China Street Hum Jin Pang, the Maxwell Food Centre stall that sold five savoury or sweet fritters for $1 and once let customers flip them in the oil with long chopsticks, closed in mid-August 2026. Deitrich Mohan, third-generation of Hong's Fuzhou oyster cake at the same centre, posted the news on Instagram on 24 August. 8world's food desk confirmed the same day: the stall had already gone dark the week before, and a porridge operator was moving into the unit.
Five fritters for a dollar, until they weren't
Second-generation hawker Lee Shu Hui ran the stall alone in its last years. Dough was mixed on site and fried to order. There were two flavours, savoury and sweet. In her father's time, diners could pick up the long chopsticks and turn the fritters themselves. That was the bit people filmed. Lee later stopped the DIY flip as she aged and worked without help. The price held: five pieces for $1, which by 2026 was an outlier even among Maxwell snacks. Maxwell Fuzhou oyster cake next door still sells at about $2.50 a piece.
The stall started as a street hawker on China Street. In 1986 those hawkers were moved into Maxwell Market. The market reopened as Maxwell Food Centre in 1987. China Street Hum Jin Pang was one of the first-generation names that made that move. Forty years in the same food centre is not a pop-up. It is a unit people walked to without checking a map.
What Maxwell loses when a first-generation stall goes
Maxwell is still the tourist hawker centre. Tian Tian chicken rice at #01-10 draws the queue that Instagram needs. Ah Tai is four units away. Danlao is already on this site for scrambled egg rice. The centre can absorb one more porridge stall without looking empty. What it cannot replace is a $1 snack that came with a story about China Street before the shophouses became a food street with table service.
Mohan's post was the local record, not a press release. He filmed the unit under renovation. 8world used Google Maps stills of the old signboard. There is no farewell date from the National Environment Agency, no last-day queue photos from Eatbook. If you went in late August looking for hum jin pang, you already missed it. If you are writing a Maxwell list in September, strike the stall and do not send anyone to the old unit for fritters.
The stall next door still frying oyster cakes
Hong's Fuzhou oyster cake remains. That is the neighbour Mohan used as the witness. Other Maxwell snacks that are still live as of Eatbook's 4 September 2026 stall guide include Ri Xin Snack Delights for $1 ang ku kueh and Heng Heng for ondeh-ondeh. None of those is a hum jin pang. If you wanted the China Street version specifically, the honest line is that it is gone.
Maxwell Food Centre sits at 1 Kadayanallur Street, across from the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple. Maxwell MRT Exit 1 is the closest. Individual stalls keep their own off days. Tian Tian is often closed Monday. Do not treat the centre as a museum of every stall you remember from a 2019 listicle.
Practical Details
- Dates: Stall closed mid-August 2026. Reported 24 August 2026.
- Time: Not applicable. The unit is under renovation for a porridge stall.
- Venue: Maxwell Food Centre, 1 Kadayanallur Street, Singapore 069184.
- Nearest MRT: Maxwell (TE18) Exit 1. Chinatown (NE4/DT19) is a short walk.
- Price: Last known: five hum jin pang for $1. Maxwell Fuzhou oyster cake about $2.50.
- Website: 8world report, 24 August 2026