What is Katong?

We are "Katong Couple" but I realize now that I have yet to explain what Katong is for those who don't know. So what is Katong? Or rather, where is it?




Shophouses at East Coast Rd

Katong is the neighbourhood where we live in Singapore, on the eastern side of the island.

Actually, Katong doesn't really exist. You won't find it on official maps of Singapore. Instead, you will find the area is divided between pieces of 'Marine Parade,' 'Geylang,' 'Geylang Serai.' Katong is not an administrative or political unit.

But Katong very much does exist in the social consciousness. When Stamford Raffles and company first defined the Singapore settlement's boundaries, the eastern edge was marked by Tanjung Katong. Some Malay villages existed in the area. Katong was just beyond the city limits.

In the early days, Katong was a place of leisure. Europeans in Singapore set up seaside bungalows in the area. But the birth of Katong as a neighborhood can be traced to Chew Joo Chiat's post World War I purchase of a large tract of land owned by the Alsagoff's, a prominent Arab family. Chew turned the land, stretching from Geylang to Telok Kurau, into coconut estates. In the 1920s, Chew set up roads through his estates and built shop houses. Peranakan merchants came to the area. So did Eurasians. With them came churches and many church-linked schools. South Indians and Ceylonese came as well, and Singapore's second-oldest Hindu temple stands on Katong's Ceylon Lane. Old Katong oozed cosmpolitanism.

The area was prosperous and was home to many of Singapore's well-to-do. Katong's progress was interrupted by the Japanese occupation but it took off again soon after the war. Singapore's first shopping mall opened on East Coast Road.

Katong today still has characteristics of old Singapore. While Singapore's communities have now been rigidly divided into Chinese, Malay, Tamil, and 'foreign' groupings, in Katong you can still see the old days of more fluid communities and natural diversity. There is a Sikh temple, the Sindhi Association building, a predominantly Malay district, red light zones worked by Vietnamese and mainland Chinese women, and multiple Peranakan heritage centres. Several Christian schools, which served the Eurasian population in the interwar period, still exist in the area, as well as churches.

Architecture moulds and reflects the social landscape in the district. Katong is home to tile-roofed walkup flats, bungalows, duplexes, and traditional shophouses. There is only one HDB (public housing) estate (at Marine Parade) and still not too many high-rise condominiums, although that is changing. That means that neither the ethnic quotas of HDB estates nor market-induced segregation created by condos shape the area's social makeup. Instead, you get a genuine mix of people who live there because they really like the area.

I do think Singapore's heartlands can be nice, but the relative absence of the post-British institutions (HDB estates, ethnic quotas, and the tripartite division of Singapore's communities) that define the heartlands allows Katong to remain special. And the district-that-isn't continues to serve as a reminder of the cosmopolitanism that Singapore once achieved.

The neighbourhood suits us quite well, and as multi-cultural nomads we feel it appropriate to draw on 'Katong' and its spirit in naming our blog.


One of the places claiming to serve the original Katong laksa. Singaporeans mostly know Katong for food.

PS -- Singapore's National Library has some good resources on the history of Katong (see, for starters, infopedia.nlb.gov.sg)