Singapore: Where Empires Met

The Singapore Sling cocktail was invented here in nineteen fifteen. The bartender was Ngiam Tong Boon, working at the Long Bar. The cocktail — gin, cherry liqueur, Cointreau, pineapple juice, grenadine, lime — was designed to allow women to drink alcohol in public without it being obvious, since it looks like a fruit juice. It became the signature drink of the hotel and, eventually, of Singapore itself.

The war arrived here in February nineteen forty-two. The Japanese military seized the hotel and used it as an officers' mess during the occupation. British officers who had been prewar guests of the hotel returned as prisoners of war and were marched past its white walls on their way to Changi Prison. Winston Churchill described the fall of Singapore — in which ninety thousand British and Commonwealth troops surrendered to thirty-five thousand Japanese soldiers — as "the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history." The hotel had become a symbol of British permanence in Asia; its occupation was a message about how completely that permanence had ended.

The hotel was heavily renovated in nineteen eighty-seven — restored to the gleaming white colonial grandeur you see now, with manicured gardens, grand corridors, and the Long Bar where tourists still drink Singapore Slings and throw peanut shells on the floor. It is a place of deliberate nostalgia. Whether that nostalgia is for a golden age or a system of exploitation is a question Singapore itself has not finished answering.

Standing in front of the Theatre, you will see a bronze statue. That is Stamford Raffles — the man whose name is everywhere in Singapore. This is the replica statue; the original stands at Empress Place, near the Asian Civilisations Museum, at the supposed spot where Raffles first landed in eighteen nineteen. The statue's pose is deliberate: arms folded, standing straight, surveying the territory. A man of certainty.

The reality of Raffles is more complicated. He did establish the settlement, negotiate the treaty with Sultan Hussein Shah that gave the British their foothold, and design the town plan that organised the city. But he visited Singapore only three times in his life and spent a total of approximately nine months here. He was a brilliant, ambitious Company man — he worked for the British East India Company, not the British government — and Singapore was one project among many. He died in England in eighteen twenty-six, at the age of forty-four, largely forgotten by the British government, personally bankrupt, and mourned primarily by his wife and a small circle of naturalists who valued his zoological collections. He had named multiple species of plants and animals after himself.

Singapore made his reputation posthumously. The city grew into exactly what he predicted — the greatest trading port in Asia — and the man who founded it became a hero of Victorian foresight. His name is now on a hotel, a hospital, a school, a shopping mall, a city, and this statue. He would have been pleased.

The city's name tells you this history. "Singapore" derives from the Sanskrit words "Singa" (lion) and "Pura" (city) — Lion City. Sanskrit is not a Malay or Chinese language; it is the classical language of South Asia and the liturgical language of Hinduism and Buddhism. The name reflects the deep Indian cultural influence on the Malay world long before any Europeans arrived. According to the Malay Annals, a Srivijayan prince named Sang Nila Utama landed on this island in the eleventh century, saw a creature he believed to be a lion — it was almost certainly a Malayan tiger — and declared it an auspicious omen.

There are no lions in Singapore. There never have been. The lion is a myth, a founding story, a piece of cultural identity that the city has carried for seven hundred years. By the time you reach Merlion Park, you will understand why that matters.

The museum's collection spans the Chinese, Malay, Indian, Islamic, and maritime trade cultures that converged here. It includes Tang Dynasty shipwreck ceramics recovered from the Java Sea, Hindu and Buddhist sculpture from across Southeast Asia, Islamic metalwork, and Peranakan domestic objects. What it makes visible is that Singapore's diversity is not a modern accident — it is the product of geography, of being the place where civilisations met.

The eight-and-a-half-metre statue you are looking at was unveiled in nineteen seventy-two by Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. There are seven official Merlion statues in Singapore, ranging from this one to a much smaller cub nearby. The symbol has been both embraced and mocked — the Singaporean architect and writer William Lim once called it "a kitsch mascot for a theme park" — but it has survived and deepened in meaning because Singapore itself is a hybrid: of cultures, of histories, of colonial myth and postcolonial ambition.

Think about what this view across Marina Bay represents. In nineteen sixty-five, Singapore was a newly independent city-state with no natural resources, no hinterland, no military, and a per capita income lower than Mexico's. Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's founding prime minister, is reported to have wept when independence was declared — not from joy, but from fear. He genuinely did not believe the country would survive. The Marina Bay Sands, the gleaming towers behind it, the financial district to your right — this is what fifty years of ruthless, pragmatic, occasionally authoritarian governance produced. Whether the trade-offs were worth it is a question Singaporeans are still debating.

This same City Hall is where Lee Kuan Yew stood on August ninth, nineteen sixty-five, and announced that Singapore had been expelled from the Malaysian Federation and was now an independent sovereign nation. He wept on camera. The footage is among the most watched in Singaporean history — a leader weeping not from happiness but from the knowledge of how difficult what lay ahead would be.

The National Gallery's collection is the largest collection of Southeast Asian art in the world: nine thousand works from the nineteenth century to the present. It includes colonial-era paintings of Singapore and the region, modernist works from across Southeast Asia, and contemporary art that engages with Singapore's complex relationship to its own history. The collection is a deliberate act of nation-building — an argument that Southeast Asian art deserves a world-class institution as much as European art does.

Somewhere on this hill, below your feet, is the Battle Box: the underground bunker from which General Arthur Percival commanded the defence of Singapore in February nineteen forty-two. On February fifteenth, from this bunker, Percival made the decision to surrender. He walked out carrying a Union Jack and a white flag, made his way to the Ford Factory in Bukit Timah, and there signed the instrument of surrender to Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita. Winston Churchill called it "the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history." Ninety thousand British and Commonwealth troops surrendered to thirty-five thousand Japanese soldiers. The fort that was meant to be impregnable had been taken from the north — from the land side, through the Malay Peninsula — not from the sea.

