"Gosh, dad, I'm really glad you took the time to explain the Feast of the
Hungry Ghosts to us in such minutely comprehensive detail."

"Look, son, here comes your mother with a nutritious low-cholesterol treat
of fat-free lup cheong and skimmed coconut milk "


And, in many ways, it really does seem like 1956 in Singapore; the war (or
economic struggle, in this case) has apparently been won, an expanded
middle class enjoys great prosperity, enormous public works have been
successfully undertaken, even more ambitious projects are under way, and a
deeply paternalistic government is prepared, at any cost, to hold at bay
the triple threat of communism, pornography, and drugs.

The only problem being, of course, that it isn't 1956 in the rest of
world. Though that, one comes to suspect, is something that Singapore
would prefer to view as our problem. (But I begin to wonder, late at night
and in the privacy of my hotel room - what might the future prove to be,
if this view should turn out to be right?)

Although you don't need Mormons making sure your pop is squeaky-clean when
you have the Undesirable Propagation Unit (UPU), one of several bodies of
official censors. (I can't say with any certainty that the UPU,
specifically, censors Singapore's popular music, but I love the name.)
These various entities attempt to ensure that red rags on the order of
Cosmopolitan don't pollute the body politic. Bookstores in Singapore,
consequently, are sad affairs, large busy places selling almost nothing I
would ever want to buy - as though someone had managed to surgically
neuter a W.H. Smith's. Surveying the science fiction and fantasy sections
of these stores, I was vaguely pleased to see that none of my own works
seemed to be available. I don't know for a fact that the UPU had turned
them back at the border, but if they had, I'd certainly be in good company.

The local papers, including one curiously denatured tabloid, New Paper,
are essentially organs of the state, instruments of only the most
desirable propagation. This ceaseless boosterism, in the service of order,
health, prosperity, and the Singaporean way, quickly induces a species of
low-key Orwellian dread. (The feeling that Big Brother is coming at you
from behind a happy face does nothing to alleviate this.) It would be
possible, certainly, to live in Singapore and remain largely in touch with
what was happening elsewhere. Only certain tonalities would be muted, or
tuned out entirely, if possible. . . .

Singaporean television is big on explaining Singaporeans to themselves.
Model families, Chinese, Malay, or Indian, act out little playlets
explicating the customs of each culture. The familial world implied in
these shows is like Leave It To Beaver without The Beave, a sphere of
idealized paternalism that can only remind Americans my age of America's
most fulsome public sense of itself in the mid-1950s.