In Singapore, the Peranakan people are the descendants of enterprising Chinese traders who settled in the Malay archipelago more than 500 years ago, married locally and raised their children in a mix of local customs and Chinese traditions. Today, their influences give Singapore an enduring and unique cultural heartbeat that can still be felt strongly among the malls and the office towers, one which manifests itself in distinctive architecture, clothing and, most of all, food.

The best place to experience it all today is in Katong, a district bracketed by Tanjong Katong and Joo Chiat roads, on Singapore's east coast. Better still, Katong is in that sweet spot for a gentrifying suburb, with enough funky novelty to be interesting while retaining much of the history and charm that made it attractive and different in the first place.

The most beautiful vision in Peranakan culture, in all its mixed-up wonder, is the shophouse front, a signature Singapore sight. A classic shophouse always follows the same pattern: narrow and two-storey, arranged in long terraces, it has a shop on the ground floor recessed behind a pedestrian walkway, vivid carved reliefs in the timber, and shuttered windows on the upper floor. The windows feel French, the shutters Spanish or Portuguese, the construction Malay and the decoration Chinese: exactly the combination of cultures and ideas that make the Peranakan what they are.

The best place to see the shopfronts is off the main streets on Koon Seng Road, a terrace of heritage shophouses each coloured in a different vivid pastel. Though maintained with a very Singaporean exactitude, these are real, occupied homes, not museum pieces, although one a little distance away, called The Intan, has opened its doors as a living museum where owner Alvin Yapp shows off a lifetime's accumulation of Peranakan furniture and decoration. Try the district's most famous shop, Rumah Bebe, where one can not only buy the classic Peranakan slippers, embroidered with hundreds of coloured beads, but learn how to make them.

A host of other businesses have moved into the district over the years. It makes for a striking combination: heavy on high-end pet-care shops and butchers where expats come to get their imported Australian wagyu, it has attracted Western bars and restaurants without driving out the classic local stores – you can still see people queueing 30 deep for laksa at the Ponggol Nasi Lemak Centre.