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CHINA TOWN THEN....AND NO
Singapore's Chinatown is a unique mix of old Peranakan-style buildings, cosy tea-houses, traditional medicine and herbal shops, colourful night markets, sleek renovated offices and trendy restaurants and bars.

In this charming quarter, right next to the high-rise Central Business District, you could spend your afternoon haggling over the price of antiques and your evening in the newest and hippest restaurant in town. Chinatown still proudly bears the heritage of its eventful past, but it's also quick in assimilating the new and trendy.

Chinatown, being near the city centre, is easily accessible. It is roughly the area bordered by the Singapore River in the north, Cecil Street in the east, Cantonment Road in the south, and New Bridge Road in the west. But before we bring you on a tour of the sights and sounds in Chinatown today, let's take a look at the district's history.

Chinatown is where Singapore's early immigrants from China first made their home. With Singapore fast developing as an important port in the early19th century, the island soon became a magnet for those seeking to make their fortunes in a new land.

The first junk bearing immigrants from the Fujian province of Xiamen anchored at the mouth of the Singapore River in 1821. The early settlers built the Thian Hock Keng Temple to thank the gods for their safe journey, and to ask for protection and prosperity in their new home.

The new settlers worked mainly at the port, as coolies carrying cargo or merchants. There were also letter-writers, who made money by writing letters dictated to them by illiterate immigrants, to be sent to their families in China; fortune tellers, mediums, prostitutes and gangsters. In the often rough-and-tumble life of this young city, temples and shophouses were often only a stone's throw away from brothels and opium dens.

Today, many of the old trades have vanished or are fast disappearing. But if you take a careful walk around the quarter, you will still catch remnants of its colourful history - temples where devotees still worship today, old houses that once belonged to rich traders and that have been restored to their former glory, buildings where secret society meetings were held. You could catch a fortune-teller offering to read your palm, or a mourner burning paper "money" as an offering to his loved ones in the afterworld.

A common architectural feature you will find around Chinatown is the shophouse, which is done in a style peculiar to this region of the world and known as Chinese baroque. These shophouses were so-called because the ground floor served as a shop while the upper floors were where the owners lived. The architecture is an eclectic mix of Chinese, Malay and European influences and is sometimes also known as Peranakan, after the Chinese settlers who came as early as the 15th century and who adopted Malay customs.