Attap houses @ Somapah Village, 1952

As a follow up to the previous post about the open-air cinema at Somapah Village, here are two more photos of attap houses along Somapah Road. Young readers who have never seen an attap house close-up and are curious about what the attap roof looks like can check out my post here. 

You can see more photos of attap houses in another part of Singapore in the mid-1960s here; photos courtesy of Geoffrey Pain. 

Finally here’s a photo of what Joe Elliott describes as a “toilet over cesspool”.

Open-air theatre at Somapah Village, 1952

Among the (year) 1952 photos that Joe Elliott sent me, are these gems of an open-air theatre which I believe should be at Somapah Village.

This is the external view of the theatre. The title of the movie, as far as I can make out is “小 罗 宾 汉” (Little Robin Hood) directed by 梁 深 (王 字 旁） starring 羽 马 and   佳 缨 .  Anyone heard of these names?

This is the entrance “to all seats”; Adult – 50 cts, Children – 30 cts.

Seating and screen area. The Gents is on the left of the screen.

This is the Projection box.

This photo shows the outside of the theatre. To the right of this photo is the open air theatre and in front - left to right - is Changi Rd. The road straight ahead leads to Mata Ikan.

This is Joe’s hand-drawn map of the area. 

After studying the last photo and Joe’s sketch; and comparing it with the 1963 street directory maps of this area (below), I have come to the conclusion that this open-air theatre was located at what was then the Somapah Village; near or at the junction of Jalan Tiga Ratus and Upper Changi Road to be exact. The road leading to Maka Ikan is Somapah Road.

Here is a 2007 map of this area for comparison. Parts of Somapah Road remain.

Below are two recent photos of this area taken from Jalan Tiga Ratus. The first photo is from Google Streetview (probably taken a couple of years ago) and the second photo was taken by me this morning. As you can see, a great deal of construction is going on.

In my book Good Morning Yesterday, I gave a detail description (page 15) of the open-air theatre that I used to go to in the 1950s. This was the South Country Theatre (南国戏院) located at, what is today, the Raffles Institution in Bishan. Thanks to Joe’s photos, more details have come back. For example, the location of the toilets to the right and left of the screen were just like in Joe’s photo. I also recall, now, how we were quite fascinated by the beam of bright light that was projected from the box office over our heads and onto the screen.

As I did not have a photo of the South Country Theatre, I had to search the National Archives’ Picas data base and I managed to find this 1986 photo which I then used in page 132 of my book. According to the description given in the Picas website, this open-air theatre was located at Somapah Village. Could this be the very same theatre in Joe’s photos – albeit an upgraded’ version? Your views please.

Aii Chan enjoys Good Morning Yesterday, the book

From my Inbox (2012-11-02)

Hi Chun See,

Got back to Luxembourg for few days, first thing when time available - to read your book, now half way, thoroughly enjoying it!  Congratulations on a project well done, so proud to be telling everyone:  it was written by my primary school classmate. I do have some comments (i.e. up to page 96 now)

1) Thank you for bringing us (our generation) down the memory lane via your book, I felt the book is even better than visiting the modern Singapore because everything/everywhere familiar is disappearing so fast, no memory lanes anymore left for us. This trip I felt like a "foreigner" visiting a completely new place - i.e. not like "coming home" feeling.

2) I do envy those who lived in your village - they could enjoy and keep your vivid descriptions of the whole neighbourhood.  How I wish someone could do this to our village too, so that Sock Geck and I could keep the memories in words!  Congratulations also to your brother Chun Chew for his super memory to help you too.

3)  You both are lucky to have an English-educated father, that means a world of difference because then he had a good job position, hence the possibility to buy cameras and to have typewriter/fridge/car at home.  With the cameras, you were able to get so many photos of the past (seeing is believing). I think your family house must have been a luxury of those days to, compared with the poor attap houses around.

4) Again, you were lucky to be living in a non-Cantonese community because you picked up a lot of Hokkien and Teochew dialects on growing up.  Most of the terms used by you were in Hokkien, which was commonly used in the other areas of Singapore (apart from Chinatown).  In fact for a Cantonese person, I think your Hokkien is excellent :-))

5)  I am amazed by the "Kan teko" (KTK), now that I am reading it. I do have some recollections of such a trade. We never had pigs (only chicken), but our neighbour (4 - 5 doors away had them), so now I do recall remarks about this person, maybe I was too young to know what he was doing.  On the other hand, I remember that there was such a person who came to "sterilize" the chicken from time to time.  I can recall watching him too.  But anyone can help me: why sterilize the chicken?

6) The last points are my questions.  I visited a place called Imperial Court at Thomson road this year, is this the old Imperial cinema?

a) At the beginning of Jalan Perminpin -Thomson Road there was a huge tree, we used to call it "Tau chiu ka" there were food stalls/coffeeshop there?

b) My last questionn:  I recall between Thomson Road (5 miles) and Sembawang Hill Estate (7 miles) a place we called in Chinese, "Ang Mo Tan keh";  anything to do with the fruit rambutan trees growing there?

One of my brothers-in-law thoroughly enjoyed the book (I bought for him at Popular).  He grew up in a different area, Devonshire Road, so things were quite different there. He appreciated very much what you wrote, since he was teaching at Nee Soon primary school (Yishun today) his students all came from the village area.

