Growing up, Singaporean film-maker Royston Tan spent much of his time at his parents’ Lorong Chuan provision shop.

Not surprisingly, it was a spot filled with memorable childhood moments. During the monsoon season, for example, his parents “would carry me and put me at the top of the shelf, while the neighbours came down to help us clear the food and put it on shelves above ground level to avoid any floods”, he recalled.

Over time, he came to see the shop as a “relationship bank and stock exchange”, he told TODAY.

“So many of my father’s customers will come and chit-chat, and discuss current affairs. I think of it as the most natural community centre that brings all the different ethnic groups together.”

These moments at the shop — which his father ran for seven years — were the inspiration behind Tan’s latest work, The Provision Shop, an hour-long telemovie which will air this Sunday on Mediacorp’s Channel 8.

Set against the backdrop of an old provision shop — which, by the way, still exists — the show explores the theme of social interactions and relationships between foreigners and locals, and presents the provision shop as a microcosm of a local community grappling with social tensions due to increased diversity. It also, eventually, shows how they grow to understand, respect and care for one another through interaction and shared experiences.

The idea of creating stories using a provision shop as a central location came from Tan’s friend Jeff Cheong, the president of advertising agency Tribal Worldwide Asia. Tan grew excited about it, said Cheong, as a provision shop was an apt location, having been an ingrained setting in his own childhood memories.

Filmed in collaboration with Tribal Worldwide Singapore and the Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI), the telemovie, which has four stories, features artistes such as veteran actor-deejay Marcus Chin and Mediacorp’s Sora Ma, who play the provision shop owner and his daughter, respectively. Also part of the cast are Mediacorp actor Brandon Wong and Chinese actor Cui Yang, who play an ice-delivery man and his supervisor from China, and veteran actress Li Yinzhu and theatre actress Siti Khalijah, who play “Empress Wu” and her meek domestic helper. There are also fresh faces, such as teenage artistes Aden Tan and Sarah Daniel, who play two tertiary students in a budding romance.

Central to the film is Tee Seng Store, a real-life 60-year-old shop nestled in a quiet neighbourhood along Rosyth Road. The shop still retains a zinc roof and a hanging Milo-tin for cash payments.

Tan said he was “fascinated beyond words” when he “stumbled upon this hidden gem of a provision shop”, adding that he was glad to capture it on film for future generations to look back on.

Tan and his crew also took months to source for retro props and goodies from yesteryear, such as the old fashioned KAKA snacks that they happened to fortuitously locate in a warehouse in Malaysia.

The strong emotional association attached to the old-school location is also shared by the cast.

“I also grew up in an era when I would look forward to going to the provision shop whenever my mother asked to buy flour or run an errand, because it meant I could pick up a little treat as well,” said Siti.

“Somehow back then, even though we were all strangers, even if I forgot to bring extra money, they will just tell me to pay them back the next time. There was that sense of family and trust,” she added.

For Ma, who grew up in Kedah, she too realised the importance of a provision shop. “It’s not only for buying groceries but it’s also a community hub — a place to entrust our keys for safekeeping before we go out and a place where families gather to exchange news and gossip. There were a lot of flashbacks when I arrived on the set for this film,” she said.

But beyond evoking nostalgia, Tan hopes to recapture that human connection and understanding he felt back then as a child.

Inspired by Tee Seng Store and the owner’s experiences in dealing with change, he also wanted to focus on how people are affected by evolving times, as well as highlight issues they are facing when it comes to integration, Tan explained.

“This project is different. Even though it uses the past as a setting, it is very forward-looking, like the owner of the provision shop himself,” he said.

“When we spoke to him, he shared with us the overall changes in the environment, the influx of different people coming into the neighbourhood and how in the past he could not speak Tagalog (a language spoken in the Philippines) but now he could due to his interactions with people from other communities. To him, it was all about being open and embracing diversity that helped him maintain the shop for 60 years, which is a real feat.”

Catch The Provision Shop on Channel 8 this Sunday from 9pm to 10 pm. The film will be available with English subtitles on govsingapore’s YouTube channel from July 19.