Culture of Singapore

As Singapore is a small and relatively modern amalgam of Chinese, Malay, Indian and European immigrants, the culture of Singapore expresses the diversity of the population as the various ethnic groups continue to celebrate their own cultures while they intermingle with one another. For example, one can find a Malay wedding taking place beside a Chinese funeral at a void deck, on the ground floor of a HDB apartment block. This can be said to be due to the policies of the HDB which tried to make sure all public housing have a diverse mix of races. However, Singapore has achieved a significant degree of cultural diffusion with its unique combination of these ethnic groups, and has given Singapore a rich mixture of diversity for its young age.

Singapore has several distinct ethnic neighborhoods, including Little India, Chinatown and Kampong Glam, formed by the Raffles Plan of Singapore in the early 19th century to segregate the new immigrants into specific areas. Although the population are no longer segregated in distribution, mainly due to the policies of the Housing Development Board and the ruling People's Action Party, these ethnic neighborhoods retain unique elements of their specific culture. The usage of such neighborhoods is mostly commercial or for cottage industry specific to the culture of its ethnic neighborhood, and no longer plays a large part in housing the population, although it was once used for that purpose. Hence, these neighborhoods have patronage of all races who wish to either eat or buy something specific to that culture.

For example, Little India is known and patronized by all races within the population for its thalis-- South Indian "buffets" that are vegetarian and served on the traditional banana leaves. These neighborhoods are accessible by public transport, especially by Mass Rapid Transit (MRT).

In other parts of the country, such segregation is discouraged by government policy. The policies of the Housing Development Board are designed to encourage a mix of all races within each housing district, with a quota system in place to achieve a minimum of minorities in each block. This effect can be observed in all parts of the country; for example a store devoted to selling Malay food might be right next to stores selling Chinese or Indian goods. The aim is to foster social cohesion and national loyalty, which Lee Kuan Yew felt was crucial for sustaining Singapore after independence when he was Prime Minister. There is a weighty emphasis on racial harmony and subsequent case study of historical events, such as the 1964 Race Riots.

Festivals

Main article: Holidays in Singapore

The major public holidays reflect the mentioned racial diversity, including Chinese New Year, Buddhist Vesak Day, Muslim Eid ul-Fitr (known locally by its Malay name Hari Raya Puasa), and Hindu Diwali (known locally by its Tamil name Deepavali). Christians constitute a large minority, and Christmas Day, Good Friday, and New Year's Day are also public holidays.

On August 9, Singapore celebrates the anniversary of its independence with a series of events, including the National Day Parade which is the main ceremony. The National Day Parade, 2005 was held at the Padang in the city centre.

Religion

Sri Mariamman Temple, built in 1843, is the largest Hindu temple in Singapore.

Singapore is a multi-religious country, the roots of which can be traced to its strategic location; after its declaration as a port, a wide variety of nationalities and ethnicities from places as far as Arabia immigrated to Singapore. More than 40% of the Singaporeans adhere to Buddhism, the main faith of the Chinese population of Singapore. Other Chinese are followers of Taoism, Confucianism, and Christianity. Christians constitute about 14% of the population of Singapore. Most Malays are Muslims, who constitute about 15% of the population, while most Indians are Hindus, constituting 7%. There is also a sizable number of Muslims and Sikhs in the Indian population.

As a result of this diversity, there are a large number of religious buildings including Hindu temples, churches and mosques, some of which have great historical significance. There are also some Sikh temples and Jewish synagogues. These interesting buildings often became prominent architectural landmarks in cosmopolitan Singapore.

A selected list of religious sites in Singapore include

• Hajjah Fatimah Mosque
• Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Temple
• Masjid Jamae
• Sakya Muni Buddha Gaya Temple
• Central Sikh Temple
• Sri Mariamman Temple
• Sultan Mosque
• St. Andrew's Cathedral
• Chesed-El Synagogue
• Saint Joseph's Church (former Portuguese Mission)
• Cathedral of the Good Shepherd
• Churches

In addition, about 14% of Singaporeans do not belong to any religion and consider themselves as "free-thinkers".

