Bugis Street: transgender aspects

Bugis Street is a well known shopping thoroughfare in modern-day Singapore located in the central region. From the 1950s to the mid-1980s, it was a gathering place for members of the male-to-female transgender community. Their presence attracted locals and tourists alike, making it one of Singapore's most well known and lucrative tourist attractions of that era.

Historical

Location

Bugis Street lies in an extensive area which was commonly referred to in the past by the Chinese-educated community as Xiao Po (小坡; little slope). The latter stretched all the way from Tanjong Pagar, through Singapore's Chinatown, to Jalan Sultan. The whole vicinity was thriving and crammed with merchants and traders, making it one of the most vibrant economic zones of old Singapore.

Bugis Street runs perpendicular to and stretches from Victoria Street to North Bridge Road. The shopping lane currently known as New Bugis Street within the Bugis Village complex is a relatively recent entity which was formed after the redevelopment of the Bugis area in the mid-1980s. New Bugis Street is actually the renamed terminal portion of the very long, original Albert Street which ran from Selegie Road all the way to Victoria Street.

Etymology

The home of the Bugis people is Makassar, the capital of Indonesia's South Sulawesi province on the island of Sulawesi (formerly known as Celebes).

South Sulawesi province in Indonesia, home of the Bugis or Buginese people who were renowned for their seafaring skills.

In the mid-17th century, the Bugis spread out from Celebes to set up trading centres throughout the region. Sailing from Sumatra to northern Australia, they traded in spices, tortoise shells, gold dust, cotton cloth, birds-of-paradise feathers, pepper, trepang (sea slugs), sandalwood, coffee and rice. Most of these goods were very much in demand by the Chinese merchants in Singapore. The Bugis even traded in slaves.

Often they had to sail to distant lands and fight indigenous tribes. They were tenacious, never surrendered and rarely lost, thereby acquiring an image as a fierce warrior caste[2]. This enabled them to extend their political influence to Kedah and Perak and to establish a Bugis sultanate in Selangor. They therefore played an important part in the political development of the Malay Peninsula in the 18th century.

Occasionally, they also put their sailing prowess to less benign uses and gained a reputation in the region for being a race of bloodthirsty pirates. The stereotype of the Bugis as pirates apparently has some ring of truth to it. There were indeed stories of English merchants being taken hostage by roving Bugis on their pinisi or traditional sailing boats (see below), and tall tales by the Dutch about Bugis bogeymen coming to take away children. But it had mainly to do with the fact that they, at the start, were a nuisance to the European colonisers who tended to label people. It must be remembered that the Bugis were originally farmers who took to the seas especially after the Dutch captured the port of Makassar in the 17th century, strangling their livelihood.

While there were indeed pirates among the Bugis, they were also known as traders and businessmen, occupations they continued to partake of upon migrating to other parts of the Malay archipelago like the Riau Islands and Johor. They are said to be quick-tempered, brash and proud, but also industrious, adventurous and brave. The Bugis have even been called the Vikings of the Nusantara and were much respected. Unfortunately, this was also the source of the piracy stories because raiding was a way of life for a people who did not have resources. But after their raids, they would engage in peaceful trade.

At the time of the founding of Singapore by Stamford Raffles in 1819, Bugis traders were already sailing up Singapore's southern waterways, mooring their boats and trading with local merchants (see main article: Bugis in Singapore). The establishment of a free port in Singapore allowed the Bugis to expand their network in the archipelago. By 1820, the distinctive traditional Bugis schooners called palari (known in Malay as perahu Bugis) were a familiar sight along the Kallang River. With white hulls, green tripod masts, gaffed rigs and twin steering oars manned on outboard galleries, they were impressive to behold under full sail[3]. Also seen were smaller Bugis vessels known as leteh-leteh. The largish palari was the older design of the two types of pinisi (also spelt "phinisi"), a traditional Indonesian two-masted sailing ship mainly built by the Konjo tribe, a sub-ethnic group of the Bugis, who were mostly residents at the Bulukumba regency of South Sulawesi. The pinisi was, and still is, used widely by the Bugis and the Makassarese, mostly for inter-insular transportation, cargo and fishing purposes within the Indonesian archipelago. A British sailor named James Cameron gave a description in 1865 of the various ships that would visit Singapore's harbour. According to him, each year during October and November, the Bugis ships would come from Bali and the Celebes. Bugis sailing vessels were a common sight off Singapore's sea front even up to the 1960s.

File:Pinisi&Palari.jpg

A Bugis palari sailing on the water in the early 1900s (left) and a beached one (right).

19th century Bugis maritime contributions (much documented in Bugis Street's atrium displays and which are unfortunately being obliterated and lost by vendors) were vital to Singapore's entrepot sophistication. At first, the Bugis intermingled with the aboriginal Orang Laut who had long established settlements along the swampy area of the Kallang River. At the time of Raffles' landing in Singapore in 1819, half of the island's population of 1,000 were these Orang Kallang, (also called Orang Biduanda Kallang). They lived on boats and sustained a subsistence living by fishing and collecting other materials from the nearby forests[4].

Many people often mistake the Bugis for the Orang Laut mainly because they are both seafaring folk. However, there is one difference - the Orang Laut spend most of their time on water. Being the aborigines of Singapore, they were also already present in this part of the region before the Bugis even arrived, acting as middlemen, navigators and hired guns for sultans. When the Bugis came during the 17th century, they basically took over the sea folk’s role. The Bugis harboured ambitions of becoming part of the political structures of the times and the Orang Laut, who were used to a more simple life, were not interested in that. The British and the Dutch eventually came to rely on them rather than the Orang Laut.

After 1819, the Orang Kallang were relocated by Temenggong Abdul Rahman to the northern Singapore Straits at Sungai Pulau. Tragically, in 1848, the Orang Kallang were wiped out by a smallpox epidemic.

Bugis Town

Thanks to their seafaring prowess, Bugis traders, who dominated the commerce of the eastern islands of the Indonesian archipelago, flocked to Riau, where their countrymen were strongly entrenched politically and held influence and power there for a long time. When the Dutch began to exercise a trade monopoly in the region in the 18th century, the Bugis' seat of power in Riau was threatened. The Dutch control of Indonesia (the Dutch East Indies) and their blockades cut off the Bugis from their traditional spice trade routes from Celebes to Java. This forced them to migrate to other areas to continue trading. Armed clashes with the Dutch in Indonesia resulted in 500 Bugis fleeing from Makassar to settle down in the fledgeling British colony of Singapore with their chieftain, Arong Bilawa, in February 1820[5]. The first appearance on the horizon of the fierce, warlike Bugis fleet terrified the inhabitants of Singapore, who were relieved to find they came as settlers, bringing their women and children. This was the largest single body of immigrants, and John Crawfurd, the Resident of Singapore from 1823-1826 was delighted to welcome a balanced community of families who would attract the prized Bugis trade. He refused to hand Arong Bilawa over to the Dutch envoy who demanded his extradition, and instead granted him asylum in Singapore. The Bugis then proceeded to build their kampong along the Rochore River. Bringing with them their invaluable trade network, the Bugis quickly formed an important component of the island's economy. Their presence was significant enough for Stamford Raffles to take notice.

By 1824, there were some 1,851 Bugis in Singapore making up slightly more than 10 percent of the island’s population. The Bugis population in Singapore peaked at around 2,000 people in the 1830s when Bugis merchants had a virtual monopoly over trade with the eastern islands of the Malay Archipelago.

Raffles' 1828 master plan for the settlement, known as the Raffles Town Plan or Jackson Plan, followed a racial approach to allocating residential spaces to the various communities in Singapore. It allotted the Bugis the land between Kampong Glam and the Rochor River, near where Lavender MRT Station is today. This area, on the right bank of the river and originally occupied by the Orang Laut, was logically named "Bugis Town" or Kampong Bugis[6]. It was near the Sultan's compound and not to be confused with the contemporary Kampong Bugis at Kallang.

The name "Bugis Town" appeared on a map of Singapore from 1825. It was larger in extent than even the generous area allotted for the Bugis trading community and labelled "Bugis Campong" in the Jackson Plan, Singapore's town plan drawn up by Lieutenant Jackson by December 1822. The old "Bugis Town" of early 19th-century Singapore seems to have persisted in its original location for a few years longer than planned, despite Raffles' directives of October 1822 to remove the Bugis from the area around what is today Bugis Junction. In any case, Bugis and Makassarese merchants and traders in Singapore actually lived and owned properties all across Singapore Town, including in the areas labelled as "Chinatown" today.

The Bugis settlement later expanded to the north and left banks of the Rochor River near today's Kallang Bridge, as well as to the banks of the Kallang River. This location was also convenient and practical because the Bugis could moor their trading boats nearby. By 1822, the area was comprised of large compounds that were owned by 20 prominent Bugis merchants and their followers. In 1823, the Bugis were asked to relocate their town to make way for an Arab kampung. A new Bugis Town was subsequently established at Kampong Rochor in what is today the area between Lavender MRT station and the Crawford housing estate.

