Slowly but surely, sovereignty will leech away, mostly in the direction of Beijing, driven by the logic of economic integration and political security. Bank regulation will largely be according to standards laid down by the Chinese government, a self-contained currency will be anachronistic, and cross-border crimes will be investigated by supra-national bodies, mostly answerable to the Chinese authorities. Technical, product safety and environmental standards will have been harmonised across East Asia as markets integrate and since China is the biggest market by far, its standards will tend to be the reference ones.

Singapore will remain a political entity, but within a greater Chinese structure, leaving limited scope for the Singapore government to venture beyond parameters set by Beijing other than in municipal matters.

China itself will be a lot more integrated into the global economy and culture, and the distinction between "Chinese" and "Western" will be a lot blurrer than now. Starbucks, for example, may well be a China-based corporation, (remember how IBM sold its personal computer division to Lenovo?) and more entertainment will be coming out of China than from anywhere else (for better or for worse). It will in fact be hard, if not impossible, to see "Chinese" as some kind of separate quality from the notion of "global", just as today, we can hardly distinguish "American" from "international".

The great cities of China too will be a lot more cosmopolitan than they are today, and so envisioning multi-ethnic Singapore as one of many "Chinese" cities will not be too difficult.

In short, being part of "China" then will not feel like being subsumed into the country that it is now, and it won't be as painful as it may seem to us in this generation.

Our passage to this future -- and it is not necessarily a bad one -- will be eased by the increasing migration of new Chinese to this island. They are everywhere now, and for the most part, they are fitting in no worse than previous generations of immigrants.

My one grouse is that our government is doing nothing to prepare our ethnic minorities for this future. Our ministers are trapped in the mindset of Lee Kuan Yew, whose political baptism of fire in the 1960s taught him to treat race and language as so utterly sensitive that they are almost non-negotiable. Any new thinking gets short shrift. I'm sure ministers will recoil in horror, imagining racial riots and blood on our streets, should anyone suggest that our schools should offer Chinese as the default second language for all, unless the parents opt out.

I don't think the idea is as crazy as it sounds. My gut feel tells me that the first group to grasp such an opportunity will be the new Indians, many of whom are keen to use Singapore as a base from which to capitalise on opportunities presented by China. As they break barriers, they will set an example for other communities to follow. Gradually, the interlocking of race and language that so characterise (and blight) our society -– and in case you don't know this, this kind of interlocking is in fact unusual in the world -- will be prised apart.

This in no way contradicts my other suggestion: that all new Chinese (including Chinese from Malaysia) must take adult classes for English. One builds a bridge from both ends.

* * * * *

 
The young woman was itemising my bread purchases at a bakery, when her colleague interrupted her to ask, in Mandarin, "What is twelve?"

"Twelve... er..." said the first worker, clearly not knowing the answer.

They turned to me. "How do you say twelve in English?"

I could hardly believe my ears! I kid you not. This is a true story that happened today. Here they are running a shop and they couldn't tell a Malay customer how much the little birthday cake cost.

"Twelve," I told the women in a tone like a schoolmarm's. "Tu-wel-vuh."

Too late. From that point on, all further negotiations between the customer and the sales clerks went through me.

"I want to ask," said the forty-ish mother in a headscarf, "what flavour is it?"

"What flavour is it?" I threw the question at the staff.

"Mango," they replied in unison.

"Mango" I said in English.

"Any chocolate?" the mother asked.

"Do you have a chocolate cake?" I translated... and so it went.

* * * * *

 
On my shopping list, besides some buns, was a haircut. Coming around a corner, I could see three barbershops in a row. There used to be a "Malay barber" among them, but not anymore. "Malay barber" is a term which in Singapore means a shop run by Malays, staffed by Malays, with a Malay-language radio or TV channel playing in the background. Now all three are run by Chinese women with Chinese pop in the background.

