When the initial dazzle with Singapore’s modernity, its cleanliness, and its style subsides, the uncomfortable questions start creeping up.

You are tempted to ask: how is the country so clean if its main ethnic groups – Malay, Chinese and Indian – aren’t exactly famous for their urban tidiness?

You may also wonder: why are there so many Indian men with Chinese women, but not vice-versa?

And you might ponder: with all this focus on the newest and biggest, is there any care for the past? Is there something we can call a culture?

Singapore does that. A city-state that in less than 50 years of autonomy has earned fame for exaggerated rules and practical living, for extreme cautions and consumer freedoms, for career worship and dirt-cheap pleasures.

And those are just the contrasts you see on the surface.

First blush

Singapore greets you with a brash downtown district, which like any major city, is crowded with towers competing for phallic pizzazz. It makes sure you don’t miss the Marina Bay Sands integrated resort, which dominates the harbour with its three corset-shaped towers topped with a silver surfboard.

Beside it are the two giant durian-shaped performance halls, a floating soccer stadium, and the unfinished aquarium, which looks like a robotic claw waiting for something to fall onto it.

The city is definitely in a hurry: the Sands casino is open for business and so is half the shopping mall, which is still dusty as the other half finishes construction. It wastes no time declaring its favoured demographic: Gucci and Ferrari are front and centre. Further in you’ll find stores selling $140 SGD pots of honey, $2,000 SGD tea sets and one traditional Chinese herb emporium with ginseng roots going for $38,000 SGD, complete with display case.

This is a place that likes to show what it’s got.

Mixed people

The second thing you notice is the ethnic medley, something unique to Southeast Asia: well-dressed and coiffed Chinese, Muslim Malays with their headscarves, coffee-skinned Tamils, and a generous sprinkling of white expats scurry about downtown.

It’s a harmony long ago enshrined in policy, when the nation’s founders mandated racial quotas in public housing in order to prevent ghettoes. It worked, but only to the point of avoiding hate and conflict. You rarely see a Singaporean of mixed race.

Street names and food stalls abide by this disjointed diversity. You’re walking along Lavender St. and take a left on Jalan Besar, and maybe happen upon a restaurant that lists chicken biryani, nasi goreng, and tomyam soup in the same menu.

Selectively uptight

Instructions for washing hands seen in a public restroom

Contrary to its neighbours, Singapore has lots of rules that are actually enforced. The law against chewing gum gets all the fame, but only for being unusual. In daily life, it’s hardly an issue, since gum isn’t sold anywhere.

The U-turn signs are far more revealing. Instead of telling you where you can’t make a U-turn, these signs indicate where it’s permitted. U-turns are outlawed until given amnesty.

One may also marvel at signs in public bathrooms explaining the seven steps to proper hand-washing, detailing rubbing methods so involute, they sound like advanced yoga poses.

But in the middle of all these regulations that make European nanny states seem anarchic, there are breaths of liberty. You can buy a beer just about anywhere and bring wine bottles to any street food stall.

Any drug use is strictly punished and dealing carries the death penalty. If you smoke weed outside the country and get tested positive upon your return, it’s jail time. Yet prostitution is fully legal and regulated. The city has several red-light districts, most famously the “Four Floors of Whores” at the Orchard Towers.

Shrug and bear it

Singaporeans love to complain about Singapore. They agree the rules go a bit too far. They know it’s silly to try to hard to protect people from themselves, as in the glass fence that keeps commuters from falling into the subway tracks. A few enlightened ones might even say all that extravagant shopping and dining serves as a distraction from their boring, work-centered lives.

But ask them about Lee Kuan Yew, the man who dreamed up every policy that made Singapore what it is, and it’s mostly praise.

In return for the obsessive-compulsive society, they get a safe city with fine comforts and an agonizing selection of great food. They look at their neighbours and see that there’s no perfect society, but what they were dealt is pretty damn good.

Next post: the “gritty” neighbourhoods.