CQ @ Clarke Quay

This guide to CQ @ Clarke Quay begins with what this bend in the Singapore River was called before the bars and fairy lights: Cha Jung Tau, a firewood harbour where Teochew coolies unloaded timber-laden tongkangs by hand through the nineteenth century. It traces the name Clarke Quay back to Governor Andrew Clarke, while crediting the district's real character to the laborers who built it, and lingers at River House, the ornate 1880s Teochew merchant mansion still standing at the quay's edge.