I am back with some more Postcards From Chinatown....
When I sauntered into Chinatown yesterday, this lovely building caught my eye and my fascination...
After some degree of search on the internet, I figured out that this is the Jinrikisha Building (金吉力沙人力车站),
Located at the junction of Neil Road and Tanjong Pagar Road, the Jinrikisha Building was a station for rickshaws - those kinds that you still have in Calcutta - the hand-pulled ones.
Rickshaw was first imported from Shanghai to Singapore in 1880 and by 1888, a Jinricksha Department was set up to register and license each rickshaw, there were over a thousand of them in Singapore in the 1880s.
The Jinrikisha Building or the station as it was known then was built from 1903 to 1904. It catered to customers coming into Singapore from the nearby Tanjong Pagar Docks. It is estimated that by 1919, there were 9,000 rickshaws manned by 20,000 rickshaw pullers working in shifts.
After World War II, rickshaws were phased out by government legislation, easing the misery of the rickshaw pullers who lived here close by in Chinatown's shophouses....
Some tourists roaming around Chinatown just like me....
O wow! Free WiFi for me at Chinatown.... That was a big help - I quickly logged on to Google Maps for directions....
Decked up for the Autumn Moon Festival!
Dusk sets in at Chinatown...
As I walked back to Raffles Place, the highrises were being lit up...
And the skyscrapers looked beautiful....
Incredibly, the quaintness of Chinatown blends into the modernity of Singapore, with no visible signs of a clash of ideas or generations...
Today when I headed back to Chinatown, with Neeti, the pace in Chinatown was a bit more relaxed, not as frenetic as yesterday....
We ended our day at Maxwell Food Centre....
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