Perspective, Perfection and Idealism

I remember wondering why our bus-stops are constantly being upgraded. Since the days of the orange and white striped shelters, they must have changed at least five or six times, if not more.

I remember a conversation I had with someone about Singapore and why the country's public infrastructure is being "upgraded" all the time. And I said something like, maybe it's because we know we cannot compete in terms of history and culture. The charming character that comes with age cannot be forged efficiently and even if we wait it out till we reach the "old" stage, and wait it out even longer to the "historical" stage, well, the parts of the world already rich with history will just get even richer. So we go the other way, we don't allow ourselves to age. Our unique selling point is that we're always new, always ahead.

Today I found a similar train of thought in an entirely unexpected avenue.

I was reading Wu Bai's photography book 風景on the train this afternoon, and was surprised to find two chapters on Singapore. And what he said about us touched me in a way I cannot explain.

An excerpt:
放棄一顆唯恐橫生傾斜的有趣樹木﹐
只為打造一片筆直的遊憩森林。

新加坡的確﹐是座完美的大花園﹐
代價是努力維持著這份完美
而不得鬆懈。

Loosely translated, he says that the sacrifice of one interesting tree that grows slightly crooked because of its fear of growing up straight, is for the purpose of building an entire stick-straight forest. Singapore is indeed a perfect big garden. The price to pay for this perfection is the pressing need to maintain it without rest.

In another chapter, he writes about his thoughts on our racial harmony in company of his pictures of a Hindu temple.

理想的另一端﹐一定有個浪漫的想法在支撐。
如果有份所謂理想國的藍圖﹐
它讓不同種族的人漂洋過海﹐為了到達理想境界而犧牲自我與想法﹔
如果這份藍圖無須經過長年的混亂廝殺﹐能夠成功且平和地運轉到現在﹐
我想新加坡這個國家若不是受到了眾神的偏愛﹐
至少也曾經偷瞄過神所繪製的美好。

The crux of it. Singapore is a country built on an idealistic blueprint. For a multi-racial country to have evolved into what it is today, peacefully and without chaos or violence, Singapore must have been beloved by the gods or at least, taken a peek at the pictures of perfection drawn by the gods.

Coming from Taiwan which is pretty much racially homogeneous, he was fascinated by Singapore and how the different races get along. On his way to Little India, he was curious enough to ask the cab driver whether the Indians will get into fights with the Chinese. The driver's tone when he replied no was without doubt, relaxed and I imagine, rather breezy.

Such is the resolution we take for granted. And I like to think that's the beauty of it. We simply just grew up together and live together in one tiny dot. We all get the same public holidays and we visit homes of friends who celebrate different festivals, we have such a marvellous variety of food thanks to these racial and cultural differences and we even have a temple housing gods of different faiths. Plus thousands of other examples. We don't really think about it, it just is.

But it's good to take a step back and appreciate it all. And wonder if our MM LKY did take a peek into the gods' masterpieces.