The Beauty World Park was a popular market and shopping destination in Singapore during the 1960s. Located at the junction between Upper Bukit Timah Road and Jalan Jurong Kechil, the market comprised over a hundred stalls that sold all kinds of daily necessities such as fresh produce, household items, textiles and stationery. It was also a venue for getai performances and Hungry Ghost Festival celebrations. The origin of the market dates back to the Japanese Occupation where an amusement park called the Da Dong Ya or Greater East Asia Amusement Park operated at the site. After the war, the park fell into disrepair and was redeveloped as the Beauty World Market in 1947. In 1962, the market expanded with the addition of the Beauty World Town. The park, however, suffered from several bouts of fire and was earmarked for redevelopment. Most of the stallholders were later relocated to the nearby Beauty World Centre. Today, the former Beauty World site is an open field and car park.
Da Dong Ya Amusement Park
Prior to the Japanese Occupation, the site on which the Beauty World Park once stood was rural land occupied by attap houses as well as mangosteen and pineapple plantations. The area was badly destroyed by bombs during the Japanese invasion.
In the early months of the Japanese Occupation, two Hokchia businessmen, Mr. Yuan and Mr. Yan, sought permission from the Japanese authorities to run an amusement park at the seventh milestone along Upper Bukit Timah Road. Taking its name from the Japanese order of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, the entertainment centre was called Da Dong Ya or Greater East Asia Amusement Park.
The park had stages for wayang and getai, a dance hall, coffee parlours, a cinema which screened Japanese and old Chinese films, amusements for children, food stalls and a large gambling hall. The stage was sometimes used by the Japanese for speech meetings to rally local support for the war cause. However most of the patrons visited the park for its food and gambling stalls. At that time, gambling, as a form of recreation, was used to divert the people's attention from the sufferings of the Occupation years. The gambling games offered at the park included Fan-tan, Dominoes and the popular Twelve-character Lottery. The park operated from 6 pm until 11 pm, and was frequented by locals as well as Japanese soldiers and their families. Each entry cost $0.20 in banana currency.
Beauty World Park
After the Japanese surrender, the amusement park declined in popularity and fell into disrepair. Permission was obtained from the British authorities to convert the amusement park into a market, and the Beauty World Market opened in July 1947. The market was named after the daughter of one of the owners, Mr. Giam. The name also made reference to its prior existence as an amusement park. At that time, entertainment parks were commonly named after "Worlds" such as Happy World, New World and Great World.
The marketplace was a hotchpotch of metal and attap shacks, gambling dens, and stalls selling various items from food, textiles, radio and television sets, cosmetics, books, flowers, hardware, sports equipment, antiques and woodcarvings, curios to accessories. The market also had stages for shows and drinks with hostesses known as "coffee fires". A fresh market, which opened till the late afternoon, sold meat, fish and vegetables to residents living nearby.
In 1962, the market expanded with the addition of the Beauty World Town. The town had stores selling clothes, shoes, textiles, toys, bags, books, bed linens, household appliances, cosmetics, jewellery, music recordings, sundry, Chinese medicine, and hair styling services amongst others. To represent the interests of the tenants and shopkeepers of the town, the Beauty World Town Shopkeeper Association Singapore was formed in 7 January 1967. The market and town grew in popularity, drawing people from places as far as Lim Chu Kang, Choa Chu Kang, Mandai, Woodlands, Holland Road and Ulu Pandan.
Beauty World Centre
Beauty World Park suffered from several bouts of fire, including two major incidences on 20 April 1975 and 7 August 1977. Due to the traffic, health, fire, electrical and drainage hazards posed by the park, the government acquired the land for redevelopment on 8 September 1975. By the mid-1970s, talks were underway to relocate the tenants and shopkeepers to a nearby site. On January 1984, the construction of the Beauty World Centre, a $45 million residential cum retail building, was completed. Most of the tenants and shopkeepers resettled there. Ownership of the Beauty World Centre transferred from the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) to Pidemco in 1989. Pidemco, in turn, sold the shopping centre for close to $80 million to 194 individual buyers through the Beauty World Centre Merchants Association in 1998.
Author
Gracie Lee
References
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(Call no.: RSING 307.76095957 FIF)
The Beauty World Town Shopkeeper Assn. Singapore 12th anniversary souvenir magazine 1967-1978. (1979). (pp. 101-102, 105, 122, 128-129, 130, 140-141, 142).
(Call no.: RSING 381.45658870095957 SIN)
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(Call no.: RSING 307.1216095957 BEY
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Tan, J. (1990, November 27). No plans now to retrofit Beauty World - Pidemco. The Business Times. Retrieved March 1, 2007, from Factiva database.
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(Call no.: RSING 915.957 TAN - [TRA])
Tan-Oehler, S., Seetoh, K. F., & Tan, C. (1995). Bukit Timah: Established in 1955 (p. 137). Singapore: OracleWorks for PAP Bukit Timah Branch.
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Urban Redevelopment Authority (1982-1983). Annual report (p. 22). Singapore: Urban Redevelopment Authority.
(Call no.: RCLOS 354.5957091 URASAR)
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(Call no.: RCLOS 354.5957091 URASAR)
The information in this article is valid as at 2007 and correct as far as we are able to ascertain from our sources. It is not intended to be an exhaustive or complete history of the subject. Please contact the Library for further reading materials on the topic.
