When there are no Pagodas on Pagoda Street: Navigating Colonial
Singapore (work in progress)
Yoke-Sum Wong, University of Alberta
(the paper is incomplete and I greatly apologize for any oddities and errors)
__________________________________________________________________
I want to begin -- at the point of disembarkation -- and to discuss two possible routes the
newly-arrived passenger will take to their lodging places, usually located near the river quays
– the heart of commercial Singapore.
Two Scenarios. Late 19th C/Turn of the 20th Century Singapore.
[Map 1]
I.
A P. & O. traveler arrives in Singapore circa 1900 and lands at the Company wharf which is
further west of Borneo Wharf, and is located at least two and three-quarters mile from
Singapore’s commercial center, that is Raffles Place. If he is not booked with a hotel like the
Raffles Hotel or the Hotel Europe, and runners are not there to make any transportation
arrangement, he will have several choices at landing which he certainly cannot ignore:
And it hardly assists [the traveler] to recover [his] poise to hear the discordant
clamour of a thousand voices making shrill outcry in many tongues; nor to see
the welter of mixed humanity that waits in evidently nervous anxiety to take
possession of [the traveler] and devour [the traveler]. Malays, Chinese, Tamils,
Bengalis, Klings, these and many other races swarm about the landing stages,
screaming the excellence of their cars and rickshaws and protesting their
anxiety to serve...1
Now, the cheapest way to travel and explore would be by jinricksha, introduced in 1881, and
which by 1920, numbered 9000 for daily hire. Though tramlines were built in 1885-7, the
lines only ran until 1892 due to the popular and overwhelming presence of the rickshaw
trade. If the traveler chooses to stay at the Raffles Hotel at Beach Road, the journey will be
at least three and a half miles, costing only 35 cents to 40 cents, as compared to a Hackney
Carriage which would be twice the price. An interesting route perhaps would be along
Keppel Road heading northwards towards Tanjong Pagar Road to link up with South Bridge
Road. At the junction of Tanjong Pagar Road and Neil Road,2 the traveler might pass the
Jinricksha Building,3 an imposing building with a large clock, built on a triangular corner site
in 1903, and quite impossible to miss. Moving on -- to and along South Bridge Road, the
traveler will encounter the hustle and bustle of Chinatown, pass the Central Police Station
and the Police Courts,4 then cross Elgin Bridge and the Singapore River on to North Bridge
Road, before turning right into High Street with its native jewelers and silk sellers, as well as
the shopping hub for curios. Then, heading down until the Dalhousie Obelisk is in sight, our
1. This is from Ambrose Pratt (1931) Magical Malaya. Melbourne: Robertson & Mullens ltd.,
17. I have substituted 'you' and 'us' to suit the text.
2. Originally Salat Road, renamed in 1858.
3. The jinricksha building is now an arts and crafts center. There were so many rickshaws at
the turn of the century that it got to a point where there were some serious strikes and
disturbances. In January 1903, there was a strike which lasted seven days. In 1888, regulation
of jinrickshas were handed over to the Municipality and a special department was established
in 1892 (ordinance V of 1892). See F.J. Hallifax’s “Municipal Government” in Makepeace
V.I., 331-332. Rickshaws were replaced by trishaw in 1946-1947.
4. Both were public works built in the 1880s. The courts in 1885 and the police station in
1886. Both were built in the same Victorian Eclectic spirit, with Corinthian pilasters and
columns, and more ornamented than the Post Office. The police station came with an IndoSaracenic onion dome, very John Nash and Brighton’s Royal Pavilion, and the court also had
a Mansard roof. Both were consistent with the buildings constructed post-Suez Canal. Both
buildings were demolished in the mid -1970s.
traveler’s rickshaw should turn left for a pleasant tree-lined ride along Connaught Drive and
the Esplanade before making a left again up Stamford Road and a right to Beach Road and
finally, the Raffles Hotel.
However, the ride along the quays can be equally, if not more fascinating. The Anson RoadRobinson Road route to the very busy Raffles and Collyer Quays are usually congested with
rickshaws and the line-up of open air markets selling every imaginable merchandise. The
quays are also where trade is conducted among the “maelstrom of humanity.” If the
rickshaw coolies were not attracting customers, they were sometimes found, in the late
1920s, in the cinema enjoying the silent antics of Charlie Chaplin.5 Located on Raffles Quay
are also the consulates of Italy, Netherlands and Portugal as well as the Telegraph Office.
As he heads towards Raffles Quay, the traveler will pass the elegant Victorian Pavilion-like
Teluk Ayer fresh market.
