Beyond the market bustle of Tanjong Pagar lies a small lane that leads uphill to a near-forgotten corner of the city. A soon-to-be-completed arch of residential triumph now looms above the alley, by which stands isolated clanhouses, a temple that has seen livelier days and the community centre of a glorified constituency.
Behind a curved wall of cracking paint, one can see the dry pits of empty pools and still towers named after a Cantonese doctor drilled in tooth. The gate is now barred and crows swoop over the concrete from which young feet once leapt into waters that harboured loansharks and other beasts of modern myth that have largely succumbed to the present vice of pleasures too private for the goodly gift of public largesse.
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