Ask an older Singaporean where the antique shops were before the war, and they'll tell you: South Bridge Road, Cross Street, Havelock Road.

It was an era hard to imagine today. No auction houses. No authentication certificates. No WeChat groups trading price quotes. A piece of porcelain travelled from village to village on the backs of peddlers, on trading ships, and on a handwritten bill of lading.

Then, in February 1942, everything stopped.

Japanese forces captured Singapore. For three years and eight months, antique dealers all did the same thing: they hid their best pieces.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Singapore's antique trade was still rudimentary.

There were two kinds of sellers. The first were Indonesian peddlers, arriving by boat from Padang in Sumatra, carrying Chinese trade ceramics excavated in Java and Sumatra — Tang, Song, and Yuan bowls, jars, and small vases. They couldn't afford hotels, so they spread cloth in the lobby of the South Asia Hotel on Bencoolen Street and laid out their wares for buyers[reference:16].

The second were settled merchants from Fujian, running small shops along South Bridge Road, selling Jingdezhen porcelain, lacquerware, and wood carvings shipped from China. In the 1930s, a young Teochew named Tang Choon Keng arrived in Singapore with two tin trunks full of embroidery needles and thread, rented a shop on River Valley Road, and founded C.K. Tang, selling Chinese crafts and antiques[reference:17].

On the same street, a Shantou native named Keng Ah Tong later opened the Tong Mern Sern antique shop on Craig Road, with a banner outside that read: "We Buy Junk And Sell Antique"[reference:18].

It was an era of low barriers. You didn't need a degree or capital. You needed an eye for recognising things, and the nerve to open your mouth.

On 15 February 1942, Singapore surrendered. The Japanese renamed the island Syonan-to.

Antique shops all closed. But closing didn't mean giving up.

A Hainanese named Han Wai Toon played a special role in this catastrophe. Han had arrived in Singapore in 1915 and in 1936 bought a rambutan plantation on Old Sembawang Road, naming it Yu Qu Yuan — "The Garden of Foolish Indulgences"[reference:19]. He was an archaeologist, a porcelain specialist, and one of Xu Beihong's most trusted friends in Nanyang.

After the Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, Xu Beihong brought a large collection of paintings and antiques to Nanyang, holding exhibitions and selling works to raise funds[reference:20]. When Japanese bombs fell on Singapore in 1941, Xu hid at Yu Qu Yuan and entrusted his paintings, porcelain, jades, and seals to Han Wai Toon for safekeeping[reference:21].

Han kept these items hidden for eight years. In 1949, the collection was returned to Xu Beihong intact[reference:22].

Not everyone was as fortunate as Han. During the occupation, the Raffles Library and Museum suffered severe losses. After the war, assistant researcher Tweedie's first task was to inventory wartime damage and track missing items as evidence for post-war trials[reference:23].

In September 1945, Japan surrendered. Antique shops reopened one by one.

But the market had changed. During the war, many wealthy families had fled Singapore, taking some possessions and leaving others behind. When they returned after the war, some found things missing. Others found things still there — but no longer needed.

This created a peculiar wave of supply. You could walk into a shop and see, side by side: a Qing blue-and-white bowl next to a British army water bottle; a Peranakan silver betel box stacked on top of a 1945 map of Singapore.

At the same time, a new generation of collectors emerged.

Banker Liu Kang, community leader Huang Manshi, pepper merchant Tan Tsze Chor, and businessman Yang Qilin — the four figures later known as Singapore's "Four Great Collectors" — mostly began collecting in the 1930s and 1940s, reaching their peak after the war[reference:24].

Huang Manshi's "Baishan Studio" focused on works by Xu Beihong, Qi Baishi, and Ren Bonian. He arrived in Singapore in 1923 as general manager of Nanyang Tobacco Company's Singapore branch, collecting paintings in his spare time[reference:25]. When Xu Beihong was struggling financially in Paris in 1925, it was Huang's brother Huang Menggui who helped him. After that, whenever Xu came to Nanyang, he stayed at the Huang home[reference:26].

Tan Tsze Chor took a different path. Born in Singapore, he studied calligraphy from childhood, later worked for Teochew merchant Lim Soo Seng, and married his daughter. At its peak, his "Xiangxue Studio" held over a thousand pieces, spanning from antiquity to the modern era[reference:27]. In the 1960s, Singapore had no art museum. When first-generation painters like Liu Kang wanted to see good paintings, they went to Tan's home[reference:28].

From the post-war period to the 1970s, Singapore's antique trade underwent a transformation.

The pre-war "peddler with a cloth" model gradually disappeared. In its place came professional merchants with permanent shops. In 1969, Goh Yong Chiang opened Chan Ngee Trading Co in Singapore, specialising in Chinese antiques and crafts[reference:29]. His father, Goh Tiang Siang, had arrived from Fengxi in Guangdong just before the war, initially wholesaling porcelain from his hometown to Singapore department stores[reference:30].

This is a story of two generations. The father brought goods in before the war; the son opened a shop after it. From wholesaling ceramics to retailing antiques, from bulk goods to carefully selected pieces — the shift in business model was also a shift in how people thought about collecting.

1993 was a watershed. That year, Christie's held its first auction in Singapore. By 1995, Christie's alone generated S$16.4 million in Singapore auction sales, more than double the previous year[reference:31].

From a small shop on South Bridge Road to Christie's auction podium, Singapore's antique dealers had travelled seventy years. The starting point of those seventy years was the people who hid things during the war.