March will bring about the 2025 Five Footway Festival in Singapore’s Chinatown. The festival, running from 14 to 23 March 2025, is the fourth of its kind.
Presented by the Chinatown Business Association (CBA), it explores and celebrates Chinatown’s culture, traditions, and rich history. CBA’s Executive Director, Ms. Lim Yick Suan, says that the ‘Five Footway Festival provides an opportunity to explore Chinatown’s vibrant past through engaging cultural experiences, allowing visitors to immerse themselves in the sights, sounds, and tastes that bring Chinatown’s history to life’.
An exciting overlap
The festivities this year are particularly exciting for visitors and locals alike as they coincide with SG60 celebrations honouring Singapore’s 60th year of national independence.
The festival gets its name from the walkways iconic to modern Singapore, which Ms. Suan considers ‘a living testament to the rich heritage, resilience, and spirit of the community that have shaped Singapore’. Beyond recognising the cultural significance of the five-footways, the festival also offers visitors an immersive experience which includes performances and workshops to gain cultural understanding.
What’s on?
Some of the festival’s key attractions include:
- A theatrical tour which follows the path of a fictional Chinese letter writer
- A guided experience showcasing 1950s Chinatown and the lives of its residents at the newly reopened Chinatown Heritage Centre
- Walking tours exploring key locations and establishments across Chinatown
- Cultural performances including by stilt walkers, face changing performers, dance troupes, musicians, hand puppeteers and opera singers
- Interactive workshops such as bamboo windchime crafts, plate spinning, Chinese ink painting and bamboo pinwheel making
- A photo booth and a traditional games booth
- Informative sessions on language, medicine, and other topics
- Cooking masterclasses including Kaya, Ang Ky Kueh, Teochew Png Kueh, Egg Huat Kueh and Chinese tea making, and
- A five-footways exhibition delving into the history and usage of the five-footways.
Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall’s Senior Manager of Education and Outreach, Ng Kia Hui, explains that the festival’s exhibitions ‘[offer] a glimpse into the lives of early Chinese in Singapore [and aim] to preserve traditions, and foster appreciation for local cultural heritage’, also emphasising that ‘the local Chinese community still cherishes its past, when the five-footway space was defined by the simple charm of everyday life’.
