Singapore's Culture

Singapore gives me an extremely exotic impression when I was first time landed here. As a country of immigrants, Singapore is composed by different ethnics. There's a big different compared to my single ethnic country where I lived previously.

Let's start with a story I met before. I had asked a Singaporean lady for help who has like a Chinese, by the way, that was the first time I spoke with a Singaporean. I simply thought that she can either speak Chinese or English, which I was able to speak as well. However, after few conversations, I found I was in trouble to understand her. Because, the language she spoken is English but mixed with some words that I couldn't understand. Few weeks later, I leant that it was Hokkien and Malay words she added to the sentence. It is called "Singlish". People can understand each other well, because they speak the same language and having same background. However, in Singapore, mixed language helps people understand each other better.

In most of the case, we distinguish cultures from one to another based on appearances, behaviours and so on. These are the things that we can see or hear through sensory perception during communications.

I had experiences on different cultures in Singapore. Let's take food for example first. I find that the varieties of food are so versatile here that one can taste almost every traditional food from different ethnics resided in Singapore. Such as beijing toasted chicken and chicken nasi briyani, I've had beijing toasted chicken in China and the chicken nasi biryani is a whole new experience for me. Another example is the crab dishes. Chinese love the black pepper crab because of the strong flavour of pepper. Hindu may favour curry crab more. And Malay like the crab with laksa source. Crab is still the same crab, but with ingredients from different ethnic cultures, it becomes an art.

Holidays or festivals are one of the most representatives that reflect culture. We can't find any countries like Singapore that people celebrate festivals like Chinese New Year from China, Christmas Day from Christians, Deepavali from India, and Hari raya from Muslims every year.

Difference cultures co-exist smoothly in Singapore, yet they adapt each other. Old traditions have been kept well; yet new traditions are formed through culture diffusion which makes Singapore a typical multi-cultural society.

Under the different cultural background, the values may not be the same. For example, I am a Chinese from China. I know that, in China, people are more tolerant in spitting and littering either for themselves or for others, although, of course we know that it is not right. However, it is quite strict in Singapore. Spitting and littering is forbidden, and it is written in the law. Violation of this law will be severely fined. Recent years, many Chinese moved to Singapore to work or as permanent resident. The tolerance to spitting