The Dutch eventually allowed Arong Bilawa to return to Riau but he had settled in Singapore by then and, along with many of his followers, chose to remain. A considerable proportion intermarried with the local Malays and became assimilated into Malay culture. The community thrived and Singapore soon became the headquarters of Bugis trade in the western archipelago. By the time of the first census in 1824, there were 1,951 Bugis recorded in Singapore, over 18% of the island’s population of 10,683. By the 1830s, the Bugis had established themselves in Singapore and formed the majority of the pioneer communities in the Kampung Gelam area. By 1881, the Census of Population reported 2,053 Bugis in Singapore. The Bugis gradually formed kampongs and settlements in places like Kampung Bugis (around the Kallang River), Kampung Soopoo, Jalan Pelatok and Jalan Pergam.

Various factors led to the subsequent decline in the Bugis population in Singapore. In 1847, Makassar was converted to a free port. The lifting of trade restrictions and the growing dominance of Western ships and steamers in the Malay Archipelago increased competition for the Bugis traders operating out of Singapore. In the latter part of the 19th century, the role of the Bugis as maritime traders was reduced along with the local sea trade. The Bugis traders now complemented modern shipping lines by serving as a link to isolated areas that were often located in shallow waters. As a result of these structural changes in the regional sea trade, the Bugis lost their dominant maritime trading position and their numbers in Singapore declined accordingly. By 1860, there were only about 900 Bugis left on the island.

With other Malay groups and the Arabs settling in this vicinity, the Bugis area became a Muslim heartland. Notable Arab entrepreneurs developed the shophouses of the area into a multicultural business zone by the late 19th and early 20th century. The intellectual enrichment of the area by pilgrim travellers and Muslim publishing businesses and intellectuals made Singapore circa 1900 one of the great centres of Islamic scholarship and information.

Between the First and Second World Wars, flourishing businesses were established in the area, especially by Japanese proprietors who may have nursed the ulterior motive of being an intelligence-gathering source.

In modern day Singapore, "Kampong Bugis" no longer refers to a kampung (Malay hamlet or village in a Malay-speaking country) but is the name of a quiet lane on the left bank of the Rochor River which leads to Kallang Riverside Park. It is home to a scattering of factory buildings, a Hindu temple, a park and a hipster café frequented by teenagers. Up to the late 1990s, an unmistakeable landmark, the cylindrical metal stucture of the old Kallang Gas Works was situated right next to it.

During the Japanese Occupation from 1942 to 1945, a number of Bugis were resettled in Pontian, Johore while others moved out to Beach Road and Arab Street. Today the Bugis have been assimilated into the Malay community, with most living in HDB flats.

Hand-tinted photos of a riverine settlement of the Bugis people.

File:KampongBugisKallangRiver001a.jpg

Black-and-white archival photos of the portion of Kampong Bugis on the banks of the Kallang River in the 1800s.

It was after these people and their settlement at Kampong Bugis that Bugis Street was named. Bugis traders would come to Singapore from Sulawesi for trade and after disposing of their goods, they would gather at Bugis Street to eat, drink and make merry until the wee hours of the morning. Despite the recognition of 5 distinct genders within Bugis culture, including the non-heteronormative bissu, calabai and calalai (see main article: Gender in Bugis society), the road, which later became famed for its nocturnal congregation of transgender people, was not named after the Buginese for this reason.

However, it is possible that transgender Singaporeans, especially the Malays, with a knowledge of this aspect of Bugis society first decided to congregate there in the 1950s because of this association and their traditional embracing of gender diversity. Indeed, to the casual observer, there would appear to be a disproportionately higher number of Malays in Singapore's transgender community in relation to the percentage of Malays in the general population, which stands at around 15% (see Demographics of Singapore). These people are probably aware of and just carrying on the tradition of the tolerant gender-fluid culture of the Indonesian archipelago, Southeast Asia and the wider Austronesian region. The infiltration of political Islam into Singapore's immediate neighbours in recent decades poses a huge threat to the culture.

• Watch a video segment in Chinese on the history of Bugis Street, excerpted from a documentary produced by Channel 8 in June 2006[7]:

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Alternative names

During the early colonial era, there also used to be low mounds of whitish sand in the area, earning the street the familiar Hokkien moniker of Peh Sua Pu or Bai Sha Fu in Mandarin (白沙浮; white sand mounds). Peh Sua Pu can also mean "whitewash" in Hokkien, with "sua pu" being the Hokkien corruption of the Malay word "sapu" (to sweep or brush). No information is available as to why the phrase having this meaning was used by the Hokkiens as a name for Bugis Street but speculation has it that it was due to houses there being once given an extra coat of whitewash[8]. The Cantonese, however, referred to the street as Hak Gaai or Hei Jie in Mandarin (黑街; black street) as there were many clubs catering to the Japanese invaders in the 1940s. During the first half of the 20th century, commuters could conveniently travel from Bugis Street to anywhere else in Xiao Po via a tram service which ran along North Bridge Road, which was referred to by the Chinese-educated as Xiao Po Da Ma Lu (小坡大马路; little slope main road).

Adjoining lanes

Closely associated with Bugis Street and which also saw transgender activity were Malabar Street, Hylam Street and Malay Street. However, prior to the 1950s, this network of four streets was well known as a huge red light district serviced by cisgender female sex workers.

As Singapore started to develop around the 1870s, immigrants, mostly men, rushed in from China and India to toil at rubber plantations and tin mines or as rickshaw pullers. To maintain social order, the British colonial authorities tolerated prostitution at designated brothels, bringing in Chinese and Japanese women in droves.

The original Malabar Street in the daytime.

Malabar Street, connecting Middle Road and Malay Street, probably got its name from the Malabar Muslims who settled there. They were Southern Indian Muslims from Kerala who came to Singapore as merchants. They formed their own association and built their own mosque, the Malabar Mosque at the junction of Victoria Street and Jalan Sultan, near Malabar Street.

Malay Street, connecting Victoria Street and New Bridge Road, was at the heart of Singapore's red light area up to the late 1930s after which sexual soliciting by female prostitutes was outlawed and stamped out by the British (see below). It was infamous for the Chinese, Japanese and European female sex workers who plied the streets.

Many Japanese women worked in Malay Street as prostitutes called “karayuki-san” between the late 19th century and early 20th century[9],[10]. They were peasant girls, mostly from the Shimabara Peninsula in Nagasaki Prefecture and Amakusa Islands in Kumamoto Prefecture, who were sold into the flesh trade in colonial Singapore and other parts of Southeast Asia.

Japan was a poor country in the 19th century and women were one of its major exports, along with silk and coal. Karayuki-san, together with other Japanese women who served as prostitutes elsewhere, including Siberia, Hawaii, Australia and some parts of India and Africa, were the third-biggest foreign currency earner for Japan at the turn of the 20th century.

The existence of karayuki-san in Singapore dates back to 1877, when there were two Japanese-owned brothels on Malay Street with 14 Japanese prostitutes. Official records suggest 633 Japanese women were operating in 109 brothels in 1905. The number is believed to have been well over 1,000, if unlicensed prostitutes are included.

From the 1950s onwards, brothels serviced by transwomen sex workers were only authorised by the government to operate along Johore Road. However, soliciting and cruising activity were seen late at night along these streets even though no brothels were located here.

Activities

Before World War II, starting from the 1920s onwards, Bugis Street was a more conventional, non-transgender red light district lined with Chinese and Japanese brothels. Noel Coward, in his short story, "Pretty Polly Barlow", described the Bugis Street of the 1930s[11]:

“Every nationality in the world seemed to be represented in the endless procession of tightly packed humanity shuffling slowly along.” Then he disparagingly describes the “ubiquitous whores, none of whom were young or even remotely attractive” (referring to the cisgender woman sex workers, not the transwomen who would only start to congregate there 2 decades later). Sexual soliciting by the largely cisgender female prostitutes was outlawed and stamped out by the British colonial authorities in the late 1930s.

After the war, street hawkers gathered there to sell sundry goods and cooked food like dim sum, roast pork, barbecued chicken wings and beef noodles. Contemporary Singaporeans remember notable dishes sold there - a Teochew beef kway teow (flat rice noodles) soup stall which moved to Eminent Plaza after the redevelopment of Bugis Street, Odeon beef kway teow soup sold on a push cart by Sook Kee, and another beef noodle stall which moved to Hougang 6th mile selling regular bowls costing 30 cents in 1958 and large 50 cent bowls which were too hefty for a teenager to eat. Chee cheong fun, sold by Kok Kee wanton mee stall, relocated to Eminent Plaza and eventually closed for good in the 2010s. A barbecued chicken wing stall moved to One KM mall[12]. Certain vendors could even whip up such exotic dishes delicacies as bears' paws (熊掌), in addition to the more pedestrian frogs and snakes, to pique the most jaded of palates.

