Room Rental. Common room
No cooking
Yishun New Town is bounded by Sungei Simpang Kiri to the north, the proposed Admiralty Road East Extension to the east, Seletar Expressway to the south and Sembawang Road to the west.1 The town is named after Lim Nee Soon, a prominent businessman in colonial Singapore.2 The Yishun planning area is made up of nine sub-zones: Yishun Central, Northland, Yishun East, Yishun South, Lower Seletar Reservoir, Springleaf, Nee Soon, Khatib and Yishun West.3
History
Yishun was part of territories inhabited by the indigenous nomadic boat-dwellers known as Orang Seletar – descendants of the orang laut or “sea people” who lived in boats and made a living as fishermen.4 On maps drawn at the time, the area stretching from Seletar River (Sungei Seletar) to Sungei Sembawang was marked as “Seletar”.5 “Yishun” is the hanyu pinyin of “Nee Soon”. Lim Nee Soon (b. 12 November 1879, Singapore–d. 20 March 1936, Shanghai, China)6 was a prominent industrialist who made his fortune by establishing rubber and pineapple plantations in the area.7 Prior to that, the area around the Seletar River was a flourishing gambier and pepper stronghold. These crops declined in popularity at the end of the 19th century, when most of the planters shifted to Johor.8
The growth of estates under Lim’s ownership started when as a young man of 24, he bought land around the Seletar River and leased freehold land from the government for cultivation. At the peak of his career, Lim owned 12 rubber plantations in Singapore and seven in Malaya. In Singapore, his rubber estates could be found in Jurong, Choa Chu Kang, Seletar, Mandai, Sembawang and Thomson.9