Moving on, the traveler will see Finlayson Green, named after John Finlayson, Chairman of
the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company in the 1880s and come up to Collyer Quay. Linking
Collyer Quay and Raffles Place6 is Change Alley. Concealed by a wooden archway opposite
Johnston Pier, Change Alley contains a hotbed of activity, with “dense crowds of Jew,
Arabs, Chinese, Japanese and Indian, bartering and selling.” According to R. N. Walling:
The noise of the hawkers of fountain pens from Germany, socks and silks
5. H. Norden in John Bastin, Travellers’ Singapore: An Anthology Kuala Lumpur: Oxford
University Press, 198.
6. Replaced by Clifford Pier in 1933, named after Sir Hugh Clifford who was Governor of
the Straits Settlements between 3rd, June 1927 to February 5th, 1930.
from Japan, ice-water, toffee sticks, fruits, shirts, pants, scissors, pencils,
nails, curios, and the thousand and one necessities of Asiatic life and
existence; the shuffling of many feet, the panting, the breathing, the spitting:
the “shop” of Chinese produce dealers, commission agents, unguaranteed
brokers, and comparadors to European firms… It is amazing how much
activity is packed into this confined space. There must surely be more
business per square foot in this alley than anywhere else in Singapore.
Walling was however, writing in 1931, re-visiting Change Alley which was once known to
traders in New York and London, but is now, as he declares, reduced to a “second-rate”
business life -- from Mincing Lane to an eastern Petticoat Lane with a bazaar-like
atmosphere.7 Naturally, if the European tourist is reluctant to dive into din of local trade,
there is Raffles Square, where the European community gather, shop, or bank. But as James
Rennie warns the rickshaw traveller, “we can only go one way round the Square, and if your
ricksha overruns Littles as far as the Dispensary you can jolly well just travel all round the
Square again.”8
[Map 2]
II.
7. R.N. Walling in Micheal Wise (1996) Travellers’ Tales of Old Singapore Brighton: In Print
Publications, 223-224.
8. James Rennie (1933) Musings of J.S.M.R. Mostly Malayan Singapore: Malaya Publishing
House, 27.
And how would a Chinese traveller on a “Chinaman”-pulled ricksha navigate his way to
Raffles Place?9 Our traveller would disembark at ‘Chha-tin ma-thau’ (Jardine’s Wharf) or
‘Sit-lat Mng’ (Singapore’s Gate), also Keppel Harbour. Following the same route of the
trams, he will go along ‘lau toa-peh-kon hit-tiau’ (old idol street) or ‘ti ku pa sat khi Tanjong
Pa-kat hai ki hit-tiun’ (that road from the old market going to Tanjong Pagar along the
shore).10 Then he might proceed along ‘Heng-Lung Kai’ (the street belonging to Lok Yu,
the towkay and his business stamp, ‘Heng-Lung’) or ‘Lo-man-san kai’ (Robinson Road),11
and reach ‘Tho-Ko-Au’ (at the back of the godowns) or Tho-Kho Au hai-ki’ (at the back of
the godowns by the seaside), which is Collyer Quay and Battery Road -- before turning into
‘Tho-fu fa-yun’ (flower garden by the godowns), which is Raffles Place. There are also other
routes, for example through Si-Shu Kai’ or ‘A-pien Kongsi’ (opium headquarters) which is
cecil Road. Notice the intonation of “Si-Shu kai”. Or the Chinese who wishes to be in more
familiar surroundings will head for ‘Guan sun koi’ (‘Guan sun’ street)12 or ‘Tai pak kong miu
kai’ (temple idol street).13
9. All Chinese names here are either in Hokkien or Cantonese. Discussion of streetnames
and the various translations, cultural versions are derived from two sources. They are: H. W.
Firmstone (1904) “Chinese Names of Streets and Places in Singapore and the Malay
Peninsula.” Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society #42, 54-288; and H.T.
Haughton (1891) “Native Names of Streets in Singapore.” Journal of the Malayan Branch of the
Royal Asiatic Society June, 49-65. See as well, "An Index in Romanized Hokkien and
Cantonese to The Chinese Names of Streets and Places in Singapore." compiled by Tan Kee
Soon and revised by A.W. Bailey and F. M. Baddeley, JSBRAS #46, 195-213.
10. Both refer to Anson road. Old market refers to Teluk Ayer Market. There was little built
on the road and so landmarks were scarce for the Chinese.
