Men and women can try their give at colouring traditional Peranakan tiles plus making bracelets in Chinatown this weekend as being the Chinatown Business Association (CBA) efforts to draw the crowds back to the once bustling place.

Shops and eateries from the heritage site were hit badly from the dramatic fall in tourist numbers over the past few months amid the Covid-19 pandemic plus travel restrictions.

To encourage locals to arrive at the area, the CBA has organised various workshops where visitors will be shown steps to make Chinese knotted bracelets, grow their unique vegetables and herbs, and also colour Peranakan tiles using markers.
Booths have been build in Sago Street pertaining to these activities, with attendance capped at groups of five. Other attractions include old-school games including hopscotch and snakes and ladders.

CBA executive director Lim Yick Suan said she hoped those actions would "increase domestic traffic to Chinatown, strengthening its position to be a cultural, heritage-rich hot spot".

She added that Covid-19 preventive steps will be in area. These include temperature getting, safe distancing and intermittent cleaning of workshop equipment.

Ms Amelia Tay, 34, is among those keen to visit the area over your weekend, saying that she'll be taking her five-year-old daughter, Andrea, to Chinatown the following weekend.

"It'll be fun to expose her towards games I used to play during a vacation and hopefully she will learn something from the workshops, " Ms Tay explained.

These heritage-themed activities form section of a monthly line-up associated with events in Chinatown.

A series of "wellness workshops" is tentatively slated for next month, where herbal tea tenants will share this benefits of their cures.

But not everyone is convinced about the efficacy of these situations.
Mr Lucas Tok, lecturer as well as marketing competency lead with Singapore Polytechnic's Business University, said that businesses inside area have to minimize their reliance on traveller dollars and reach out instead to locals through e-commerce platforms whenever they hope to survive.

"Places like Tiong Bahru and Keong Saik can bring in locals devoid of losing their rich heritage and they could be seen as a formula of how Chinatown might evolve, " he said
The CBA declined to reveal the amount of Chinatown stores have d since January, or what steps retail sales have fallen vary the same period recently. But a handful connected with street vendors and retailers contacted by Straits Times said profits had plunged by no less than 50 per cent considering travel restrictions were made.

Ms Jane Yee, SIXTY, a storekeeper at Feng Shui Specialist, said the shop promoting souvenirs and religious paraphernalia in the past 16 years would close in a month or two.

"We are attempting to cut our losses by selling persistent stock at 50 % discount, " she mentioned in Mandarin.
Ms Wang Shan Shan, 36, any waitress at hotpot skewers bistro Li Ji Chuan Chuan Xiang, said business had dropped by 50 percent when the tourists gave up on coming.

Mr Mohamad Jahubar, any shop assistant at Victoria Present Centre, which sells handicrafts along with collectibles, said business has fallen by more than 80 per cent given that February.

He said that wage subsidies with the Government had helped but the shop owners have needed to dig into their savings to hold the business going.

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