Scenes from an almost vanished Singapore
Holdouts in a rich country’s last rural settlement
WAH! SIX slices of bread for breakfast: Sng Mui Hong was unusually hungry. She knew what that meant. The spirit of her father, dead these past 25 years, was with her, and he was starving. Not that Ms Sng could see her father—she never had been able to see ghosts—but she could sense his presence: a heavy weight on her shoulders or a yawning pit in her stomach, hungry for white bread.
This article appeared in the Christmas Specials section of the print edition under the headline “The last holdout”
Christmas Specials December 18th 2021
- A Zimbabwean archaeologist retells the story of a civilisation
- Does good parenting in Hong Kong mean submitting to the Party?
- An economic history of restaurants
- The rise and rise of corrugated iron
- The mathematical method that could offer a fairer way to vote
- How to prevent conflict on the way to Mars
- Scenes from an almost vanished Singapore
- Retracing Julius Caesar’s path through France
From the December 18th 2021 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionDiscover more
Inside the last true political machine in America
What a town is like when one family runs everything
AI is stalking the last lions of Hollywood
The first actors to lose their jobs to artificial intelligence are four-legged
The truth about the passenger jet Putin’s men shot down
Investigating MH17, the crime that presaged the war in Ukraine
Meet the boffins and buccaneers drilling for hydrogen
The search is on for a clean fuel that could one day replace oil
The best sailors in the world
Why the vaka, vehicle for the extraordinary story of the peopling of Oceania, is enjoying a revival
Oceania’s wayfinding skills
The art of getting a vessel and its occupants from one place on a vast ocean to another