Nyonya Needlework and the Printed Page
Cheah Hwei-Fe’n examines the impact of print media on the time-honoured craft of Peranakan embroidery and beadwork. Singapore’s national respository of nyonya needlework, comprising the embroidery and...
View ArticleA Tale of Two Churches
Penang’s Armenian church was demolished in the early 1900s while the one in Singapore still thrives. Nadia Wright looks at the vastly different fates of these two churches. In Penang, the Armenian...
View ArticleEarly Malay Printing in Singapore
Mazelan Anuar tracks the rise and decline of Malay printing and publishing in 19th-century Singapore, and profiles two of the most prolific printers of that period. Inscriptions in Old Malay can be...
View ArticleThe Symbolism Behind The Third Charter of Justice
This legal document – issued by the colonial government in 1855 – is an integral part of Singapore’s constitutional history. Kevin Khoo explains the significance of its elaborate borders. The roots of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Women on a Mission
Female missionaries in colonial Singapore have made their mark in areas such as education, welfare and health services. Jaime Koh looks at some of these intrepid trailblazers. Nineteenth-century...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Living it up at the Capitol
Capitol Theatre was the premier venue for film and stage when it opened in 1930. Bonny Tan uses oral history recordings to piece together pre-war narratives of the theatre. Capitol Theatre opened to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Warm Tidings in a Cold War
Remittance letters between Singapore and China during the height of the Cold War from the 1950s–70s recount both the joy and angst of relationships across the miles. Dong Hui Ying delves deeper. The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Memory Laps: Pool-Time Recollections
Between the mid-1930s and 1960, only four swimming pool complexes in Singapore were open for public use. Jocelyn Lau speaks to people who remember these pools. The first public swimming complexes in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Recipes for the Ideal Singaporean Female
From cooking, cleaning and becoming a good mother to outsourcing housework as careers for women took off. Sheere Ng charts how home economics lessons have evolved over the years. Someone once asked me,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Stamping History
Postage stamps are more than little squares of paper to be stuck on envelopes. Justin Zhuang discovers how stamps have helped forge Singapore’s identity over the past five decades. There was precious...
View ArticleClik here to view.
When Tigers Used to Roam: Nature & Environment in Singapore
Urban development has destroyed much of the original landscape, as Goh Lee Kim tells us. But Singapore has taken great strides in conserving its natural heritage. Singapore was blanketed in lush green...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hunting Down the Malayan Mata Hari
Ronnie Tan pieces together the fascinating story of Lee Meng, the Malayan Communist Party female agent who headed its courier network for a brief period in 1952. On 16 June 1948, three European...
View ArticleClik here to view.
文言与白话的抗争与磨合: 近代华文教学语体的蜕变历程
Classical and Modern Chinese education in Mainland China and Taiwan has been debated for over a century. Chua Chee Lay analyses its development and provides valuable lessons from history....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Four Taps: The Story of Singapore Water
From a hole in the ground to running water at the turn of the tap. Lim Tin Seng tells us how far Singapore has come in its search for water. Water has and will always be a precious resource in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Warrior Women: The Rani of Jhansi Regiment
A band of extraordinary women rose above oppression and poverty in Malayan plantations to overthrow the British in colonial India. Meira Chand has the story. The traditional Indian woman is invariably...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Chinese Renaissance Architecture
This unique style of architecture only reigned for five decades in China, yet several buildings in Singapore still bear the hallmarks of this hybrid form, says Julian Davison. There have been several...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Secret War Experiments in Singapore
The story of the Imperial Japanese Army farming bubonic plague-bearing fleas as biological weapons is very much fact, not fiction. Cheong Suk-Wai delves deeper. A few days before Christmas in 2017,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
St John’s Island: From Gateway to Getaway
St John’s Island was once home to new migrants, opium addicts and political detainees. Marcus Ng charts the island’s transformation from a place of exile to an oasis of idyll. It’s well known that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Portraits from the Lee Brothers Studio
Gretchen Liu casts the spotlight on the Lee Brothers Studio Collection. Comprising some 2,500 images, this is the largest single collection of photographic portraits in the National Archives of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Blooming Lies: The Vanda Miss Joaquim Story
Is the Vanda Miss Joaquim a human-made hybrid or a happy accident? In this cautionary tale, Nadia Wright, Linda Locke and Harold Johnson recount how fiction becomes truth when it is repeated often...
View Article