Sungei Road
Encyclopedia
Sungei Road is a road in Singapore
situated between Serangoon Road
and Jalan Besar
and runs along the Rochor Canal
. The area around Sungei Road was formerly the homes of affluent European
s and Asians, where many ornately designed buildings were built in its place. From the 1930s to the present, the road has been synonymous with the Thieves' Market, the largest and oldest flea market
in Singapore, where the locals can hunt for old bric-a-brac
or second-hand goods, as a cheap replacement for one's faulty or lost item. It's also the place where the well-known Sungei Road Laksa, a local spicy noodle soup originated. Sungei Road was also known as "Kek Sng Kio" in hokkien dialect or "结霜桥" in Chinese. The name was made in reference to the Singapore Ice Works which use to exist in the precinct.
name sungei meaning "river". Sungei Road start opposite the former Kandang Kerbau police station, hence it was known to the Chinese
in Hokkien
dialect as "tek kah ma ta chu" meaning "tek kah police station".
, the founder of modern Singapore, for the homes of affluent Europeans and Asians, when he divided the early settlements according to different ethnic groups. The Arabs and Malays
who had settled here previously were relocated to the east of Sungei Road at Kampong Glam
. Ornately designed two-storey and three-storey shophouse
s that came with covered 5 feet (1.5 m) way were built in its place.
At nearby Lavender Street was the attap house of Cho Ah Chee, the carpenter of the ship S.S Indiana in which Raffles travelled to Singapore in 1819. It is believed that Raffles gave the house to Guangdong
-born Cho, in recognition of his services at the time of the founding of Singapore. The house has been demolished in the 1970s and a small public park has taken its place.
During the Japanese Occupation
, a street market known as Robinson Petang meaning "evening Robinsons", started along the banks of the Rochor Canal where the poor could buy cheap household wares and other merchandise in short supply, akin to what department store Robinson & Co.
had sold.
man ("rag and bone man" in Malay), that one buys from today, may not be there tomorrow. There are no receipts, so refunds are impossible. Until the British Army
withdrawal in the late 1960s, it was also a place to buy army merchandise like uniforms, army gear and other army surplus, possibly looted earlier from British military stores. The open air market soon acquired a bad reputation as the major dissemination venue for stolen goods that would last to the present day. If an item was "lost" recently, one can try their luck in looking for it at the Thieves' Market, and buying it back from the sellers who will always claim no knowledge of its source.
In the early 1970s, opium
dens used to be common in the Sungei Road area. The drugs were popular with workers looking for a cheap way to ease the hardship of the day's toil. The opium addicts were mainly poor, elderly people from working-class groups. In early 1991, a spate of fires destroyed more than 20 shophouses along Sungei Road. Most of the century-old shophouses, crumbling with age, had become potential fire hazards for its residents. The first fire incident left two people injured and 61 homeless. As a result, many of its buildings were torn down for safety reason and its inhabitants relocated in later years.
Another similar rags-to-riches story is Pang Lim, who was an illegal fruit hawker in Sungei Road in the 1970s. His big break came when he saved enough money to rent a coffee shop in 1990 with his younger brother and uncle. They rented the stalls out to other hawkers and managed the drinks stall themselves. The business took off and from one coffee shop, Pang is now the managing director of Koufu, which operates 20 foodcourts, five coffee shops and five cafes around the island.
, a local spicy noodle soup that originated from Peranakan
culture. The founder, Wong Yew Hwa uses charcoal fire to keep his gravy constantly warm in order to maintain its distinctive flavour. His laksa dish was listed by a local food guide as one of the top 10 dishes in Singapore.
The Sungei Road laksa legacy was started in 1956 when a Hainanese
friend of Wong, Ah Tong, gave Wong and his brother Wong Yew Poh, his secret recipe for laksa on account of their long-standing friendship. The Wong brothers set up a push-cart stall to sell their laksa and the response to their recipe was overwhelming. It was sold with the thick bee hoon (Chinese noodle) cut up and served only with a spoon, without chopsticks
, topped with cockles, bean sprouts and home-made fried fish cakes in distinctive chicken motif bowls. Customers ate it while standing by the roadside and it cost only 20 cents a bowl back then. By day, they sold along Johor Road and by night, off Sungei Road. Today, the brothers have since lost contact with Ah Tong, but their children still serve the traditional recipe with its unique way of serving at a very reasonable price.
and York
corporations. It was popular as a pioneer establishment that brought refrigeration and air-conditioning to Singapore. In 1958, it was renamed as the New Singapore Ice Works. In later years, the factory was bought over by Cold Storage
who ran it under their management. However, in 1984, the Housing Development Board (HDB) took over its site for redevelopment. The factory was soon demolished and the plant operations was re-located to Auric Pacific at Fishery Port Road. This facility has since closed down after being in use for over twenty years.
especially those hard to sell items such as old photographs, badges, medals and other collector's items.
