74-year-old Ng Ngak Heng has been running an old-school provision shop in Pulau Ubin for nearly 50 years.
Despite making a loss of S$6,000 last year, Madam Ng is reluctant to let go of the store, due to its rich history.
She told Shin Min Daily News that she has been running the family business since she moved to the island in 1975. A unique feature of the shop is that it’s open all year round, from 7am to 7.30pm daily.
Mdm Ng said her involvement in the business began after her marriage.
Her father-in-law initially started the Yak Hong provision shop in the 1920s before handing it over to her and her husband.
This means that the “mama shop”, which sells everything from groceries to sweets, snacks and coconuts from Thailand or Ubin, has a history stretching nearly 100 years.
The shop is impossible to miss the moment you leave the island’s jetty. Everything in there looks the same as before, like time had stood still.
According to a report in Channel NewsAsia (CNA), Mdm Ng said the store used to supply island residents with basic necessities and feed for their farm animals. But with so few people living on the island now, demand for provisions is low.
Naturally, keeping the store going has been challenging, she said, as the number of visitors to the island has been declining. This is due to people choosing to travel abroad instead.
Business has thus become more difficult, with barely any profit left after deducting electricity bills, labour costs, taxes and other expenses every month.
“Our grocery store actually lost more than S$6,000 last year. But even so, I have never thought of selling it,” Mdm Ng told Shin Min. “I live comfortably here, and this is what my father-in-law left me.”
Although he didn’t say that it must be passed down, I want to keep doing it until I can no longer do it.
She told CNA that both her sons work and live on the Singapore main island, and she has no plans to handover the store to them as “they have their own jobs”.
During the pandemic, Mdm Ng noted that the island experienced a spike in popularity due to overseas travel restrictions.
Business boomed as a result, especially after a few pandemic restrictions were relaxed which led to an increase in visitors to the island.
At the time, she noted that the store would import 10 boxes of coconuts on a weekly basis and sell nearly 300 coconuts per week.
The 30 chairs they kept outside the store would also be filled with people.
“The business was really good at that time,” she recalled.
Another store in the area, about 100m away from Mdm Ng’s store, is run by second-generation owners Chen Zhijian (name transliterated from Chinese) and his wife, Xu Xiufeng (name transliterated from Chinese).
In 2005, they opened a seafood restaurant next to the shop, which is still operating today.
Ms Xu shared with Shin Min Daily News that their store similarly had a history stretching over nearly a century.
“There used to be six to seven grocery stores here, but now there are only two of us left,” she said. “It’s really hard to do business. I still hope more people can visit the island.”
The island does enjoy its share of regulars, however, who still visit the area on a weekly basis.
One of them, 64-year-old Bing Lin (name transliterated from Chinese), said his friend opened a store in Pulau Ubin in 2017 and he would visit them when he had the time.
“It became vacant after the owner passed away,” Lin said, adding that he also befriended Mdm Ng and would visit her store once or twice a week.
He noted that fewer visitors come to Pulau Ubin in the off season, but he would travel by ferry to visit the area and support local businesses.
In addition to coconuts, beverages such as beer are also pricier in Pulau Ubin. However, he pointed out that the reason for this was likely due to the costs that went into shipping them.
Also read: Photographer captures pictures of rare venomous banded krait at Pulau Ubin
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Featured image adapted from Shin Min Daily News.
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