Soon after being appointed Chairman of Singapore's Housing and Development Board (HDB) in 1960, Lim Kim San went around the slum area in Chinatown. He came across a labourer in a bunk who had a blanket pulled right up to his neck. Lim asked the man whether he was sick. The labourer replied: “No. I've got no pants on.” Lim asked him why. He replied: “My other brother has just taken my pants out. I'm wearing briefs.” Lim's thoughts on the man's reply: “No, I don't think he was in briefs. There was no such thing as briefs at that time. You see how poor they were! They had to share [clothes].” The dead were not exempt from sharing, either. “In those days, there were shops which pulled clothing and shoes off the dead to sell them. ‘My God,’ I thought to myself, ‘I really must help these people.’”

It was a moment of transformation for Lim, then in his forties. Scion of a well-to-do business family, a product of the prestigious Anglo Chinese School and the elite Raffles College, he was a talented and successful businessman. The gourmet and racecourse enthusiast had access to what the good life could offer in Singapore. He had often driven past Upper Nanking Street, but had never been inside the shophouses where Singapore's poor huddled — lured from China and elsewhere, ironically by the island's prosperity.

Prosperity during colonial times had been a mixed blessing. Singapore had prospered since Stamford Raffles had established an entrepôt on the island in 1819 to service the East India Company's China trade. As East-West trade grew during the nineteenth century, the British colony became the clearing-house for the region's produce and the distribution centre for the European goods traded in return. Indeed, the city became the trading, banking and insurance headquarters for the whole of Southeast Asia. However, the population grew as well. From a mere 52,900 in 1850, it rose to 229,900 by 1901, shot up to 940,700 by 1947, and almost doubled in the following decade. People crowded into the shop houses at the centre of the city area.