When Rob Tan was a child, he lived in the Zhongshan Building in Kampung Attap, Kuala Lumpur, with his parents and maternal grandparents. His grandparents had moved there in 1962. They started a butchery — Lee Frozen — downstairs and lived upstairs where they were renting a unit.
As time went on, the family gradually bought all the units in the three adjacent shophouses that make up the Zhongshan Building. “They basically leased the units to families. For many of them, it was their first home in KL,” says Tan.