Every Face Has A Story To Tell, Every Story Seeks To Be Heard.... Part III

While in Chinatown, Every Face Has A Story To Tell, Every Story Seeks To Be Heard...., some places too had stories to be told...

One such place was the Great Southern Hotel or the Nam Tim (meaning "southern sky" in Cantonese) Built in the 1930s, it was one of the tallest buildings of its times in Chinatown, the first hotel in Chinatown to have an elevator.

The Great Southern Hotel catered more to Chinese travellers, including celebrities from Hong Kong and China, unlike the upmarket hotels like Raffles Hotel, which then accommodated mainly Europeans. As a boutique hotel with shops and entertainment outlets for rich Chinese immigrants, the Great Southern Hotel was considered as the "Raffles Hotel of Chinatown".

The Great Southern had a creepy side to it - being the tallest building in the area, it was a popular place for suicide attempts...

The hotel’s Great Southern Cabaret and Southern Restaurant were legendary, patronised by prominent personalities of that time. The Great Southern Cabaret was located on the 6th floor and was an open-air cabaret where guest enjoyed a bird’s eye view of the surrounding area. It was one of the most glamorous places for wealthy Chinese to gather. Guests could buy tickets to dance with hostess. After a night at the Southern Cabaret, guests often invited hostess for supper at the neighboring Pearl Market.

Equally famous was the Great Southern Restaurant where operas were performed as entertainment for guests. The operas were later replaced with song performance by female artiste.  While enjoying the performance, guests would sip tea and sample South Restaurant’s variety of snacks. Although many restaurants had opera performances, a visit to Southern Restaurant was something special. The elevator ride was a novelty and going to a place where the rich and famous gathered added a magical touch to the experience.

(Source: http://www.chinatownology.com/) 

Faced with competition, the hotel had to shut shop in the 1990s and was sold to a Hong Kong based conglomerate, which opened a departmental store here. Today, it's known as the Yue Hwa Building. Law mandates that the facade of the building be preserved. 

While moneyed folk entertained themselves at the Great Southern, the commonfolk had to make do with teahouses, theatres and opium dens...

In the 1920s, Chinatown got another landmark, the Majestic Theatre that hosted Cantonese operas as well as the occasional silent movie. 

In 2003, Majestic Theatre was converted into a shopping center, which shutdown in 2007. Today, the building is unused. 

Glimpses of Chinatown in the 1930s...

A layout of the area from the thirties...

Tailoring was a craft that became popular in Chinatown...

When we see Singapore's glitz and glamour, litle do we realise that it had a not so pleasant past, but what matters is that the city-state came out of it...

A simple lifestyle described the lives of the folk here. 

Those days were tough....

With currents of change, Chinatown and Singapore as a nation transformed itself...

Indeed, Every Face Has A Story To Tell, Every Story Seeks To Be Heard.... 

Every Face Has A Story To Tell, Every Story Seeks To Be Heard.... Part I

Just about two buildings from the Singapore Coins And Notes Museum lies the Chinatown Heritage Centre, a place highly recommended if you are a history buff and fancy all that stuff about how the city state evolved into what it is today. 

Ever since I planned my trip here, I knew I had to visit the Chinatown Heritage Centre. Undoubtedly, you would conclude I am a history buff, no prizes for guessing that.

Located in a "shophouse", the museum recreates the magic of yesteryears, the 1800s when poverty stricken immigrants or "sinkheh" (new comers in the Hokkien dialect) landed here in Singapore with a desperate hopefulness, somewhat similar to that of Indian indentured labour that was taken abroad to Mauritius, Fiji, Guyana and other far-off lands.

The Chinese immigrants were told that they were being taken to Nanyang, lands in the southern seas and South East Asia that were rumoured to have streets of gold. For these immigrants, who had suffered enough of poverty and famine at home, this was enticing enough....

Labour recruiters in mainland China recruited large numbers of unskilled Chinese in the coolie trade to "fuel" the colonial economy overseas in exchange for money to feed their families. This type of trading was known as mai zhu zai (賣豬仔, "selling piglets") by the Chinese. 

They were promised a good pay and excellent working conditions - these enticements lured them into signing multi-year labor contracts. They hoped they would return home, richer, and would ameliorate the living conditions of their families. 

As I entered the Chinatown Heritage Centre, sepia-toned photographs of early Chinese immigrants greeted me. But it did seem that there much beyond the smiling faces. As I was to discover, Every Face Has A Story To Tell, Every Story Seeks To Be Heard....

