Ghost Train to the Eastern Star (51 page)

Lee, a Cambridge graduate, is a great admirer of the British. He has a prickly history with the United States—his socialist utterances in the 1960s provoked the CIA to subvert some people in his party with payoffs and intrusions. He has never forgiven America for this.

"He's a frank admirer of President Bush," one of my Singaporean friends said. "But he disliked Clinton for his irregular private life. Do you remember when that American boy damaged the car and was caned for it?"

This was Michael Fay, an eighteen-year-old who was stripped naked, bent over a trestle and tied, then ass-whipped with six strokes. He also got a heavy fine and four months in prison—this for spray-painting graffiti on cars in a Singapore parking lot. Fay was a punk who deserved to be disciplined. But whipped? Yet his punishment was mild, practically ridiculous, in comparison with the torture meted out to many others in Singapore's jails, whose cases never got into the newspapers: many more strokes, long prison sentences on political grounds or for thought crimes, or death by hanging for drug offenses.

Wang said, "Fay would not have been caned had Reagan been in power. Lee was trying to teach Clinton a lesson, showing Clinton that Singapore disapproved of him by whipping the American boy."

Some U.S. senators lodged a protest. President Clinton called the punishment "excessive," though his outrage at the caning must be weighed against his unseemly haste just two years earlier, in 1992, to stop campaigning for president in New Hampshire and fly back to Arkansas to authorize the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally retarded black man.

The American reaction to Fay's punishment provoked Lee to reveal in an outburst what he really thought of American society and how he viewed Singapore. "The U.S. government, the U.S. Senate, and the U.S. media took the opportunity to ridicule us, saying the sentence was too severe," he said in a television interview. The United States "does not restrain or punish individuals, forgiving them for whatever they have
done. That's why the whole country is in chaos: drugs, violence, unemployment, and homelessness."

Like the head of an isolated cult who preaches to his people that only they are pure in a wicked world, Lee actually believes that America is "in chaos," and he enjoins Singaporeans to believe this nonsense and to count their blessings. We Americans are undisciplined and bestial, out of control and criminal. Singapore is the opposite, orderly and safe, nonviolent and hard-working, and will continue to be so under Lee's leadership.

Some time ago, on a rare trip to Paris, so a well-placed friend told me, Lee was granted a meeting with François Mitterrand. Lee began lecturing the premier of France on governance. After Lee had left the room, Mitterrand said, "Who is this ridiculous man who wastes my time? Running Singapore is like running Marseilles. I am running a whole country!"

Lee's Anglophilia is shared by Singaporeans, but it is based on a dated notion of English ways, a set of social snobberies—tea-drinking, cricket-watching, and harmless affectations—and an overformal way of dressing in the Singapore heat, turning up the air conditioning so they can wear tweeds and Burberry sweaters. Like Lee, Singaporeans are assiduous, honest, tidy to the point of obsessiveness, and efficient. They also tend to be inflexible and stern. They are fluent in English, though with a small vocabulary, and in pronunciation and idiomatic bewilderments they have made the language their own. Their jaw-twisting yips and glottal stops are so sudden and glugging that some words can sound less like language than a gag reflex.

Lee is a vain and domineering patriarch, and with the passing years he sounds more and more like the head of a cult than a political leader. His son Lee Hsien Loong is prime minister, and a chip off the old block. Hsien Loong's wife, Ho Ching, is the executive director of the government-linked Temasek Holdings. The Lee family is the nearest thing to a political dynasty. Yet Lee never smiles. He is never satisfied.

"No one ever gets a compliment here," a Singaporean woman told me. "There is no flattery. People are suspicious of compliments or any expression of appreciation. Toughness is the style. Good manners are suspect."

In a Singapore joke, a man goes into an antique shop and sees a lovely
image next to an ugly one. "I know that's Kwan Yin, the goddess of mercy," the man says, "but who is that ugly one?" The shop owner says, "It's Kwan Yew, the god of no mercy."

Singaporeans are intensely aware of their living like lab rats in this huge social experiment. It seems to make them melancholic and self-conscious and defensive.

