Editor’s note: A previous version of this article stated that the newsmaker is a tourist and that is inaccurate. The content creator has been living in Singapore for eight years. We sincerely apologise for our error. The article has been amended accordingly, and we have included further clarification from her. We have also reached out to the content creator to apologise.

A woman from Dalian, China, who came to Singapore, remarked on social media platform Xiaohongshu that she felt like she was still in her home country, despite flying several thousand kilometres.

The reason?

Singapore is sufficiently Sinicised — at least in the shopping and dining scene — due to the large number of retail brands originally from China that have spread abroad and set up shop, especially in the Lion City.

According to a subsequent video of hers, the woman explained that she took months to take the footage for the short clip about the Chinese brands, and she has been in Singapore for the past eight years.

She added that her intention was to "share about life” in Singapore.

Brands she came across

Her Chinese brands in Singapore video highlighted prominent retail brands she personally came across, mainly from the food and beverage sector, such as Haidilao, Mixue, and Juewei, as well as lifestyle products brands Yishion and Miniso.

All these businesses originate from China, and taken as a whole alongside many others, they can be found across the island.

Visited businesses

In the video, the woman could be seen visiting some of these Chinese businesses in Singapore.

Background

The presence of Chinese F&B businesses here should not be surprising though.

In recent years, China's tech giants, such as Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance, the parent firm of TikTok, have set up regional offices in Singapore.

The Financial Times reported in January 2023 that the number of Chinese family funds in Singapore has soared from a handful a few years ago to an estimated 600 today.

At the same time, some 500 Chinese businesses have registered in the city-state in the past year, FT noted.

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