Republic of Singapore

      Everywhere you go in Singapore, you see the Capitalist tradition of Stamford Raffles and the Overseas Chinese going strong. Throughout Southeast Asia, for hundreds of years, cadres of Chinese capitalists have been the economic elite in every country. When the British came to Singapore, it was only natural they and the Chinese would combine forces and build a powerhous commercial city. This grand edifice, which in another era would have been an imperial palace or a great temple, is in fact Tang Plaza, one of the many downtown shopping emporia. Perhaps it may be thought of as a temple of Commerce; indeed, Commerce does seem to have something of the status of a god here. To a Vagabond accustomed to "live simply, that others may simply live," this can make Singapore seem strangely surreal. More surreal still is Sim Lim Square, a towering skyscraper (or so it seems; actually, it is just six floors) inhabited almost exclusively by electronics merchants. Ride the escalators up past floor after floor of televisions, digital camcorders, computer parts, 100-packs of blank CDs, GPS transceivers, fish finders, just about any electronic gadget one can think of.
      Surrounded by so much mercantilism, the bewildered Vagabond knows not what to do. A break from all this is in order. So, we go to Far East Plaza, where licensed massage therapist Norhaidah uses traditional Malay/Indonesian techniques to soothe tired bodies and rheumatism. She also offers specialized services for postpartum women, and herbal sauna for the sick. Watch out, though -- Norhaidah is a perceptive one: she tells me things about myself I have no idea how she could know. After your massage, she will likely send you away with some mysterious therapeutic product you've never seen before.
      Behind the glittering modernity, though, the old cultures still live. Although Singapore has been called "A Chinese island in a Malay sea," the reality is more complex than that. Chinese are here, as are Malays; Bugis Street is so named because it was once an enclave of a tribe of sea-people by that name; and the intermarriage of Chinese and Malay over the centuries created the "Straits Chinese." Add to this the Indians (everywhere the British have gone, so have the Indians), and Singapore is a ployglot and ploychrome city. This jar of scary-looking stuff is "Zen's Roaring Tiger Vintage"; it is all sorts of animals and animal parts, including sea horses, snakes, lizards, and, so I was told, the male genitalia of bulls and tigers, all preserved in cognac. Drink it if you dare -- but remember, tigers are an endangered species. Is it really worth the novelty? Overblown claims of Chinese medicine are one of the biggest drivers of hunting pressure on endangered species, from tigers, to rhinoceroses, even across the sea to the ginseng of America.

      Outside the central business district, Singapore has its own beauty, which can be enjoyed to a great extent simply by riding a commuter train and looking out the window. One of the first things one notices in this way is the diversity of people. Notices inside the trains are in four languages: English, Malay, Chinese, and Tamil. (The Chinese can be difficult to read, because for some reason, this bastion of Capitalism uses the Maoist "simplified" characters.) The variety of faces and costume reflects this variety of languages. This is the home of actress/pop singer Fann Wong, who sings in Chinese. One can, in various places, see Chinese temples, Hindu temples, Christian churches, Muslim mosques. Everybody seems to speak English, however.
      Singapore is made up of "satellite cities" -- equivalent to suburbs in that they are the residential districts for housing commuters, but different in that they consist of clusters of towers called skyrises. These tend to be quite beautiful, since different satellite cities have different styles of skyrises; they are painted in earthtones and pastel colours, always with simple patterns of contrasting colours, and some complexes also have decorative panels in simple geometric forms. This, combined with the presence of trees growing everywhere, makes for an altogether pleasant urban scene. Singapore has taken a conscious approach to green spaces, the satellite cities serving to prevent the nightmare of unbroken cement that has afflicted large cities in some other parts of the world. Singapore Science Center, in its series of nature guides, has even published one on Skyrise Gardening and another on Urban Trees.

