Caging culture
Back in 1992, Singapore unveiled it's Tang Dynasty Village amid much fanfare and regional media coverage.
It was an ambitious big-dollar project replicating the ancient Chinese city of Chang-An. And if you know Singapore, you'd know this – the detailing was faithful down to the groutline of the stonework and the glazing on tiles. They had restaurants, a wax museum, period performances and people in costumes reenacting daily life in the 7th century Chinese street. There was good public transportation to the Village, and a fighting-fit company was set up to manage the compound's sustainability. Part of the economic gameplan was to lease the spaces for film production; in fact, a Hongkong crew was filming when I was there many years ago.
In short, Singapore did all it could - as it often does - to make TDV a resounding success.
Today, if you take the Second Link from Gelang Patah into Tuas, drive along the Ayer Rajah Expressway (AYE) towards the city, some 10km or so from the Immigrations you'd pass by a seasoned stone enclosure to your left with the roofs of Chinese pavilions peeking beyond its walls. Strangling figs have begun to grab the masonry. Tall trees obscure its still-majestic proportions. But this is a strangely unSingaporean sight; strange because it is abandoned. This is the Tang Dynasty Village today. Defunct.
There is a lesson in here. Fourteen year later, and many repeated mistakes on our very own shores, will we learn?
Rais Yatim says the govt is planning to build a cultural village. Chances are, it'll be in the Titiwangsa area in KL. The Star reports that it'll “feature typical Malaysian icons like coffee-shops, warongs and traditional houses plus filming facilities at the site”.
Deja Vu.
Rais is Culture, Arts and Heritage Minister. Maybe the portfolio should be appropriately renamed the Ministry of Kitsch, Pop, and Theme Parks.
Haven't we learned? Hands up anyone who's been to the Mini-Asean Park off the PLUS highway at Ayer Keroh, Melaka. Or Mini-Malaysia nearby? Or the now-defunct Safari Park in Johor? Hands up all who think the RM3 experience of a whored-up Fort Cornwallis in Penang was mind-blowing and the costumes very clever and cute?
Time after time our leaders show their shallowness in the belief that culture can be imaged. When the Mall in KL was opened, the foodcourt was dressed as a kitschy Melakan street. It is a pathetic space today, like an aged porn star. The interior of KL's Central Market has a similar theme going. Fake roofs, fake windows. It's a disaster in tourism promotions. I've seen many a tourist walk-in, suck in the aircon and then make a bee-line out.
You cannot create culture.
Not unless you're talking nutrient soup in petri dishes, you can't. Culture is the patina of social activity played on an everyday basis over generations. Culture breathes, just as we breathe. Culture can be rich as our jungles or plain as plastic. An intricate set of relationships – values, geography, population, resources – determines whether the culture of a certain place grows, remains static or dies.
You cannot pick a spot and say let there be life. You will fail.
You can force a settlement to emerge out of the belukar, but you cannot seduce culture to reside there. Look at Shah Alam. Of all the state capitals, it's arguably the nation's most sterile. This despite the obscene advantages it has had in development over the past decades.
Most of all, culture reflects.
It is a mirror to who we are as communities. No amount of dressing can bluff away our values and maturity, nor express how much we interact and exchange, nor how inventive we are.
It's not all bleak; we've had triumphs. Take the KL Performing Arts Centre in Sentul, which I believe to be the most intelligent contribution yet by the private sector in recent memory. It is a testimony of a group of well-informed people synergistically making the right judgement with the right experts and keeping it real. It had only a tiny fraction compared to the Esplanade's budget in Singapore but I consider it immensely successful. This place has soul.
Keep it real, said Ali G.
Gross humour aside, that's sound advice. It ties back to the origins of the feared word – hell. The Indo-European root to this word is kel-. It means “to conceal, to hide”. Does it not make sense then that people who are constantly preoccupied in hiding their true selves invariably live in hell, constantly on the lie?
What the hell then is this proposed cultural village – an assortment of fake kopitiams, nasi kandar stores and warongs amidst kampong houses and Melakan shophouses? It doesn't happen that way. Why offer a cheapened buffet when all these delicious spaces could be had 10 minutes from each other on foot in almost any decent town in Malaysia?
Would it not make more sense to rejuvenate Kampung Semarak and Kampung Loke Yew whose predicament was reported in The Star just yesterday? I mean, surely it cannot be because it was inaugurated by Mahathir, no? Just make it good. The patterns are already there.
Here we have an authentic Malay village and a centre for handicraft facing extinction because of a proposed highway, while on the other hand, we're planning fake artifacts and calling them cultural villages.
The Ninth Malaysia Plan deserves more inspiration than that, fellas. But before true inspiration, first learn. You can't cage culture.
Photo credit: Flipboy
