The book will be available after mid of July!
Within this book are stories of shopkeepers, stallholders and other small businesses rarely featured in the Singapore Story. Though they never became well-known like the towkays, they were the backbone of the economy and community. A great variety of little trades did business in the congested but lively Chinatown of old, from storytellers and brothels to textile shops and tea merchants. But as the town was remade through renewal and conservation, the shopkeepers were swept along into a world in motion, grappling with forces beyond their control.
In Shopkeepers of Chinatown, Loh Kah Seng and Stephen Dobbs trace the true stories of small business in Singapore, starting from where they came from to how they were affected by rapid development and gentrification in the wake of independence. The book is a multi-pronged celebration of the tenacity of shopkeepers, a critique of the often exploitative nature of small business (‘petite bourgeoisie’), a historical timeline of Singapore’s most iconic family businesses and a lamentation for a time that was swept away by development.