11. Robinson as pronounced in Chinese, ‘Lo-man-san’. The Chinese would simply adapt the
British streetnames and adapted it to the Chinese venacular. Notice Cecil is Si-shu.
12. ‘Guan sun’ is one of the five divisions of the Hokkien community who take part in a
Chinese procession
Shanghainese Li Chung Chu paid a visit to his friend, the first Chinese Consul to Singapore
sometime in 1887. His accounts, published in Chinese in 1895, contained rather different
observations – and it is hard to believe that this is the same Singapore. Unlike Western
travelers who filled their journals, diaries, and letters with impressions of hustle and bustle,
colour and noise, and the riot of eclectic sensations greeting them, Li found disappointing
the lack of reception for new arrivals whenever a ship came to port, and the inadequate
number of services and amenities. In comparison to Hong Kong or Canton, he noted the
scarcity of Cantonese restaurants and inns or hotels in Singapore. Where European visitors
would direct their criticisms to the quality of food halls and lodgings, Li was less than
enthusiastic about the quantity of such places. Li also noted the cluster of theatres, the the
plight of young girls shipped as prostitutes meant for the numerous brothels in Kreta Ayer
(or Chinatown), the high price of opium, and the impoverished ricksha coolie. And while he
spoke of the non-impressive building forms of the Chinese clan associations, the eclectic
range of architecture found on the landscape was hardly an attraction, nor worth
mentioning. He writes as well, being from Shanghai, that he encountered language
difficulties because the Chinese porters were either Fukiens, or “natives” -- and therefore
was vulnerable to chicanery.
If we can imagine taking the journey of these two travelers, would the same roads they
traveled to their respective destinations offer the same experiences, and if they were indeed
13. Teluk Ayer Street which leads to the center of Chinatown.
even the same spaces. Is Raffles Place the same place as “the flower gardens by the
godown”?14
Street Smart
How do you know where you are going even if you are certain of where you are? And how
many colonial Singapores were there if indeed our social worlds are constituted by language?
Consider. The 1891 Singapore Census listed four distinct categories: Europeans, locals,
which included Eurasians, Chinese and Malays, Indian (South Asian) races, and finally,
Others. Within the European population alone, which included Americans, West Indians
and Turks (a contrast of Euro and Asiatic Turks) – we have to remember that the world was
rather different then – are at least 25 nationalities. Within the Chinese Population, 10 dialect
groups, including “not stated”. Within the Indian races, 4 groups; the Malay races, enfolded
11 groups including Phillipinos (who shared linguistic similarities).
[image-1891 census]
In 19th-century Singapore, you can know of a street – and never know it at all. For the same
street encompassed different names, different landscapes – different ways of knowing. If
according to Michel de Certeau, we narrate a city through language, then in Singapore, there
were multiple spatial narratives. In 1887, Section 143 of the Municipal Ordinance had
14. Another reference here to the gardens is Finlayson Green which is located in Raffles
Place.
proclaimed that the Commissioners affix at the corner of every street in the town of
Singapore, a board on which it is inscribed, “The name by which such street shall be
known.”15 Sensitive to the different racial groupings in Singapore, and their respective
enclaves, streetnames were selected to reflect their cultural orientations and languages (even
dialects), for example in the Chinese part of town, we have Hong Kong Street and Hokkien
Street, and in the Malay part of town, Jalan Sultan, meaning Sultan Road. However, despite
the good intentions, the official streetnames were used mainly by the European population
and visitors, and ignored by most non-Europeans like the Chinese, the Tamils and the
Malays, who possessed and preferred their own naming practices.
The complications were immense. Each group mapped the areas according to different
indices of meaning and spatial orientations. European streetnames tended towards proper
nouns such as the memorialization of places, individuals and events, though there were
instances of mundane descriptors such as High Street, Hill Street, and even Tavern Street.
Chinese and Tamil names were mainly descriptive, based on landmarks or direct translations
from the Malay, or even a Malay word pronounced in a Chinese way, for example, ‘selat’
became ‘sit-lat’. The Malays, however placed little emphasis on streetnames but on the wider
place, meaning they navigated the streets according to ‘kampungs’ or villages – or
geographical features such as the river. They also identified places with infrastructure such as
transportation or water pumps.
