It’s a sweltering afternoon in 1960s Singapore, the kind where the humidity is so thick sweat clings to your skin like a second shirt. Thirteen-year-old Victor Yue slips away from his mother’s usually steady gaze and heads towards Yan Kit, the public swimming pool, picking up a friend on the way. As they weave through the ramshackle, shop-lined streets of Chinatown, they pass durian stalls and vendors selling exotic arrays of textiles. Finally they reach their goal and for just 15 cents they’re through the gate and ready to plunge into the cool euphoria.

But their joy is short lived.

As the two boys splash around, they are approached by a boy of similar age, who asks: “What number do you play with?”

To some, it might sound cryptic, but Victor knows better. Those six simple words are code, a gang challenge, that if answered incorrectly, can land you in serious trouble. Countering calmly, Victor replies “We don’t play with numbers.” The boy scowls, then swims away.

Six decades after the swimming pool encounter, Victor Yue is an enthusiastic advocate for local history. In the Singapore where he grew up, gangs and secret societies weren’t some faraway myth. Instead, they were embedded in everyday life, instilling fear and unease among locals.

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Today, as tourists queue at bustling hawker stalls, Singapore’s gangland past feels largely forgotten, but its legacy is regularly brought back to life.

“We used to hear stories,” Yue recounts. “Inside coffee shops, where people would gather at different tables. Some will bring bottles and be putting them underneath the tables.”

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“If the two gangs don’t reach an agreement, then they will give a signal for a fight, which is where they turn the cup upside down, and those bottles they had underneath the table were filled with acid that they’d throw at each other. So, coffee shops are always very worried.”

Now 73, Victor Yue remembers a time when these exchanges were a common occurrence.

Alvin Chiong and Adrian Er are two former gang members. They now lead curious groups on walking tours through the very streets they used to fight on, sharing personal stories and offering cautionary tales of an underworld some say still operates. Adrian Er says he was pulled into the gang scene in the 1990s.

“All my friends went to secondary school in the same area, and I was the only one that went to a different area,” Er recalls.

Although he had no gang affiliations, his association with a neighbourhood tied to rival gangs meant trouble. With no protection, he sought safety in the familiar company of neighbourhood friends.

“I don’t feel safe at school, so I don’t go to school. I mix with people from my neighbourhood instead,” Er says. 

Alvin Chiong joined his gang in the 1980s for similar reasons.

“In order to look for love, because I cannot find love at home, I outsource,” Chiong says.

“I went to the neighbourhood and looked for love from all those neighbourhood boys. But, in order to be one of them, you have to be part of them – you have to be like them.” Raised by a violent father who abused drugs and alcohol, Chiong says he and his brother endured frequent beatings. He was just 7-years-old when his mother left for good.

Although Adrian and Alvin grew up in different gangs, decades apart, they both quickly became consumed by the vices of gang life.

“At age 10 I started taking sleeping tablets, I started glue sniffing, smoking, drinking, everything,” Chiong says.

But as those highs faded, Alvin turned to heroin. Adrian too, found himself quickly swept into routine substance use.

“People around me started taking drugs, it seemed normal to take drugs, so I started experimenting. I tried almost all drugs except heroin,” Er says.

During the late 90s to early 2000s, Adrian recalls his gang as being the largest operating in Singapore.

“In my neighbourhood, there were over 1000 people a part of my gang alone. Back then I have over a hundred people following me.”

Rival gangs often clashed over turf, money, or pride, with young members expected to prove their loyalty through violence. The roots of these organisations stretch back long before Adrian and Alvin’s time. The gangs were modern offshoots of secret societies stretching back to the 19^th century, when Chinese immigrants first settled around the Singapore Strait.

Brotherhoods to criminal enterprises

The late 1800s drew thousands of young men from southern China, fleeing poverty, famine, and war in search of work in the newly founded port settlement, according to Martin Purbrick, an analyst and writer who is an expert on Chinese Triads and secret societies.

“In Singapore, Chinese immigrants provided the manual labour in ports, construction sites, mines, and plantations, and were exploited as they were essentially bought and sold,” Purbrick says.

Emerging out of this migration, secret societies were born. These groups traced their origins and inspiration from Chinese Triads – underground brotherhoods with rigid codes and hierarchies – and evolved into the dominant force of Singapore’s criminal underworld.

“Secret societies as well as clan associations (Kongsi) were involved from the start of the journey as they were involved in controlling and regulating the emigration of Chinese workers, acting as agents, helping to pay for their journey and then seeking employment for them,” Purbrick says.

They also provided a source of community, support, protection and belonging when settling into their newfound way of life. But the support came at a price.

“This caused those Chinese emigrants to be immediately indebted to the secret society,” Purbrick says.

“The Chinese emigrant-dependent relationship with secret societies was deepened by the desire of exhausted labourers for entertainment, which was largely prostitution, gambling, and opium, all provided by secret societies for a cost. In this way secret societies provided both mutual aid to Chinese emigrants as well as illegal services, and developed as criminal enterprises.”

