Ideas - How port cities like Singapore shaped the world

Episode Date: March 17, 2026

Port cities are where worlds collide. They are a place of cultural, economic, political and religious contact. They've existed for millennia and facilitated the birth of empires and the rise of a globalized economy. Without port cities, our world would look very different. In the first episode of our series on how port cities shaped the world as we know it, UBC journalism professor Kamal Al-Solaylee visits Singapore — a constantly-evolving port city whose maritime roots go back to the 13th century. 

All right, the Academy Wars are here, but did you know, before a single statuette was handed out, this year's Oscars had already made history with a record-breaking 16 nominations. Did Ryan Cougler's Sinners reign supreme? My name is Alameen, and I can't wait to get into all the wins, snubs, and surprises you need to know on my show commotion. You can find and follow commotion with Elamane Abdul Mahmood on YouTube wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Welcome to ideas. I'm Nala Ayyed. I've always wondered why I was so strange as a Singaporean. Why is it that I'm, you know, I'm Asian, I'm Chinese, but yet I speak English.

Why is it that I love spicy food like sambal or fishhead curry? And I thought that there must be a reason for all of this. And I found out that that was because of Singapore being. this very unique sort of urban creature called a cosmopolitan port city. Port cities have existed for millennia as places of cultural, economic, political, and religious contact. They have facilitated the birth of empires

and the rise of a globalized economy. They are places where the past, present, and future collide, sometimes peacefully, other times, as with the transatlantic, Atlantic slave trade with tragic consequences. The contact happens in these port cities because these port cities are sort of gateways and windows to the rest of the world. And oftentimes the contact, I would say parts of it involve a sort of open, willing acceptance of new things, but there's also a kind of contact that comes through conflict. People and goods, myths and harsh realities travel through their

waters and their histories. And port cities indelibly shape the people they create, people like UBC journalism professor Kamala Sulele. Kamala, Kamala, thank you for coming in. My pleasure. I want to start at the beginning and ask you where your fascination with port cities actually started. Well, I mean, I can safely say that port cities run in my DNA. They've shaped the course of my life. I was born in a port city. Aiden, spent many years of my childhood in Beirut. That's another port city. And my first trip to England or Europe was to Liverpool to visit my sister who's living there.

And now I live in Vancouver. And coming from a family with roots in Aden that go back centuries has given me a kind of an emotional connection and a deep appreciation of cities where people from different communities come, go, sometimes settle in, some that they come in and they leave. they trade and lifestyle and ideas are exchanged. Obviously, the storyteller in me loves the possibilities that happen when worlds and histories collide. It really sounds like for you it's a way of life. Yes, it's a different way of life. And it's a way of life that has influenced everybody. You don't have to have been born or lived in a port city to be impacted by port cities.

It just permeates every aspect of our modern life. We begin our series on Port Cities with Kamal's documentary about Singapore. You mentioned so many, several ports that have played a large role in your life. So why is it that Singapore is what is your focus today? I mean, that's between me and my therapist. There's something about Singapore that is, like, that somehow clicked for me. Honestly, I don't really understand it, but I will try. to, you know, I would try to explain some of it.

Whatever you're comfortable telling us. Oh, I think we're at the point of sharing now now. So let's share, let's share. So my mother comes from a place called Hydromote in what is now sort of the south part of Yemen. And they have been traveling for, you know, generations to a place called Singapore, in Arabic, it's Singapore. And it sounded so strange.

