本堂源流Our Story
Eighty years of one family, one trade, and a stretch of Upper Thomson Road that has changed around us more than we have changed.
一 Origins
A trade carried in the hands, not in a suitcase.
Wong Tak San (黃德珊) was born in Sanhe township, Dapu county, Guangdong — Hakka country, where his family had practised medicine for generations. He learned at his father’s side. When the region grew unsettled in the 1930s he came south to Singapore with no capital and one skill, and took the only work available to a physician without a shop: sitting in someone else’s medicine hall, seeing their patients.
Colonial Singapore was not short of medicine halls. Competition along the five-foot ways was fierce, which is exactly what made a careful physician’s reputation worth something. In 1934 his son Wong Yue Fai (黃如輝, 1913–1993) followed him out. Yue Fai had left school before finishing primary — the family could not keep him there — so he learned the way the trade has always been learned: sweeping the shop, memorising the drawers, reading medical texts at night, watching his father’s hands.
By the early 1940s the two of them had their own counter in the Thomson area. They called it Chee Seng Tong — 濟生堂, “the hall that aids life.”
二 The ledger
Eighty years,
entered by hand.
The dates a shop actually remembers are not the ones in the brochure. These are ours.
1930s
南下
Wong Tak San (黃德珊) leaves Sanhe, Dapu for Singapore and practises from other people’s shops.
1934
父子
His son Wong Yue Fai (黃如輝) arrives and begins his apprenticeship on the shop floor.
1940s
創堂
濟生堂 opens in the Thomson area — father and son, one counter. It has no English name yet.
1960
先考
Wong Tak San dies. Wong Yue Fai takes the shop on alone.
1960s
承業
Wong Chin Nai (黃進來) graduates from the Singapore Chinese Medical College and joins his father at the counter — the third generation.
1972
合夥
The business commences on 2 October with three partners — Wong Yue Fai, his wife Chong Ah Sie (張泗妹), and their son Wong Chin Nai. She put her name to the registration and helped get the doors open.
1975
立業
The business is formally registered on 28 February as Chay Sin Tong Medical Hall — the same 濟生堂, spelled the way the dialect was written then.
1992
易名
On 20 April the shop is renamed Chee Seng Tong Lakeview Traditional Medicine Shop — the same name, romanised the way it is written today. Wong Chin Nai and Wong Chin Hin (黃進興) are entered as the owners.
1993
先父
Wong Yue Fai dies at eighty. His sons run the shop between them.
1997
會長
Wong Chin Nai serves as President of the Singapore Chinese Physicians’ Association.
2000
遷址
The shop moves from Lakeview Shopping Centre to Thomson Imperial Court, a few hundred metres up the same road.
2007
公共服務獎章
Wong Chin Nai is awarded the Pingat Bakti Masyarakat for his service to Chinese medicine.
2021
接棒
Wong Chin Nai’s children take over the counter. The fourth generation.
2025
上線
The shop starts selling online.
Today
五代
Five generations have stood at this counter. The fourth runs it now; the fifth is growing up behind it.
三 The family
Five generations
of the same trade.
Every physician who has stood at this counter learned it from the one before. There is no other route into this family.
Family photograph
Awaiting the family’s own archive — no stock portrait will stand in for Wong Tak San.
黃德珊
Wong Tak San · Founder
First generation in Singapore. Trained in Sanhe, Dapu. Died 1960.
Family photograph
Awaiting the family’s own archive — no stock portrait will stand in for Wong Yue Fai.
黃如輝
Wong Yue Fai · Co-founder
1913–1993. Apprenticed to his father; built the Thomson practice.
To be photographed
Dr Wong at the counter, window light, no flash, seated.
黃進來 醫師
Wong Chin Nai · Physician
Third generation. Singapore Chinese Medical College. Former President, Singapore Chinese Physicians’ Association. PBM, 2007.
To be photographed
Commission alongside his brother
黃進興 醫師
Wong Chin Hin · Physician
Third generation, and Chin Nai’s younger brother. The two of them own and run Chee Seng Tong together today.
A note on names. The shop was registered as Chay Sin Tong Medical Hall until 1992 — the same 濟生堂, spelled the way the dialect was written at the time. The surname 黃 is romanised Wong throughout, as the family has always registered it.
We are not the oldest shop in Singapore. We are just the one that never moved off this road.濟世活人 · 一脈相承