Pagoda Street

You're standing in Chinatown's busiest street. Today it sells fridge magnets and fans, but a century and a half ago it was one of the harshest places in the port.

1A market in men

From the 1850s to the 1880s, this street was a station in the coolie trade, the traffic in labourers arriving from southern China. Many arrived already in debt for the cost of their passage. Brokers and secret societies lodged them, handed them out to employers and recovered the debt by docking their wages for months. In Chinese, the business was contemptuously known as "selling piglets".

The street also had an opium den. For many coolies, worn out after days hauling loads in the port or on the plantations, the pipe was their only relief, and a trap. The colonial government, for its part, drew a large share of its revenue from selling opium licences.

2Ten men to a room

In the early 20th century, many of these shophouses became lodging houses for workers. Rooms were divided into tiny cubicles crammed with whole families, or groups of men who shared beds in shifts. These lodging houses disappeared in the 1930s.

The street isn't named after a Chinese pagoda at all, but after the tower of the Hindu temple you can see at the end.

3What to look for

• The Chinatown Heritage Centre, at numbers 48-50, which recreates those cubicles.
• The covered five-foot ways in front of the shophouses, required by Raffles' 1822 town plan.
• The temple tower rising at the end of the street.