Chinatown Singapore

This guide to Chinatown Singapore starts on Pagoda Street with Raffles' 1822 decree drawing a line south of the river for a Chinese quarter, then walks to Sago Lane, where by the 1940s seven houses existed for a single purpose: receiving the dying. It explains the belief that dying at home brought misfortune, and how rickshaw pullers, coolies, and amahs paid ten dollars for a bunk beside other waiting bodies while families brought meals in tiffin carriers. Listen for the funeral cymbals and undertakers the guide describes just outside those doors.