Racial harmony

Racial harmony is an important concept in Singaporean society. Briefly shaken by the racial riots in Singapore's history during the 1960s, it emerged stronger after independence and is seen as a cornerstone of Singapore's culture today.

Religious tolerance has been strongly encouraged since the British colonised Singapore; the Sri Mariamman Temple (a south Indian Hindu temple that was declared a national heritage site in the 1980s), as well as the Masjid Jamae Mosque that served Chulia Muslims from India's Coromandel Coast is situated along South Bridge Road, which is a major, and old road that runs through Chinatown. Among other religious landmarks is the Church of Gregory the Illuminator, that was built in 1836, making it one of the oldest religious buildings in Singapore. It has been preserved to the present day, and Orthodox services continue to be held in it. Although orthodox religions are tolerated, some groups are banned, including Jehovah's Witness, which opposes Singapore's policy of national service.

Cuisine

A typical open-air kopi tiam (coffee shop) in Singapore.

Main article: Cuisine of Singapore

Singaporean cuisine is also a prime example of diversity and cultural diffusion in Singapore. In Singapore's hawker centres, for example, traditionally Malay hawker stalls selling halal food may serve halal versions of traditionally Tamil food. Chinese stalls may introduce Malay ingredients, cooking techniques or entire dishes into their range of catering. This continues to make the cuisine of Singapore significantly rich and a cultural attraction.

Some favorite local foods include:

• Bak kut teh
• Char kway teow
• Hainanese chicken rice
• Hokkien mee
• Ketupat
• Laksa
• Nasi lemak
• Rojak
• Roti prata
• Satay

Singaporeans also enjoy a wide variety of seafood including crabs, clams, squid, and oysters. One favorite dish is the stingray barbecued and served on banana leaf and with sambal (chilli).

Language

There are four official languages in Singapore: English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil. In general, English tends to be the language spoken widely in the business, education and government sector of Singapore. But colloquially, the Singaporean also speaks a diverse and mixed language that can involve English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil, depending on the circle one is associated with, the age group, the race and the location.

The English used is primarily British English, with some American English influences. The local colloquial dialect of English is known formally as Singapore Colloquial English (though it is more commonly called "Singlish"), and has many creole-like characteristics, having incorporated much vocabulary and grammar from various Chinese dialects, Malay, and Indian languages. Singlish is basically identical to Manglish (the English dialect of Malaysia), and is the usual language on the streets, but is frowned upon in official contexts, and this matter has been brought up in recent years in the Parliament and the ruling party. English used among the population generally became more widespread after the implementation of English as a first language medium in the Singapore education system in 1980.

Mandarin Chinese is the second most commonly-spoken language among the Singaporean Chinese population. It became widespread after the start of the Speak Mandarin campaign during 1980, which aims to make Mandarin the common speech tongue among the Chinese in Singapore. In 1990s, effort was taken to target the English-educated Chinese. Colloquially (on street), the Mandarin in Singapore is spoken in a mixed way similar to Singlish, in which Mandarin is often mixed with other Chinese dialects, English or Malay words. Such colloquial Dialect is known as Singdarin. The accent of Mandarin Chinese language spoken in Singapore is largely influenced by Chinese dialects such as Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew etc and in comparison to the standard Beijing accent, it has no "r" tone, exhibiting a Chinese accent unique to Singapore and also found in neighbouring Malaysia.

Performing arts

Singapore is emerging as a cultural centre for arts and culture, including theatre and music. As a cosmopolitan and multi-racial society, Singapore is often identified with the "gateway between the East and West". In the past decade, there is an emergence of several performing arts groups in Singapore, especially in theatrical arts. A number of productions were staged successfully and several groups, such as TheatreWorks, have performed in overseas. In recent years, more and more contemporary dance companies were formed as dancers from pioneering companies become individual artists.

The Singapore government encourages a product-oriented arts scene within its master plan to include arts as a commodity for its economy, true explorations and innovation exist but at a level that is not well funded.