      Clearly, Singapore is a futuristic (i.e., forward-looking) city. And so we might now mention the futuristic-looking building in this picture, a very distinct landmark, known as the Concourse. Although the Concourse looks interesting from a distance, do not waste time going up close -- the shopping mall on the ground floor is even less interesting than most (literally nothing there worth mentioning), and above is only an office building much like any other. No, we mention the Concourse as a landmark -- just a few blocks to the southwest of it is Arab Street.
      Of course there would be good restaurants in Arab Street. Café le Caire is a good, no-frills kind of place. It hasn't much in the way of décor, but the food is beyond excellent. Be sure to try the hibiscus juice. There are several other small cafes in this area, as well as a pleasant and quite good Turkish restaurant. Arab Street has many cloth merchants: whole-cloth silk, silk garments, Oriental rugs. Any of the rug dealers should be worth a look. In the one I know, the ground floor is full of rugs from Iran, Pakistan, and Kashmir, some made by hand, others by machine, and one could look only at these and come away well satisfied; but mention an interest in rugs from Afghanistan, and you will be shown two more floors upstairs. In addition to traditional patterns, some of the Afghan rugs display motifs from Afghanistan's war against the Soviet Union -- militaristic images of missiles and tanks. If you go about one block north, you find the entrance to a more tourist-oriented area, including, in addition to yet more cloth merchants and little cafes, an art gallery offering a wide selection of krises (i.e., Malay daggers).
      Why Malay daggers in Arab Street? Malaysia and Indonesia are both Muslim countries. Indeed, some of the travel guides are vague on this point: in describing Arab Street, they describe it as having originated as a neighborhood of "Muslim immigrants," but do not actually say whether those immigrants were Arabs, or from other parts of the Muslim world. The Muslim world extends across three continents, encompassing most of North Africa; parts of the Balkans and Caucasus; and across the Middle East and Central Asia to the Malay Archpelago. Relatively few Muslims are Arabs. It is true that streets here have names evoking the Middle East (such as Baghdad Street), and the aforementioned cafes serve Middle Eastern food. It is also true that, here as nowhere else in Singapore, one can see signs with Arabic lettering; but the Malay language is often written in Arabic lettering.

      I was surprised that this mostly-Chinese city has a Chinatown. This is a relic of the British days, when the ethnic groups were separated into distinct enclaves; after independence, enlightened government policies involving housing quotas eliminated racial and ethnic tensions within a decade. Walk south from the Chinatown subway station, and you will find Tea Chapter Trading, a Chinese teahouse. Upstairs is the tea drinking area, with intimate little nooks decorated in spare, Chinese style, where small groups of friends can enjoy tea and conversation. The Chinese tea ceremony is worth experiencing; be sure to select a tea with an aroma you enjoy, because the ceremony centers on enjoying the changing aroma of tea as it goes from hot to cool, and the change again from aroma to taste. The tea house can also be a romantic setting for other sorts of conversation. Downstairs is the sales area, with a selection of Chinese tea sets and associated paraphernalia. (Goodness, I just can't stop speaking in terms of shopping; Singapore does that to a person -- it became one of the economic tigers through commerce, after all.) The travel guide mentioned a Taiwanese tea house also, but I was unable to find it. There are also Chinese apothecaries in this area, for those who prefer Chinese traditional medicine; the apothecary will formulate your medicine from the array of ingredients in his wall of little drawers.

      Another ethnic enclave is Little India, with buildings painted in gaudy rainbow colours. Here, too are mosques, a reminder that India is not monolithically Hindu. Note the difference between this mosque (left picture) and the Sultan Mosque: whereas the Sultan Mosque has gilded onion domes and windows of onion dome-like shape, this mosque in Little India has square windows, and is overall brighter in colour, with a very different style of ornamentation. On one bloc of shopfronts, presumably with dwellings above, each unit bore the Muslim crescent-and-star emblem on semicircles above each window, as seen in the right picture. In addition to the expected Indian restaurants and sellers of Hindu paraphernalia (icons, incense, ghee, etc.), there are various purveyors of audio CDs: music in Hindi, Tamil, and other languages; from Hindu chants, to Tamil Christian songs, to themes from Tamil cinema. The Indian Classical Music Store is of particular note; here, one can find sitars, drums, and bamboo flutes in various sizes, including children's sizes; sheet music and instructional books (some in English, some in Tamil); and recordings of sitar music. As in Arab Street, one can also find silk merchants here.
   

      So far, I have avoided mentioning the overtly touristy spots, but I cannot pass over the Singapore Night Safari. This is one of the most enlightened zoos I have ever seen: there are extensive free-range areas, where animals roam in natural settings; and by only opening at night, it allows people to see nocturnal animals actively moving about instead of just sleeping. This was the first place I ever saw such rare oddities as the fishing-cat, the binturong, the red panda, the chevrotain, and a whole herd of babirusa. There were a few no-shows, e.g. the giant anteater, but then, that is true of any trip to any zoo. Further, the trained-animal show, "Creatures of the Night" displays an unusually strong environmental consciousness (Hint: if you are afraid of snakes, avoid the first three or four rows in the center bloc). On the other hand, there are ethical questions as to whether animals ought to be trained for human entertainment anyway.