Despite its long history and tenacity, the flea market's days are numbered as the site, sitting on a huge chunk of state land about the size of a football field. Part of the Sungei Road is acquired for Downtown Line, Sungei Road MRT Station construction. The remainder would be redeveloped by HDB at the later time.
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
situated between Serangoon Road
Serangoon Road
Serangoon Road is a road from Little India to Boon Keng of Singapore . There is another road, from Woodsville Interchange to Sengkang called Upper Serangoon Road.Another way is via Jalan Besar and Bendemeer Road....
and Jalan Besar
Jalan Besar
Jalan Besar is the name of a street in the northeastern part of the Central Area in Singapore, which is its central business district. It is also the name of the electoral Jalan Basar Group Representation Constituency, of which Jalan Basar is a prominent centrepiece...
and runs along the Rochor Canal
Rochor Canal
Rochor Canal is a canal in the Central Region of Singapore. The canal is about 1.4 km in length.Rochor Canal is a continuation of an unnamed canal that passes through the Bukit Timah area, which starts beneath the junction of Jalan Jurong Kechil and Upper Bukit Timah Road...
. The area around Sungei Road was formerly the homes of affluent European
European ethnic groups
The ethnic groups in Europe are the various ethnic groups that reside in the nations of Europe. European ethnology is the field of anthropology focusing on Europe....
s and Asians, where many ornately designed buildings were built in its place. From the 1930s to the present, the road has been synonymous with the Thieves' Market, the largest and oldest flea market
Flea market
A flea market or swap meet is a type of bazaar where inexpensive or secondhand goods are sold or bartered. It may be indoors, such as in a warehouse or school gymnasium; or it may be outdoors, such as in a field or under a tent...
in Singapore, where the locals can hunt for old bric-a-brac
Bric-a-brac
Bric-à-brac , first used in the Victorian era, refers to collections of curios such as elaborately decorated teacups and small vases, feathers, wax flowers under glass domes, eggshells, statuettes, painted miniatures or photographs, and so on...
or second-hand goods, as a cheap replacement for one's faulty or lost item. It's also the place where the well-known Sungei Road Laksa, a local spicy noodle soup originated. Sungei Road was also known as "Kek Sng Kio" in hokkien dialect or "结霜桥" in Chinese. The name was made in reference to the Singapore Ice Works which use to exist in the precinct.
Etymology
Sungei Road got its name because it runs along the banks of the Rochor River (Sungei Rochor), hence its MalayMalay language
Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia , Indonesia , Brunei and Singapore...
name sungei meaning "river". Sungei Road start opposite the former Kandang Kerbau police station, hence it was known to the Chinese
Chinese in Singapore
Chinese Singaporeans are people of Chinese ethnicity who hold Singaporean nationality. As of 2010, Chinese Singaporeans constitute 74.1% of Singapore's resident population, or approximately three out of four Singaporeans, making them the largest ethnic group in Singapore...
in Hokkien
Min Nan
The Southern Min languages, or Min Nan , are a family of Chinese languages spoken in southern Fujian, eastern Guangdong, Hainan, Taiwan, and southern Zhejiang provinces of China, and by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora....
dialect as "tek kah ma ta chu" meaning "tek kah police station".
History
In the 1820s, the area around Sungei Road was designated by Sir Stamford RafflesStamford Raffles
Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles, FRS was a British statesman, best known for his founding of the city of Singapore . He is often described as the "Father of Singapore"...
, the founder of modern Singapore, for the homes of affluent Europeans and Asians, when he divided the early settlements according to different ethnic groups. The Arabs and Malays
Malay race
The concept of a Malay race was proposed by the German scientist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach , and classified as the brown race. Since Blumenbach, many anthropologists have rejected his theory of five races, citing the enormous complexity of classifying races...
who had settled here previously were relocated to the east of Sungei Road at Kampong Glam
Kampong Glam
Kampong Glam is a neighbourhood in Singapore. It is located north of the Singapore River, in the urban planning areas of Kallang and Rochor.-History:...
. Ornately designed two-storey and three-storey shophouse
Shophouse
A shophouse is a vernacular architectural building type that is commonly seen in areas such as urban Southeast Asia. This hybrid building form characterises the historical centres of most towns and cities in the region.- Design and features :...
s that came with covered 5 feet (1.5 m) way were built in its place.