Those in the most popular stretch would cover their tables with white tablecloths, the only hawkers in Singapore to do so. There was initially also a small number of outdoor bars set up beside rat-infested drains. The street served as an entertainment area catering to British troops and thereafter, American forces taking an R&R respite from the Vietnam War.

The earliest published description of Bugis Street found by Yawning Bread as a place of great gender diversity and transgender activity was in the book "Eastern Windows" by Francis Downes Ommaney (1960. London:Longmans. pp. 39-45)[13],[14]. Ommaney did not date specifically his description of the street but his book made clear that he was in Singapore from 1955 to 1960. Another first-person account of Bugis Street in the 1950s by Bob, a visiting gay Australian sailor currently residing in Brisbane[15] describes that each bar arranged its tables outside its premises but the usage seemed almost communal and tables and chairs were rearranged many times in the course of an evening.

He did not know how the various bar owners and employees kept track of whose customers were whose but it all seemed to work somehow. The overwhelming impression was that an overall good humour, even bonhomie, prevailed. There were disputes, both between the service staff of the various bars and within each bar itself but an all-out brawl was rare. More serious were occasional quarrels between the cisgender girls and the cross-dressers as to who owned which patch or which serviceman. The transwomen were in the minority but were nonetheless aggressive in promoting their wares and protecting their turf. They definitely had the edge in repartees. Policing was done by locals under European direction, and seemed to have a light hand unless a brawl, threatening property damage, started in which case the police and the shore patrol or military police rushed there in force.

When transgender women or transwomen (formerly derogatorily but popularly referred to as transvestites) began to rendezvous in the area in the 1950s, they attracted increasing numbers of Western tourists who came for the booze, the food, the pasar malam shopping and the "girls". Business boomed and Bugis Street became an extremely lively and bustling area, forming the heart of Xiao Po. It was one of Singapore's most famous tourist meccas from the 1950s to the 1980s, renowned internationally for its nightly parade of flamboyantly dressed transwomen and attracted hordes of Caucasian gawkers who had never before witnessed Asian "queens" in full regalia. A 20-year old visiting British soldier in 1965 recalled that it was "pretty wild...and such a culture shock for an English lad. The smell of Tilley lamps, the smell of hawker food, the perfume of young 'ladies'."

Drinking section

Veterans recall that the notorious drinking section with its glittering activity only took place in Bugis Street proper, stretching from Victoria Street to North Bridge Road, which today is completely engulfed by the Bugis Junction complex. New Bugis Street, despite having a similar name and the current presence of a shimmering, touristy sign at both entrances reading only "Bugis Street") was actually the terminal portion of Albert Street and did not have as much commercial activity such as food vendors and roadside stalls, although transwomen could be found there, mainly indulging in sex work (a more politically correct term to use nowadays than "prostitution").

Almost halfway along Bugis Street between Victoria Street and North Bridge Road, there was an intersecting lane called Malabar Street which ran parallel to the main roads, also lined with al fresco bars.

In the 1980s, Western visitors were charged prices at least three times higher than locals - for example, a bottle of coke would cost them $1.50 compared to 30 cents when bought from coffee shops.

Sex work

Transwomen started to congregate at Bugis Street and indulge in sex work from the 1950s onwards. An article published in The Singapore Free Press on 1 August 1957 noted that Bugis Street was "perhaps the worst area in Singapore" affected by prostitution. Since the latter was one of the most lucrative sources of income, gangsters' protection societies and the sites of mob clashes had almost invariably been in the vicinities where sex work was rampant. The article stated that although prostitution was not carried on in Bugis Street itself, it was the location of the largest "pick-up" site" in the then British colony. There, secret societies with names such as the "08 gang" and the "329 gang" were constantly vying for "protection" services. Despite liquor licencing laws, it was possible to buy an alcoholic drink at Bugis Street at an hour as early as 5am.

During the Vietnam War which stretched from 1955 to 1975, American servicemen and sailors thronged Bugis Street to sit, chat with and ogle at the transwomen. As a result, the area was listed as one of the must-see places by international tourist magazines. The transwomen give character to Bugis Street. It was not uncommon during its heyday to find 30 to 40 transwomen gathered there on any one night. In the well lit and bustling street after around 11pm, cross-dressers would start to appear and tease, cajole and sit on visitors' laps or pose for photographs for a fee.

Others would sashay up and down the street looking to hook half-drunk sailors, American GIs and other foreigners on R&R, for an hour of profitable intimacy. Not only would these clients get the thrill of sex with an exotic oriental, there would be the added spice of transgressing gender boundaries in a seamy hovel. Occasionally, some transwomen would do a striptease standing on a chair by the roadside and this inevitably attracted a large crowd of onlookers. Stories of wild parties where 30 or 40 of the "sisters", as they liked to call themselves, would dress to kill and give the performance of their lives - the legendary Ah Kua shows - are still recounted in the 21st century. The street would remain alive till dawn.

Although prostitution is not illegal in Singapore, soliciting to provide sexual services is and the vice squad periodically arrested transwomen for sexual solicitation. On 1 June 1981, The Straits Times reported that a 19-year-old youth, Ariffin bin Othman, was fined $250 by a magistrate on Friday, 29 May 1981, after he admitted soliciting for "an immoral purpose" in Bugis Street on 15 May 1981 at 2:50am. The court heard that Ariffin, dressed in women's clothes, was seen approaching male tourists from table to table.

The transwoman sex workers of Bugis Street worked independently. They were not under the control of any pimps. Their clientele was almost exclusively Westerners whom they preferred as these foreigners could presumably afford to pay better than most locals and possessed the allure of coming from more advanced societies compared to the Singapore of that era. However, the surrounding areas up to Sungei Road were under the control of pimps, as well as gangsters.

Once their clients had indicated their interest in having sex, they would adjourn to private apartments or even rooms in landed property which some transgender sex workers were well off enough to afford, on account of their relatively lucrative occupation. The less economically privileged ones brought their tricks to one-room HDB flats which they shared with other transgender sex workers. This was to avoid the possibility of being cheated or beaten up by their clients. Some Western military and naval personnel who stumbled upon Bugis Street without knowing its transgender reputation would pick up transwoman sex workers for a night of carnal pleasure only to wake up the following morning and be shocked to find out that they had slept with a biological male, assuming they only had oral sex.

There were no brothels located along Bugis Street itself as romantically depicted in the movie "Bugis Street" (see below). However, according to a person named Choo Teck Hong who gave an oral history interview, he lived in a block along Malabar Street, just before it joined Victoria Street, which housed sex workers from Hungary[16]. There were many more single-storey brothels located farther away at Johore Road and around the intersection of Sungei Road and Rochor Road, on the left bank of Rochor Canal.

Crime

From the late 1970s onwards, the police began to come down hard on transwomen in the popular tourist spot of Bugis Street and the red light district of Johore Road after an upsurge of pickpocketing, robberies, assaults, street brawls and crime in the area.

A Straits Times article on 2 April 1977 reported that more than 40 transwomen, who were referred to as "catamites" by the journalist (typical of the vocabulary of reportage during that era), were arrested and questioned. They were released after being screened and warned to keep clear of crime. The particulars of the arrested transwomen were recorded by detectives and a form of register was kept to keep tabs on them. Most of the crime victims were tourists who complained that they were beaten up or had their wallets picked by transvestites. It was believed that the majority of the victims did not make police reports. The crackdown was also aimed at discouraging secret society members from operating "protection" rackets in the area.

On 10 June 1984, The Singapore Monitor reported that a Bugis Street transwoman named Amil who pickpocketed a tourist under the guise of a loving embrace was fined $l,000 the previous day by a magistrate’s court. The court heard that at about 2:45am on Friday, 8 June 1984, the "freelance transvestite", as she was described in the charge sheet, approached Australian tourist Randall Peter MacArthur, 27, while he was having a drink in Bugis Street and embraced him from the back. MacArthur, who did not take too kindly to the gesture, told her to go away. Fifteen minutes later, be found that the $60 he had in his shirt pocket was missing. After a quick search, be spotted Amil and informed a policeman who detained her. They found $60 in Amil's handbag.

Transwomen were increasingly disallowed from entering Bugis Street and told to move back to Lorong 6 in Geylang. Those who had been hauled before to the police station had their particulars taken down and if caught returning to the area, would be booked and later charged in court. "Ever since we moved out, we’ve been having a hard time", said one of them in a Straits Times article dated 11 October 1985. "We used to earn about $300 a night, now we're lucky to get $50. Bugis Street is our only home." The newspaper article also noted at the time that "only three or four could be seen after midnight, dressed in tightly cut clothes, often with their cleavages showing."

