A Real Fine City

Air conditioning hits me full in the face as I enter a souvenir shop across from St. Andrew's Cathedral. I find the flag I'm looking for , but there's also a coffee mug that catches my attention. It reads "Singapore is a Real FINE Place."

The mug is blue and carries a list, pictures circled and crossed out in red, of the various offences in the city and their associated fines. No Spitting, $500; No Chewing Gum, $500, No Urinating in Lift, $500. Though there are more, these examples get to the heart of Singapore: it's a place that likes rules and order. One piece of tourist kitsch has summed up an entire municipal attitude.

At least they can laugh about it, I think to myself.

I leave the shop and get to thinking about what I'll find on my day's walk. My route goes through Chinatown, a place the world over that evokes very specific sights and sounds and smells. The clatter of humanity. The grunge of not enough time in the day. The stink of deregulation.

Will all of those things be there in a city where littering is punishable by a $500 fine? I catch the metro to get my answer.

Outside of Outram Park station, I turn onto Eu Tong Sen Street and know I'm in Chinatown. A big red arch with Chinese characters rests over the passing cars - that's about it. Otherwise, I am on a street like any other in Singapore. There are multiple lanes of traffic, office buildings and department store, coffee shops.

I find my way to the incongruously named Smith Street and think, this is better! Shops are crammed together and filled to overflowing. Red lanterns string their way overhead from one side of the traffic to the other.

Something, however, is still not quite Chinatown about this Chinatown. A monolithic office building stares across at the Chinese merchants; Oriental Plaza is just around the corner, full of niche clothing stores. I have yet to smell anything that requires me to re-straighten my nose hairs.

I duck into one of the shops, hoping. Lots of places in any other Chinatown - Hong Kong's, for instance - will have dried birds nests and snakes on sale, among other things. Not here. Vitamin C and Calcium are on offer in sterile glass cases. The place is brightly lit. Dinge is nowhere.

I keep walking. My feet take me to the pedestrian haunts of Trengganu and Pagoda Streets. The path between the stalls allows four or five people to pass and not once do I have to say, "excuse me" or use my elbows to get anywhere. Tables and chairs at restaurants do not have that ragged, abused look; they're all new and shiny. There are still no stinks to report.

I buy a pair of chopsticks and three silk ties just to say I got them in Singapore's Chinatown, then walk a few blocks and have a coffee in another crisp shopping mall. It's called China Square Central. The cappuccino is very good and I sip slowly, then catch the metro back up-town.

That night, I read about the area of town where I'm staying. Bugis Village, on Rochor Road near Victoria and New Bridge Streets, used to be full of "rowdy sailors... transvestites and prostitutes", which ran contrary to the country's image. The current version opened in 1991 and, along with the Bugis Junction Shopping Centre, provides a cleaner alternative, glistening and exact.

My next day takes me to Little India. At the shopping arcade, the first shop I see is 7-11. Despite the encouraging fog of incense from somewhere in the back, the floors are covered in bright linoleum and the walls give shops here a contained look. It is more of the same, a striking uniformity.

Thinking over everything later, I realize that citizens have had to adjust their way of living to meet a common expectation in Singapore. Business attire and casual street clothes walk the streets far more than head scarves and fezzes and saris. Shopping malls satisfy the public need to purchase and push little knick-knack corner stores to the sidelines. Singaporeans live in a world of polished commercial pursuit and urban cleanliness.

People here have conformed to the rules. The city - and its expectations - defines them; they do not define the city.

I'm not complaining. Services and amenities that meet Western standards are wonderful. Clean streets are great. I just wish they didn't come at the cost of being able to buy a bird's nest in Chinatown.