However, the local scene of constructive arts critics is still much under developed and often subjective in tone. Most prominent events and venues are government operated and normally with an international focus. The Singapore government having hospitality to foreigners and talents on top of their list, tourists can expect to see a wide variety of performances and even those from their own countries. For indigenous artistic works, it's best to explore and find out about local private arts companies. Another festival that is going strong is the Singapore Youth Festival organised by the Ministry of Education, in fact, it has become a magnet that provide bread and butter works for local performing artists to work for most local schools to compete for the gold!

Other than that, it is still an extremely courageous act for the local practitioners to propose and try to power private initiated projects of updated artistic vision.

A small nation is Singapore, the good thing is that it is easier for the government to streamline and control what they want, the bad thing is that there is relatively less room for passionate artists to survive fighting for what they stand for.

Arts is nourishment for the soul, and should be supported for this sole reason and if the country can afford. It is good for the nation's self esteem and pride if it is original and of indigenous origin.

Prominent local arts groups include:

• TheatreWorks
• ACT 3 International
• The Necessary Stage
• Singapore Repertory Theatre
• W!LD RICE
• The Theatre Practice
• The ETCeteras
• ECNAD Project
• Singapore Dance Theatre
• Dance Ensemble Singapore
• Singapore Symphony Orchestra
• Singapore Chinese Orchestra
• Orkestra Melayu Singapura
• Singapore Indian Orchestra and Choir
• The Singapore Lyric Opera

Funding for these arts companies are divided into different class, some are government inititiated companies and may received direct funding from the government (eg Singapore Symphony Orchestra) while others will need to apply for funding through the National Arts Council. At the moment, major grants are given to mainly western and ethnic cultural companies to signify them as the flagship companies of Singapore.

Due to the limited physical space of Singapore, arts groups and companies are also relatively dependent on housing arrangement and provision by the government. So far, the issue on space is still one of the major factors that influence performing arts making in Singapore. A much more vibrant local scene may evolved if this issue can be carefully resolved.

Singapore hosts an annual Singapore Arts Festival when international and local artists gather in the country to perform in a wide variety of events including music, dance and theatre. The Singapore Arts Festival has become an event for Singapore to showcase its ability to buy international renowned performing arts products.

In 2003, the Esplanade - "Theatres on the Bay", a centre for performing arts, was opened. The Esplanade is also known as "The Durian", due to its resemblance to the fruit.

Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) and LASALLE College of the Arts are the two main arts institutions offering full-time programmes for the performing arts in Singapore. Institutions including government schools nowadays receive good funding for their arts programmes.

Cultural policy

Further information: Censorship in Singapore

Singapore is a relentlessly G-rated experience, micromanaged by a state that has the look and feel of a very large corporation. ... There's a certain white-shirted constraint, an absolute humorlessness in the way Singapore Ltd. operates; conformity here is the prime directive, and the fuzzier brands of creativity are in extremely short supply.

—William Gibson, "Disneyland with the Death Penalty", Wired Issue 1.04, September 1993.

Singapore maintains tight restrictions on arts and cultural performances. Most artistic works have to be vetted by the government in advance, and topics that breach so-called out of bounds markers (OB markers) are not permitted. While the OB markers are not publicly defined, they are generally assumed to include sensitive topics such as race, religion, and allegations of corruption or nepotism in government. Nudity and other forms of loosely-defined "obscenity" are also banned. Singaporean film director Royston Tan has produced movies which challenge these policies, including a movie called Cut in reference to censorship of the arts.^[1]

The country's first pre-tertiary arts school, The Arts School, is currently being built at Kirk Terrace. Expected to commence in 2008, the school aims to provide an environment for nurturing young artists aged between 13 and 18 years old.^[2]

There has been much public rhetoric about liberalization and its association with the development of a creative economy in Singapore. The response from artists, academics, public intellectuals, and civil society activists has ranged from strongly optimistic to deeply pessimistic, as reflected in the chapters written for edited book Renaissance Singapore? Economy, Culture, and Politics.^[3]

Culture

Enjoying Singaporean cuisine is a national pastime. Hawker centres and kopi tiams are well-distributed throughout the country.