Singapore is a real tinkered-with experiment—not the political con game of Turkmenistan, or the free-for-all of India, or the tyranny of Myanmar, or the muddle and make-do of Sri Lanka, or the neglect of Laos. Thailand seemed to me exceptional—a success because people were proud, loved their king, had a sense of unity, and had never been colonized. Singapore came into existence because the British colonized the jungly place. Having made it a class- and race-conscious island of clubs and bars, the British kept it as an imperial artifact until the Japanese invaded, during World War II, little skinny soldiers riding in on bikes, capturing the island, and humiliating the British for four years in diabolical prisons.

The Japanese demonstrated that British rule was hollow, self-interested, and weak. After the war, the British looked impotent and lost their will to govern. Singapore was dominated by Islamic, Chinese-hating Malaya, which became the Republic of Malaysia in 1963. At last, in 1965, in a lachrymose display, weeping on TV (but he cries easily), Lee declared the island's independence. He was humbled, because he had believed his destiny was to be Malaysia's prime minister, not CEO of this tiny island, more a corporation or a cult than a country. But he reminded Singaporeans that they were surrounded by enemies, and he invited the world to do business in his city-state. Foreign companies relocated here, invested their capital, and helped Singapore to become an economic success. It has flourished because it made itself useful to the great powers and to global business.

Because initiative is dangerous in an autocracy, Singaporeans are employees, not innovators. And because space is at a premium and the cost of living is high, Singaporeans marry late and, either through pessimism or procrastination, tend not to produce children. The birth rate fell so sharply in the early eighties that a government dating agency was started in 1984, to host matchmaking parties, to promote marriages and births. This agency, called the Social Development Unit, or SDU (known to
Singapore wags as Single, Desperate, and Ugly), was a failure. While I was in Singapore in 2006, it was disbanded.

Over the course of my week here, I reacquainted myself with old Singapore friends and heard their stories.

One said: "My wife went to Australia. She was studying for a degree. But when she finished, she wouldn't come back. I went there and tried to persuade her. She said that she could never live here again, although she was born here. It wasn't a man. She just couldn't bear Singapore any-more.So we got a divorce."

One said: "Your student [and he named him] killed himself. Your student [and he named her] also killed herself. Suicide is a Singapore solution."

One said: "We never go to Malaysia or Indonesia, although they're right next door. The Muslims are crazy. They want to overwhelm us. They deliberately isolated us."

One said: "Life here is shopping and eating. Also 'What kind of car do you have?' and 'Where are you going on vacation?' When women get together they talk about clubs, investments, money, stock tips, and servants."

One said: "Do you remember [and he named two former students]? They got married, but when they split up she became a fanatical Catholic. She never goes out. She only stays in her flat and prays."

One said: "I bought a new car a few years ago. It cost me forty-five thousand dollars U.S. I first had to apply for a permit to buy it. In ten years I'll have to renew this permit, and that will cost money. Everything is regulated—buying the car, driving, access, parking. It's a fortune, and this is just a little Nissan sedan. But no one really needs a car here."

One said: "We never talk about politics, race, or religion. We never talk about the prime minister. We never tell ethnic jokes. We hardly tell jokes. Joking can be dangerous."

One said: "Yes, we're pushy. There's a reason for it—the Hokkien expression
kia su,
'afraid to lose.' No one wants to be seen holding the short straw."

One said: "Remember [and he named a Singaporean]? He still hates you!"

One said: "Yes, it is a life without texture."

One said: "The big man [Lee] has erased the old Singapore. Singapore
begins with him. He has obliterated the past. Though you can see the city had a colonial history, he has tried to erase it. That's your problem here, Paul—you're a ghost from the past."

***

AND HERE IS THE CONTRADICTION
. Everyone I met in Singapore treated me with the utmost courtesy. I was fed the Singapore delicacies—chili crabs and dumplings and steamed fish and bowls of
laksa.
I was invited to give a lecture at the new national library, and four hundred people showed up. I was driven around by the sweetest, most solicitous people I'd met on my whole trip. They smoothed my way. What did I need? How could they help? Did I want something to read? Was there anyone I'd like to meet? Was I hungry? Was I tired? Was I having a good time?

I swore I would not carp. I had been sick on my trip, endured nasty governments and horrible hotels, drunk filthy water on dirty trains and eaten disgusting food and put up with drunks and thieves and pests. Here I was in a place where everything worked, everything was clean, everything was on time.

