Hot in the City

I read this article on the TODAY newspaper this morning. WTF??!

CAN NY PASS THOSAI TEST?

The city's foreign cuisine is great but then ... A city's surroundings
help make it a great place to live


IT HAS become fashionable to refer to some cities in the West, particularly New York and London, as "cities of the world". It is time not only to question these claims but to challenge the whole fascination with the idea of being a "city of the world". Goh Kok Huat's well-written article, "Can Singapore handle New York's buzz?" (Dec 14), provides such an opportunity.

New York is no more a city of the world than Singapore is just because its taxi drivers are migrants from all over. That just shows taxi-driving is an available entry-level occupation for migrants. New York would be more a city of the world if a sizeable portion of its cab fleet were made up of vehicles of European and Asian makes, instead of reflecting a "Buy
American" ethic.

New York does not qualify as a city of the world just because one's colleagues there might comprise Argentinians, Germans and Indians. It would be more so if they and their children retain the characteristics and culture that make them distinctly Argentinian, German and Indian.

New York would be a city of the world if it becomes a given that third-generation Chinese immigrants can speak Mandarin with confidence and proficiency. Yet we know that to integrate, in what has been grandiosely called a great melting pot, is to become culturally Anglo-Saxon American.

Of course, New York offers a great range of foreign cuisine at low and high-end eateries. The former caters to poor first-generation migrants, while the latter is for the well-heeled seeking nostalgia or the exotic. New York would be a city of the world if a white Anglo-Saxon American living there were as likely to wake up to a breakfast of masala thosai or
nasi lemak.

And to suggest that New York's economic growth benefited by learning from Chinese, Vietnamese or Hispanic migrants is really stretching things.

The point is that mere physical juxtaposition of diversity should not be mistaken for open-mindedness, cross-cultural understanding or a catalyst for economy or innovation.

New York would be more a city of the world if a former mayor who had snubbed a visiting Chinese leader to pander to anti-China sentiments weren't so popular.

To begin with, why the need for "cities of the world" when the world is becoming "smaller"? It would be a loss, not gain, to diversity were New York or London to become cities of the world. It would not be a slight in the least to call them American and English respectively.

What we all need is a deeper understanding of points of view that don't come from our part of the world without forgetting our origins.

Thus, to Mr Goh's question - "Do we find it threatening if the ang moh culture becomes a mainstream one on our shores?" - the answer is that it already has been for some time. Practically all of us have, consciously or otherwise, incorporated some aspects of ang moh culture in our identity. It only becomes a threat - and culture only becomes a zero-sum game - if we start seeing it as a necessary good to distance ourselves from the
ethnic dimension of our identity.

THE writer has made many comparisons between Singapore and New York, but he has omitted one important detail that distinguishes the two cities.

New York is a city where the denizens can escape to tranquillity to the vast American hinterland easily. In contrast, Singapore is an island state, so cramped that impromptu music performances are not allowed at parks. Whenever anyone feels stressed in New York, forests, mountains, lakes and even Niagara Falls are just a short distance away, not to mention the quaint little towns of New England.

All the nature reserves of Singapore are quite limited, and one gets the feeling of living in a glasshouse even deep within MacRitchie Reservoir Park.