It may strike a casual reader as quaint that barbering in Singapore can be so ethnically divided. Quaint indeed it is, dating from as long as I can remember. Among my earliest memories is that of my father taking me on a long walk -– actually it was only about 400 metres, but it was long for my short legs -– to the neighbourhood Indian barber. Yes, likewise, "Indian barber" means a shop owned and staffed exclusively by Indians. There, in a room swooning from the overpowering scent of aromatic oils, I was perched on a plank stretched between armrests, frozen in terror while a big hairy man with fat cheeks put a lawnmower to my head.

From such memories are racial stereotypes born. As soon as I was old enough, I resisted Indian barbers completely.

Indian barbers have nearly all disappeared from Singapore, as far as I can see. Only Little India would still have a number, I think, but that's a ghetto exception. They used to be quite commonplace, and I believe many of them came out from serving the British forces pre-Second World War. The British brought from India thousands of low-level support staff.

There were also plenty of Chinese barbers who set up shop in the five-foot-ways of Chinatown and elsewhere. My own grandmothers on my mother's side (I had more than one) were barbers running a shop my grandfather had set up for them. Family honor would have me repeat to you the proud fact (myth?) that they were the first female barbers ever seen in Singapore, titillating their male customers as they shampooed and cut their hair, setting new standards in depravity -- oops, I mean service.

However, my English-speaking civil-service father imitated the British of the day and patronised Indian barbers. And thus I was initiated into the racial sociology of barbering.

Sivam Barbershop in Kuala Lumpur -- one of many Indian barbers all over the city.

By contrast, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, there are lots of Indian barbers still. They probably had the same origins as the Indian barbers of Singapore, but have evidently carried on as family businesses. Partly, it has to do with the fact that the Indian minority in Malaysia is more numerous, percentage-wise, than in Singapore, thus more noticeable, but is perhaps also due to the discrimination they faced in education and jobs, from both the Malay-dominated government and Chinese-dominated big businesses. As a result, Malaysian Indians may be compelled to earn their livelihoods through sustaining their own small businesses.

Another example is the way many Indians run food stalls in Malaysia, such that over there, the term "mamak stall" is used to describe the equivalent of what Singaporeans call "coffee shop" (i.e. a cheap food restaurant). "Mamak", I am told, comes from the Tamil word to mean "uncle".

(I once absent-mindedly said "coffee shop" in Kuala Lumpur, and nobody understood me.)

* * * * *

Now, where was I? Oh yes, I was going to get a haircut.

I have no preference for any of these three shops in a row, usually choosing whichever has an available seat. That is, if I come here at all. In fact, I have increasingly used either the QB House chain of shops or EC House, its shameless copycat competitor.

Today, however, I noticed that one of the shops in this row has remodelled its interior. It now resembles QB, with compact little cutting stations, a steriliser for combs and scissors, vacuum suction for loose bits of cut hair and a bright, clean interior. Minus the little TV set, though.

Best of all, it had one seat free and a pretty boy at the door waiting to serve me. The second I caught his smile, I was sold!

To that, I say: Don't be a self-righteous twit of a hypocrite. Most people on this earth act in this way. You too, probably, without even knowing it. Our national ("Singapore Girl") airline built its billion-dollar business upon this very natural human instinct. If that is worthy of accolade, if flaunting heterosexuality has flag-carrier respectability, so is my choice of a pretty boy barber.

Only problem was, pretty boy turned out to be from Sichuan. And now, I was the one with the linguistic handicap. I didn't know the words for expressing my wishes with respect to hair styles. There is probably a quite specific Chinese terminology, which I have never had the need to know.

I finally said, "Do it anyway you like," which really wasn't far from the truth, since I have never felt any need to be fashionable, and would likely end up looking like a joke if I tried.

"I'll just cut it short," he said.

"Yes, short will do."

In the end, he did it quite well. From his technique, one can tell that he has had some real training, unlike the Malay barbers who always seem to me to have no skill whatsoever.

And this Chinese-owned shop only charged $8. Malay barbers, in the lead-up to Christmas and Chinese New Year, tend to up their price from $8 to $10. Now, tell me, why do so many still stereotype Chinese as greedy businessmen?

So I shall be going back to the pretty boy, but before that, I am going to have to learn a few Chinese phrases pertinent to hairstyling, and set a good example of making a personal adjustment to a new Singapore reality.

© Yawning Bread