Speech by MOS Alvin Tan at the Reopening of the Chinatown Heritage Centre

Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to Chinatown. To all of our colleagues and to Cai Yinzhou, newly minted MP for Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC, as well as TY, Byron; my colleagues from STB, Jean, Shoo Ling as well as Cherie; and also my really dear friends, Mr Peh Cheng Hoo and many others, Bernard, Yick Suan and members of the Chinatown family, a really warm afternoon to all of you.

Chinatown is very special. It's very special to me because about 20 – I don’t want to reveal my age – but about 20 plus years ago, I was a young man walking the streets here and volunteering and knowing every single corner, Banda Street, Sago Lane, Temple Street, knowing the sight, sounds and smells. Mr Lim Gek Ming is here – a round of applause – Mr Lim Gek Meng saw me grow up here in Chinatown.

And why is Chinatown so special? Chinatown is very special because of stories. And please allow me to share a few stories with all of you today.

If you came here to Chinatown many, many years ago, like I did about 20 plus years ago, you will meet with many old people, hong tou jin and ma zhe, and I will tell you two stories of two of them who really touched my heart.

Both of them used to come from Dongguan in southern China. And if you go visit them in their blocks in Banda Street – Mr Peh, we went a few times – you will see that in their homes, they will have what we call the coolie bed. They move the entire coolie bed, it's a double-decker bed, and they will put it into the rental flat. And I would go together with Mr Peh, with others also, Mr Lim, and we would just sit down and just listen to their stories. Listen to their stories of what it was like to travel from Dongguan, from southern China, alone, unmarried, to come to Singapore, Nanyang for a better future; what it was like then to be like, you see that statue of the hong tou jin, the Samsui woman, how it was like to build Singapore brick by brick; how it was like to be a ma zhe, to look after the children of the British families; and how then to build Singapore as a pioneer.

So the stories that they tell us, the stories that I remember, are the stories that are now encapsulated today in the Chinatown Heritage Centre that TY, Byron and Yin Zhou have very painstakingly put together to remind us of our past. That it is not just 60 years as though we celebrate our 60 years of nationhood, but it is beyond the 60 years where our pioneers have toiled during the British colonial era, up until 1965 and up until today.

So the Chinatown Heritage Centre is a bridge, a bridge between our past and a bridge between our present. It is a reminder to all of us who are much younger, what the past was and what we must treasure, because if we forget the past, then we aren't able to remember what we need to have to steward the future for Singapore.

There is also a tourist element to it. So I'm wearing my STB hat because Jean will ask me to say a few words about our tourism sector. Our tourism sector, as I mentioned yesterday at MBS, is doing well. We have about 16.5 million visitors last year, as well as record tourism receipts. It bodes well for Singapore as a whole, and even with all of the headwinds of the tariffs and uncertainty, we think that our tourism sector is on for a good year ahead.

But in order to make sure that our tourism sector continues to be very vibrant, we need to make sure that all of our different parts of the tourism sector start to grow, and we must inject new and fresh ideas, like Chinatown Heritage Centre. This is one of our new jewels in our whole tourism suite that we can offer to our tourists as well as Singaporeans alike.

So I want to again thank our Chinatown Business Association, our Chinatown Hawkers Association, our Kreta Ayer Community Club, STB as well as Byron, TY and Yinzhou, Woopa Travels for putting all of this together.