Trengganu Street is located in the heart of Chinatown and intersects with two other popular roads in the ethnic enclave—Smith and Sago streets— thus earning it the moniker, ‘the cross street of Kreta Ayer’, with Kreta Ayer being a reference to the area. The shophouses along the street often housed several families cramped into small cubicles. Apart from the shops on the ground level, hawkers set up stalls and plied their trade along the sides of the street. Some of the early Chinese immigrants found employment at the numerous rickshaw companies (‘kongsi’) or depots (‘kun’) located in the area.