The majority of Singaporeans live in planned estates of high-rise, high-density HDB flats.

Singapore is a small and relatively modern amalgam of an indigenous Malay population with a third generation Chinese majority, as well as Indian and Arab immigrants with some intermarriages. There also exist Eurasian and Peranakan (known also as 'Straits Chinese') communities. Singapore has also achieved a significant degree of cultural diffusion with its unique combination of these ethnic groups, and this has given Singapore a rich mixture of diversity for its young age. One of the prime examples is in Singaporean cuisine, often a cultural attraction for tourists.

The English used is primarily British English, with some American English influences. The local colloquial dialect of English is Singlish, which has many creole-like characteristics, having incorporated vocabulary and grammar from various Chinese dialects, Malay, and Indian languages. Singlish is spoken commonly on the streets, but the government frowns upon its use in official contexts. English became widespread in Singapore after it was implemented as a first language medium in the education system, and English is the most common language in Singaporean literature.

Singapore has several ethnic neighbourhoods, including Little India and Chinatown. These were formed under the Raffles Plan to originally segregate the immigrants, but now have a diverse patronage whose main intentions are to either eat or buy something specific to that culture. Many places of worship were also constructed during the colonial era, a practice encouraged by the British to promote religious tolerance. Sri Mariamman Temple, the Masjid Jamae Mosque and the Church of Gregory the Illuminator are among those that were built during the colonial period. Work is now underway to preserve these religious sites as National Monuments of Singapore. The policy for the primarily commercial ethnic neighbourhoods stands in contrast to the housing policies of the Housing and Development Board (HDB). HDB policies attempt to promote a mix of all races within each housing district in order to foster social cohesion and national loyalty.^[4]

Creative writing

Main article: Literature of Singapore

Singapore has a rich heritage in Creative Writing in the Malay, Chinese, Tamil and English Languages. While there is more emphasis on social and patriotic themes in Malay, Chinese and Tamil, the writer in English finds himself (or herself) more comfortable in the analysis of the individual and his motivations. For the writer in Tamil, Chinese and Malay, a healthy concern with the particulars of everyday life (one could say the minutae of living) and the interweaving of these into the fabric of larger nationalistic, patriotic social events is in no way an offensive experience -- in fact it is expected. The writer in English seems more concerned with discovering an image of the individual self, or extrapolating human experience. The social milieu of the English educated is a middle class one and they have middle class pretensions. The middle class preoccupation with the self has over the years pervaded the consciousness of the modern Chinese and Malay writers and is what made it possible for their identification with writers using the English Language.

The writer in the English language was a comparatively later phenomenon. Creative writing in English is traced to the establishment in Singapore of an institution of higher education in the arts and sciences, Raffles College, which subsequently became the University of Malaya in Singapore together with the King Edward VII Medical College. One of the high points in writing in English was the early and mid-fifties when a rising anti-colonial nationalism was at play and contributed to the desire to be identified as "Malayan". The poems of Wang Gungwu, Lim Thean Soo and Augustine Goh Sin Tub from this period are in a category by themselves. Except for Wang who managed to move into some detached social poems, the rest are mostly personal and experimental in their use of language. The imagery is for most part forcedly local with rubber trees, durians, laterite etc appearing again and again as do words and phrases from Malay and Chinese. This led to the coining of the word "Engmalchin" to explain the highly rarefied, nationalistic application of such languages in poems in English.

In the mid-fifties and early sixties there rose a group of writers in English, only a few of whom are alive today--Ee Tiang Hong, Edwin Thumboo, Lloyd Fernando and Oliver Seet. A "younger" group among whom Wong Phui Nam was most outstanding arose a few years later and moved away from the conscious Malayaness of their immediate predecessors, but found themselves unsure of direction; though convinced of their interest in writing.

