Singapore is famous for its cleanliness and rule-abiding-ness. And for its money. It’s the financial capital of the East, a distinction built on the foundations of law and order and harsh penalties, and evidenced by the quarter of its population who are millionaires.
The Singapore that I saw is all of those things, but that’s the window dressing. The real Singapore has nothing to do with any of that.
Rather, Singapore is what happens when you take three ethnic groups and shepherd them into the 21st century under the canopy of a common tongue and a united vision. The result is tension between past and future, but not among citizens. Singapore is the battle between old and new.
The country’s major ethnic groups are Chinese, Malay, and Indian, and each group has its own section of town:
