The Whole of Asia in One Tiny Space
The gateway to Southeast Asia brings together East and West, tradition and modernity Singapore – the boom town on the equator.
With hard work and strict laws, the multi-ethnic, swampy island state has become the financial and cultural centre of Southeast Asia.
The noise is deafening at lunchtime in Lau Pa Sat, one of Singapore’s largest food courts at the heart of the banking district. Beneath an enormous Victorian metal structure dealers extol the virtues of Indian fish head curry, Chinese noodle soup or Malaysian chicken kebabs. For reasons of hygiene, the government moved the street vendors off the street and into modern hawker centres – covered halls with canteen charm – in the ‘70’s. However, the small food stands continue to serve authentic dishes in a city full of five-star hotels and gourmet restaurants.
Asiatic traditions under a Western veneer
At the same time they reflect the multicultural 4.2 million metropolis on the equator. ″Superficially Singapore seems very Western: modern buildings, large cars, capitalist lifestyle. But in reality the people of Singapore are firmly rooted in their traditions and religions”, explains the French woman Marie Le Sourd, who has worked in Singapore for seven years. This is particularly evident in Chinatown, Little India or Kampong Glam: every couple of hundred metres you come across garish Hindu temples, mosques with onion domes or Chinese pagodas disappearing behind clouds of incense sticks.
The division into ethnic quarters stems from the colonial period when Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles founded modern Singapore in 1819 and had a British free port built. Strict racial segregation led to unrest and in 1965 to the exclusion of Singapore from the Malayan Union. In the meantime, the swampy island state has transformed itself into a boom town with the highest standard of living in Southeast Asia. The various sections of the population – 76 per cent Chinese, 14 per cent Malay, 8 per cent Indian – today live peacefully side by side because of a firm but clever residential and social policy.
Severe penalties relaxed in recent years
The recipe of the authoritarian one-party government: good education, good infrastructure and financial success for all – achieved by means of social control and severe penalties. But the image of a spick and span police state is no longer quite correct. Admittedly, there are still severe penalties for minor offences: Anyone who crosses the street in the wrong place or is caught throwing away litter must pay up to 500 euros. Nevertheless, scarcely an inhabitant of Singapore waits at red in an empty street and there are plastic bags lying around every second corner. The chewing of gum and table-top dancing in bars have also been permitted meanwhile. ″The government is pragmatic enough to realise that they cannot remain completely authoritarian when globalisation is at the door”, says Ho Khai Leong from the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