During this period (1950-1963), prose writing was almost negligible. Herman Hochstadt's "The Compact and Other Stories" is about the only collection. Lloyd Fernando, then a short story writer, published his first novel after 20 years. Of the other writers, Awang Kedua (Wang Gung Wu, again) had surest control of language and development of theme. It was however, poetry and not prose that surged forward in the sixties beginning with Robert Yeo, Dudely de Souza, Arthur Yap(died in 2006) and Wong May. The achievements of these writers were consolidated and enlarged by the establilshment of "FOCUS", the journal of the Literary Society of the University of Singapore, so much so that when the next group of writers, Lee Tzu Pheng, Mohd Hj Salleh, Yeo Bock Cheng, Pang Khye Guan, Syed Alwi Shahab and Chandran Nair(now living in Paris) arrived at the University in 1965, there was already in existence within the confines of the University, a micro-tradition of writing and publishing in English. The arrival of Edwin Thumboo to the English Department from the Civil Service was an added impetus.

At around this time too, Goh Poh Seng (now living in Canada), who had actually taken a year off to do nothing but write in Dublin and London (and almost starved as a result), arrived to begin work as a Medical Officer at the General Hospital. He started "TUMASEK" a journal for the publication of Singapore/Malayan writing; the fourth such attempt -- the first being "WRITE" begun by Herman Hochstadt and others in the late 1950s; the second,"MONSOON" edited by Lim Siew Wai in the early sixties; the third, the aforementioned "FOCUS". "TUMASEK" however followed "MONSOON" into death after a few issues but Goh pushed forward undaunted and founded together with Lim Kok Ann, CENTRE 65 which presented the first ever "Poetry and Folk Music Festival" to Singaporeans at the Cultural Centre in 1966. The Centre provided Goh with the framework to develop as a playwright beginning with his "Moon is Less Bright" and going on to "When Smiles are Done". Goh later decided that his particular field was prose; "The Immolation" being his first novel.

The poets of the mid-sixties extended their style and techniques in the seventies and published in local and international journals and also in individual collections--Robert Yeo's "Coming Home Baby" and Arthur Yap's "Only Lines" in 1971, Chandran Nair's "Once the Horsemen and Other Poems" in 1972, and "After the Hard Hours, This Rain" in 1975. The impetus of the sixties was carried over into the seventies and among the names that emerged in poetry were Chung Yee Chong, Sng Boh Kim, Ernest Lim, and Geraldine Heng, who achieved a remarkable fluency of style in a single volume work, "White Dreams".

Today the younger poets writing in English, Leong Liew Geok, Angeline Yap, Boey Kim Cheng, Heng Siok Tian, Paul Tan, Yong Shu Hoong, Cyril Wong and Felix Cheong, show a more "diffusive" sensibility: rather than treating the self as linked to a core or primal place or time (Singapore before independence, a childhood haunt), their poems are conscious of the change and flux, the dispersions and returns which are appropriate to comtemprorary Singapore society.

National pride

The Institute of Policy Studies in Singapore (IPS) conducted the General Pride portion of a survey by the International Social Survey Program on 1500 individuals. According to the IPS, Singapore’s “mean score of 17.2 puts it on par with the US…and ahead of Japan” and they concluded that “Singaporeans are very proud of their country”. It was also noted that Singaporeans with university educations typically had a lower level of national pride, with a score of 16.1 compared to a score of 17.0 for diploma holders, and a score of 16.9 for post-secondary students.^[5]

National symbols

• Flag of Singapore
• Coat of arms of Singapore
• Majulah Singapura - the National Anthem of Singapore
• Singapore National Pledge
• Vanda Miss Joaquim - the National Flower of Singapore
• Symbol of Singapore - the Lion Head symbol

See also

• Holidays in Singapore
• Cinema of Singapore
• Cuisine of Singapore
• Literature of Singapore
• Dance in Singapore
• Music of Singapore
• Tourism in Singapore

Water and beach activities at Palawan Beach, Sentosa.

References and notes

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