In his 1926 short story, "P. and O.," Somerset Maugham wrote, "Singapore is the meeting place of many races. The Malays, though natives of the soil, dwell uneasily in towns, and are few; and it is the Chinese, supple, alert and industrious, who throng the streets; the dark-skinned Tamils walk on their silent, naked feet, as though they were but brief sojourners in a strange land, but the Bengalis, sleek and prosperous, are easy in their surroundings, and self-assured; the sly and obsequious Japanese seem busy with pressing and secret affairs; and the English in their topees and white ducks, speeding past in motor-cars or at leisure in their rickshaws, wear a nonchalant and careless air. The rulers of these teeming peoples take their authority with a smiling unconcern."
In present-day Singapore, the whites you see on its streets are generally a cut above. Smartly dressed, relaxed and attractive, they are mostly moneyed vacationers or business executives. You won't find among them Honey Boo Boo with Mama June. Some bars are patronized almost exclusively by whites, and they carouse deep into the night. As for the Japanese, they're certainly not obsequious but confident and at ease, as befitting their long-earned First World status.
The aftertaste of conquest lingers forever. Since a British or Japanese tourist is aware his people subjugated Singaporeans and humiliated them, his steps have an extra bounce and his smile, in whatever context, betrays a reservoir of deep satisfaction. We kicked your asses! Though the Brits raised the white flag to the Japanese, who in turn had to bow down to the Americans, Brits and Japanese remember they had once punched their hosts in the face, and the punchee also remember. If an American peace activist, say, journeys to Hiroshima, he's still the representative and embodiment of the Bomb. His very appearance on Hondori Street is a victory parade.
Zooming by the gleaming towers, trucks and pickup trucks transport Bangladeshi, Tamil, Filipino and Burmese workers. Plopped on the darkened flat beds, these tired men occupy the lowest rung of Singaporean society. Foreigners are needed to do the lowliest tasks, and 38% of the people here don't have citizenship. To maintain Singapore's ethnic balance, however, immigration from the Indian subcontinent must be kept in check, and that's why the government is welcoming Chinese immigrants. In fact, many Singaporean Indian restaurants have been forced to hire mainland Chinese to staff their kitchens.
For me, the greatest pleasure of Singapore is its many food courts, for here you can have an excellent Chinese, Indian or Malay dish for a small price. Since their communal setting must be off-putting to many of them, whites rarely enter one of these hawker centers. The offerings can also confound if not disgust. As you slurp your turtle soup, a stranger sharing your table is enjoying pig intestine rice gruel, while a third merely a plate of beef chow fun.
The busboys are often old, wizened men. I saw one stuff something into his mouth as he cleaned up a table. Chewing, he continued working. Like just about every other population save post-Depression era Americans, Chinese understand hunger. In the US, even our destitute casually toss away food. Once, I bought a homeless guy a beer, only to see him chug just over half of it, then pour the rest into a trash can.
Hectored and coached for several decades by Lee Kuan Yew, Singaporean Chinese are markedly different from all of their kin, for nowhere else will you find Chinese so considerate and civil. A Singapore Chinese in her twenties confided, "I'm most annoyed by the PRC Chinese. Although they look more or less like us, I can always tell them apart by their behaviors. They can be so crude, yet so arrogant. Once I heard a PRC say in a Two Dollar Store, 'This is where the poor Singaporeans go to shop!' Arghhh! Lots of people shop there. I shop there. The Vietnamese here don't stand out so much, so people don't mind them, but lots of people complain about the PRC Chinese."
Serious about national defense, she informed me that Singaporeans have managed to make an excellent assault rifle, the SAR 21, and they use German tanks and Russian jet fighters, the absolute best. Becoming excited, she thrust her hand horizontally, vertically then horizontally again, all very abruptly, "The Russian Sukhoi can maneuver like a cobra." Speechless, I simply nodded.
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