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Asian blend
By ROBERT N. JENKINS, Times Staff Writer
In his 1937 autobiography, Coward related arriving in Singapore on a ship with his terminally ill companion, and he described Singapore as "this God-forsaken hole." Whether he would think better of it today probably would depend on his toleration of skyscrapers, a populace chasing after money and, perhaps most important, a government democratic in name but heavy-handed in practice. This island nation has focused for most of its 37 years on elbowing aside the past to make way for international finance and manufacturing. It has largely succeeded. Singapore is one of the world's most prosperous nations and matches much of Western Europe in the per-capita productivity of its 4-million citizens. The government heeded the plea of tourism officials, if not its social historians. For the past quarter-century or so, it has been salvaging a large number of architecturally significant, colonial-era buildings, not so much to preserve ethnic heritage but to lure commercial tenants and tourists to formerly degraded neighborhoods. The showpiece of this rejuvenation is the Singapore River, the basis for Raffles' plans to make this island the junction for cargo ships sailing from China, the Spice Islands, East Asia and India.
* * * "This river, 20 years ago, had everything in it: dead dogs, dead cats. It was a sewer. "Then the government decided to clean it and to renovate the warehouses." Patrick Wan is moving among tables, schmoozing with the lunchtime crowd at the riverside Brewerkz. Executive operations manager of the brew pub/restaurant, the Singapore native is as much at ease discussing the second fermentation process used by his brewmaster as he is recounting social changes in Singapore. Wan was sent to the United States as a teenager to study the hospitality industry. He went to college in Delaware ("We had a relative living there, so if I needed to be sent home in a casket, someone would have been on hand," he jokes) and spent 15 years in the state before returning to Singapore in the mid 1990s and taking his present job. Brewerkz is a prime result of the government's role in bringing the heart of old Singapore back to life. It got rid of decrepit riverbank warehouses and century-old, two-story shop-houses (family-run shop downstairs, apartment above) and banned cargo boats from the river. The riverside residents were evicted from shop-houses that had been in their families for generations. They were assigned housing in new government-built towers, often miles from the river. Using a cookie-cutter approach, the government then refurbished the buildings, which included old mansions, a pineapple cannery and an icehouse. The spaces became pubs, offices, retail stores, souvenir shops; the exteriors were painted in the colors of sherbet. Think St. Petersburg's BayWalk, stretched for a mile or so and with a river running through it. Though some preservationists have sniffed that the result is "Disneyfied," people now come to the river for a drink, a plate of barbecued stingray or grilled prawns, or a dance at places such as the Winchester '73 (a country-western bar), Voodoo Shack and, for homesick Americans, Hooters of Singapore (happy hour starts at 10 p.m.). The river traffic used to be hand-rowed, flat-bottom sampans, loaded with cargo from oceangoing ships anchored offshore. Now the crowds grazing and drinking beneath patio umbrellas see only water taxis and boats carrying tourists looking back at them. * * * A couple of weekends each year, exceptions are made to the river traffic rule. Philip Quay and Jason Swanson, natives of Victoria, British Columbia, working in Singapore as real estate financiers, are enjoying one of those weekends. They are snacking outside a bar while watching some of the other 65 members of the Canadian club defend its title in "dragon boat" races. About 100 teams are competing on this Saturday in December. They are rowing, in teams of eight or 24, despite the on-and-off rain typical of the monsoon season this time of year. Quay, Swanson and their pals are among the tens of thousands of foreigners -- from North America, Great Britain, Europe and India -- working white-collar jobs in Singapore. Their expertise formerly was concentrated in offshore banking and investments, in shipping and oil-production, and in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, chemicals and electronics manufactured for export. Then came a huge influx of foreigners to set up, supervise and teach in the new information technology industry. In the '90s, the nation was said to be second to the United States in creation of software. But Singapore's economy has been buffeted in the past half-dozen years by the Asian financial crisis and the shift of manufacturing to southern China, where labor is cheaper. Unemployment, though the percentage is relatively small, is significant. A 67-year-old cabdriver, who asked that I not use his name, put it this way as he took me around one morning: "Not like in United States: In Singapore, you no work, you no eat." He said he drives his cab "10, 12 hours a day, seven days (a week)." His children, ages 21, 22 and 25, still live at home to cut their expenses, and they work, too. * * * About 78 percent of Singapore's population is of Chinese heritage, 14 percent are from Malaysia (about a mile across the Johore Strait), and 7 percent are from India. A few minutes' walk from the financial towers of the Central Business District and from the mercantile glory that is Orchard Road are flavorful neighborhoods termed Chinatown, Little India and Kampong Glam, which is a concentration of Malaysians. Despite this diversity, the populace has melded into a bustling, productive society by adopting traits of the distant nation that ruled the island for more than a century. Hence, English is one of Singapore's official languages, its judicial system and land use/housing plans are modeled on those of Great Britain, and the government is a parliamentary democracy -- without royalty. The streets are far cleaner than those of such Asian metropolises as Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur, Indonesia's Jakarta and Thailand's Bangkok. Huge import fees on cars have reduced traffic problems on the well-maintained roads. Western dress is the standard. All this can make newcomers see Singapore as Asia for beginners. But that is misleading, said Wan, the U.S.-schooled native. "Singapore is a cosmopolitan society, not a Western one," Wan observed. "We take from the cultures of the Malay, the Chinese, the Indian. "Even with their different religions, there is more intermarriage than before. "The government purposely mixes the (ethnic groups) in the public housing and the schools." On their own, the people mix not just in their jobs but also in several glittering malls, restaurants and nightclubs. The latest venue opened last year, a series of contiguous performance halls called Esplanade. Not surprisingly, it is built on the banks of the Singapore River. Each major nationality holds festivals that everyone is welcomed to. As my cabdriver put it: "We have four new years: Chinese, Indian, Malay and English." But even as the renovation of the declining ethnic neighborhoods has led to complaints of homogenization, some worry that Singapore's people have shed too many of their differences in pursuit of globalization. On the elevator in my hotel, I asked a man pulling a roll-aboard suitcase if he was arriving. "No, I work here four or five days a month," he said, his accent British. "But it's too antiseptic. That's why I'm just back from a weekend in Thailand."
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