Old Chinatown in Photos: Mooncake Stalls, Lanterns and Ahma’s Stories
This is Chinatown the way your ahma tells it: mooncake tables out on the street, lanterns overhead and vegetables on the pavement. These photos come from people's own albums, shared on Heritage SG Memories.
What you would have walked past
Long red tables stacked with mooncakes, staff in white shirts packing boxes by hand. Yellow tins piled to the ceiling. Fruit under big umbrellas, with a bicycle parked right against the crates.
You would also have walked past a Garuda Watch billboard, because every old Singapore skyline needed one.
The part you cannot redo
Chinatown still has its mooncake stalls every Mid-Autumn. What is gone is the noise of it all being outside, on the road, with your ahma haggling over the price and you holding the bag.
The original cover uses a “POV: 1978” frame. We have not verified the capture date of each photograph, so it should not be read as a precisely dated record of Chinatown in that year. For the same feeling from another decade, try the 1990s no-phones POV. Chinese Garden in 1978 is next on our page.
Good to know
· Bring your ahma to Chinatown. She will correct everything we just said.
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