Chinatown

Under the Raffles Town Plan of 1822, also known as the Jackson Plan, the Chinese community was allocated land south-west of the Singapore River, and the district grew into a centre of Chinese migration, trade and clan associations. Its Chinese name, Niu Che Shui, means bullock-cart water, a reference to the animal-drawn carts that brought water to the area in the 19th century; the Malay name Kreta Ayer, meaning water cart, carries the same story.

The neighbourhood was never only Chinese. Naraina Pillai, who arrived with Raffles in 1819, founded the Sri Mariamman Temple here, and Chulia Muslim traders from South India's Coromandel Coast built Jamae Mosque on South Bridge Road between 1830 and 1835. On 7 July 1989 the Kreta Ayer area was gazetted for conservation as part of Singapore's first large-scale urban conservation programme, protecting its Transitional, Late and Art Deco shophouses.

Chinatown is still a working neighbourhood. Elderly residents live in the public housing blocks around the Chinatown Complex, clan associations keep their halls, and traditional medicine halls and provision shops trade alongside newer boutiques. Festivals follow the lunar calendar, with Chinese New Year bringing the biggest crowds, and Mid-Autumn celebrations filling the streets with lanterns. Devotees of several faiths visit the temples and mosque daily, so visitors should be mindful of prayers in progress.