Chinatown Heritage Centre

During my visit to Chinatown Heritage Centre, I felt I was transported back in time to the 1950s. The recreated living spaces and exhibits vividly showcase the migration, settlement, and daily lives of early Chinese migrants in Singapore’s Chinatown. For young Singaporeans, it offers a deeper understanding of our our ancestors’ resilience and hard work, for example, exhibition of the Samsui women and Majie, whose dedication helped build the foundations of modern Singapore. For the older generation, it’s a nostalgic journey that rekindles memories of a simpler yet tougher life, reminding us how far the community has come while cherishing the warmth and spirit of the old Chinatown. For tourists, the Centre offers an authentic and immersive glimpse into Singapore’s early migrant experience, an opportunity to see how the city once was before i The Centre also organizes free public talks on traditional trades and crafts. One fascinating series, “Secrets Behind the Artisan,” features master artisans such as the Fire (Straw) Dragon Maker, whose intricate work is beautifully reimagined through the artistry of Japanese artist Tsuyumi Miwa.

First time visiting this Chinatown Heritage Centre. I am very impressed and want to compliment the guide - Swee Lin for her excellent hospitality of showing us around and explaining to us those people residing in Chinatown with nice showcase of the living environment once upon a time in Chinatown. Will recommend to my relatives and friends for a visit.

Spontaneous visit yesterday and I'm very glad we did! This centre was full of interesting information about the fascinating history of Singapore and Chinatown. We spent an engaging two hours here and loved it, highly recommended!

Second time here after years. The exhibition is different than the last time I was here, but it's still the same top-notch quality exhibition with lots of information. The signs are clear, too. Very recommended!

TC, the trishaw rider, was an excellent guide! He shared many interesting facts and secrets around the house. The place is filled with all sorts of items from the past! Very interesting learning about everything. Downstairs there is a shop full of Singapore souvenirs and a special tea shop. Highly recommend to come here. Full air conditioned too!

The Heritage Center was a fantastic way to get an overview of life in this vibrant area of Singapore. The museum contains multiple floors of richly set up exhibits, videos, and artifacts depicting life through the formative years in Chinatown Singapore. I highly recommend it to any one visiting the area. You will not regret it.

What an incredibly fun and lively show! From beginning to end, the atmosphere was full of energy, and the storytelling kept us completely engaged. We were also lucky enough to catch a magic performance during the program, which added an extra element of surprise and excitement. It truly felt like more than just a performance—it was an experience that blended culture, history, and entertainment in the best way. I went with a local Singaporean friend, and one of the highlights was seeing how much he enjoyed it as well. Even he discovered new stories about his own ancestors and heritage that he had never learned before. Watching him experience his own history in such an engaging way made the evening even more meaningful for both of us. A huge round of applause goes to the storyteller, Achoo (?), who has an incredible gift for bringing history to life. Rather than using complicated terms, he chose clear, simple, and relatable words that everyone could understand, especially tourists who may not be familiar with the culture. His humor and lively style made the entire session flow naturally, and there was never a dull moment. Instead of feeling like a lecture, it felt like being part of a story, which kept the audience fully engaged the whole time. I highly recommend this experience to anyone visiting Singapore. Whether you’re a tourist wanting to learn more about the local culture or even a local curious to rediscover your roots, this show will leave you entertained, informed, and inspired. Don’t miss it!

What a great place to learn about developing Chinatown within Singapore. This place was super informative and interactive. I learned so much here going through the different exhibits and rich history that was provided. Definitely a must visit when touring through Singapore.

Step back in time at Singapore's Chinatown Heritage Centre. Located in three restored shophouses on Pagoda Street, this was a nice place to start learning about Singapore's history. Cheyenne from Indie Singapore Tours used this Centre to start the discussion about Chinatown. Traders. Immigrants. Laborers. Why people left their homes in China for a better life escaping famine, floods and civil unrest. How much they were paid. Where they lived. Who made the trip successfully on the ships. Who succumbed to illness and died on the journey. How many men and women lived in a house. Interesting to learn about the Samsui women who wore trademark red head scarfs as they worked. They arrived in Singapore in the 1930s and worked in the construction industry. There were immigration limited on male immigrants, but no restrictions on women immigrants which allowed more women to immigrate to Singapore. It often took the women decades to pay off their debt to immigrate. The red headdress was worn as a way to prevent accidents and to carry their belongings. A great Centre to learn about the history of Singapore's Chinatown.