PS - Hopefully there will be a "future book" coming :-))

My Remarks

Thanks Aii Chan for your kind comments and for recommending “our” book to your friends. 

Yes; like many other friends, Aii Chan owns part of Good Morning Yesterday, the book. She contributed details to the sections on Braddell Rise School (Chapter 7), and games that girls of our generation played (page 114). She also narrated that interesting account of her encounter with the night soil carrier at Braddell Rise School in page 53.

Related posts

My Recollections of Braddell Rise School 

Return to “Police Catch Nuns”

ANCHOR BEER – the smooth beer for men (by Peter Chan)

I thought about this topic not because you might have been impressed that I am a hardcore beer drinker: truth is I am not even one.  Rather this beer reminds me of my frequent commuting by car as a young lad.  Frequent commuting sharpened my sense for road directions as well as a good memory for places.  Since my father was the driver, I sat next to him looking at the way he managed the steering wheel, gears and pedals but I would say most times this got to a point of being very boring.  So my eyes would turn to things outside the car window.

Every week, we visit my grandparents who lived in the pre-war Tiong Bahru S.I.T. Estate.  Tiong Bahru is quite a long distance from where we lived in Upper Bukit Timah Road.  From my memory, I recall taking three different routes from my grandfather’s abode to our home.  Two of the routes went through the Alexandra – Queenstown, Alexandra - Ayer Rajah Road areas and the third was through a “rich man’s area” - Botanical Garden and Holland Road.

Plate 01: Sketch-map of travel journeys from Tiong Bharu Estate to Upper Bukit Timah Road.

 When Jalan Bukit Merah was opened in the mid-1960s, a fourth route was added.  My father was never known to be a flexible person; there would never be a fifth, a sixth or any other alternative routes when there was one.  It always had to be the same for yesterday, today and tomorrow (even when I got my driving licence and became the “driver”).

This reinforced my memory of prominent landmarks, one of which was the Archipelago Beer Company, whose famous brand was ANCHOR beer.  In the light of the recent corporate take-over of TIGER BEER, we must not forget ANCHOR.  According to my father, ANCHOR had its factory in Alexandra Road before WWII.  What attracted me to the landmark was the good-wagons belonging to the Malayan Railway (now KTM Bhd) at the bonded customs warehouses.  Today the warehouse is now occupied by IKEA Furniture.  The factory was on the opposite side of Alexandra Road, now the Anchor Point and The Anchorage condominium.  Beer was produced at the factory and moved across Alexandra Road to the bonded customs warehouse using the concrete overhead bridge.

Photo 01: Canned ANCHOR Beer.  Nice when chilled.

Photo 02: ANCHOR Beer’s factory at Alexandra Road (c 1952).  Factory on the right, warehouses on the left and the overhead concrete bridge across Alexandra Road.

I would see workers loading crates of beer into the good-wagons and a locomotive would bring the fully loaded good-wagons to Tanjong Pagar Railway Station.  The railway siding crossed Jalan Bukit Merah and vehicular traffic stopped because the safety wooden level crossing was in place.  Today if you visit the empty plot of land between IKEA Furniture, you can find remnants of this railway siding. 

Now here’s a bit of mystery for me.  Maybe someone can crack this mystery and we all can know the answer. 

Recently when I visited the National Archives in England, I found something “unusual” about an aerial photo of the Alexandra Road area (Photo 03).  It not only showed the ANCHOR Beer factory with its unique guardhouse (now a restaurant in Anchor Point) but Nissen huts and  the railway siding as well.

Photo 03: Aerial Photo showing the future Rumah TInggi area [bottom] and the ANCHOR Beer factory and the guardhouse [left-middle] c 1947

Though I am showing one portion of the Alexandra Road area nearer to Queensway, I can tell you this railway siding is longer than the one that terminated at the ANCHOR Beer warehouse.  It ran into Leng Kee Road (which never existed during WWII), across Tanglin Road into Belvedere Close, and finally ending at Prince Charles Crescent and Prince Philip Avenue (which never existed by name but only for the grid layout of roads). 

When the British Army pulled out of the Alexandra Road area in 1949, they turned over military properties to the Singapore Improvement Trust (S.I.T.).  The rest is history as S.I.T. built post-war estates at Prince Charles Crescent, Strathmore Avenue and Dawson Road in the mid-1950s.

Can I hear some answers soon?

Eating places near Bedok Rest House in 1952 (Updated)

Here are more photos, courtesy of Joe Elliott, of eating places, eating stalls and an itinerant food vendor. Joe recalls in a recent email:

“At the side of Bedok Rest House were stalls on the pavement and behind them on the beach were tables and chairs which you can just see on the photos. The stallholders were cooking various foods which I had at one of tables in 1952.  It was several pieces of meat (not sure what kind) on a thin wooden skewer and a small dish of sauce.  The meat when dipped into the sauce was out of this world - it just melted in your mouth and I've never tasted anything like it since. I knew at the time what they were called but in 60 years I've forgotten. "The memory forgets what they were called but will never forget the taste".

PS – I think Joe must be referring to satay.

Related posts:

This is the way we eat, part 1

Thisi s the way we eat, part 2

Itinerantfood vendors of yesteryears

Eatingplaces at Tian Lye Street 1