Amoy Street

Amoy Street (Chinese: 厦门街) is a one-way street located within Telok Ayer, a part of Chinatown, within the Outram Planning Area in Singapore.

Amoy Street starts at its junction with Telok Ayer Street and McCallum Street and ends with its junction with Pekin Street, now a pedestrian mall. It is intersected by Boon Tat Street and Cross Street.

Etymology and history

Amoy Street is one of the old streets developed during the 1830s defining Chinatown under Stamford Raffles' 1822 Plan. It was listed in George Drumgoole Coleman's 1836 "Map of Singapore" as "Amoi Street", and was probably a reference to the many migrants who came from Amoy in China.

During the British colonial era, Amoy Street was famous for its opium smoking dens. The Chinese name for the street is based on landmarks in the area: it is called "ma cho keng au" in Hokkien (back of the Ma Cho temple), or "kun yam miu hau kai" in Cantonese (behind the Kun Yam temple), referring to the Thian Hock Keng Temple on Telok Ayer Street where both goddesses were worshipped.

Amoy Street was also known as "ha mun kai" in Cantonese, "ha mun" being the Cantonese pronunciation of the characters representing the name of the place Amoy.

The street was also known colloquially as Free School Street or "ghi oh khau" (front of the school) because the "Cui Ying" School was built here in 1854. It was in one of the shophouses here (Number 70) that the first Anglo-Chinese School was started on 1 March 1886. The shophouse has since been marked as a historic site.

References

*Victor R Savage, Brenda S A Yeoh (2004), "Toponymics - A Study of Singapore Street Names", Eastern University Press, ISBN 981-210-364-3