far and, you know, at the risk of sounding like I'm stereotyping it, it's almost sounded so exotic to my ears. It's like the place where Simbad may have traveled through or something. But it was many decades later, I think, like in 2019, just before the pandemic, literally three or four months before the pandemic, that I visited Singapore for a Writers' Festival. And it felt immediately familiar. I mean, I don't want to go all new agey here, but it felt like I've been here before. But I think like a more realistic or a more plausible explanation is what a friend of mine has always talked about, is that you feel a connection to lands where your ancestors may have walked on. You know, I can safely say that my ancestors probably have not walked through the streets of Toronto

or Vancouver, but they have walked through the streets of Singapore in the 19th century. And I kind of sensed that immediately in Singapore, but also became kind of fascinated with Singapore as a port city, as a modern city state. The more I visited, I've been back several times. In my mind, sort of no other place in the world kind of captures the legacy of port cities as places of contact among cultures or how. Port cities are sort of adapting and transforming themselves through tech and digital innovations. I've always seen Singapore as much the city of the future as it is kind of remains anchored to its roots as a port city,

a role that it has played since the 13th century. Kamal, would you like to get out at the exit nearest the museum or you want to get out at Raffles Place and walk there? Whatever you think will see more stuff. Yeah. I wanted to know more about this merger of past and future. So, pun intended here, my first port of call was a visit to writer Kenny Ting, who most recently served as the director of the Asian Civilization Museum in Singapore. Well, here we are, just outside the Asian Civilization Museum.

You spent eight years of your life here. Yes, I did, yes. It's very fond of this place. It's very strange to be coming right back to me. This is your first first first. Well, thank you, thank you. The museum sits between the Singapore River, where the history of Singapore as a trading center began

and the city's financial hub. I mean, I think what is so wonderful about being, having worked here, is that we're really at the heart of Singapore sort of past, its present and its future. I mean, you know, like this particular building is the third oldest still standing building in Singapore. the parts of it were opened in 1867. And of course there you have the warehouses

that are part of that historic 19th century Singapore. And in front of us is, you know, there's this global financial center. So it's just a nice juxtaposition of old and new and past, present and future. And it continually changes. Kenny brings me to the Tang Shipwreck Gallery is a starting point for understanding

the deeper history of Singapore. as a port city. It features a collection of artifacts that were found in a 9th century shipwreck of the coast of Sumatra. What's so important about this wreck is that it is proof that there was long-distance, sort of global, in a way, trade more than a thousand years ago because the ship itself is actually a Middle Eastern-style Dow,

and it was carrying goods that were made. in faraway China. It was a pretty large cargo. There were more than 70,000 pieces found in the Tao, of which some 50,000 or so pieces are actually in the museum's collection. 50,000. Wow, that's remarkable. So maybe you can tell me what is the significance of this collection, you know, the Tang Shipwreck in relation to Singapore's place

in the ancient maritime trade routes. So one of the things that I've been very fascinated with is that historically, Southeast Asia, has been a sort of gatekeeper to global trade between the West, which at the time was in the Middle East, and China. And in the course of history, there have been these entrepore ports that emerge as gatekeepers to trade. Singapore is the most recent in the long line of great port cities in Southeast Asia that flourished as part of these ancient trade routes between China and the Middle East. Pambang in what is now Indonesia and Milaka in modern Malaysia. Geography is destiny. Southeast Asia has always been a kind of that in-between place.

You had to get through it to go anywhere, like, you know, east or west. Even for these sort of long-distance vessels, you had to make. stops because you had to refuel all and you had to, you know, pick up provisions. You know, again, it's one of those places that you think is peripheral because you have the Indian civilization and you have the Chinese civilization and you have the Middle Eastern civilization and you have the Europe. But I've always thought that, I mean, everybody came here or came through here for a reason. What if Southeast Asia was actually the center? If Southeast Asia was the center of the world in the 9th century, when the shipwreck occurred,

It was a profoundly interconnected world. The ship actually left from the port city of Canton, Guangzhou. At the time in the 9th century, Canton was already a very bustling cosmopolitan port, kind of like Singapore. And there were communities of these Arab and Persian merchants resident in Canton who would have been the middlemen, so to speak. Part of the gallery where Keri and I are standing

has been taken over by hundreds of brown and beige ceramics, displayed in a wave-like structure. to evoke their maritime journey. Researchers believe that the ceramics were fired in kilns in what is today the Chinese province of Hunan. But the patterns are similar to the ones you'd find in ceramics from the Abbasid caliphate that rose the power in the 8th century. Esport city of Basra, today part of Iraq, was legendary in ancient trade routes.

