Singapore Stories: Language, Class, and the Chinese of Singapore, ...

language, and not having the chances in life that are afforded to thosecompetent in English. Yet, what do we know of this twin?

Voices from Below

When I embarked on this research project, I wanted to write a book about the policies that had given many among my generation in Singapore some of the best opportunities in the world. Having grown up in Singapore during the era of astonishing economic growth in the 1980s and 1990s, I was confident that I knew what I would find. I was never so naïve as to think that I would find a utopian story of shared wealth in all corners of society. Nor was I so cynical as to expect a story of grand deception, where the shiny skyscrapers and row upon row of public housing were merely a façade hiding hordes of utterly impoverished citizens. I expected to find a story of policies that logically widened the spectrum of possibilities for individuals and households to achieve economic mobility. What I found instead were voices from the underside of Singaporean society that existed “below” the state-driven discourse. They told me about that other Singapore Story—the twin that historians know so little about. To recover this story, I needed to be prepared to listen to these voices.

For nearly four years, I listened to and mapped the architecture behind this other story as I asked people to tell me about their lives. I began by asking friends of friends, and from there, I asked for further suggestions about whom I could speak to. I found myself in the lobbies of luxurious hotels speaking to successful businessmen over twelve-dollar cups of tea. I spoke to social workers who did their rounds in the poorest neighbourhoods on the island, and they accompanied me as we visited the dispossessed, providing me with a commentary on what it was like to live on the margins of the “economic miracle”. I visited factories, beginning with the one that I had worked in for a time in my youth, listening to production workers and their supervisors speak of their memories in the industry. I spoke to school teachers who were responsible for equipping a generation of Singaporean youth with the language of power and