At nearby Lavender Street was the attap house of Cho Ah Chee, the carpenter of the ship S.S Indiana in which Raffles travelled to Singapore in 1819. It is believed that Raffles gave the house to Guangdong
Guangdong
Guangdong is a province on the South China Sea coast of the People's Republic of China. The province was previously often written with the alternative English name Kwangtung Province...
-born Cho, in recognition of his services at the time of the founding of Singapore. The house has been demolished in the 1970s and a small public park has taken its place.
During the Japanese Occupation
Japanese Occupation of Singapore
The Japanese occupation of Singapore in World War II occurred between about 1942 and 1945 after the fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942. Military forces of the Empire of Japan occupied Singapore after defeating the combined Australian, British, Indian and Malayan garrison in the Battle of Singapore...
, a street market known as Robinson Petang meaning "evening Robinsons", started along the banks of the Rochor Canal where the poor could buy cheap household wares and other merchandise in short supply, akin to what department store Robinson & Co.
Robinson & Co.
Robinson & Co. Limited is a retail company which has department stores in Singapore and Malaysia. The company owns the Robinsons department store, John Little in Singapore and has franchise outlets of Marks and Spencer in both countries. The company has grown into one of the country's most renowned...
had sold.
Thieves' Market
After the war, Sungei Road and its surrounding roads became a flea market better known as the Thieves' Market, because all sorts of second-hand merchandise as well as contraband goods were sold here. Also, the peddlers known locally as karung guniKarung guni
The practice of Karung guni is common in Singapore. Its practitioners are a modern form of rag and bone men that visit residences door-to-door. They make visits in carts, collecting old newspapers and other unwanted items. These will be resold at specialized markets and eventually recycled or reused...
man ("rag and bone man" in Malay), that one buys from today, may not be there tomorrow. There are no receipts, so refunds are impossible. Until the British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
withdrawal in the late 1960s, it was also a place to buy army merchandise like uniforms, army gear and other army surplus, possibly looted earlier from British military stores. The open air market soon acquired a bad reputation as the major dissemination venue for stolen goods that would last to the present day. If an item was "lost" recently, one can try their luck in looking for it at the Thieves' Market, and buying it back from the sellers who will always claim no knowledge of its source.
In the early 1970s, opium
Opium
Opium is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy . Opium contains up to 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The latex also includes codeine and non-narcotic alkaloids such as papaverine, thebaine and noscapine...
dens used to be common in the Sungei Road area. The drugs were popular with workers looking for a cheap way to ease the hardship of the day's toil. The opium addicts were mainly poor, elderly people from working-class groups. In early 1991, a spate of fires destroyed more than 20 shophouses along Sungei Road. Most of the century-old shophouses, crumbling with age, had become potential fire hazards for its residents. The first fire incident left two people injured and 61 homeless. As a result, many of its buildings were torn down for safety reason and its inhabitants relocated in later years.
From rags to riches
Despite its notorious reputation, there were a few cases of honest and hardworking karung guni men who made good, and became millionaires. One was Poon Buck Seng who started his business with only a capital of S$50 by picking up junk, or paying small amounts for things people were throwing away in the 1980s. He would then take his goods to sell at the Sungei Road Thieves' Market. Within seven years, he had saved enough money to rent a shop space nearby, and expanded his business to sell bigger used items like computers, refrigerators, videotape recorders and television sets, in addition to old clothes, shoes and records. In 1993, he registered his second-hand goods trading business and began to focus his business in exporting used computer parts, as there were not many people doing that back then, and his business thrived. He made a few thousand dollars every month and five years later, Poon had saved enough money to buy a 1636 square feet (152 m²) freehold property worth S$730,000 and was offered S$1.4 million for the unit in a collective sale later. His export business lasted only 10 years. By 2002, Poon's business was declining as too many people had jumped onto the bandwagon. He decided to end his export business and went back to his old karung guni trade again that lasts to this very day.Another similar rags-to-riches story is Pang Lim, who was an illegal fruit hawker in Sungei Road in the 1970s. His big break came when he saved enough money to rent a coffee shop in 1990 with his younger brother and uncle. They rented the stalls out to other hawkers and managed the drinks stall themselves. The business took off and from one coffee shop, Pang is now the managing director of Koufu, which operates 20 foodcourts, five coffee shops and five cafes around the island.
Sungei Road laksa
Located nearby at Jin Shui Kopitiam ("kopitiam" means "coffeeshop" in Malay) is a stall selling Sungei Road laksaLaksa
Laksa is a popular spicy noodle soup from the Peranakan culture, which is a merger of Chinese and Malay elements found in Malaysia and Singapore, and to a lesser extent Indonesia.- Origin :The origin of the name "laksa" is unclear...
