Runme Shaw went to Southeast Asia soon after the founding of Tianyi Film Company to promote business and explore markets. He recalled arriving in Singapore around 1924 and 1925. His brother, Run Run, joined him a year later to help develop the distribution network, At the time there were already well-established cliques among the Singaporean and Malay business communities: the Teochew, the Hokkien, the Cantonese, the Hakka and the Hainanese. Each had its own dialect community and highly exclusive trade networks. On their first arrival, the two young men with their Shanghai background and Ningbo ancestry found themselves isolated by these local communities. Naturally, their attempts to expand distribution and screening were fraught with difficulty.

Under these trying circumstances, Runme Shaw decided to build a direct channel to customers by running their own cinema. He leased an old theatre in the Tanjong Pagar district (near Chinatown) at a monthly rent of two thousand dollars. After he obtained screening rights, the theatre, which used to screen American imports, was transformed into one screening mainly Chinese movies. Using Singapore as a stepping stone, Runme Shaw expanded into the Malay Peninsula. In places where no cinemas were available, the Shaw brothers erected tents to create make-shift theatres. Runme Shaw recalled those days: “We went to all the small towns all no cinema. We just tried a place, one place, two then next place. We just started like that. From this very beginning, we tried travelling shows, you know just like that. Some places had no cinema at all. We had a tent, you know, travelling.”(sic) Outside their film distribution and screening business, the two brothers also operated amusement parks including Great World and New World, which were modeled after their hugely popular Shanghai namesakes. Locals loved these parks with their roller-coasters, Ferris wheels, circuses, Cantonese opera performances as well as cheap entrance fees.