SINGAPORE – Mr Ong Wee Serm remembers the years toiling as a coolie, or manual labourer, who moved goods to and from ships off the coast of Singapore. The 77-year-old, who was a coolie for a decade from 1963, unloaded items like rice, corn and beans from ships onto “twakows” or bumboats docked next to the vessels. Each sack weighed about 100kg, a load which he had to shoulder repeatedly for at least eight hours a day. “It was so tiring I could fall asleep standing,” he told The Straits Times at the launch of a gallery which documents, among...