Kaffir Street Tour
This stretch of Shophouses, located at Kaffir Street, are typical of the many homes of the rich merchant classes in colonial Singapore (1819-1941). Shophouses in a way, are a condensed expression of the sprawling Chinese courtyard estate known as the Siheyuan. Shophouses, however, are multi storey, built wall to wall, opening to the street, and often have ornate, colourful facades, showcasing the best of regional craftsmen who worked with plaster, porcelain and wood carving to create the iconic Shophouse fronts, often festooned with mythological friezes, auspicious symbols and art.
While called shophouses, many were in fact purely residential, and are more or less townhouses. The front, ground floor of the Shophouse features a sheltered corridor that links the shophouses together, known as the Five foot way. These walkways served as a way for pedestrians to stay out of the rain and sun, and in quieter residential areas, also doubled as a kind of verandah.
The entrance to the home leads to the main reception room, where guests and business associates are recieved and entertained. The standard layout for this room features a central round table with stools or chairs, and with traditional Chinese hardwood chairs flanking the walls on either side. This is typical of a Chinese style reception hall where guests sit side by side, with chairs divided by side tables.
The reception hall is decorated with the very best objects and art to showcase the household's refinement and values, or portraits of the family's many predecessors, to highlight the family's lineage. The more domestic hind quarters of the home are separated from the more businessy reception hall by a large, ornate wooden screen, in front of which is usually the family's altar.
Beyond the divider screen lies the heart of the home, the courtyard. Due to a tax imposed on the width of a house, shophouses became fairly narrow, but were very deep. The courtyard, or airwell, was an important feature to allow light and air into the deep recesses of the home, and served as a form of air conditioning, helping to cool the interiors by circulating air.
In many homes, it became a living and dining area, where more intimate guests were invited to join in family meals. The courtyard is also where the main, or only staircase is located. Because of water's symbolism in Chinese culture for wealth and abundance, the courtyard is also an important symbolic feature, where rainwater pools, symbolising the accumulation of wealth for the home. The rainwater is also collected and used for washing. It was also important to have plants and nature in the courtyard, better still, symbolically significant plants.
While many inhabitants of the Shophouse were Chinese or Peranakan, and the home is laced with Chinese sensibilities, symbolism and aesthetics, the Shophouse at its peak, was essentially a Victorian/Edwardian era home. Many homes featured trendy electrical or gas light fittings, European furniture and the very latest technology of the time.
Upstairs lies the bedrooms and private spaces of the house. Typically there are several rooms that feature more traditional Chinese-style beds, that is, raised beds covered by a canopy structure. As usual, these bed chambers are covered in auspicious motifs and symbols, and are usually assigned to a newly married son and his wife, in the hopes that they may produce an heir, as many of these homes were multi-generational. In keeping with the times, however, many shophouses also had more contemporary bedrooms, done up in a more European style. Including such novelties as metal bed frames, lace, linen, European style desks and the like.
The back of the house usually features another courtyard, and a partially open air space, in which is usually built a kind of outhouse, as well as where the washing and cooking is done. Individual inhabitants of the home usually washed and performed ablutions in their rooms with tubs and chamberpots. Servants often just resided in this back portion of the house, as this is where most of their lives took place.
