Last Of Its Kind: Dying Trades Tour

Meet the craftsmen and businesses keeping Singapore’s vanishing trades alive, and uncover the stories behind skills at risk of disappearing.
About this Event

About The Tour

Step into a forgotten side of Singapore that is disappearing before our very eyes.

Beyond the shopping malls and towering condominiums, a handful of family businesses still make things the way their grandparents taught them. On this immersive walking trail through the lesser-known corners of Chinatown, meet the last people carrying on these family legacies, many with no successor to take over.

Along the way, you’ll encounter a fountain pen seller surrounded by his grandfather’s photographs and receipts, a master craftsman who builds paper effigies to pay respects to the dead, kuehs so carefully made you must order a day in advance, and a legendary shoemaker who spent decades customising bespoke leather shoes for Lee Kuan Yew.

What To Expect

• Visit the workshop of Lee Kuan Yew's shoemaker and hold a pair of shoes crafted for Singapore's founding Prime Minister.
• Uncover the world of paper effigy building and try your hand at crafting these intricate structures from bamboo, paper and traditional glue.
• Step into a living archive of vintage fountain pens, old photographs, receipts and documents that tell the story of a business spanning generations.

• Enter Singapore's last Teochew bookstore, a shop frozen in time where a dialect still survives in print.
• Learn why pairs of lions and dragons guard important doorsteps, and examine a collection spanning multiple eras and cultures.
• Take in the striking contrast between one of Singapore's most misunderstood neighbourhoods and the affluent districts that stand just across the river.