iSurprise Seng Cheong Society Building

This was a clubhouse built in 1928 for members of the Seng Cheong Society. In the 1930s the club actively promoted jazz and western music through the Seng Cheong Society Brass and Reed Band. Badminton was much played here, and it had a club, the “Seng Cheong Society Badminton Club.” During the Japanese Occupation, the place was used as a brothel. After the Second World War, the clubhouse was sold to a new owner and transformed into a hotel.

This building site is also believed to be the location of the Anglo Chinese College where missionaries were trained and materials in Chinese and Malay were printed. Malay-language printing began in Melaka with the arrival of William Morrison, William Milne and C. H. Thomsen of the London Missionaries Society (LMS) in 1815. Munshi Abdullah was one of the first locals to learn printing from the LMS.