A family medicine hall on Upper Thomson Road since the 1940s. Physicians who read your pulse, herbs weighed by hand, and a drawer for every remedy — still at 200 Upper Thomson.
Not a wellness brand, not a supplement shop. A medicine hall does a specific job, in a specific order, and it has done it here for eighty years.
診
The physician reads you
望聞問切
Pulse at both wrists, tongue, questions about sleep, appetite and heat. Ten to twenty minutes. No appointment needed for most days.
配
The prescription is weighed
執藥配方
Your formula is filled drawer by drawer on a brass hand scale, wrapped in paper, one packet per day. Nothing pre-mixed.
煎
You take it home and brew
煎服調理
We write the brewing method on the packet in English and Chinese. If you would rather not brew, ask us to decoct it for you.
Every drawer is somebody’s handwriting.百子櫃
The wall behind the counter
二 The apothecary wall
Open a drawer.
百子櫃
Behind our counter stands the hundred-drawer cabinet. Every drawer holds one herb, labelled in the hand of whoever filled it last. Here are fifteen of the ones we reach for most — tap one to see what is inside.
Singapore has its own vocabulary for this: heaty and cooling. Filter the wall the way your grandmother would.
Written for general understanding, not as a prescription. Chinese medicine is matched to the person, not the symptom — what suits one body can be wrong for another. Speak to a registered physician before taking anything, especially if you are pregnant, on medication, or managing a chronic condition. How a consultation works →
三 Since the 1940s
Two brothers from Dapu, one shop on Thomson.
Huang De-Shan came south from Sanhe, Dapu in the 1930s. His son Huang Ruo-Hui followed in 1934. Neither of them arrived with a shop — they arrived with a trade, and they earned the counter.
Huang De-Shan leaves Dapu, Guangdong, for Singapore. He begins seeing patients from behind other people’s counters.
1940s
創堂
Father and son open Chee Seng Tong 濟生堂 in the Thomson area.
1975
立業
The shop is formally registered — the same UEN we still trade under today.
2000
遷址
We move up the road to Thomson Imperial Court, where we have been ever since.
Nothing here is done by a machine that could not be done by a pair of hands.親手執藥
Eighty years of the same motion
四 From the shelves
What people carry home.
Soup packs made up at the counter, single herbs by weight, and the proprietary medicines that have sat on the same shelf for decades. Delivery across Singapore.