Newspaper articles

Main article: Singapore's first newspaper articles on the LGBT community

In 1972, The first detailed "exposé" of the sex work done by Bugis Street's transwomen was published by the evening tabloid of the day, the New Nation, in a groundbreaking 4-part feature on Singapore's LGBT community entitled "They are different...".

Excerpt:

"The transvestites who have become prostitutes frequent Bugis Street where they usually solicit after midnight and Johore Road, in foul-smelling, oppressive hovels, honeycombed with box-like cubicles big enough only for a double bed and standing space for one or two. At these places, they ply their trade at prices ranging from $3 to $20 or more for a quick time, often fleecing European tourists or resident expatriates. Their clients: Male homosexuals as well as men who also enjoy normal heterosexual relationships and do not regard themselves as homosexuals. The Bugis Street homosexuals often cater for Europeans or tourists, and the Johore Road group for the locals. Such male prostitutes find it extremely difficult to rent accommodation from decent, normal people."

Anecdotal experiences

Transwomen

Even though much has been written about Bugis Street, documented first-person accounts by transwomen who actually worked there are few and far between.

The first instalment of Singapore's first newspaper articles on the LGBT community featuring a photograph of Bugis Street in the lower left corner.

• The first was found in the 1972 New Nation article mentioned above:

"Most of the 'sisters' start the same way. In school they realise that they are different. The boys tease them, then they start seeking the companionship of their own kind. Paradoxically they discover that they like boys. Then they start hanging around places where homosexual contacts are made. They experience sex and like it. Then they get more daring, dressing in women's clothes, the first few times in borrowed dresses and with haphazardly applied make up.

Later they get bolder, and dress more stylishly, and accompany men on dates to nightclubs and cinemas. The men give them presents, and from there it is only one step towards accepting money. By this time the 'sister' will have left school, and will experience difficulty getting a job. He will start loitering around Bugis Street and Johore Road more frequently, becoming semi-professional. His family will grow suspicious of his staying out at night. One day he will be caught in the act of soliciting. There will be terrible quarrels at home, and a promise to behave more like a man in future.

This promise will be almost impossible to keep, because he feels that he is a woman at heart. He will persist in behaving like one. Family disapproval will grow stronger. He will either leave home or be thrown out. He has to live, so he will turn to prostitution. Since he does not care about his family any more he will try to become fully a woman. He will take hormone pills and undergo plastic surgery and soon will have a female figure. It will now be impossible for him to live the life of a man.

Then boyfriend trouble, gangster trouble, and with the police will start. Gangsters tend to leave most male prostitutes alone, but those who look like women and who have nowhere to turn to are victims of the gangs. Such male prostitutes find it extremely difficult to rent accommodation from decent, normal people, "So they stay in brothels, and pay exorbitant rents ($130 a month for an unfurnished cubicle 10 ft. square) and pay the gangsters $3 to $5 per day in 'protection money' and give the gangsters sexual pleasure too. They also run the constant risk of being arrested by the police for soliciting or for picking pockets. I know that some of us sometimes steal from our customers, but can you blame us when we are desperate? Then there will be trouble with boyfriends. Living such lonely lives female impersonators are desperate for real love and sometimes fall victim to conmen. Anyone who shows signs of love can have a transvestite wrapped around his little finger.

One 'sister' lost her life savings of over $7,000 to a conman, and now she is almost 30, with very few years left In this business, and with a curvaceous figure which would bar her from taking any normal job.There will also be trouble with honest boyfriends. Some boys do fall in love with transvestites and treat them as girls, but many transvestites are so insecure and possessive that they make jealous wives seem mild in comparison.Sometimes the boys just give up because of the constant naggings they get. In other cases social disapproval and family quarrels force the boy to give up his transvestite girlfriend, leaving her heartbroken.

Of course there are some transvestites who have established fairly long lasting relationships with their boyfriends for four or five years. But in their cases, they are still pretty. I have not known any of the old transvestites to have boyfriends. In yet other cases we meet very nice boys, very independent, who do not care what society thinks and they date us, and treat us well, and we enjoy ourselves tremendously when we go dancing, water skiing and shopping with them.

But such boys are always terrible flirts, and even real girls cannot tie them down. We know that they visit us merely for a thrill, and for a bit of spicy variation. So we enjoy them when we can, but dare not let ourselves fall in love with them because they have reputations as heartbreakers. Many of us hope to change sex, but still we have this fear that we will not be accepted by society. Besides, most of us have no skills to hold down a woman's job, like being a secretary, though two of those who changed sex recently are doing well as fashion models.

For the rest, we live from day to day, organising frantic parantic parties, going shopping, sightseeing and to the cinema, trying to push the thought of growing old to the back of our minds. In our way of life we are over the hill once we pass 30, and every morning we look into our mirrors, trying to ignore the increasing wrinkles, and wondering what tomorrow will bring."

• Another account by a 60-year old transwoman named Tina Lee who was a sex worker for two-thirds of her life is found in Russell Heng's article[17]:

"...after she was too old and ugly to have any market value, she worked as a dish washer but lost the job when employer found out she was once a transvestite, fearing she had Aids. Remember Aids came on to the Singapore scene in 1984 with the first reported HIV positive case. She then lived in a rented room on her savings. She said: "no matter what they do, the government should realize there will always be places like Bugis Street. They should help us by giving us a place to stay and ICs so that they will know who we are and we are not criminals. We don't want sympathy nor do we want to be ignored. We just want understanding."

• In 2010, The New Paper published an article which also dealt with aging transwomen who used to do sex work at Bugis Street[18].

One of them was Georgie, whom the tabloid described as "without make-up, and save for his effeminate gestures, the stocky Georgie looks every bit like a man". Georgie said, "My glorious days are over. Money used to be pretty good then and, depending on where I was, I could easily earn a few thousand dollars a month if I worked hard." But after the authorities cleaned up the grimy backlanes in the 1980s, the "spotlight went poof into the air."

Georgie went on to lament how she was cheated by her philandering Malaysian lover whom she moved in with after retiring in 1995. After breaking up with the man, she ran a stall selling nasi lemak in the mornings. By about 2pm, she would return home for a short nap before heading out 3 hours later to Orchard Road where she freelanced as a masseuse. She spent about half of her monthly earnings of between $1,800 and $2,000 on beauty products such as cleansers and moisturisers.

Many of her Bugis Street friends had opted to go overseas in search of love. "It's easier to find acceptance - and thus, love - especially in Europe," she added. This was the case with one of her friends, a transsexual in her 50s. Georgie said, "The last I heard, she is happily married to a European man 20 years younger. They live in Denmark with two adopted children. But those who do that are mostly the ones who have gone for a sex operation and become a woman. The rest of us (who didn't) end up struggling to stay happy and alive here."

Georgie stretched out both hands in a gesture to include her friends, paused for dramatic effect, then said, "What you see here are the 'chao Ah Kua' who have now become the 'lao Ah Kua'." Georgie's gang - she is quick to add that they're not gangsters - is a curious mix. Cross-dressers Lina, 58, and King, 50, were in black dresses and tights, complete with heavy make-up. The other four were, in their own words, "the result of sound investment" meaning that they had undergone a sex-change operation.

• A gay man in his late 50s in 2017, R. Tan, recounts, "Back in the 1970's, I knew of an Uncle Ken who was a tailor by day, and by night, he transformed into Ms Molly Hua who roamed Bugis Street. His wife helped him dress up for the night. They had four children - 2 boys and 2 girls, and yes, they lived happily. Uncle Ken passed away at the age of 80, a few years ago leaving behind 1 loving wife, 4 children & 10 grandchildren! Singapore has her very own inspiring real life stories. Uncle Ken was my grandmother's mahjong kaki. Molly Hua was my very first encounter with a cross-dresser who appeared late one night at grandma's home in full drag before hitting Bugis Street. His divine image stuck in my childhood memory till today. Enchanting!"

Gay men

Russell Heng's article[19] also recounts the story of Eugene (a pseudonym), a gay man who frequented Bugis Street. It sheds light on the sexual ethos and professional code of conduct among those who worked at Bugis Street as well as the mindset of certain gay men during that era. In the 1970s and 80s, the butch he-man type, many of whom were of working class background, could be found buying sex on Bugis Street and not in gay bars.

Eugene had a crush on a char kway teow hawker in his neighbourhood. The kway teow seller was also one of the local samsengs with tattoos on his body, which drove Eugene wild with lust. Eugene was prepared to pay him for sex but to no avail. Subsequently, Eugene wised up to the fact that the only way to hook local butch men was to go in drag and seduce them at Bugis Street. One night, Eugene in his wig and dress serendipitously met the kway teow seller on the street and the tables were turned. He was prepared to pay Eugene for sex. In those years, many butch men could only bring themselves to have sex with another man if the latter turned himself into a surrogate woman by going in drag. It probably lessened the guilt for them and preserved their insecure sense of masculinity.

