The Business of Death in Chinatown

Chinatown Stories | Updated as of July 2019 The Business of Death in Chinatown Before it became a must-visit destination for tourists, Chinatown was home to coffin shops catering to Singapore’s Chinese community. In the late 1930s, Chinatown in Singapore was riddled with over-congestion, crime and hygiene issues. To address the housing problem, the Singapore Improvement Trust (predecessor of the Housing Development Board, the body responsible for Singapore’s public housing) built flats on New Bridge Road, Trengganu Street and Banda Street, adding on a few apartment blocks on Upper Pickering Street in the 1950s. Although just nine stories high, these blocks were, at the time, the tallest buildings in Singapore. People who wanted to take their own lives were drawn to these buildings and some 20 people ended up committing suicide from the flats. As such, the development came to be known as the “suicide flats”. The Chinese called the street “Tiao Lou Jie” 跳楼街, which means “the street where people jump to their deaths”. Ang Chin Huat Casket was a well-known casket business located on Upper Pickering Street, opposite the old police headquarters. Established since 1912, it was an early pioneer of the funeral profession in Singapore. Its founder, Ang See Karr, had arrived in Singapore from Nan’an County in Quanzhou, Fujian province, and saw the need for quality and essential funeral services for the Hokkien community in Singapore. Today, the company operates under the name Ang Chin Moh Funeral Directors and is located at Geylang Bahru. Coffin Street Sensing the opportunity for growth, more and more coffin makers began to set up shop along Pickering Street. The street used to be home to so many coffin makers that it was commonly referred to as Coffin Street. In the 1950s, another well-known coffin business, Teck Hin Undertaker began operating out of Upper Pickering Street. Founded by Tay Yeow Leng, a newly arrived immigrant from Kit Yang, China, the company started as a basic coffin trading business that catered solely to the Teochew community. In the 1980s, it expanded to provide funeral services. Sago Lane or Street of the Dead Besides Pickering and Upper Pickering Streets, Sago Lane also attracted coffin makers and sellers to set up shop here. The street derived its name from the many sago factories that used to operate there in the 1840s (sago is a type of starch extracted from various tropical palm stems). However, due to the fact that it had a high concentration of Chinese “death houses” – shophouses with a funeral parlour on the ground floor and a space on the first for people to live out their last days – Sago Lane was also known as the Street of the Dead, and many coffin shops operated out of there. In fact, both Sago Street and Sago Lane were lined with businesses catering to the dead. Besides coffin makers, there were funeral parlours next to each other, as well as others providing embalming services, selling flower wreaths, and those that made paper Page 1 of 3 Chinatown Stories | Updated as of July 2019 effigies of houses, cars, wheelchairs, and even air planes. There was a shop that dyed clothes for families that had to go into the customary three-year-mourning period during which they would eschew coloured clothes. Clothes were soaked in a large earthenware jar in order to dye them black. Coffin-making as a skill Coffin making required specialised tools and careful attention to detail. Those who were keen to enter the trade apprenticed under experienced coffin makers. According to Ang Hong Hin, a grandson of Ang See Karr, and current Chairman of Ang Chin Moh Funeral Directors, making coffins in those days was a multi-step process. The coffin craftsman, or “master” would first assess the quality of the log used to make the coffin. He would then draw measurements onto the log, setting the area to be turned into the coffin. After sawing that portion off, the master would then sculpt and mould the wooden block into shape before sanding it down and coating the surface. The master used tools like an axe, saw, changkol (a type of hoe), chisel, hammer and nails to do his job. The coffins initially followed a standard design. Over time, as craftsmanship skills improved, the company’s coffins featured rounded corners and even elaborate carvings on the outside. “The making of one coffin required the skills of two masters. It took four to eight days to make one coffin, depending on the quality of the log and the size and design of the coffin,” he explains. “We worked closely with the death houses to provide coffins for the deceased, and if a family wanted to purchase a coffin they would visit our shop, often accompanied by their village head or clan association representative, to select a coffin for their deceased loved one. We had customers from all over Singapore.” People who passed away at the death houses would be transported to the undertaker by trishaw. As one interviewee at the Chinatown Heritage Centre recounted, trishaw riders collecting the dead would “put a hat on the corpse, put it onto the trishaw, and cycle all the way back to the coffin shop”. Accountant-artist Yip Yew Chong grew up on the second floor of a shophouse on Sago Lane and remembers the coffin shops that lined his street. Many of the coffin shops were located where the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple now stands. “When I went downstairs, I’d have to walk past funeral parlours and the corpses would be on wooden planks,” he said in an interview with CNA in 2018. “After a few days, they’d wash the corpses out in the open before putting them inside coffins. Nothing in those days was sanitary but you get used to it!” Page 2 of 3 Chinatown Stories | Updated as of July 2019 References: http://www.chinatown.sg/index.php?fx=directory&&g1=precinct&g2=3&g3=5&m=print &tid=731#tenantdetails http://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/photographs/record-details/a4fcb22f-1162- 11e3-83d5-0050568939ad http://www.angchinmoh.com.sg/aboutus https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/lifestyle/chinatown-heritage-history-sago- lane-keong-saik-road-10210256 https://www.teckhinundertaker.com.sg/company-history/ www.hsse.nie.edu.sg/staff/blackburn/oralhistorychinatown_then_and_now.doc https://books.google.com.au/books?isbn=1409360024 Page 3 of 3 .

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