Why Modernisation Harms Asian Countries More Than Western Countries (Part I)

The Story

I went on my first Learning Journey for the year today to Balestier. As part of the Learning Journey, we were supposed to reflect on whether Balestier was representative of "authentic" culture or "real" Singapore. While we made our way to the first checkpoint, a traditional bakery, some auntie walked past us and spat rather bitterly "What stupid school is this?" The answer was staring at her quite plainly from many of our classmates' shirts. Perhaps that was why she commented, loud enough for us to hear. We were never really quite welcome.

Undiscouraged, we manoeuvred around the shophouses, peered suspiciously at the traditional bakery, tried to get on the bakers' good side by purchasing bread, failed, moved on to the next checkpoint, cautiously stroked coffee tins at the coffee factory, remarked rather loudly on incredibly expensive coffee prices, and landed ourself in a nice cool air-conditioned hipster café. Familiar American pop remixes blasted from speakers, English-looking bicycles hoisted up as decorations on the wall.

There we settled ourselves down, bought some expensive drinks and dessert because they were "at least cheaper than Starbucks". We decided to stay there, enjoy the spacious cleanliness and fill in the Learning Journey handout.

At some point, while filling in the handout,  I became deeply unsettled. I realised that of all previous places we visited, all the reverberations of Singapore's past, I felt most comfortable in this hipster café, listening to Western music, watching people drink overpriced camomile tea, Coke float, ice cream cake, surrounded by Western everything.

I proceeded on with the Learning Journey trying to squish this realisation. I mean, afterwards we all seemed rather happy eating hawker food. We discussed rather energetically about how wonderful the chilli sauce was, and how oyster omelette artfully balances the oyster's slime with crispy fried egg. I could not squish this nagging feeling though, that maybe if we had to choose between hawker food and hipster cafés, hipster café would outshine every time.

The last checkpoint was Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall. People took selfies of themselves imitating poses of bronze statues and sculptures surrounding the building. It was like visiting a zoo. After five minutes or so, everyone left.

I didn't. Not because I am special, though maybe pretentious. I just thought since it was free entry I might as well make use of the opportunity to tour the exhibits. Tour the exhibits I did, but I did not look long at them. There were too many Chinese characters. They put me off. I ought to be ashamed.

I stopped in front of a documentary because I saw George Yeo's face on it. It was a documentary in English, and I stayed. It was some drab thing about the Xinhai Revolution. As I tried to take notes, I was pleasantly surprised that there was free Wi-Fi. Using the Wi-Fi, I played my game, still standing in front of the documentary screen, headphones on my ears. Occasionally I would change back to the Notes app so Chinese elderly walking past would not judge me.

How to modernise without losing your essence? (...) The West wants us to be like them, but we have to, in our core, know of our ancestry and draw upon it deep strength. (...) Learn from the West but do not be westernised (...) Sun Yat Sen had British education and was a Christian, but he remained Chinese in his encounters with Westerners (...) There is a reason why China likes the Singaporean model. Because we are modernised, we are open to new ideas, but our very core, we are not Western (...) It is important we stay true to ourselves. something along these lines came out from George Yeo's mouth.

The documentary was recorded in 2001 (or 2003, I did not pay much attention except confirm it was not recent).

A/N The previous post has many glaring problems but (I am sorry)I will not be editing them. Perhaps as an act of self-indulgence but I wanted to keep the mistakes as part of the memory of my first legitimate blog post in a long time. By the same logic, I might not be editing this and upcoming posts until a certain time where I decided I should stop being lame.

There will be a Part II to this where I actually address the post title. I just really want to sleep right now.