Eugene held an executive position in a mulitinational company and was freelancing on Bugis Street. He did not need the money but he had to charge. One could not give sex for free and spoil the market for others. If word got around that one was providing it for free, one would be beaten up by those who really needed to earn a living.

Photographic documentation

Foreign photographers would sometimes pay the transwomen to take topless or nude photos of them. Some local shutterbugs like See Mun Wah[20],[21], who is in his eighties in the 2010s, also have an extensive collection of photos of the transwomen of that era, as well as of the sailors who were preparing for the "Dance of the Flaming Arseholes" (see below). See, who is a lifetime member of the Singapore Photographic Society, used to shoot with a Polaroid as well as SLR cameras and develop his own darkroom prints. He is a polite and well spoken elderly man with many stories to tell and who used to sell the photos for several decades at Sungei Road and also in his home, at prices ranging from 50 cents to $2 each.

Another photographer who has shot a large collection of photos of the transwomen of Bugis Street is KF Wong from Sarawak. However, these subjects do not form the main focus of the work of both Wong and See.

Surrounding areas

Sexual solicitation by transwomen also spilled out onto the adjoining lanes like Hylam Street, Malay Street and Malabar Street.

The latter were dimly lit and had no drinking sections. Much less glamorous prostitution by older transwomen past their prime took place in the much seedier, no longer extant Johore Road located further away on the other side of Rochor Road, next to the Queen Street bus terminus which served as a landmark and was sporadically found all the way to Sungei Road. There were brothels located at Johore Road and more housed in the single-storey buildings around Sungei Road. The brothels of Sungei Road were set up much like those in the back alley of Desker Road today, but with a considerable proportion of transwoman sex workers as compared with the predominantly biological woman sex workers of Desker Road. Men, mainly working class local Chinese (there were very few South Asian foreign workers in Singapore from the 1950s to the 1980s), would mill around in large crowds outside the brothels whose doors were wide open to display the girls lounging around on sofas. One could enter the living room, chat with the girls and then, if interested, proceed to a bedroom in the unit for sex.

Extensive area over which transwoman sex workers were active at night from the 1950s to the mid-1980s.

Gangsters ran protection rackets in this entire area as well as guarded the "girls" from harassment. They would not hesitate to beat up or even stab anyone who disturbed the transwomen excessively. Occasional police raids by the vice squad, who would momentarily detain transwomen as well as passers-by on-the-spot for their particulars to be recorded, were part and parcel of nightlife during that time.

Sex reassignment surgery

Main article: Sex reassignment surgery in Singapore

Prior to the 1970s, almost all transwomen at Bugis Street were cross-dressers and pre-operative transsexuals. Only those wealthy enough to travel to the West and afford exorbitant surgical fees could undergo a sex change. As Singaporean surgeons became more skillful, some like Prof. S Shan Ratnam were authorised to perform male-to-female sex reassignment surgery at Kandang Kerbau Hospital from 1971 onwards[22]:

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However, before hopeful transsexuals-to-be could go under the knife, they first had to subject themselves to an exhaustive battery of tests and be given a clean psychological bill of health by Singapore's chief academic psychiatrist Prof. Tsoi Wing Foo. Later, the more technically demanding female-to-male variety was also offered there and at Alexandra Hospital, performed by gynaecologists such as Ratnam's nephew Dr. C Anandakumar and his other protegé, Dr. Arunachalam Ilancheran. A Gender Identity Clinic and Gender Reassignment Surgery Clinic were set up at the National University Hospital two decades later. In fact, for thirty years since the early 1970s, Singapore was one of the world leaders in gender reassignment surgery. This gave a new lease of life to the many transsexuals who felt trapped in bodies of the wrong sex. Thus, Bugis Street started to become populated with a range of transgender people from cross-dressers to iatrogenic, physically intersex individuals to fully transitioned women.

Public toilet

There was a well patronised public toilet with a flat roof located at the intersection of a T-junction. It was referred to by the slang word of "dunny" by visiting Australian and New Zealand sailors. A member of the Intelligence Corps in Singapore described the condition of the loo in the 1960s and early 1970s[23]:

"The place stank to high heaven. When you urinated it went onto the floor. You had no choice but to walk in the urine. The stench of ammonia was unbelievable. If you wanted a crap, well that was even worse. You would have to put up one hand against the door to stop any kai tai's from coming in while the other hand was over your nose to stop the smell of the crap already filling the bowl. If you were smart you had your own paper, if not, well...!"

There exist archival photos, complete with jubilant rooftop transwomen who were wont to give impromptu theatrical performances in drag on the flat toilet roof to the delight of the crowds and the occasional fury of the police. This toilet was immortalised in the movie, "Bugis Street", which contained a scene in which visiting sailors stood in a row and mooned the passers-by below.

Cruising by non-cross-dressing gay men also took place in the male half of the loo. From the mid-20th century onwards, homosexual men who were ignorant of cruising areas patronised solely by men who have sex with men would venture into Bugis Street in an attempt to look for other MSMs because of the confusion in that era between transwomen and gay men. This signature fallacy, held by many Singaporeans from the mainstream community even today, was astonishingly made despite months of research by the investigative reporters behind Singapore's first newspaper articles on the LGBT community published in 1972 which lumped gay men together with transgender women into the same category.

Location

The location of the infamous public toilet has been speculated on and researched by Icemoon in the blog "Second Shot" on Blogspot[24] and later greatly expanded on by Toh Hun Ping in his Wordpress blog article, "'Round About Midnight, Bugis Street."[25]

After much deliberation over the available evidence, Icemoon and Toh conclude that it lay at the junction of Bugis Street and Malabar Street (the portion leading towards Rochor Road).

Today the site of the toilet is occupied by the open space in front of the ticketing counter at Bugis Junction.

Dance of the Flaming Arseholes

Main article: Dance of the Flaming Arseholes

One of the "hallowed traditions" bestowed upon the area by sojourning sailors, eg. from Australia and New Zealand, was the ritualistic "Dance Of The Flamers" or "Dance of the Flaming Arseholes"[26] held on the roof of the infamous toilet. Compatriots on the ground would chant the signature "Haul 'em down, you Zulu Warrior" song[27] for "musical accompaniment" whilst the matelots performed their act either completely naked or with their trousers and underwear removed. The dance was carried out after stuffing one end of a length of toilet or any rolled-up piece of paper into the dancer's anus while the other end was set aflame (see videos of modern iterations:[28],[29],[30],[31],[32]).
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Over the years this became almost a mandatory exercise and although it may seem to many to be a gross act of indecency, it was generally well received by the throng of sometimes up to hundreds of tourists and locals who crowded outside the toilet to witness the spectacle. The kai tais or beanie boys, as the transwomen were referred to by Anglophone white visitors, certainly did not mind either. By the mid-1970s, Singapore started a crackdown on this type of lewd behaviour and sailors were arrested at gunpoint by the local authorities for upholding the tradition. By this time those sailors brave enough to try it were dealt with severely and even shipped home in disgrace.

In one instance, reported in The Straits Times on 23 March 1974, two Australian sailors were arrested for indecent exposure at Bugis Street on Sunday morning, 17 March 1974. The sailors, from the destroyer "HMAS Vendetta" which was in Singapore for naval exercises, caused a furore when they stripped and performed the dance on the roof of the public toilet. An ANZUK spokesman said that officers from Beach Road police station arrested the pair and handed them over to the military police. They were subsequently sent to the captain of the destroyer for disciplinary action.

Recreation of dance in Bugis Street (the movie)

Yonfan, the Hong Kong director of the movie Bugis Street, attempted to recreate the iconic Dance of the Flaming Arseholes in his film. However, since the original toilet had been demolished during the redevelopment of Bugis Street in the mid-1980s, he used a contemporary building at New Bugis Street as a substitute. Unfortunately, the building was not an exact replica of the original and the Caucasian actors merely mooned at the audience in the movie instead of actually inserting a roll of paper into their anuses and setting it alight.

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Foreign articles

Illustrated Weekly of India, 1975

Photograph of article

File:IllustratedWeeklyOfIndia75.jpg

Editable text of article

(Photo caption: WITH "BEAUTIES" LIKE THESE, Singapore is fast catching up with Bangkok and Tokyo as the "Playground of Asia".)

Singapore's 'Fairy' Land

Singapore's Bugis Street is like any other street during the day with the amell of cooking noodles and meat and cycle-rickshaws winding their way through the traffic. But after sunset...

SINGAPORE'S Bugis Street is no different from any other busy thoroughfare. Luxuriously air-conditioned limousines glide along the narrow street flanked by music and foodshops. The smell of hot pork fat and noodles and a variety of meats frying in it rises slowly, heavily, in the humid air and settles like a fog on the pavements. Keen buyers of pop-music cassettes stand outside shops, haggling over prices, while listening to the music through earphones. Cycle-rickshaws, pulled by weary perspiring Chinese coolies, weave their way through this confusion.

