Chinatown, Singapore: gay aspects

A casual visitor to Singapore may wonder why, in a country where the majority of the population are Chinese, there exists a Chinatown. After all, one does not find any Chinatowns in the other predominantly Chinese societies of mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

=Founding of colonial Singapore= As the enquirer delves back in history, he discovers that the Chinese did not always form the majority race in Singapore.

Sir Stamford Raffles arrived in Singapore on 28 January 1819 and soon recognised the island as a natural choice for the new port. It lay at the southern tip of the Malay peninsula, near the Straits of Malacca, and possessed a natural deep harbor, fresh water supplies, and timber for repairing ships. It was also located along the main trade route between India and China. Raffles found a small Malay settlement at the mouth of the Singapore River, with an estimated population of about 1000 that consisted of the Orang Laut (sea gypsies), Malays and Chinese headed by the Temenggong and Tengku Abdu'r Rahman. The island was nominally ruled by the Sultan of Johor.

When Raffles landed, it was estimated that there were around 1,000 people living in the whole of the island of Singapore, mostly local groups that would become assimilated into Malays and a few dozen Chinese. In his ambition to turn Singapore into a bustling port, he envisioned a future where the majority of the populace would be Chinese. The probable reason for this was that Chinese coolies were reputed to be able to live in meagre conditions with poor remuneration while remaining relatively docile and industrious. The population increased rapidly soon after Raffles' arrival; the first census of 1824 shows that 6,505 out of the 10,683 total were Malays and Bugis. Large number of Chinese migrants also started to enter Singapore just months after it became a British settlement, by the census of 1826, there were already more Chinese than Malays excluding Bugis and Javanese. Due to continual migration from Malaya, China, India and other parts of Asia, Singapore's population had reached nearly 100,000 by 1871, with over half of them Chinese. Many Chinese and Indian immigrants came to Singapore to work in the rubber plantations and tin mines, and their descendants later formed the bulk of Singapore's population.

=Raffles Town Plan=

The Raffles Town Plan segregated the races as he believed that Europeans should not live together with their impoverished Asian subjects. The various Asian races were designated individual areas. Even amongst the Chinese, he demarcated separate sections for Hokkiens, Teochews and Cantonese.



The plan of Singapore would divide the town into ethnic functional subdivisions. Ethnic residential areas were to be segregated into 4 areas:
 * The European Town had residents who consisted of European traders, Eurasians and rich Asians.
 * An area south of the Singapore River was designated the Chinese Kampong, a Chinese district that evolved into the present-day Chinatown.
 * The Indian area, called Chuliah Kampong, was located further up the river next to the Chinese zone (the Indians however would later also settle in another area north of the river now called Little India).
 * Kampong Glam consisted of Muslims, ethnic Malays and Arabs who had migrated to Singapore, and was further divided into three parts, for the Bugis, the Arabs and an area for the Sultan.

The division however appeared not to be strictly enforced, as may be indicated by the presence of Nagore Durgha, Al-Abrar and Jamae mosques in the Chinese Kampong.

Thus, from Raffles' vision sprang Chinatown as each ethnic group was not free to live wherever it liked under early British rule.

=Attitudes of Southern Chinese towards homosexuality=

The interaction of Chinese attitudes towards homosexuality and British colonists' Victorian values shaped the development of homosexual culture in Chinatown and in Singapore.

=See also=
 * Chinatown, Singapore

=References=

=Acknowledgements=

This article was written by Roy Tan.