CULTURAL DIARY

Singapore, the roaring success of the Lion

city

2022-2023
LLCER Class
Authored by: Louise Patenostre
 Theme 2: changing environments

FOCUS 3: RE-THINKING CITIES

How did a tiny 3rd World Island formerly shaped by divisive colonialism
use its ethnic and cultural diversity to build “the world’s only fully
functioning city state”?

Documents studied in the unit

I)From third world to first

- 3 videos entitled “Singapore – Crossroads of

the East” from an archive documentary issued
in 1938
- An article of The Economist published in Mars
26th of 2015
- A written extract of the speech conveyed by
Lee Hsien Loongs on National Day 2015
- A review conveyed by Kofi A. Annan
concerning the book From Third World to First
written by Lee Kwan Yew
II) Rising the challenges: shelter and
food as tools for cohesion in a Land-scarce
Island city
- A video entitled “How Singapore fixed its
housing problem”, published by the
Bloomberg news network in 2018
- An extract from the book From Third World to
First: the Singapore story written by Lee Kuan
Yew between the years 1965 and 2000
- An article of the CNN entitled “How did
Singapore become such a green city?”
- A video documentary of National Geographic
entitled “Singapore, city of the future”

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 Additional documents
And how has Singapore been striving to unite and bring people together, in order
to achieve economic and social success?

Singapore anthem

The first extra document is the national anthem of Singapore “Majulah Singapura”
which means “onward Singapore” in Malay.

This anthem was actually adopted officially just after the obtention of full
independence in 1965 and contains descriptions on how the nation had to
remain united to go forward, as the lyrics witness: “Let us, people of Singapore,
together progress towards happiness”. In addition, there is a real cohesion
demanded as the union of citizens, beyond racial divisions or class divisions, is
acclaimed – just as the general bulding of team spirit advocated, notably in the
speech of Lee Hsien Loongs – in the verse “Let us unite, with a new spirit”. The
fact that the lyrics are sang in Malay also covers an interesting aspect of the will
to keep this portion of the population included, because it’s one of the 4 main
ethnicities (Chinese, Indians, Malays and others) still living in Singapore, as the
country was formerly part of Malaysia. Nevertheless, the anthem is allowed to
be sung in 3 other versions, in Singapore's 3 official languages, namely
Mandarin, English and Tamil.

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 The Hawker culture

This extract from the Intangible cultural heritage of UNESCO website published on
December 17th of 2020 presents the hawker culture of Singapore.

Diving into this culture emphasizes the sense of community built over the years
throughout these practices. Therefore, this document also, just as the anthem
does, illustrates the social success that the city-state cultivates between its
inhabitants. Indeed, as the author proudly mention “hawker centers have
become markers of Singapore as a multi-cultural city-state, comprising Chinese,
Malay, Indian and other cultures”, bringing to light this celebration of the bond
that these different communities, united as part of one united nation have been
able to build despite their differences. In fact, this phenomenon is here
mentioned as “social fabric”, strengthened by these hawker centers. Beyond the
acceptance of diverse cultural backgrounds being mentioned, the different
socio-economic classes are claimed as being a part of this mingling process as
well. Indeed, the hawker centers are presented here as instances aiming to
“embrace people from diverse socio-economic backgrounds”. This spirit is once
again very much the same as the one espoused by Lee Kwan Yew in the
premises of his speech on National Day, with a glossary of words implying the

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motive of being a team that moves forward and works to make Singapore strive:
“work/progress/act/come” […] together”.

The organisation of Citizen

🔗(full page)

This image that I chose to add is part of a section of the governmental institution
“Public service division” (PSD)’s website entitled “Cultivating a harmonious society,
becoming one people”, published in 2015 by the Prime minister’s office.

In this picture, a reunion takes place on the process of these newly Singaporean
citizens on their Citizenship Journey, where they attend Community Sharing
Sessions to meet other new citizens and grassroots leaders. We can also learn in
the page that the state organizes visits to places of worship and aim above all to
help new citizens learn about the diversity of cultures that « make up modern
Singapore », thus celebrating these varieties.
As the two other documents do, this image also highlights the proximity of
Singaporeans that Singapore encourages but also here implements officially
within its gestion of its citizens. Besides, “living in harmony” is a principle
written as the headlines of this page, explaining that “From schools to public
housing and National Service, we have infused our public institutions with
opportunities for Singaporeans of different backgrounds to come together,
understand one another and respect our society’s rich diversity.” This quote
stipulates that the inclusion and unity of the citizens is a crucial cause for the
PSD. Furthermore, in terms of the public housing mentioned, we can refer

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ourselves to the explanation video of the Housing Development Board published
by Bloomberg and detailing its deployment and rapid capacity to accommodate
400,000 people in 5 years. Precisely, another topic addressed by the association
is the purpose of the HDB regulation, as quoted here “HDB’s EIP, introduced in
1989, spells out the proportion of each major ethnic group who may own units
in an apartment block or neighbourhood. These stipulations ensure that most
families in Singapore (80% of whom reside in HDB’s public housing estates), will
live alongside others of different religion and ethnicities, sharing common
amenities such as playgrounds, shops and bus stops – the diametric opposite of
the colonial era norm of ethnic segregation. This discourages the formation of
ethnic enclaves, making the daily social experience of Singaporean life more
inclusive and diverse.”

As a matter of fact, Singapore, since the grant of its self-governing status in 1959, has
been aiming to reunite its once divided communities towards a common goal: having
a strong status and impact globally. To conclude, whether it means sharing a common
anthem advocating for a promising journey as one people, maintaining space for the
mingling of communities or organizing citizenships journeys, Singapore continues to
entice to bring its people together in order to achieve economic and social success.

Conclusion
I’ve found myself getting truly interested along the study of this unit, particularly
because of the newly covered thematic areas in which we dived in. First and
foremost, I wasn’t aware of this Lion city’s past colonialism period and even less so
that it represented such a crossroad in the East, exploited by the British Empire. Thus,
the details given for a much better understanding of the historical context were
exhilarating. Furthermore, I had no true idea of the population that made and makes
Singapore’s diversity and the reasons why these specific people coming from these
three main countries (China, Malaysia, India) landed in the country. In addition,
learning about the governing style of its former authoritarian leader, restraining some
fundamental freedoms at the expense of making strategic choices concerning the
investments and trade was an interesting paradox of power’s execution, leaving the
question of his ethical impact still debatable. The nation’s gestion of its public
housing policy was also a socio-economic topic that I enjoyed, as it was thrilling to
think about the state’s decisions and logic to do so. Lastly, the sustainable
development projects of Singapore and the latest innovations put in place truly
illustrated Singapore’s status as a high-tech trailblazer in the engineering field as
well, which was enlightening. To be more specific, the green mark schemes and B-
houses projects in term of environmental protection and smart city planning were the
ones that stuck with me the most. The collaboration they made with airbus to produce
delivery drones and equip houses with areo-spaces, called “Skyways” was an
example of a meticulous organization of the engineers that I found brilliant too.
Another futuristic invention that I am this time less enchanted with but that still
testifies to a technological prowess is the 3-D printed automatized food, additionally
linked to a monitoring watch.