But come midnight and Bugis Street changes into a "Fairy" Land. Gone is the busy honking traffic. All across the street are tables laid under bright lights. Beer glasses clink as bottle after bottle is opened and the merriment of sailors and tourists is expressed in loud laughter.

PRETTY PARADE. Some of Asia's most beautiful girls come from Singapore. The boys, however, are not far behind.

FROM BIRTHDAY SUITS TO COATTAILS. Anything goes in the nightclubs of Bugis Street. The Singapore Government, which has passed stringent morality laws, turns a blind eye to the goings-on here.

The city state of Singapore sits snugly on the tip of the Malaysian peninsula which juts out into the Indian ocean. A proud clean dty, it has stringent laws about obscenity and nightclub cabarets. But Singapore's Government has consistently turned a blind eye to the magic world of Bugis Street with its exposed panties and popping bosoms.

Bugis Street, with its highly painted transvestites, sexy prostitutes and homosexuals, is a big draw for sailors looking for entertainment and for tourists who are looking for a night's binge. They sit here at shaky little tables, sipping beer or soft drinks, and overhear the most blatant bargaining for sexual pleasures.

Bugis Street is now as much an institution as a tourist attraction of Singapore.

A Haunt For Sailors

Way back, it started off as a haunt for sailors who gathered here to drink and seek sexual satisfaction from young effeminate boys. Today these young men strut around exquisitely made up in the sexiest of revealing clothes. Stories are told about how hard they work to achieve their feminine figures. Exercises, diet, hormone and silicone injections go into the creation of smooth shapely slim waists and eye-catching bosoms. Some among them have psychiatric treatment for months, after which they go through sex-change operations and become complete women except that they cannot conceive.

The beer joints and bars in Bugis Street pay them attractive sums to parade in front of the shops to attract a larger clientele.

Among the transvestites in Bugis Street are also some Indian hijras in saris and "Oriental" make-up. Most of them are happy to join groups of tourists and pour out the story of their "operation", or their yearning to be women. Almost all of them claim to be "nice women" with interesting tales to tell.

In years past, the sailors who frequented Bugis Street drank a great deal and often stripped completely in full view of the tourists. This has now been prohibited. But bosoms of every size and shape are on view; so are thighs as microminis rise way above shapely bottoms and frilled panties.

Once a year, the transvestites arrange a beauty contest and the winners often are more shapely and more beautiful than the bewitching girls who win the world's most celebrated beauty contests.

UK naval documents

In November 2002, newly declassified UK naval documents revealed that possibly 50% of its servicemen had indulged in homosexual sex at some time in their naval service life and many had visited brothels in Singapore's then legendary Bugis Street in the 1960s as soon as their ship docked. A document written by the navy's medical director general in 1969, described Singapore's transwoman prostitutes as "very beautiful" and who "dress well and smell delicious". He added, "They perfect the female walk, stance and mannerisms and some even undergo surgery to complete the illusion"[33].

There was an adage amongst Westerners that one could easily tell who was a real female and who was not - the transvestites were drop-dead gorgeous, while the rest were real women. The amount of revenue that the transwomen of Bugis Street raked in was considerable, providing a booster shot in the arm for the tourism industry. Some Americans referred to it as "Boogie Street" following the resurgence in popularity of the word in the wake of the 1970s disco craze. In 2001, Canadian singer, songwriter, poet and novelist Leonard Cohen wrote a song entitled "Boogie Street" (see below).

Urban redevelopment

Main article: Redevelopment of Bugis Street

From October 1985 to the early 1990s, Bugis Street underwent major urban redevelopment into a retail complex of modern shopping malls, restaurants and nightspots mixed with regulated back-alley roadside vendors. Underground digging to construct the Bugis MRT station prior to that also caused the upheaval and termination of the nightly transgender sex bazaar culture as well as the disappearance of traditional trades practised for generations. This marked the end of a colourful and unique era in Singapore's history.

Attempts at transgender revival

Tourist and local lamentation of the loss sparked attempts by the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board (STPB) to recreate some of the old sleazy splendour by staging contrived "Ah Kua shows" on wooden platforms, but these artificial performances fell flat on their faces and failed to pull in the crowds. They were abandoned after a short time.

The Ah Kua show tradition was revived indoors in later decades at the Boom Boom Room by Kumar, by transwoman activist Leona Lo in her play "The Ah Kua Show" and by Eugene Tan a.k.a. Becca D'Bus in the drag revue "Riot!" which debuted at TAB along Orchard Road in 2015.

National Heritage Board whitewashes Bugis Street's transgender history

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On 5 March 2016, the National Heritage Board posted four archival photos of Bugis Street[[34]] on its Facebook page[35] and provided the caption:

“While the bazaar atmosphere of Bugis Street continues today, the night bazaars of the 1950s to 1980s along the area dazzled a different way..."

However, the Board neglected to mention anything about the transgender activity for which Bugis Street was world-renowned.

In reaction to this, Facebook user and writer Ng Yi-Sheng on 17 June 2016 commented under the post, "Stop erasing our LGBT history. If you don’t dare to say anything about the transgender women that Bugis was famous for, then don’t talk about it all."[36]

Bugis Street in popular culture

Books

All books on Singapore's transgender community inevitably mention Bugis Street in one way or another. The following are works which deal predominantly, if not exclusively, with the subject.

Bugis street blues: a sentimental guide to Singapore

A 24-page book by Barrington Kaye consisting of verses of poetry, published by D. Moore in 1955. It is available on Amazon.com[37] as well as on microfilm at the Singapore National Library[38].

Singapore girl: A true story of sex, drugs and love on the wild side in 1970s Bugis Street

A novel by James Eckardt published by Monsoon Books in February 2010[39],[40].

Synopsis: "This is the true story of a long-vanished Singapore and the dangerous carnival known as Bugis Street.

After four years of romping around West Africa and the Brazilian Amazon, James Eckardt cut a raffish figure as he stepped off a sailboat at Clifford Pier in Singapore on March 30, 1975, en route from Manila to Jakarta. Little did he know that he would become enchanted by a fun-loving Singaporean nymph named Milly who would take him in hand to explore the exotic wonders of her city.

The fun would turn into hopeless love, one Eckardt would desperately chronicle in a 36-hour, drug-laced writing spree and entitle “Singapore Girl”. The yellowing carbon copy would sit in an envelope for thirty years as the author went on to become Thailand’s most famous expat writer.

And then on December 19, 2004, an email arrived that would lead Eckardt to discover what had happened to the Singapore girl, who, at the time he had loved her, had not technically been female."

Read a review by J. Lundberg:[41].

Bugis Street: the novel

Bugis Street: the novel is a 164-page book written by Koh Buck Song in collaboration with Tan Hwee Hua and published by Pacific Theatricals in 1994[42],[43]. Abstract from the back cover: "A world-famous street is about to be demolished. An architect falls in love with a hawker. A star transvestite longs for a new life in a new body. The novel is a story of fate. Of how a place determines the destiny of the people who inhabit it. Of how a Singapore girl, Mei-li, returns after 20 years in Britain and America, in search of her family and her roots. She arrives in Bugis Street, the place of her childhood, but finds herself involved in its very destruction. Of how the values of different social classes, from gangsters to graduates, are reflected in a changing Singapore of the ‘60s and ‘80s. And of how the street’s transvestites seek acceptance in a hostile world. Told, in turn, in the individual voices of several characters, the novel relives the last days of a street, once the life of Singapore after dark, as it dies into memory."

Musical adaptation

File:BugisStreetMusicala.jpg

Script of Bugis Street - The Musical. Photo credit: Ng Yi-Sheng[1].

Based on the skeleton of the story, the novel (or "book" as it is called in the theatre tradition) was written at the same time that the script for its musical adaptation was being developed, in 1994. The work was entitled, not surprisingly, Bugis Street - The Musical, with music composed by Raymond Ooi and Edmund Ooi, and lyrics penned by Tan Hwee Hua and Mock Pak Lum[44]. The cast of the musical was made up mainly of cisgender gay men playing transwomen, a genuine transwoman and a few cisgender straight women.

Bugis Street: A Movie Book by Yonfan

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A 1995 paperback version of the movie's storyline by Yonfan[45]. Bugis Street (妖街皇后) is a 1995 Hong Kong-Singapore co-production directed by Yonfan, about the lives of Singaporean transvestites in a bygone era. It was a minor hit at the box office with a sexually-explicit R(A) (Restricted (Artistic) rating, male full-frontal nudity and its nostalgic evocation of a seedy but colourful aspect of Singaporean culture, prior to the redevelopment of Bugis Street into a modern shopping district and the eradication of transvestite activities in the area.

