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Sam Leong Road is a road in Little India. The street is off Jalan Besar, running parallel to Syed Alwi Road. I always wondered why the road is named Sam Leong Road - after all, the only Sam Leong I know about is the one that used to be a chef at a well-known group of Chinese fine dining restaurants. He is famous, but still alive and way too young to have a street named after him. However, one must remember that in Singapore, many of the streets named after Chinese persons do not include their surname. So Sam Leong Road is not named for Sam Leong the chef, but for Ong Sam Leong (1857 - 1918), a Peranakan business tycoon.

Boon Tat Street, right in the heart of Singapore's Central Business District, is named after Ong Boon Tat (1888-1941) - a well-known, wealthy, Peranakan businessman who also served as Municipal Commissioner and Justice of Peace.

Boon Tat Street is parallel to Cross Street and runs from Amoy Street and intersecting with Telok Ayer Street, Robinson Road, Shenton Way and Raffles Quay. Interesting landmarks on Boon Tat Street include the SGX Centre (Singapore Exchange), the iconic neo-classical Ogilvy Centre, and the distinctive Octagon and historic landmark, Lau Pa Sat. And most importantly for many of us, part of Boon Tat Street is closed to traffic in the evenings to make way for dining at the row of Satay stalls just outside Lau Pa Sat.

The following article is the second in our series looking at the history of certain areas and road names in Singapore. Read the first article here: "Do you know? - Aljunied and Syed Alwi".

The famous Joo Chiat Road in the east coast of Singapore is named after Chew Joo Chiat (1857-1926) who was also known as the ‘King of Katong’. Chew was born in Fujian, China, to a farming family. He left for Singapore in 1877 to make a better life for himself and for his family back in China. The young man arrived in Singapore penniless but he had good business acumen and a willingness to work hard. The small business he started soon prospered.

In the early twentieth century, he bought land in the east coast of Singapore from the Alsagoff and Little families. He used the land for coconut plantations and for growing spices like nutmeg and gambier. Copra (the meat of the coconut) was a valuable cash crop; spices were in great demand by the Europeans.

The dirt track that ran through his plantation estate was called Confederate Estate Road and it was used by bullock carts. The Municipality in 1917 wanted to develop that dirt track into a motor road from the town to the beach, where Singapore’s rich had seaside bungalows. Chew knew that the motor road would make transportation of goods from the plantation easier and also increase the value of his land. Instead of selling the stretch of land to the Municipality, Chew  donated it to them. The Municipality then named the road after him – Joo Chiat Road.

In the 1920s, Singapore’s population was increasing and people started to move out from the town area. Chew then parceled his land into building lots and sold it to developers. Peranakans started moving into Joo Chiat as the Telok Ayer area, where many stayed, was getting overcrowded. A few years later, the predominantly Catholic Eurasians also moved into Joo Chiat when a Catholic church and school were built. Joo Chiat became home to large Peranakan and Eurasian communities. Chew and his family lived in the Joo Chiat area too and after he died in 1926, he was known as the ‘King of Katong’.

Syed Alwi Road is a street running across Serangoon Road and Jalan Besar, right in the heart of bustling Little India. It is home to colourful conservation shophouses and to the giant 24 hour shopping paradise Mustafa Centre.