The cultural identity of Singapore is complicated but rather fascinating. When you get off the plane and walk the streets, there is English everywhere. On Signage, on menus, on maps, on the bookshelves, everywhere. But the people are anything but what you would consider ‘typical’. The majority of Singapore is ethnically Chinese, followed by Malay and Indian with a small minority being Caucasian. So already we can see this language and ethnic blend is likely to produce something rather unique. But exactly what rather surprised me.
I first noticed something a little off when I experienced a significant bout of cognitive dissonance and culture shock when I ‘Jalan Jalan’ (walking) around the town. I remember it quite clearly. The disconnect in expectations from the superficial observations of Singapore and the actual experiences with the locals – not quite, as i would expect, typically western, and yet not, as I would expect, not quite eastern. In retrospect, and to be fair, my dissonance probably stemmed from the fact that every English-speaking country on the planet is, on balance, largely very similar in it’s cultural values. Think the US, Britain, New Zealand etc. And so I had, without being aware, been primed to have a rather nasty culture shock experience without realizing it. A problem a good many people who visit or get posted to Singapore experience for similar reasons. But it was these adjustment issues that got me thinking more critically about the cultural nature of Singapore. Why it didn’t fit neatly into a western or eastern category, and how the role of English served as a very deceptive indicator of cultural orientation for me.
What I learned, after much psychological pain and angst, was that the cultural pragmatism of the original inhabitants of Temasek (the name of the island prior to British settlement) was still alive and well today. Because the original inhabitants, or at least the very early settlers, of Temasek are what we call ‘Peranakans’ today. Which essentially means, Straits born Chinese. This group of people probably arrived in the region up to 1000 years ago, driven out of their native homeland in Southern China for lack of economic opportunity. As such, they set their sights on opportunities abroad, as was quite typical of many Chinese at the time.
As is the case for many migrants, and given the nature of work in the era, the Chinese were often forced to build their own businesses and serve as ‘middlemen minorities’, a sort of gateway between their new homeland and their old motherland. Ultimately, this resulted in a good many, if not most/all of the Peranakan population becoming businessmen and/or merchants in the area, accumulating vast amounts of wealth in the process.
But doing so was no mean feat. It required extreme strategic cultural adaptability, with a very much ‘ends justify the means’ sort of mentality. In order to service the needs of their new homeland, the newly arrived Peranakans had to learn to speak the language of the locals. They began to speak Malay to converse the local Malay populations, and, pertinently, their own form of Malay at home, which came to be known as Baba Malay. But the point is, in the interests of success, they forfeited a significant portion of their former cultural identity – their language.
Furthermore, the newly arrived and aspiring business men (and it was mostly men), also discovered that the best ways of making headway into making business deals with locals was to marry into powerful and well connected families. Partly due to necessity, but also partly due to opportunity, the Chinese who arrived in the Straits took on local Malay wives. And many of them. Multiple wives were a common occurrence among the Peranakan communities. This meant that the Peranakan population exploded in size.
From a cultural perspective, the significant element of these two facts, 1 – embracing the local language and adapting it to ones own interests, and 2 – marrying into and having children with members of the local community, brought about an entire cohort of humans beings who had a unique culture. This was, in essence, the birth of Peranakan culture. And what was the defining hallmark of this culture? Pragmatism.
Throughout the history of the Peranakans in Singapore they have evolved to adapt and grow in whatever circumstances they existed in at the time. This meant that as various colonial powers moved in and moved out of the region, they began to learn whatever language was necessary to better their chances of servicing the business needs of the new colonial arivees. But the key junction occurred in 1824, at the signing of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty. The Chinese Peranakans at the time had been, in essence, backing the British. They had been learning and adopting English as a language of their own, reserving Baba Malay for their home environments. This proved to be lucrative as after the Anglo-Dutch Treaty, Britain consolidated it’s control over Peninsular Malayu, thereby, by implication, consolidating the Peranakans position of power among the British colonialists, and placing them high on the social pecking order within the new settlement. Not to mention, lining their pockets handsomely at the same time.
This is how the Peranakan Chinese managed to arrive in the region, and create for themselves, not only a unique culture, but a successful and thriving one. One based on business and pragmatism.
Its not hard to see how, many years later, this has become the very nature of Singapore today. Walking through the streets of Singapore, it’s easy to be fooled into thinking the country is culturally very western orientated. But much like their forefathers, this is pragmatism at best. The people of Singapore often do not speak English at home, or among themselves. English is the language of business and pragmatism. It is there to make money and earn a living, not much more. As it has been for them for the last thousand years or so. The idea that because the Singaporeans converse and write in English, makes them western or even necessarily favourable to western interests, is a mistake. A sort of ‘ruse’. One that they have been pulling off effectively, to their own benefit, for many centuries.
Make no mistake, the Singaporeans are governing, and operating, for the benefit of the Singaporeans. They always have and they always will. It is what has made them a fantastically successful and wealthy trading port over the years. And it’s this pragmatism that will likely keep Singapore competitive and relevant going into the future.
But all in all, it was a rather interesting voyage of discovery. Singapore, on the surface, is a fairly innocuous and benign society. And by many metrics it is. But that also belies the extremely complex cultural undertones of the country.
A good analogy in my mind is the Singaporean shop house. Where typically the family home is split into two distinct areas. There is the front of house – where the business is conducted, and a certain code of conduct associated with that behaviour might be expected. Then there is the back of house – where the family lives, and the true nature of the house inhabitants is revealed. This is the perfect analogy for what Singapore is. One giant shophouse. Where as an outsider, you will be invited in to see the parts of the country that the host want you to see, but all the while there is another part of the house, operating independently of the front, with its own culture, its own language, its own tempo, that is actually the heart of the house.
It’s a truly fascinating cultural experience.
Photographer and cULTURE VULTure 
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