Over the decades, these criminal enterprises evolved to include brothels, illegal gambling dens, drug trafficking, and loan sharking, common operations in the underworld economy, according to Purbrick.

During Alvin Chiong’s teenage years, he helped his boss operate illegal gambling dens.

“We used chips because it was psychological. When you are gambling with plastic you won’t feel pain, you will bet until the last chip is gone,” he says .

“We have a two or three percent tipping system to make money, I do loans also, that is where my money comes from the biggest. I charge 20 percent interest over six instalments. Every week you have to pay me back.”

Alvin explains that often he would order members below him in the gang hierarchy to “harass” and “whack” (beat) people who didn’t pay him on time.

Victor Yue has lived in Chinatown his whole life, and witnessed the insidious evolution of these groups over the last six decades.

“They can be very visible to the people living in the area, but maybe not to the people outside,” he says.

“You have businessmen who are probably heads of triads, but they were seen as community leaders because they donate money towards charities, so in their respects, you do not know who they are.”

Police crackdowns and a new law

By the 1950s, secret societies and gangs ruled Singapore’s streets, prompting the government to introduce the Criminal Law (Temporary Provisions) Act, in 1955.

Colloquially known as Section 55, The Act gave authorities the power to detain suspects without trial for up to 12 months, with the capacity for renewed detention annually. The next three decades brought a wave of police crackdowns.

In April last year, Associate Professor Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim, Minister of State for Home Affairs and National Development released a statement: “Victims and witnesses feared reprisal against themselves and their family members, if they testified against the secret societies. This made prosecution in court extremely difficult. The Act gave the Government levers to deal effectively with the problem.”

Initially intended as a temporary measure, the Act has been renewed every five years, significantly reshaping Singapore’s approach to organised crime. Despite decades of government crackdowns, some gangs and secret societies simply continued their operations off the streets and behind closed doors, according to Adrian Er. He says gangs became more strategic, with members often camping outside police stations, watching the movements of police.

“They will take note of the license plate and then they will message our chat group to tell us this group of cars is coming out from the police station. They are heading your way,” says Er.

He tells the story of a night in his late 20s spent in the Singapore suburb of Orchard, when a call came through. Some people from a rival gang were creating trouble at a nearby disco. He and two others rushed down.

“We run over there, and we go inside and whack them. There were too many people around and half of the disco was damaged,” Er recounts.

The next day he was a wanted man. As his photo was circulated, he was forced to keep a low profile, going underground while continuing to traffic drugs. He was eventually arrested for drug trafficking in 2002 at the age of 18, spending two years in prison. Er went on to be incarcerated a further three times, sentenced to a total of 25 years and spending 17 of them inside.

Recovery and transformation

Today, both Adrian Er and Alvin Chiong are changed men.

Having spent a combined 22 years behind bars, both have emerged as advocates for change and second chances, using their past to help influence the trajectory of others.

Now, they are tour guides for Triad Trails – a walking tour of the back alleys of Chinatown, offering a raw and first-hand look into the clan associations and cultural landmarks that shaped Singapore’s secret underworld, as well as educating people on Chinatown’s rich history.

Chiong is also a prison volunteer, regularly returning to the very place he once served time to offer spiritual guidance and hope to those still behind bars.

Er worked in the prison infirmary during his incarceration, and says the death of his cellmate became a turning point, prompting him to confront the consequences of his choices and commit to turning his life around.

Gang culture today

While gang activity today looks different from decades past, both men agree it hasn’t disappeared but rather shifted underground and online.

According to police data, detailed in the Straits Times, more than 1,300 suspected members of unlawful societies were arrested from 2022 to 2024.

“I don’t think the gangs today are operating the same way that we did. I don’t think they follow rules and regulations today. As long as you are making a lot of money they don’t mind,” says Chiong.

“Operation-wise, it was very clear cut for my time. We are operating openly, we bring and impose fear to everybody face-to-face, but today everyone hides behind computers, it’s totally different.”

Er agrees.

“It’s still prominent. I think it’s not so visible anymore, but sometimes through social media you can see the young ones, they like to flaunt it.”

While their presence has faded from public view, the memory of these societies remains. You may not find it in the museum or in official archives, but it’s a part of Singapore’s history.

“There is nothing to be ashamed of in this history, and it should be recognised as an important part of local history involving how civil society can be successful against very entrenched criminal interests,” Purbrick says.

Still, the silence remains.

Victor Yue says, “People are much happier to talk about it, but the moment you tell them that you are going to record them, they’re not going to tell you, because we never know what’s happening around us, which are the ones that are still active, or not active.

“I guess for that reason, that’s why nobody’s willing to talk about it.”

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This story was produced as part of a federal government New Colombo Plan funded Curtin Journalism Singapore Study Tour.