, a local spicy noodle soup that originated from Peranakan
Peranakan
Peranakan Chinese and Baba-Nyonya are terms used for the descendants of late 15th and 16th-century Chinese immigrants to the Indonesian archipelago of Nusantara during the Colonial era....
culture. The founder, Wong Yew Hwa uses charcoal fire to keep his gravy constantly warm in order to maintain its distinctive flavour. His laksa dish was listed by a local food guide as one of the top 10 dishes in Singapore.
The Sungei Road laksa legacy was started in 1956 when a Hainanese
Hainanese (ethnic)
The people of Hainan , known as Hainanese and Hainan people, usually refers to people who originate from Hainan Island, the southernmost and smallest Chinese province. The term "Hainanese" was frequently used by the Hainanese Han who are the majority in the island, to identify themselves overseas...
friend of Wong, Ah Tong, gave Wong and his brother Wong Yew Poh, his secret recipe for laksa on account of their long-standing friendship. The Wong brothers set up a push-cart stall to sell their laksa and the response to their recipe was overwhelming. It was sold with the thick bee hoon (Chinese noodle) cut up and served only with a spoon, without chopsticks
Chopsticks
Chopsticks are small, often tapered, sticks used in pairs of equal length as the traditional eating utensils of China and its diaspora, Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Northern provinces of Laos, Thailand and Burma. Generally believed to have originated in ancient China, they can also be found in some...
, topped with cockles, bean sprouts and home-made fried fish cakes in distinctive chicken motif bowls. Customers ate it while standing by the roadside and it cost only 20 cents a bowl back then. By day, they sold along Johor Road and by night, off Sungei Road. Today, the brothers have since lost contact with Ah Tong, but their children still serve the traditional recipe with its unique way of serving at a very reasonable price.
Singapore Ice Works
Located at the junction of Sungei Road and Pitt Road, was the former site of the Singapore Ice Works that was built in the 1930s. The factory was the first ice-making plant in Singapore using large compressors manufactured mainly from CarrierCarrier Corporation
The Carrier Corporation is one of the world’s largest manufacturers and distributors of heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems, and a global leader in the commercial refrigeration and food service equipment industry...
and York
York
York is a walled city, situated at the confluence of the Rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. The city has a rich heritage and has provided the backdrop to major political events throughout much of its two millennia of existence...
corporations. It was popular as a pioneer establishment that brought refrigeration and air-conditioning to Singapore. In 1958, it was renamed as the New Singapore Ice Works. In later years, the factory was bought over by Cold Storage
Cold Storage (supermarket)
Cold Storage is the second-largest supermarket chain in Singapore behind NTUC FairPrice, owned by Dairy Farm International Holdings.It operates 3 supermarket brands in Singapore and Malaysia; Cold Storage , Market Place and Shop N Save .-History:Established in 1903, Cold Storage started as a small...
who ran it under their management. However, in 1984, the Housing Development Board (HDB) took over its site for redevelopment. The factory was soon demolished and the plant operations was re-located to Auric Pacific at Fishery Port Road. This facility has since closed down after being in use for over twenty years.
Rochor Market
The Rochor Market, a wet market, was another popular landmark in this area. Built in 1872, it served the surrounding community for more than a century. In August 1982, part of the market was demolished and its stalls were moved elsewhere.Sungei Road today
Today, the flea market is still thriving despite the fact that all the old shophouse buildings have been torn down in the mid-1990s. What remains are the street peddlers, displaying their wares on canvas sheets now along the empty roads in the area. The peddlers do not pay rent but they are forbidden to sell brand-new items by the authorities. To keep up with the times, some of the peddlers have put up their wares to sell on websites and eBayEBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
especially those hard to sell items such as old photographs, badges, medals and other collector's items.
Despite its long history and tenacity, the flea market's days are numbered as the site, sitting on a huge chunk of state land about the size of a football field. Part of the Sungei Road is acquired for Downtown Line, Sungei Road MRT Station construction. The remainder would be redeveloped by HDB at the later time.
See also
- Bugis StreetBugis StreetBugis, in the city-state of Singapore, was renowned internationally from the 1950s to the 1980s for its nightly gathering of trans women, a phenomenon which made it one of Singapore's top tourist destinations during that period....
- Middle Road, SingaporeMiddle Road, SingaporeMiddle Road is a road located in the Downtown Core and Rochor within the Central Area of Singapore. It starts from its junction with Selegie Road and ends at Beach Road. Middle Road was already in existence in early Singapore, appearing in George Drumgoole Coleman's Map of Singapore in 1836...
- New World Amusement ParkNew World Amusement ParkThe New World Amusement Park was the first of three amusement parks, along with Great World and Gay World , that wooed Malaya and Singapore night crowds from the 1920s to the 1960s. New World was a prominent landmark in Jalan Besar, as it occupied a large area of in size...