Bukit Timah’s past is not only a story of grand houses and green hills. Near Sixth Avenue, a former Javanese village became known for tempe—fermented soybean cakes made by local families. Here is how Kampong Tempe earned its name, what Jalan Haji Alias remembers, and how to explore the area without confusing a living neighbourhood with a heritage attraction.
Choose your reading route
Locate the former village · Discover the food trade · Read the surviving reminders · Plan a respectful visit
Read from the beginning for the full story, or choose the question that brought you here.
1. Where was Kampong Tempe?
Kampong Tempe, also written Kampong Tempeh, was a former village near Sixth Avenue in Bukit Timah. Its name came from the fermented soybean cakes that families produced there. Today, the most useful way into its story is through Jalan Haji Alias and Masjid Al-Huda—not a search for a surviving row of village houses.
The National Heritage Board’s Bukit Timah trail booklet locates the early settlement between Coronation Road and Annamalai Avenue. Around 1905, Javanese families acquired or rented land from Chettiar owners; by the end of that year, it records twelve families, mostly from Kendal in Central Java.
The mosque’s community account of Kampong Tempeh describes a wider neighbourhood between Sixth Avenue and Coronation Road West, including Jalan Haji Alias, Jalan Lim Tai See, Jalan Siantan and other streets. These descriptions concern a settlement that grew, rather than a permanently fixed boundary. It is sensible to read them as different views of the village’s geography.
That distinction matters when you visit. A modern street map can help locate the area, but it cannot reconstruct every house, garden or family connection. Nor does a historical village name mean that the present neighbourhood is an open-air museum. People live and worship here.
Start with the simple question: what still carries the old name or story? A road sign and an institution may tell you more than a search for picturesque buildings. Local history often survives in ordinary places that you would otherwise pass without a second look.
2. Why a soybean cake became a place name
Tempe is food, but in this neighbourhood it was also work. NHB describes families wrapping prepared soybeans in banana or teak leaves with a fermentation starter. Its account says festive production could reach 5,000 pieces in a day. That is a peak figure, not a documented daily average for the entire village. Read the food-making history in the trail booklet.
Imagine the difference between cooking a meal for your household and preparing food for sale. The second involves timing, materials, customers and repeat orders. That is the useful lens here: a familiar ingredient connected home life with a local livelihood. The neighbourhood’s name remembers the product people associated with it.
The mosque’s account describes skills passing between generations and producers helping other families enter the trade. It also records factory-made competition and fewer household producers by the late 1970s. These are recollections of economic change, not a complete set of business statistics. The village history provides the community perspective.
There is no need to romanticise the work to appreciate it. A home-based trade can involve demanding preparation and uncertain returns. What makes this story compelling is its scale: the reputation of a district could emerge from the repeated efforts of families, not only from a large employer or landmark development.
For a family conversation, ask children to name something made near their own home. Then ask whether that product could become the area’s nickname. The exercise makes Kampong Tempe’s name easier to understand without pretending that today’s neighbourhood has the same economy.
3. Jalan Haji Alias and the surviving mosque
Jalan Haji Alias commemorates Haji Alias bin Ali, one of the settlement’s early residents. NHB identifies him as a Singapore Botanic Gardens gardener who worked with Henry Nicholas Ridley on rubber-tapping methods. The road name therefore connects village history with horticultural work beyond the village. NHB records the connection in its community chapter.
Masjid Al-Huda supplies another link. NHB records community fundraising for its concrete rebuilding in the early 1960s, including tempe sales, salary contributions and collections by hawkers. The replacement mosque was completed in 1966. Food-making income thus appears in the history of a shared religious institution as well as in the village’s name. Read NHB’s mosque landmark account.
The same account records a heritage gallery added during the 2015 renovation. That does not establish unrestricted public visiting hours today. If you hope to see the gallery, contact the mosque first rather than assuming that a heritage-trail listing is an admission invitation.
MUIS lists the mosque at 34 Jalan Haji Alias, Singapore 268534, and explains that it now serves nearby residents and workers following resettlement. It remains a functioning place of worship. Check the current MUIS directory entry.
For the mosque’s fuller chronology, including the land donation and successive buildings, continue to our Al-Huda Mosque history article. Here, the focus is the village and its food trade: connected stories, but not interchangeable ones.
4. Things to do: a thoughtful neighbourhood visit
A visit works best as a short, attentive look at the present neighbourhood, supported by reading beforehand. Use the official address to plan your journey and a current map for pedestrian directions. This article is not a surveyed walking route and does not promise continuous pavements, parking or an accessible entrance.
From a safe public position, look for the Jalan Haji Alias street sign and consider the person behind it. Notice how a historical name remains useful in everyday navigation. You do not need to enter anyone’s property to make that connection.
If mosque staff welcome your visit, follow their instructions about dress, footwear, photography and where you may go. Ask before photographing people. Worship and the congregation’s needs come first; an exterior visit is a perfectly worthwhile outcome if interior access is not available.
For children, try a three-part notebook entry: one thing visible today, one fact learned from a source, and one question still unanswered. For example, a street sign is an observation; its connection to Haji Alias is a sourced fact; the location of a particular former household would need further evidence. Keeping the three separate makes the outing both enjoyable and accurate.
You can also explore the food connection on another occasion by finding tempeh at a food shop or meal stop of your own choosing. Treat that as a way to recognise the ingredient, not proof that a seller is descended from Kampong Tempe’s producers. This guide does not identify a surviving village business.
Finally, place the village within the larger history of Bukit Timah. The district’s story includes roads, rainforest, factories, farms and family enterprises. Kampong Tempe brings that last category into focus: a neighbourhood whose identity was shaped by something people made, shared and sold.