The Battle Box is preserved as a museum. The hill also contains the keramat — the sacred grave — believed by many to be the tomb of Sultan Iskandar Shah, the last ruler of ancient Singapura. There are spice gardens planted in homage to Raffles, who was a passionate botanist and established the first botanical gardens in Singapore on this hill. And there are the graves of William Farquhar, Singapore's first Resident, and other early colonial figures — men who built the settlement and now lie in the soil of what they built.

Peranakan culture is one of the most visually distinctive in Southeast Asia. The Nyonya kebaya — a sheer embroidered blouse worn over a batik sarong — is a masterwork of textile art, combining Chinese embroidery traditions with Malay fabric. The Peranakan porcelain, known as nonya ware, is Chinese porcelain painted in vivid pinks and greens with phoenix and peony motifs. The beaded shoes are extraordinary: tiny glass beads sewn by hand into floral patterns, each pair taking months to complete. The Peranakan shophouse — the two-storey buildings with ornate plasterwork facades and covered walkways — is the architectural signature of old Singapore and Penang.

Nyonya food is the cuisine that has most deeply influenced what the world thinks of as "Singaporean food." It blends Chinese technique — wok cooking, fermented sauces, pork — with Malay flavourings: coconut milk, lemongrass, galangal, belachan shrimp paste. Laksa, one of Singapore's most iconic dishes, is a Peranakan creation.

The Peranakans occupied a crucial social position in colonial Singapore: fluent in both Chinese dialects and Malay, educated in English, they served as interpreters, traders, and administrators — the cultural brokers between the British colonial government and the Malay world. Today Peranakan culture is experiencing a revival, partly through popular culture, and partly through the recognition that it represents something irreplaceable: a genuine cultural synthesis, made in Southeast Asia, belonging to no single heritage.

The streets around the mosque are a sensory experience unlike anywhere else in Singapore. Arab Street is lined with fabric shops — batik printed in Java, songket woven in Malaysia, lace from Brussels, cotton from India. The smell is of oud and rose water from the perfume shops. On Fridays, the streets around the mosque fill with worshippers spilling out onto the roads. Haji Lane, a narrow alley behind Arab Street, is lined with independent boutiques and cafes — it has become one of the most photographed alleys in Singapore, its pastel-coloured shophouses decorated with murals.

The community here has deep roots. Arab traders from Hadhramaut in Yemen have been part of the Singapore mercantile world since the eighteen twenties. Hadhrami Arab families — the Aljunieds, the Alsagoffs, the Al-Kaff family — were among the wealthiest and most influential merchants in nineteenth-century Singapore. Their philanthropy built mosques, funded schools, and shaped the Islamic community across Singapore and the Malay Archipelago.

You are standing near Tekka Centre, which was known for most of its history as Zhujiao Market. This is one of the oldest markets in Singapore, and the most authentic food experience the city offers to someone who wants to eat as Singaporeans actually eat rather than as tourists are directed to eat. Inside, banana-leaf rice is served from stalls that have been in the same families for generations. Biryani cooked in enormous vessels. Roti prata — the flaky flatbread introduced by South Indian Muslim immigrants — made on a griddle and served with dhal and curry. Fish-head curry, which is a Singaporean invention: a dish created in Singapore in the nineteen fifties by an Indian chef adapting to local Chinese tastes for fish head.

The Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple on Serangoon Road, dedicated to the goddess Kali, has been operating since eighteen eighty-one. Its gopuram — the ornate tower above the entrance — is covered in brightly coloured sculptures of deities and figures from Hindu mythology. During Deepavali, the Festival of Lights celebrated in October and November, the entire length of Little India is hung with elaborate light installations, and the streets fill with people from every community in Singapore. It is one of the city's most genuinely joyful public events.

The architecture of Chinatown is the architecture of the shophouse. These two-storey buildings — with commercial space on the ground floor, residential space above, and a covered walkway called the "five-foot way" at street level — were mandated by Raffles as a condition of construction. The five-foot way was to be kept clear as public pedestrian space, passable even in the rain. You can still walk under these covered arcades today, though they are now lined with tourist shops rather than clan association offices and medicine halls.

In front of you stands the Sri Mariamman Temple, at the corner of South Bridge Road and Pagoda Street. This is the oldest Hindu temple in Singapore, built in eighteen twenty-seven — eight years after Raffles arrived, six years before the settlement had even been formally transferred from the East India Company to the British Crown. It was founded by Naraina Pillai, who came to Singapore on the same ship as Raffles in eighteen nineteen and became the first Indian merchant and community leader in the settlement. He was a government clerk from Penang who recognised the commercial opportunity immediately, obtained a land grant, and built this temple as the spiritual and social centre of the Indian community.

The temple is dedicated to Sri Mariamman, a form of the goddess Parvati associated with protection from disease and adversity. Every October, the temple hosts Thaipusam — when Hindu devotees in states of ritual trance carry elaborate kavadi, ornamental frameworks attached to their bodies by skewers pierced through their skin, in acts of devotion and thanksgiving. It is one of the most extraordinary spectacles in Singapore: a city that built its identity on commerce and rationality, momentarily given over to something ancient, painful, and transcendent.

You are at the end of this walk. Behind you is the colonial core that Raffles designed. Around you are the communities that filled it: Chinese, Indian, Malay, Arab, Peranakan — each brought here by the logic of trade, each making this place their own. Singapore is not a melting pot. It is a city of distinct communities that have learned, imperfectly and sometimes painfully, to share a small island. The miracle is not that they share it harmoniously. The miracle is that they share it at all.