Yonfan's Bugis Street

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Yonfan's Bugis Street (The New Hong Kong Cinema) is a 188-page academic paperback written by Kenneth Chan and published on 1 March 2016 by Hong Kong University Press[46],[47]; ISBN 9888208756 (ISBN13: 9789888208753). Abstract: Bugis Street was famous (or notorious) for being a haunt of transgender prostitution in the early decades of postcolonial Singapore. Since then the site has been a source of touristic obsession and local cultural anxiety. In his 1995 film "Bugis Street," director Yonfan brings the short lane back to vivid cinematic life. By focusing on the film's representations of queer sexualities and transgender experience, this book contends that the under-appreciated "Bugis Street" is a significant instance of queer transnational cinema. The film's playful yet nuanced articulations of queer embodiment, spatiality, and temporality provide an unexpected intervention in the public discourses on LGBT politics, activism, and cultures in Singapore today. This book's arrival at a much more complicated and contradictory picture of the discursive Bugis Street, through the examination of Yonfan's film and a range of other cultural and literary texts, adds a new critical dimension to the ongoing historical, geographical, sociological, ethnographic, and artistic analyses of this controversial space.

Movies

Pretty Polly

Pretty Polly, also known as "A Matter of Innocence", was a 1967 British film, directed by Guy Green and based on the short story, Pretty Polly Barlow, by Noël Coward. It starred Hayley Mills, Shashi Kapoor, Trevor Howard, and Brenda De Banzie. The film was largely set in Singapore and featured a night scene at Bugis Street, complete with transwomen soliciting and performing in an impromptu cabaret show, street vendors and a tic-tac-toe scam perpetrated by a little boy.

• Read a detailed blog post about the film by Benjamin Slater[48] and an amazing visual journey into the locations and the colonial mindset of Pretty Polly by Toh Hun Ping which traces exactly where the film was shot and how those places have evolved or been demolished over the years[49].

Saint Jack

Main article: Saint Jack

In 1979, Saint Jack, the first Hollywood movie to be filmed entirely on location in Singapore, contained a scene of a dazzling transwoman named Bridgit Ang, playing herself, in a platinum blonde Afro chatting up a table of Western expatriates at Bugis Street. Watch a video of the scene[50]:

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Bugis Street (the movie)

Main article: Bugis Street (the movie)

The transwomen of Bugis Street were immortalised in an English-language film made, ironically, by a Hong Kong and not a Singaporean film company. However, it did employ some local talent in the production.

• Watch the entire movie on YouTube: [51]:

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Some Women

Main article: Some Women

Some Women was a 2021 feature autobiographical documentary produced by transwoman freelance film director, writer and producer Quen Wong. Her first foray into the genre, the film traced her own trajectory from 'living in stealth' to finding pride, love and community[52]. It touched with bracing honesty upon her journey as a transgender woman in Singapore - from her days as a teenage boy coming out to her uncommonly supportive family, to the present as a woman about to marry the love of her life. Locating herself within the local transgender community, the documentary also weaved in interviews with different generations of transwomen including Anita, a former legend of Bugis Street, a world-famous stomping ground for transwomen from the 1950s to the 1980s, and Lune Loh, a trans youth activist.

The prime focus of the movie was on Wong who, on the verge of getting hitched at the age 46 years, decided to come out of her stealth mode. It encompassed not only her own transition, but also her fiance's cancer diagnosis and treatment, and their wedding. However, it also stretched out to connect with two other generations of transwomen - Sanisa, (known as Anita to her peers and clients) a former sex worker from Bugis Street typified the older, while transwoman activist Lune Loh, who was lesbian and had opted not to pursue medical interventions, exemplified the younger, feistier one. Some Women unearthed some of the buried queer history of Singapore’s Bugis district during its heyday and the political consciousness of a frustrated Gen Z.

Wong took her camera and her smartphone into the streets. “We made technical choices to achieve a cinematic feel, such as favoring prime lenses with shallower depths of field, achieving a poeticism of composition and keeping the camera still for locked-down shots as opposed to the feel of a handheld camera.,” she explained. The archive footage wa a mix of public historical records as well as some less cinematic iPhone-footage or personal diaries that gave access to Wong’s more private and contemplative moments. A prominent use of voice-over borrowed from the ‘confessional’ story-telling style, lending and gavee the film a more personal and intimate feel. Wong said she did not originally intend to be at the centre of the film, but decided on the strategy after asking herself if she “had the right to make this one if I didn’t have the courage to also appear in it.”

Music

Boogie Street

Main article: Boogie Street

Canadian singer, songwriter, poet and novelist Leonard Cohen wrote a song entitled "Boogie Street", published on his album Ten New Songs (2001)[53]. He purportedly composed it after a visit to Singapore's Bugis Street where a vendor offered to sell him a complete collection of Leonard Cohen bootleg CDs![54]

• Watch music videos of the song on YouTube:[55],[56]

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Lyrics:

• Oh Crown of Light, Oh Darkened One
• I never thought we'd meet
• You kiss my lips, and then you're gone
• And I'm back on Boogie Street
• A sip of wine, a cigarette and then it's time to go
• I tidied up the kitchenette, I tuned the old banjo
• I'm wanted at the traffic-jam, they're saving me a seat
• I'm what I am, and what I am is back on Boogie Street
• And o' my love, I still recall the pleasures that we knew
• The rivers and the waterfall, where in I bathed with you
• Bewildered by your beauty there, I'd kneel to dry your feet
• By such instructions you prepare a man for Boogie Street
• Oh Crown of Light, Oh Darkened One
• I never thought we'd meet
• You kiss my lips, and then it's done
• And I'm back, back on Boogie Street
• So come my friends, be not afraid, we are so lightly here
• It is in love that we are made, in love we disappear
• Though all the maps of blood and flesh are posted on the door
• There's no one who has told us yet what, Boogie Street is for
• Oh Crown of Light, Oh Darkened One
• I never thought we'd meet
• You kiss my lips, and then it's done
• And I'm back, back on Boogie Street
• A sip of wine, a cigarette and then it's time to go
• I tidied up the kitchenette, I tuned the old banjo
• I'm wanted at the traffic-jam, they're saving me a seat
• I'm what I am...

No one wants to dance

On 27 January 2017, a karaoke music video entitled, "No One Wants To Dance", made by Amanda Lee Koe for the Asian Film Archive as a site-specific response to Saint Jack, was uploaded to YouTube. The video was a reaction to the 1979 movie which was banned in Singapore for more than twenty years, and the forcible removal of transwomen from Bugis Street in the mid-1980s with police slogans such as "Tourism does not depend on transvestites"[57].

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It queried what it meant for a Singaporean girl to hanker after a vision in some white man's New Wave Hollywood movie, in a production bankrolled by Playboy. Did the non-professional Singapore cast have agency in their roles, was there room beyond stereotypes? What does it mean to act and to voice and to show and to tell?

Shot mostly on an iPhone by Kirsten Tan, No One Wants To Dance replicated and implicated the white man's moviecam gaze by way of pseudo-authentic representation and "local color" even while it documented a voice from the underrepresented Singaporean transgender community and the irrevocable loss of Bugis Street (and the continuous obsessive-compulsive tendency to clean up still extant in Singapore).

Anita is a 60-year-old transwoman who was a Bugis Street old-timer in its heyday, and through long conversations with her before the making of the video, the producers were given to know that "Bugis Street was the most beautiful place in the world. It was the only place I felt at home. There will never, never, never be another Bugis Street."

The karaoke video was played for a month in a swanky VIP lounge opposite the site of the old Bugis Street - stomping ground of transwomen in '60s and '70s Singapore, where boisterous sailors, convivial conversation, hard drugs, chilli crab and bartered sex could all be found in one place. Once referred to as the Montmartre of Asia, Bugis Street is now a by-the-numbers pedestrian mall peddling Hello Kitty keychains / fast fashion / McDonalds.

• Lyrics: Amanda Lee Koe
• Vocals: Amanda Lee Koe, featuring Anita
• Music: Kiat & Cherry
• Archival images: Anita
• Director: Kirsten Tan
• Assistant: Si En Tan

Poetry

Writer Ng Yi-Sheng composed a poem entitled, "Bugis Street", published in his book "Last Boy" and performed the piece during the second ContraDiction during IndigNation 2006.

Scenes in TV serials

One episode of the Mandarin TV serial entitled "当我们同在一起" (Dang wo men tong zai yi qi; translated by Channel 8 as "Together") broadcast in 2009 contained a scene set at Bugis Street which featured transwoman sex workers[58].

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Photography exhibition and talks

From 3 February to 14 March 2014, an exhibition eponymously entitled, "Bugis Street", open to the public, was held by French photographer, Alain Soldeville at the gallery of Objectifs - Centre for Photography and Filmmaking, 56A Arab Street, tel. 6293 9782.