15
. All discussion on streetnames and the various translations, cultural versions are derived
from two sources. They are: H. W. Firmstone (1904) “Chinese Names of Streets and Places
in Singapore and the Malay Peninsula” Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society
The cultural maps, however were not completely unique or distinct, and sometimes, the
Chinese, the Tamils, and the Malays agreed on the most distinctive landmark or the nature
of the street or the place for example, ‘Kreta Ayer’ or ‘Gu Chia Chwi’ and its variations such
as ‘Gu Chia Chwi ma-ta chu.’ ‘Kreta Ayer’ and ‘Gu Chia Chwi’ both refer to the bullock
carts which hauled water when there were no piped water to certain areas. However, the
variation ‘Gu Chia Chwi ma-ta chu’ is significant for added to the bullock hauling water-cart
motif is the ‘mata-chu’ which means Police Station. ‘Mata’ is Malay for the eye, and ‘matamata’ refers to the police. What is revealing here is the nature of cultural interaction and the
insinuation of one language into another when one language fails to provide the adequate
tools for comprehending an institution such as the police.16
When the 1887 street name ordinance was declared, there were 112 streets with formalized
names. Imagine if we multiplied one linguistic reality with three or four more. The official
streetnames constituted but one layer of the unwieldy landscape. Consider North and South
Boat Quay where the godowns and coaling stations once flanked the Singapore River until
the shipping demands became impossible. Getting to Boat Quay meant encountering the
range of complexities of Southern Chinese dialects, and at the end of the day, Boat Quay
was everywhere but in Boat Quay. Boat Quay was in Cantonese, ‘Tiam Pang Lo Thau’ the
place to get sampans (the malay word sampan pronounced as tiam-pang a kind of little boat).
In the Hokkien dialect, the place was also ‘Chap Sa Hang’ or 13 shops, as well as ‘Chap Poet
#42, 54-288; and H.T. Haughton (1891) “Native Names of Streets in Singapore” Jounral of
the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society June, 49-65.
16
. The term ‘mata’ continues to be used by dialect groups in Singapore and Malaysia today.
Keng’ or 18 houses.17 The quay was also known as as ‘Chwi Chui Boi’ which meant bathing
house at the end of the street, ‘Kek S’ng Cheng’ or the front of the ice-factory, and the more
practical ‘Khok Ki’ or stream bank. If a British subject asked a Cantonese what the street
name or place was, and then asked a Hokkien person next, and then a Tamil person, and
then see the sign on the street corner -- he or she would be quite befuddled having just been
served four conceptions of the same street.18
And there is also Pagoda Street, where there are no pagodas nor Chinese temples. There is,
however, the Sri Mariamman Temple, the first Hindu temple in Singapore built sometime
between 1842-1844, and refaced on many occasions. The pagoda-like structure would refer
to the ‘gopuram’ with six levels, shaped like a pyramid, and covered by a profusion of
statues. It could have been possible that the municipal government was not aware of its
architectural term and chose the most appropriate – or convenient concept. In the Hokkien
dialect, Pagoda Street is simply ‘Kek Leng Kia Loi Pai Au’ or the back of the Kling place of
worship whereas in Tamil, the road was sensibly known as the side street by the temple of
Mariamman -- the side street being South Bridge Road which is actually the main address for
the temple. But Pagoda Street was also once known to be the centre for slave traffic and
thus, to the Chinese, it was also known as ‘Kwong Hup Yuen Lo’ or ‘Kong Hup Yuen
Street’, named after the slave trader who lived in house number 37.
17
. Hokkien itself contained several linguistic variations, (depending on the area of the
Hokkien province one was from).
18
Here patois becomes important. The pronunciation of streetnames may further confused
the traveler or the person asking, especially when the name is then re-pronounced or retranslated through variations of dialects and languages in conversational exchanges –
depending on how you hear the word. For example, the word “towkay” is a composite of
several Chinese dialects of a word meaning “big boss” or “chief head” .
How would the traveler or the visitor then know if he or she was on Pagoda Street when
there were no pagodas in sight? Each group had its own spatial cosmology and street signs
and their alphabets were valueless, and meaningless to those who possessed different spatial
coneptualizations. Despite the official use of streetnames on the maps, it did not mean that
the formal names erased other cultural realities and material practices. They were
superimposing, shifting realities. In fact, I would argue that the various racial groups
continued with their descriptors which on the one hand, were detached from the official
street names, but on the other hand, were interwoven as individual threads into the intricate
fabric that was cosmopolitan Singapore. The multiplicity of names did not present any
anxiety to the Singaporean who would have expected the spatial palimpsest. The traveler, the
visitor, any newly-arrived person, however, would have faced greater ambiguities in
navigating Singapore. More than one European traveler had complained that rickshaw
pullers, usually Chinese and Indian, were notorious for carting people to the wrong
addresses – or quite possibly -- the right ones.
