One of my
weekend treats was to pick up a John Grisham novel called “Gray Mountain,”
which focuses on a young New York lawyer who gets retrenched from her big law
firm and ends up working in the Appalachian Hills. Although I’ve only started
the first few chapters but the book has already painted a wonderful picture of
how a former “real estate” lawyer dealing with billionaire property developers
suddenly discovering people who have no jobs and domestic violence is a way of
life.
This fictional
account of a Wall Street lawyer in Appalachian country underlines the fact that
America isn’t a single country but many countries, where people from different parts
of the country have totally different experiences from other people in the same
country. This is also not unique to America. Here in Asia, there are plenty of
examples of countries that are in fact many countries. Like in America, the
difference is largely centred on the urban-rural divide. For example, when
everyone talks about the Chinese economy and the great wealth in China, they
are thinking about the shinning metropolitan centres of Shanghai and Shenzhen. What
nobody thinks of is the rural areas where people have been so busy worrying
about getting flour to make soup to bother knowing about what goes on outside
their village.
Being a
multitude of places isn’t limited to large countries like the USA or China. Even
small places like Hong Kong and Singapore are many countries as opposed to
being one unified block. If anything, the difference between the various communities
in small places like Hong Kong and Singapore appear more pronounced than they
are in large places. A Wall Street banker will most likely never have to look
at someone from the Appalachian hills in the course of their daily lives. Here
in my work place in the centre of Singapore’s financial district, you have the
slick residents of condo-land walking past the aunty from one-room HDB
heartland trying to sell them tissue paper just to pay her utility bill.
Countries like
people, want to show the world their best side to the world and wanting to “gloss
over” certain realities is understandable. It becomes even more pronounced of
places what need the outside world and governments in such places go through
great lengths to “gloss up” their image. My stepfather, once made a point that
he would only fly airlines of small but wealthy countries because the national carrier
in such places were extensions of national pride. Airlines like SIA, Emirates,
Cathay Pacific and Qatar consistently rank among the world’s best because they
are part of their native lands that governments want the world to see.
In the case of
Singapore, everyone gets to see Shenton Way or the Marina Bay sands. These are
iconic images and one they are very nice. I admit they are great to look at and
very pleasant areas. One of my great after work pleasures is to walk from
Shenton Way to the Marina Bay Sands casino and towards the bus home.
However, unlike
what I saw in London, where the tramps were young and had probably taken a few
bad turns with drugs, the ones in Singapore are inevitably old and they’re
begging but doing physically demanding work for criminally low money.
Nobody seems to
talk about this group. If you read official news in Singapore, you are bound to
think that Singapore of Crazy Rich Asians is the only Singapore. However, while
we may all like to think that, this isn’t reality. I look at my work on Shenton
Way and the box collectors and its not far fetched to think I may end up
experiencing a different Singapore in my old age.
We need an
honest conversation about what is Singapore. Like it or not, the one-room flat
dwellers are as much a part of Singapore as those on the top of Marina Bay
sands The conversation should move from how to do we get more people on top of
Marina Bay Sands to ensuring that Singaporeans, particularly the elderly ones
don’t need to collect cardboard boxes in their twilight years. We do so much to
create an image but that image can only be sustained if people feel some
reality of that image.
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