Thus began their journeys aboard Chinese junks or boats to various British colonies around the globe - Fiji, Guyana, South East Asia, Mauritius.... The Chinese, like the Indians were prized for their work-ethic.

Travel onboard the junks (traditional Chinese boats) was far from comfortable, and many immigrants died en route to Singapore because of bad transport conditions. Usually, they were cheated of their wages and were unable to return to China after their contracts expired.

The account of a lady, Ah Kwai summarizes the plight of the immigrants:

"We were farmers and lived at the Lee Kai village in Samsui.

The family could not make a living out of the farms,

so I volunteered to leave and find work in Singapore.

Nobody objected, what could they do?

We could not manage with what we had. So I had to come."

The story of Leong Ah Hoe, a domestic servant:

"I lost my mother when I was young, so I looked after other people's cows in China.

My father was old, so I went to my maternal grandmother's house to stay.

When she passed away, I was already 16 or 17.

Life was tough, so I came to Singapore. I took a Teochew ship from Samsui to Hong Kong, and bought my ship ticket from the hotel in Hong Kong to come to Singapore. I came with a few sisters of mine." 

With their meagre possessions and with hopes of returning back home, the coolies undertook the arduous journey to Singapore. This reminded me of the heart-rending stories of the Indians in Fiji (Girmityas - a corruption of the word "agreement" under which Indian labour was taken to Fiji) and our diaspora in Guyana (I remembered the tale of the Indian labourer Sujaria, documented by her great-granddaugther, Gaiutra Bahadur in her book, Coolie Women).

Since a lot of the immigrants from China were single men, prostitution became rampant in Singapore. That led to spread of diseases amongst the communities in Chinatown...

A depiction of a brothel room from the late 1800s 

Four evils faced the sinkhehs in Singapore - secret societies (mafia), prostitution, addictions (opium and alcohol) and gambling

An opium pipe...

Often opium and gambling went hand in hand.... this compounded the misery of early settlers in Singapore....

The early settlers thought that opium was the balm of long life....

The foundations of the mafia in Singapore weren't all that evil - they started as societies to help the early immigrants....

The secret societies or the mafia converged all the evils....

But the industrious immigrants rose above these evils.... that's perhaps why every face in Chinatown has a story to tell....

Every Face Has A Story To Tell, Every Story Seeks To Be Heard.... Part II

As I went further into the Chinatown Heritage Centre, I was even more convinced that Every Face Has A Story To Tell, Every Story Seeks To Be Heard.... 

The story of the humble, industrious immigrants or the sinkheh went beyond the four evils - mafia, prostitution, opium and gambling. The early immigrants found kinship in associations that helped them cope with the stresses of being away from home...

These associations kept their bonds with their motherland alive. They kept their culture alive, celebrated festivals together...

New bonds were created, a "home" away from home was created...

This reminded me of what Indian diaspora had done abroad. In Mauritius, we had experienced how a crater lake at Grand Bassin was considered as "holy" as the Ganga by the Indian immigrants.... The called it the Ganga Talao... They congregated here for kumbh and other festivities that they celebrated back home....

This wall was quite interesting - it explained the origin of various Chinese surnames....

Every name also has a story to tell....

This quote of a Samsui lady, Loh Ah Kwai, is so quite true for the diaspora, Chinese or Indian....

Life in those days wasn't easy, with a lack of amenities and sanitation....

Racially segregated as part of the Raffles Plan, Chinatown got its water supply through bullock carts....

Si Lat Po, as the early immigrants called Singapore, was a dream for many, but the journey was expensive and arduous....

Loh Ah Kwai was an actual immigrant to Singapore. I am told she was interviewed and her experiences have been recorded and are presently housed at the National Archives of Singapore...

But the numerous, facesless sinkheh would have had similar stories to tell, stories of adversity and courage.... 

Religion kept the early immigrants culturally connected to the Mainland... and many temples came up in Chinatown...

The steps, literally, the steps of history give a timeline of Chinatown...

A model of a modest tea shop housed in a "shop-house" with dim-sum steamers on the tables...

The marketplaces of yesteryears...

Bookshops and libraries...

Street-side kitchens of yesteryears....

Keeping traditions alive...

恭喜發財 - Kung Hei Fat Choy - New Year celebrations in Chinatown!!!!

Business was brisk at festival time...

The origins of the Night Markets...

The Chinese, much like Indians, have a fascination for gold... And goldsmiths had a great franchise in Chinatown...

I tell you, the Chinatown Heritage Centre is such a fascinating place to visit, actually a must visit in Singapore for all those interested in the heritage of the city-state...