With much of old Singapore still covered in jungle, encounters with animals were not uncommon for those who lived here. Tiger Tales brings to life little-known tales of such episodes in Singapore’s past, from a crazy rain of fish and the discovery of a giant crocodile in the Rochor River in the middle of town, to a conundrum with tapirs and the delights of a zoo in the Botanic Gardens. Of course, no compendium of Singapore’s animal stories can go without the legend of Sang Nila Utama, the island’s mythical founder—did he really see a lion, we wonder? —and the dramatic story of the tiger under the Raffles Hotel’s billiard room. Along the way, readers also meet a cast of colourful yet real people from the past—including Colonel William Farquhar, the First Resident of Singapore, Zheng He, the famous Ming Dynasty admiral of China’s treasure ships, and Charles Phillips, the former principal of the Raffles Institution who marches into these pages in his pyjamas.
