Shopkeepers of Chinatown: Singapore’s Business World in Motion 1819 - 2025 (Event Over)
by Loh Kah Seng and Stephen Dobbs
DATE
TIME
SPEAKERS
VENUE LOCATION
ADVOCACY THEMEChinatown
Tags:
REGISTRATION CHINATOWN
20 September 2026 (Sunday)
TIME
11AM to 12PM
(registration opens 15 minutes before)SPEAKERS
Dr Loh Kah Seng
VENUE LOCATION
The Working Capitol, 1 Keong Saik Rd., Singapore 089109
ADVOCACY THEME
Chinatown
Tags:
REGISTRATION CHINATOWN
Join us for the book launch of Shopkeepers of Chinatown: Singapore’s Business World in Motion 1819 - 2025, with author Loh Kah Seng!
This new book puts a spotlight on heritage businesses around Chinatown, showcasing the family stories and business development histories of shopkeepers, hawkers, and other small-to-medium businesses located within the historic district. Loh Kah Seng will also be putting “Chinatown” in context – an area that certainly does not just include the Kreta Ayer–Telok Ayer–Keong Saik–Bukit Pasoh area, but also a “Greater Chinatown” found on both sides of the Singapore River! Find out how these districts have experienced changes in urban redevelopment and conservation efforts over the decades since independence, which have contributed to the tourist-centric zone as we know today. Loh Kah Seng will also highlight how such changes have impacted the livelihoods of the Chinatown shopkeepers and what many of these shopkeepers have done to ensure the continued operations of their businesses. Finally, Loh Kah Seng will be sharing his experiences and reflections in using oral history methods to capture the stories of these Chinatown shopkeepers, as well as the various lessons that other business-owners can learn from such heritage businesses.
Do note that the book will be available for sale at a special discounted price of $32 (usual price $35), and there will also be a book-signing session after the event!
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Loh Kah Seng is an independent historian and founder of research consultancy Chronicles of Old Singapore. He is interested in all things that happened in the history of Singapore and the little histories of its people. His books include Squatters into Citizens: The 1961 Bukit Ho Swee Fire and the Making of Modern Singapore (NUS Press, 2013); Tuberculosis - The Singapore Experience 1867 - 2018: Disease, Society and the State (Routledge, 2020); Theatres of Memory: Industrial Heritage of 20th Century Singapore (Pagesetters, 2021); and Pandemics in Singapore, 1819 - 2022: Lessons for the Age of COVID-19 (Routledge, 2024).
Stephen Dobbs has been a working academic at the University of Western Australia for the past 25 years. Prior to this, he was a labourer in a BHP steel mill in Western Australia. As a staunch unionist and defender of workers’ rights, he has always had a strong interest in the working class and their often-untold historical accounts. This interest carried through to his research over the years on people and occupations that have been largely ignored in Singapore history, beginning with The Singapore River: A Social History, 1819 - 2022 (NUS Press, 2003).