This is currently closed for renovation and will re-open in the second half of 2015. My review is based on my previous visits and I hope the place will be even better after the renovation. I love this place for its way of bringing history to life. I have been here several times as I will usually bring visitors here or recommended them to take a look if they have time. Chinatown is not a place I visited as a child so this place is a great resource in learning more about the lives of the early Chinese immigrants and also to know the layout of a typical shophouse in Chinatown. Most people will never get the chance to explore a shophouse and its nooks and crannies. I never realized how long a shophouse is and that there is an airwell in the middle for ventilation. Or how the many cubicles on the upper levels actually housed many families. A family of 4 or 6 or more would actually live in a cubicle. How they lived then I had no idea, with today's concept of personal space. Besides the living conditions and various Chinese cuisines the Chinese immigrants brought to old Singapore, I also learnt more about the traditional Chinese culture and the opium and gambling dens as well as the work they did. It was just a very educational place but done in such a way that it was not boring at all. I am looking forward to the re-opening next year.

We had some time to kill and I suggested that we should check out the Chinatown Heritage Centre, located near the hotel we were staying out. It turned out to be much more than I expected. I love the way the Centre utilizes the shophouse building to bring to life the stories of the Chinese immigrants who lived in these types of accommodations in the past. The thorough and engaging audio tour highlighted the struggles, hopes, and joy of everyday life. The second half of Chinatown Heritage Centre is designed more like a traditional museum with exhibits on relevant topics. I loved this section equally as much. Our visit enriched our understanding of Singapore's history and I highly recommend any visitor (or resident) of Singapore make the time to stop by.

Chinatown Heritage Centre is located right inside Chinatown. When I walked into the museum itself, I thought it is a store selling deco and keepsakes. I do like how the museum itself preserves and shows the tenants used to occupied the building including tailor, hawker, coolies, samsui women and people of different trades. There is also a restaurant, Singapore Heritage Restaurant on the premise if you want to try out famous Singapore dishes with a twist. Admission is $10. Great if you want to see how the life of early Chinese in Singapore were.

Well worth a visit. It's inexpensive and a cool way to get a feel for what things were like before Singapore turned in to an Asian megacity. The provided audio guide is nice, if not a little long (I was ready to move on from some items before it was done talking) and covers the first and second floors, which recreate a Chinatown shophouse. The third floor is much more dense, covering other portions of Chinatown history and nearby points of interest - supposedly the guide is being extended to cover the third floor, but that's going to take a lot of work. The museum staff was very helpful as well, recommending the nearest hawker center - "don't eat at street level, that's where tourists eat." Worth remembering.

One of the best museums I have visited in Singapore. It's very interesting, maybe because I'm of Chinese descent as well. Although I came from Indonesia and not Singapore, I could imagine that the living condition for the newly arrived immigrants from China was equally hard. Here you would be taken back to the time back in the early 1900s when the first waves of immigrants come from China and had to take hard labours and live in inhumane quarters as you would see in the museum. With the audio guide, it would feel like you relived the past as you walked through the exhibition in the museum. It's a must visit when you're in Chinatown.

Have not expected this place to be so great. Didn't look so interesting from the outside. But what a nice surprise. This place is definitely where you have to start exploring the China town. So interesting to see how people lived, actually be able to see how their homes looked like from inside. unforgettable experience.

This was an unexpectedly amazing experience. Very well done museum to bring alive history. Engaging and educational.

Omg I loved this place. I'm not sure when it opened, but I wish I had known about to sooner. So my mother was born and grew up in Singapore Chinatown in the 50s and 60s, which is the time period this museum covers. I had been to Chinatown a few times before, and my mom always pointed out the different shophouses where she had lived. Yeah the place looked dirty and rundown, but I really had no idea what things were really like until I visited this center. It's set up like a preserved shop house with an audio tour that describes the living quarters and the lives of the people who lived there (from what I can tell, the stories are about actual people and families who lived in Chinatown during this era). I have to say, this center really gives you a feel for how difficult life was and how little these people had. My mother had described to me living in a single room with her parents and four siblings and that they shared a house with different families. I always pictured a small studio apartment with a shared kitchen, kind of like a dorm. I was shocked to see the reality of the environment. There weren't rooms; there were cubicles that were offered privacy only by curtains and no doors. What immediately struck me was how small these cubicles were; about the size of my office at work right now (maybe around 8 ft x 8 ft). Imagine a family of 7 or 8 sharing this room along with all their possessions. The "beds" were hard wooden tables with straw mats on top. The shared kitchen was the size of my kitchen right now (which I think is too small) and had an outhouse toilet and shower at the back of it. Any by kitchen, I mean a narrow room with cement counters on either side where each family could place their portable stove (stove kind of a deceiving term now, since the stoves were basically stone cylinders that housed wood fires. It was really eye opening to me to understand how my mom actually lived and grew up. The audio tour also did an excellent job at explaining the history of Chinatown, where people came from and why, and how they ended up living in these unfathomably tiny and uncomfortable quarters. A very intimate and compelling portrait of history.