Tiong Bahru Market

This guide to Tiong Bahru Market in Singapore starts with the neighborhood's name itself, a Hokkien-Malay pairing that hints at what stood here before 1936, when the Singapore Improvement Trust cleared the land and built the island's first public housing estate. You'll hear about architect A.G. Church's aeroplane-inspired blocks, the first eleven families who moved in for twenty dollars a month, and the market that grew into the estate's heart by the 1950s. Listen for the story of Tay Soo Nam, who set up a wok here in 1954 and started frying kway teow.