      Of course, Singapore, ever astute in business, has figured out that one more money machine is found in shameless tourist resorts. Hence, Sentosa Island. I hardly need to write about that -- it is about what you would expect of a theme park built under the influence of contemporary Chinese culture. Still, even I managed to find a few things worth seeing there.
      The best was the butterfly garden. I always visit butterfly gardens whenever I can, so I feel I have a sense of which ones are better than which. This one was a good one; I lingered longer than usual, partly because of the airy spaciousness, creating the right kind of atmosphere to enjoy these ethereal insects. These butterflies are yellow birdwings and another species I forget, feeding from the flowers of a tropical vine related to buckwheat. The butterflies were Southeast Asian species, including several species of birdwings. Unfortunately, they did not have any living Rajah Brooke's birdwings, although there were dead ones displayed in the museum. The vegetation, on the other hand, was not so authentically regional, including several ornamental heliconias whose parent species came originally from Central and South America.
      Also on Sentosa is the Singapore Aquarium. I do not really endorse aquariums because, like zoos, they confine animals in spaces smaller than their natural territories and home ranges, and at higher than normal population densities. The public is kept unaware of how often animals in aquariums are replaced when they die; unless you can tell one individual from another, you would never know whether you are seeing the same animal on two different occasions. However, if you are okay with aquariums, you may be interested in seeing the dugong, a completely herbivorous marine mammal.

      At the center of Singapore Island is a complex of nature reserves, which share a common border with the zoo and night safari, and together fill the center of the island and surround the city reserviors. All are strictly protected. And although there are mature rain forests in the heart of Singapore Island, and a burgeoning city surrounds them, no timber harvest takes place here. Singapore Science Center has published a series of guidebooks (in English) on various aspects of nature in Singapore. The centerpiece of the reserves is Bukit Timah Reserve, Singapore's highest hill, and part of its core of tropical rain forest reserves (there is also a Bukit Timah Road, so if you are coming here by taxi, tell the driver, "Bukit Timah Hill," to avoid confusion -- an irony of Singapore's adopting English is that no one notices the redundancy: "bukit" is Malay for "hill", so "Bukit Timah Hill" literally means Tin Hill Hill). This eco-consciousness might at first seem surprising in such an urbanized and commerce-driven place; but remember, Singapore is confined to a small island. It has no room to spread, no hinterland to buffer itself. It has therefore been forced to become conscious of its limited natural resources, and to adopt strict conservation policies. Singapore has gained notoriety in the West for its draconian law enforcement, although, in fairness, it must be pointed out that beatings with the rotan are a long-standing Malay custom, and still practiced in Malaysia and Indonesia as well as Singapore. More frequently, penalties take the form of fines, the amounts of which are often posted on signs in relevant places.

      Case in point: these monkeys (longtailed macacques, Macaca fascicularis) live near the base of Bukit Timah. Although they are thoroughly habituated to the presence of humans, and people gather around to look at them, no one feeds them, because the signs clearly post the amount of the fine for doing so.

      Singapore is the exception to the stereotype of tropical rain forest regions: normally, we constantly hear about the great number of undiscovered species, the need to catalogue them before they disappear, etc.; but this is not so in Singapore. In Singapore's rain forests, most of the species are known, and Singapore Science Center has even been able to publish data about which plants are common, rare, endangered, and locally extinct. This is one of the advantages to being a rich country: Singapore has the time and resources to have thoroughly explored even its old-growth rainforests, and determined its conservation strategy. We may hope other tropical nations will be able to do this before too much is lost. As an anti-consumerist, I do find this a troubling irony: how much of the nature in other countries had to be despoiled to provide Singapore with the financial resources to protect its own remaining forests? The flashy electronics in Sim Lim Tower are made of copper, silicon, plastic, and many other materials, all of which were mined somewhere, refined and processed somewhere, probably not here. In the end, the shimmering mirage of Singapore wavers and fades -- one still cannot have both conservation and high-tech materialism at the same time.