We've had researchers who have also pointed out that, you know, these kind of stylized motifs on the plates might also be Arabic or Persian script that has been so abstracted because, you know, I guess there was this practice at the time in a Basit art, this idea that when you confound the viewer, you bring him or her closer to the divine.

To me it's remarkable that the Chinese kilns that were making these were catering to an Arabic taste It speaks to reciprocity and the trade, of course, but it also kind of what we would today call, like understand your market, like understand who you're selling to and cater to their culture and what would be fashionable or what would be desirable for them.

Yes, I mean, I think what's remarkable is that what you just said, these are very contemporary concepts, but I mean, they're age old, clearly, you know, this idea of merchants, of makers wanting to make sure their products appealed to the market. That's something that trade is as old as humankind itself. Part of why Kenny is so fascinated by this history

is that it reveals the larger web of trade and cultural exchange, especially as we moved to the 18th and 19th century, of which European traders were just one part. So who else was part of this network of traders, Kamal? So in the decades leading up to Singapore becoming a British colonial port in the 1820s, there were Arab traders from Yemen. They had already established their presence in South Asia in general, particularly in Sumatra, in modern Indonesia.

In fact, the first Arab traders that come and settle in Singapore in the 1820s came from Sumatra, including someone will hear a lot more about, Sayyad, Omar Elginid and his uncle. The Al Junaid family thrived in Singapore, working in both trade and property investment. So my name is Sait Thah, been Sait Najib al-Junid. I am 28. I work in North London Collegiate School, Singapore. I work as head of business development. I'm seventh generation of Al-Junid in Singapore.

I mean, when we met at the Arab Network at Singapore, and you introduce yourself as alginate. My heart sank because I don't think I've met anyone with that last name, knowing what I know about the history of the family in Singapore. So where are you in the family tree of the alginate? So Sait Muhammad is my great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather. And, of course, Sait Omar would be my great, great, great, great-grand uncle.

And what were some of the stories? Like, give me a sense. particularly in relation to trade and Singapore as a kind of trading post is origins. So the stories, you know, and I'm going to sound, it's going to sound bad, but a lot of the stories were how rich we were. You know, my grandmother, who is still alive, she used to live in Nassim Road, which is just off of Orchid. And if you were to go to Nassim Road at this point, it is lined with embassies and huge houses

that are not going for any less than $50 million. And they used to stay there. And my grandmother would say, you know, I would have, you know, at that point, when we were still living there, we were one out of 10 cars in the whole of Singapore. And we had two of them, you know, and we had maids, we had chefs and everything. Now, there are obviously stories as well about how our forefathers had really good relations with Sir Stamper Raffles and, you know, how we came to Singapore because of how it was a bustling trading port. and how we gained our wealth through that, through trading of spices, trading of cotton and all other sources stuff. So those were the stories that I got.

At one point, the Elginate family owned much of Singapore's land. Today, as with many things in Singapore, it's a different story. Related to that wealth is also the loss of it, because at some point in Singapore history, in the 19th century, Al-Janeid, Al-Sikov, Al-Qaf, there's three big families from Hadramot in Yemen, owned much of the properties and land, much of which later on were appropriated.

Yes, so the biggest things, of course, after the conversations about how we accumulated the wealth, was how we don't have the wealth anymore. Because in Singapore, a lot of things have changed. Where you may be standing right now is reclaimed land. what you may be standing right now, maybe land that was owned by the Aljunids, you know, that kind of stuff. And it's very easy for history to be erased because of the huge developments that are happening

over the last 50 to 60 years after Singapore gained its independence. But I would say learn about what was Singapore and what made Singapore. Not in the last 60 years, but in the last, you know, like you mentioned, 2,000 years. because without those people then, and I'm not just talking about my family, I'm talking about everyone, without those people that have made Singapore in that bustling port city, we will never be here today. I must also mention the boogies. Traditionally, farmers from Southeast Asia, again, mostly from Indonesia, whose seafaring roots go back to the 16th century and they were solidified in the 18th. There's a fascinating mythology around that community, but that's another idea's episode.

