Some Residents of Upper Nankin Street, Singapore

Abstract

Upper Nankin Street is in the heart of Singapore’s ‘Chinatown’. Bounded on the north by New Bridge Road and on the south by South Bridge Road, it is one of a grid of streets evidently laid out shortly after 1835¹. It is about one-eighth of a mile long, and is bounded both ends by busy one-way streets carrying a good deal of the cross-city traffic, which give it an isolation of its own. Apart from two vacant lots, on one of which a shack has been built, and the back of a Chinese temple opening into Upper Hokkien Street, it consists entirely of two- and three-storey shophouses, built back-to-back to similar rows in the parallel streets: Upper Chin Chew Street on the west, and Upper Hokkien Street on the east. There is no means of communication between these back-to-back houses, and this tends to train social interest towards the street itself. In the street there is a great deal of activity most of the day: people coming from and going to work; itinerant hawkers selling cooked foods and other commodities; the activity stemming from the shops, some of which are in fact workshops, or small factories; children playing on the stairs and on the pavements; people gossiping; and so forth.