to know more. Not his familiar terms of phrase or too-human penchants, the favourite cuisines or the refrained ideologies. To know by time the weight of the gaze upon the container ships and industrial cranes: candid spellings of failure and second chances.
“Both the regrets being released back into the waves, as well as the hopes sustained, by raft, across so many successive oceans.”
Places Of The Heart are not only getaways with landscaped beauty, but also spaces imbued with special meaning. In fast-paced Singapore, it is important to detach yourself from your day-to-day routine and find a place where you can reflect, remember and recharge.
We need to remind ourselves about the purpose of living, which is to appreciate every moment, every day.”