While I wrote my notes at night, my hand began to shake. It seemed ungrateful to be criticizing, yet it was horribly unfair that there was so little room for people to grow and be happy. The government's interest in the arts or culture was entirely fictitious, just another bid for control. For all the bright talk there was a reflex of pessimism when it came to action. No one wanted to have children in Singapore, not many people even wanted to get married. The city-state kept evolving, but because the rule was "conform or leave," Singaporeans remained in a condition of arrested development, all the while being reminded that they were lucky to be governed by inspired leadership—in effect, the Lee family.

Lee was a social leveler, but like all levelers he had elevated himself, introduced contradictions, and created a society in which there were privileges for the few, monotony for the many. Lee and his planners were full of great ideas. The trouble was—and it seemed to me a fault of most repressive, power-hungry people—they didn't know when to stop.

***

BUT THERE IS ANOTHER SINGAPORE
. It takes a while to find, and you need someone in the know to help. One of my friends, "Jason Tan,"
heard me denouncing Lee for sanitizing the place, and said, "Give me a couple of days. I'll show you things that most people don't see."

The first thing I saw, at midnight in the outer district of Geylang, was a skinny prostitute in a tight red dress, praying as she burned so-called gold paper (
kim chwa
in Hokkien) in a brazier on the sidewalk, a thick sheaf of gilt-embossed fake banknotes—quite a blaze, outside a noisy joint where other prostitutes (kittenish, vulpine) were groping men, who were standing at a bar.

"She is transferring gold," Jason said, "from this world to the souls in the underworld, who can spend it—like Western Union, into the next world."

I liked this unusual Singapore sight: decadent beauty, obvious vice, ancient superstition, defiant litter, veneration, smoke and ashes. There was something about this intense little ceremony, being performed by a dusky dragon lady in a crimson dress, white-faced with makeup, red lips, with long fingernails and stiletto heels, that made it superb.

In a Singapore that had turned its back on the past, that never talked about having been part of the British empire, or despised subjects of the Japanese for four years of occupation, or as the setting for books by Joseph Conrad, Somerset Maugham, Anthony Burgess, or even me—Singapore's history had started with Lee Kwan Yew—this prostitute praying in the open, using fake money and real flames, was a strange and wonderful thing.

Something stranger lay beyond her: twelve long streets of whorehouses, massage parlors, bars, knocking shops, and love hotels. Local lady-boys—young men in makeup—were cruising and winking, and so were transvestites; streetwalkers were perched on benches or motorcycles, looking decorous and making kissing sounds of invitation.

"How much?"

"Eighty dollah. Take me."

That was fifty U.S. dollars, and in Geylang it was the going rate for a short time.

"You want I come your hotel? Hundred dollah. Take me."

Some slender women from China with snake-like features and long legs simply held their breasts and offered them in delicate eloquence, saying, "No speak English."

It was the old recognizable Singapore, but there was much more of it than before. Because Singaporeans were encouraged to put the best
face on their city-state, and because (as I learned later) none of the sex workers were Singaporean, this wild side was never written about or advertised.

"See? See?" Jason Tan said. "This is Lorong Four—all the even-numbered streets up to Lorong Twenty-four or Twenty-six are reserved for sex."

Lorong
is the Malay word for lane or small street, and we were walking up East Coast Road, which bisected the numbered streets, looking east down the lorongs where each shophouse held ten or fifteen prostitutes, some lolling on couches, others sitting inside glass enclosures like aquariums, each girl wearing a number and frantically beckoning as we came near.

"Does the government know about this?"

"Are you kidding? These are government-licensed whorehouses. The girls have medical cards. They have to get regular checkups."

It was more than a few licentious streets; it was a whole district of crowded roads, each one like Gin Lane—noodle shops, open-air bars, brothels, cheap hotels, women sitting on curbstones, teenagers gaping, groups of young men swigging beer; very busy on this hot night, very noisy, very lively. The pedestrians and gawkers were mainly locals—Chinese, Malays, Indians, with a smattering of bewildered
ang mohs,
the Singapore term for red-haired devils. Because Singapore was well policed, the district was safe; because Singapore is tidy-minded, there was no litter; and because of restrictions, there was hardly any traffic. Just strollers, cruisers, touts, pimps, and the usual selection of Artful Dodgers. The whole district was well organized while allowing freedom of movement. I didn't see any police, yet it was orderly, and I presumed self-regulated, probably by gangs, the Triads, the secret societies that have been enforcers in Singapore since the nineteenth century.