Singapore Shophouses
A few years a go, I visited the Back to Backs in Birmingham. These are restored 19th century houses set around a courtyard and were for built for the working people. The Back to Backs are owned by the National Trust and well worth a visit. On your visit you move from the 1840’s through to the 1970’s. In contrast, today I visited the Chinese Heritage Centre in Singapore, this is a Shophouse Museum and showed the living conditions of the immigrant Chinese when they arrived in Singapore. These shophouses are as the name suggests, shops on the ground floor, with housing on the 1st and 2nd floors of the building. When I visited, I discovered, that individual families would live in one room and would share the kitchen and bathroom with everyone else who lived on the floor. This could be with as many as 40 other people. One room housed a family of six. The rooms are restored to the 1950’s and on the audio tour there are memories of those who lived in the houses. This museum a