The library at Chinatown opened on the 31st of January 2013. We went there because we could. It’s at the top floor of Chinatown Point!
There was a mini exhibition with traditional paper cutting near the entrance.
The sitting area is pretty cool. Also when you enter this library you start to see that it is different from the other public libraries in Singapore. For one thing, this library is run by volunteers.
This is the children’s section. I’m quite amazed that there is a lot of Chinese based young adult fiction? You get to learn that the library@chinatown has niche subjects. It’s all Chinese but in ALL different languages. I’m not sure how it is arranged yet because the languages are all mixed up in the shelves.
You can get English, Malay and Chinese on the same shelf but I think it is about the same topic or subject.
The other sections. Yes, there were martial art manuals and stuff under the health and fitness section. Lots of Chinese culture books in English. I really have no idea how the library got all the books because woaah, I didn’t know all these books existed… IN ENGLISH. The Malay books totally made us go oooh too.
Not sure if I saw any Tamil ones since we went to the recipes section to check out dim sum.
The programme zone looks like some wu xia tea house area and there was also a section where they showcased Rediffusion radio station throughout the years. You can listen in to the shows but it’s in dialect.
There was a section that I didn’t take a picture of but you can read the news on screen and it’s linked to ipads that are subscribed to the Straits Times and other newspapers.
I decided to borrow a book of Chinese fairytales which was translated from German and then translated to English(?!?!). It’s a new book and thus had the special tag of it being from the library@chinatown.
Had to go to the deactivation station since it’s a new book. The deactivation station is near the entrance by the way. Check your receipt if it tells you to do this since you might trigger the alarm if you don’t.
So far, it’s lovely! It’s seriously a niche library and if you ever needed to do research on anything Chinese, chances are you might find the book there.