In the early 1980s, Soldeville came to Singapore, visited Bugis Street and started a photography project he did not specifically plan for. He started photographing the transgender community there and today, his photos, shot from 1981 to 1984, show a side of Singapore history that many may not be familiar with.

Taken mainly at night, the photos show the girls on the streets as well as in their apartments. Explaining the shots, Soldeville said, “Looking back, I believe I meant those photos to be portraits of these people I had come to consider friends, wishing to show their fragility, their humanity rather than documenting a situation, news style.”

On Wednesday, 3 December 2014, Soldeville gave an "Artist Talk" on his Bugis Street photography project at 7:30pm at Objectifs[59]. Admission was free but pre-registration was required. Soldeville spoke about his project, his experiences and the process of creating this piece of history.

On Tuesday, 9 December 2014, Soldeville gave another talk on the subject during an event initiated and moderated by Zhuang Wubin and hosted by Marcel Heijnen called, "imag(in)e sea #004: Alain Soldeville. From Bugis to Bangkok: A Farang in Southeast Asia"[60] held 7:30pm at Artistry, 17 Jalan Pinang. Special guests were Sean Lee and transwoman Amy Tashiana. As an interjection to Soldeville's talk, Lee introduced "Shauna" (2007-09), a performative piece in which he tried to imagine himself as a transgender character living between Siem Reap and Singapore. Transwoman Nicole Tulsi also contributed substantially to the discussion which followed.

Docu-drama

In mid-2014, Linda Agahari, researcher and producer at Ochre Pictures Pte Ltd, a Singapore-based film company, sourced material on Bugis Street for a sequel to the film company's award-winning series, "There Was A Time", which aired in November 2013 on Mediacorp's Channel 5. "There Was A Time" was a 6-part documentary-drama series that chronicled personal stories about Singapore's history. Some notable profiles featured in Season One included Othman Wok, Prof Tommy Koh, Bill Teoh and Prof Wang Gungwu.

For the second season, the company intended to focus on the development of Singapore as an independent nation from 1965-1985. Bugis street was one important aspect of the follow-up series as the producers aimed to highlight the changes in Singapore now and then, the many struggles of various communities, causes and consequences of government policies and most importantly, the human stories or personal recollection of certain experiences and events in the 1970s/80s era. An interview was arranged with a transwoman from SgButterfly who actually worked at Bugis Street during its heyday. The production of the docu-drama, which is intended to be aired on Channel 5 in a prime time slot, is currently in progress.

Contemporary

The fame of the original Bugis Street has spawned a slew of namesakes eager to capitalise on the brand, even though many tourists, including some young Singaporeans, have no inkling as to the reasons for its erstwhile 'glamour'.

Amongst the new places, buildings and companies which carry the name of 'Bugis' are New Bugis Street, Bugis Square, Bugis Village, Bugis Junction, Parco Bugis Junction, Bugis Junction Towers, Bugis Cineplex, Bugis MRT Station, Bugis Pasar Malam, New Bugis Food Village, Bugis Music World, Bugis Money Changer, Bugis City Holdings, Bugis Health Centre, Bugis Store Trading, Bugis Backpackers, and Bugis Street Development.

This cacophony of 'Bugis'es clamouring for a spot in the limelight, reminiscent of the transwomen who gave the original its glory, leads to great confusion when trying to locate Bugis Street itself.

The current Bugis Street

The section of the original, longer Bugis Street presently named simply "Bugis Street" is a cobblestoned, relatively wide avenue sandwiched between the buildings of Bugis Junction. Midway through its length is the new entity of Bugis Square, a granite-tiled plaza containing a dancing fountain and surrounded by the food, shopping and entertainment outlets of the Bugis Junction complex on all sides.

This was where the touristy portion of Bugis Street with all the glamorous transgender activity and food vending took place.

New Bugis Street

The lane presently touted as 'Bugis Street' by the Singapore Tourism Board and advertised from August 2005 onwards with an enormous light bulb-studded sign at night, actually developed from New Bugis Street, which is a truncated version of the section of the original, longer Bugis Street from Queen Street to Victoria Street. New Bugis Street, which has the sign saying so only at the Victoria Street end, was created after the whole area was redeveloped in the mid-1980s. New Bugis Street is a maze of lanes lined with stalls selling pasar malam goods. It stretches from its entrance along Victoria Street facing the new Bugis Street and Bugis Junction to its other entrance along Queen Street facing the entrance to Albert Street.

Bugis Square

Bugis Junction

Bugis Junction encloses the portion of the old Bugis Street where the flamboyant transwomen enthralled tourists, as well as the seedier Malabar Street, Hylam Street and Malay Street.

Bugis Junction Towers

Bugis Village

Bugis MRT Station

Main article: Bugis MRT Station

See also

• Transgender people in Singapore
• Bugis Street (the movie)
• Bugis
• Bugis in Singapore
• Kampong Bugis
• Gender in Bugis society
• Redevelopment of Bugis Street
• Johore Road: transgender aspects

External links and References

• Imran bin Tajudeen, "From ‘Kampong’ to ‘Compound’: Retracing the forgotten connections", Singapura Stories[61].
• Mayo Martin, "Were the Bugis really pirates? Here are 5 things we found out", Channel NewsAsia, 14 October 2017[62].
• Annabel Diong, "Remembering The Ladyboys Of 1980’s Singapore", YP SG, 10 November 2017[63].
• Daniel Peters, "Leonard Cohen once wrote a song about Singapore's Bugis Street", Bandwagon, 8 December 2016[64].
• "National Heritage Board criticised for ‘whitewashing’ history of Bugis Street", The Independent, 19 June 2016[65].
• "The transgender women of Singapore's 'Boogie Street'", article in "Dangerous Minds" blog, 28 January 2015[66].
• Toh Hun Ping, article in Wordpress blog, "The Hunter: Location scouting in Singapore's filmic history", "‘Round About Midnight, Bugis Street.", 14 November 2013[67].
• Roy Tan, "Photo Essay: A Brief History of Early Gay Venues in Singapore"[68] in the book "Queer Singapore - Illiberal Citizenship and Mediated Cultures" edited by Audrey Yue and Jun Zubillaga-Pow, Hong Kong University Press, 2012. ISBN 978-988-8139-34-7[69],[70],[71],[72],[73],[74],[75].
• Yeo Hong Eng, "Singapore's Bugis Street of Old", 1 June 2013[76].
• Icemoon's article in his blog "Second Shot" on Blogspot, "Where exactly was the infamous toilet in Bugis Street", 3 July 2010[77].
• Dr Russell Heng's article on Yawning Bread, "Where queens ruled! - a history of gay venues in Singapore", August 2005. [78]

Dr Heng also gave a talk based on his article during the inaugural IndigNation in 2005. View a video of the event recorded by Roy Tan[79]:

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• Dr Russell Heng's article archived on Yawning Bread, "Tiptoe out of the closet: the before and after of the increasingly visible gay community in Singapore", June 2001.[80]. This paper was originally published in the Journal of Homosexuality Vol 40 Numbers 3/4 2001 Special Issue - Gay and Lesbian Asia: Culture, Identity and Community, edited by Gerard Sullivan and Peter Jackson, pp 81 – 97.
• Yawning Bread's account of Singapore's transgender and sex-change history:[81]
• James Seah's (Thimbuktu)'s article in his blog "Blog To Express" on Blogspot, "3D Blog: Bugis Street (People) - Then", 29 December 2010[82].
• Alain Soldeville's photos of Bugis Street in the early 1980s:[83]. Soldeville held an exhibition of them in Singapore in 2014.
• Zeesleepvaart.com, "Reis met de "Oostzee" deel 2 : The Bugis Street "[84].
• Tourist guide to the Bugis area on Wikitravel:[85].
• Dazzled, "History of Bugis street and Bugis Junction", Blogspot, 19 April 2012[86].
• Takehiko Kajita, "Singapore’s Japanese prostitute era paved over", The Japan Times, 18 June 2005[87].
• Faridah Ibrahim, "BUGIS STREET’S NOTORIOUS PAST WAS ONCE WORLD FAMOUS?", s.u.r.e., 2016[88].
• Maureen Koh, "Old Bugis St Queen ravaged by age, savaged by time", The New Paper, 7 December 2010[89].
• "Times of my life" blog, "Big Pore and Small Pore of Singapore", Wordpress, 4 February 2010[90].
• Tay Shi Ting, "Watch a series of foreign films that showcase other sides of Singapore", SG Asia City, 18 January 2017[91].
• James Seah's (Thimbuktu)'s article in his blog "Blog To Express" on Blogspot, "If the past is no longer present ", 17 August 2019[92].
• Michelle JN Lim, "Bye bye Bugis Street", The Home Ground Asia, 31 March 2021[93].

Acknowledgements

This article was written by Roy Tan based on his personal experiences, verbal accounts by friends like Amy Tashiana and information on Yawning Bread, Fridae, SiGNeL, NewspaperSG and other Internet sources.