Same but Different – How to Bark Cat-Like
The Historian, Richard Cobb delighted in walking the streets of Paris at all moments of the
day, but especially the night. He delighted in finding his way back in the hours after midnight
-- or rather groping his way home. In “The Streets of Paris”, he writes:
Just as I like my history to look inwards, from light into semi-darkness, from
the street into the interior, if possible even to cross the threshold and
negotiate the dark staircase, enjoying on the hand the smooth curling wood
of the banister, just as I want my historical itineraries to be capable of
reconstruction in terms of both walking distance and regular habit – to and
from work, the different itineraries of leisure or of the season, and again the
different promenades de Dimanche – all of which will contribute a sense of
reassurance, because of predictability and continuity (because discontinuity in
history is utterly alarming), so I feel that Paris should be both walkable and
walked, if the limitless variety, the unexpectedness, the provincialism, the
rusticity, the touching eccentricity, and the often tiny scale of the place are to
be appreciated.19
Cobb is a master of the spatial narrative, as he shuffles elegantly, in that paragraph above,
light and darkness, continuity and discontinuity, the abstract of history and the minutiae of
everyday life. In the next paragraph, he shifts from “the tiny scale of the place” to Paris, as
the big city. It is in the play of contrasts – this spatial chiaroscuro -- that Richard Cobb
evokes a Paris that is both knowable (walkable) and impossible to know (walked -- as in the
process of walking which is always different) – though he is -- if we must say – essentially,
still talking about the same physical space.
There is a tendency to write of colonial landscapes as spaces usually shaped and
systematized, moulded into rational, bureaucratic use by colonial governments, then
competed, and sometimes, triumphantly resisted. It is as if the space readily presents
itself as is -- as singular and essential – and then transformed according to the vicissitudes
of power. The numerous street names, unofficial or official ones in colonial Singapore
directs us to a more multi-layered colonial world, and the welter of discursive realities
19
Richard Cobb, (1998) “The Streets of Paris” in Paris and Elsewhere London: John Murray,
113.
that constitute a seemingly monolithic landscape, and the slipperiness of any cohesive
spatial narration. If anything, the landscape here resembles the Derridean idea of the
sheaf, in which one cultural reality is but one presence which defers to another and
differs.20 A friend of Joseph Conrad once wrote having arrived in Singapore, “there really
is something romantic about the great spaces of the East. You can breathe there, you can
scheme there, you can disappear there.”21
Colonial Singapore was always located
elsewhere – its spirit and its substance was English, American, French, Portuguese,
Armenian, Javanese, Chinese, Indian, Jewish, Arab, etc. etc. – and its physical
boundedness in the East is merely by the default of geographical taxonomies. To traverse
the streetscape of colonial Singapore is always to risk getting lost.
Though speaking of language and identity, and in particular, the condition of bilingualism,
and the exile’s lot, Abdelfattah Kilito’s writes in Le mot canins/Dog Words that if the bedouin
loses his way at night in the desert, he barks to find his way to the safety of a campfire. 22
“What strategem does [the bedouin] use to find his way to human habitation, and therefore
find himself?”. Sometimes, one barks so well, that one loses the fluency of the “mother
tongue” or the former language – and so one begins to spend more time with dogs, take “a
liking to gnawing bones” and develop “an intense hatred of cats”. Kilito’s playful narrative
explores the themes of displacement, identity slippages and linguistic transfigurations, ending
20
Jacques Derrida, (1982) “Différence” in Margins of Philosophy trans. Alan Bass, Chicago, U
of Chicago Press, 3-27.
21
. Richard Curle (1923) Into the East with a preface by Joseph Conrad London:
Macmillan and Co., 128.
22
Abdelfattah Kilito (November1981) Le mots canin presented at Rabat University, Morocco.
with the possibility that the reader too will start to lose himself or herself and start speaking
another language.
Kilito’s ludic treatment of bilingualism is pertinent here. We cannot prevent language and
identity from slipping into another -- even at the risk of the loss of self. If barking enables
the Bedouin in the desert to find the warmth of campfires and human habitation, then such
sacrifices of the loss of one’s language -- and self might be necessary. There is no one
colonial Singapore to be navigated, and a different picture might emerge from immersing in
other forms of mapping and spatial significations– even if it means barking – and quite
possibly -- up one of many right trees.
Abdelfattah Kilito then misses a point. Sometimes dogs do not develop an intense hatred of
cats – and can bark very cat-like.