It is said that when Singapore was building the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) in the mid-eighties, the then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew consulted the highly respectable Venerable Hong Chuan about the plan. The latter warned that the tunnelings would severely damage the excellent fengshui of the island, and the only solution was to ensure all Singaporeans carry a bagua (octagon diagram) with them.
But this was impossible among the different races and religions, so PM Lee thought of an excellent idea: to design the new $1 coin with the shape of a bagua, so that it would be carried by all Singaporeans.
This urban legend was made believable due to the coincidence of the timings: The new $1 coin was launched in September 1987, just two months before MRT began its first operation.
A further addition to the rumour was the road tax label, also in the shape of an octagon, which means every car on the roads of Singapore would be carrying a bagua too.
I’d heard that the shape of the dollar coin was intended to give everyone a bagua to carry, but it never occurred to me to wonder what sort of geomantic effect building an MRT system would have. Fascinating.
A while ago I was thinking about what looked like a change of attention amongst Singapore’s planners and developers away from the horizontal and towards the vertical:
Singapore definitely seems taller. But lots more of it seems to be underground as well. There are new connectors between Wheelock Place and Orchard MRT, a new subway between City Mall and Suntec, three new floors of shops below ground in Ion mall. Rather than reclaiming land horizontally, from the sea, and eventually from Indonesia and Malayasia, Singapore seems to be reclaiming it vertically. No new territory, as far as the map is concerned: instead, they’re using engineering to overcome the physical resistances of densely-packed earth and thin, unsupportive air to fit more people (and businesses, and advertising) in the area they already have, in the same way that engineering and ambition enabled them to reclaim vast areas of land from the sea. It must be easier than facing the political resistances that limit horizontal expansion. Or perhaps it’s a way of overcoming them: tunnels between malls in Johor Bahru and Woodlands must surely already be on a planner’s laptop somewhere.
I just came across the Economic Strategy Committee’s report, published on the 30th January 2010, a month before my speculation on the change of axis. About three-quarters of the way through, there’s this recommendation from the committee:
Adopt a long term perspective and invest ahead to create new land and space. While we can expand our land mass through reclamation as we have done for Marina Bay, there will be limits in the long-run. In the next 10 years, the government should seek to catalyse the development of underground space as a means to intensify land use. We should put in place enablers for underground development such as by developing a subterranean land rights and valuation framework, and by establishing a national geology office. We must also develop an underground masterplan to ensure that underground and aboveground spaces are synergised, and invest in the creation of basement spaces in conjunction with new underground infrastructural projects (e.g. rail), so as to add to our “land bank”.
Subterranean land rights and valuation framework, and an underground masterplan. Making sure above and below are lined up. And adding to a store by creating more empty spaces. As usual, Singapore is a few steps ahead of my imagination.
I like to listen to programmes on Radio 4 when they’re meant to be listened to, but being 8 hours ahead of the UK means that programmes broadcast weekly are usually a week old. Listening to Broadcasting House this Sunday morning, with its speculation about the possible release of Aung San Suu Kyi and continued interest in Ed Milliband’s performance at PMQs, I felt something in common with the expats in Maugham or Greene, waiting for regular bundles of letters and newspapers to make the journey upriver to be devoured in the full knowledge that their contents were long out of date. Strange that expectations and possibilities that arise from the internet end up creating the same kind of situation.
Singapore recently celebrated its National Day: every residents’ association spent July providing decorations and bunting and exhorting residents to deck their parapets with ordered rows of red-and-white flags. There was a parade, rehearsed for weeks beforehand, and by the time it took place the novelty of the aircraft and the fireworks must have worn off, though you wouldn’t have known it from the applause. I really enjoyed it. Here’s a video:
(A week later they hosted the Youth Olympic Games opening ceremony. Watch the last three minutes or so: amazing set, Speer-like, shades of Metropolis, drifting in the half-shadow of Marina Bay, a place that’s no less artificial or considered than a stage)
This sort of thing is a reminder that in lots of ways Singapore is a made-up country, one created suddenly and with a sense of urgency only a generation or so ago. The patriotism that is encouraged here is genuine, of course, and there are very real threats to the island’s security which demand a sense of loyalty, but there’s an untested quality to it that draws your attention to the way it’s been made up, in schools and workplaces and televised events.
They make up other countries as well. These pictures were taken in the IKEA cafeteria, after eating meatballs and boiled potatoes.
“Dalarna. It is mythical. It is summer. Midsummer. An enchanting hilly landscape. A picture painted by famous artists. The sound of a happy violin. Folklore. Culture. Traditions. Bright nights. Breath-taking light. It is the most Swedish in Sweden. It is Dalarna.”
Sweden, mystical home of sensible interior planning and refreshing attitudes to public bathing. Of course, we do the same thing, and not just to Sweden: there’s a distance of a couple of thousand miles at which any country is more easily understood through the ways it’s made up than through any actual experience. People in the UK did it with various countries now in the Commonwealth, Americans did it with Japan, and now Singaporeans romanticise Northern European countries and the parts of the culture they like. The Swiss are used in a similar way: the highest quality butchers, embroiderers, dry cleaners and health food suppliers all have “Swiss” in their name. The British aren’t treated the same way, being a much more real part of recent history here.
None of this is a criticism. But all this making up other countries has made it more obvious to me how I choose the parts of England that I miss, how I make up my own country to be nostalgic about. Since I arrived I’ve been listening to Dave Swarbrick and Alistair Anderson, and to groups that imagine their own village more obviously: the Moon Wiring Club, Belbury Poly, the Focus Group and others on the Ghost Box label. When I miss home now, after watching other people construct their own ideas of countries, I feel much more aware that I’m missing somewhere I made up, and take more pleasure in populating it on purpose: old Children’s Film Foundation programmes, Greater London Council lettering on country roadsigns, AA badges, muted, textured countryside, Puffin books and Alan Garner countrysides, morris dancing, public works in rollling hills from Dacorum and Milton Keynes borough councils, long barrows and neolithic landscapes, greaseproof paper and boxes of orange juice, whimsical acts of principled civil disobedience, well-spoken male voices in children’s radio programmes, village flotsam from the Festival of Britain, electronic engineering, and further away the Channel and the North Sea and stories of smuggling and secrecy.
Singapore is pretty good for snacks, nibbles, bites, little somethings and all sorts of treats. I bought the three things above from Tiong Bahru Pau, just round the corner. The one in the middle is a pork pau (also bau – basically means ‘bun’ as far as I can see): the case is light and soft from being steamed rather than baked, slightly sticky to the touch, and inside is a few wedges of pork, with gravy. Was lovely. On the right is something that I’ve never had before and don’t know the name of, but it turned out to be a sort of super-powered Scotch egg: the batter case contained half an egg and some lighter slices of pork or ham. Both delicious.
And the thing on the left is another thing I don’t have a name for, but it made a good dessert. Sesame donut with red bean sauce inside, just the right blend of sweet and savoury. I got these from the kitchen shop on Outram Road, but they’ve got a stall in the hawker centre that’s on my list now.
