Tungsan

The Singapore Basketball Centre on Aljunied Avenue 1 is where every team in the National Basketball League Division 1 turns up, and Tungsan is no exception, taking the court there as one of the clubs affiliated with the Basketball Association of Singapore. The venue belongs to the league rather than to any one side, which shapes how a club like Tungsan is known locally.

That name carries a story that has nothing to do with sport. Tungsan Food Industries, the company behind the club, was started in 1973 by Tan Siah Wee, a man who had spent his early years in China and was known around him as "the Chinese lad." Tungsan is the Hanyu Pinyin rendering of Tangshan, a word that in that context also stood for China itself, and it stuck to Tan as a nickname long before it became the name over his factory door and, later, over a basketball team.

A match report once placed the team in blue, though nothing settles the colours beyond that single sighting.

What is left is a food company's name carried onto a basketball court, and a shared home at the Singapore Basketball Centre, where the club takes its turn among the rest of Division 1.