The boogies arrived in Singapore in 1819. The same year, the Sir Thomas Stanford Raffles worked out a deal with the local Malay rulers to establish a British trading port in Singapore. And he described that port as open to ships and vessels of every nation free of duty. And I think that's really important because he, open Singapore, not just to the region, but to the world at large. Singapore was used to be called Timisak, and it had a long history, obviously, as a trading post that predate the arrival of raffles by centuries.

I think the earliest records we can find is from the 13th century. Still, generally speaking, Raffles is regarded as a founder of modern Singapore, modern-day Singapore. He was both open to the world, but with a firm colonial agenda in mind. I've witnessed, or I've noted more than one statue of him in Singapore today, but the most prominent one, like this big white marble statue facing the Singapore River, has a plaque that credits him as, and I quote, having changed the destiny of Singapore from an obsecured fishing village to a great seaport and modern. metropolis.

My dear sir, here I am at Singapore. This place possesses an excellent harbor and everything that can be desired for a British port in the island of St. John's, which forms the southwestern point of the harbor. We have commanded an intercourse with all ships passing through the Straits of Singapore. We are within a week's sail of China, close to Siam and in the very seat of the Malayan Empire. If I keep Singapore, I shall be quite satisfied. And in a few years, our influence over the archipelago, as far as concerns our commerce, will be fully established. Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, January 31, 1819.

So within a few short years of Sir Raffles landing in Singapore, and with help from his lieutenant, Philip Jackson, the Raffles Town Plan was in place. Sometimes it's also referred to as the Jackson Town Plan. And to strengthen a sense of belonging and security, each community was allotted a stretch of land. So if you're Indian, you had your part of Singapore, the Europeans were in another part, the Chinese in a third part. And one of these areas was reserved for Malays as well as, you know, the Bugis settler and the Arab merchants, pretty sort of in close proximity to each other. in what was then and remains to this day known as Campong Glam,

a neighborhood that tells the ever-changing story of Singapore as a port city, like no other. So with that in mind, let me introduce you to Imran bin Tejuddin, an academic at the National University of Singapore, who explores cultural encounters in Singapore through the lens of architecture. So we are at Kampung Glam, which is a historic port town in Singapore. Kampong Glam, for the longest time, had the Amporia or trade streets, shopping streets, that were central to the textile trade. That's a good place for you to explain what does Kampong actually mean.

So this term Kampong is what an interesting one. In the key centuries of the... vibrant port city development of the indigenous communities of maritime Southeast Asia, Malays, Javanese, Bugis. The term Kampong was used to denote an urban neighborhood of traders, a particular community of traders or a community of artisans, crafts, peoples, and so on. So occupations. So you notice that there are three communities, plus one.

one more Arab. So four communities, Arab Kampong, Bugis Kampong, Chulia Kampong and Chinese Kampong, surrounding the British cantonment and the European town. These were designated areas. Now, what happens in the case of the Kampong is that we see a framework for the management and accommodation of diversity in the port city. Emman takes me to an old cafe in Kampong glum for lunch. Okay, so what do you recommend we have? I mean, maybe we could start with Lontong. Lontong is Malay, but there's also a Javanese equivalent

called a different name, the Lontong. It's rice, compacted rice cakes in coconut milk-based yellow gravy with grated coconut, surrounding is called, and then some vegetables, and then eggs, you know, and sambao is a chili condiment. So that's... that's Malay but then you have other items

like that it's called Mi Siam but it's got nothing to do with Sayam see siam here is the reference to Sayam

Thailand but it's not a Thai dish at all it was something that was some people would claim invented here actually by the

Javanese residents of Basra Street and it's called Siam a reference to Thailand because there was a tartness to it it's a

soupy noodle or bihun so what Bihun is Chinese in origin, but it's thoroughly localized in Malay and Javanese cooking. So Mi Siam is a great example of that. And then you can find hawfan beef on the menu, which is, of course, a southern Chinese dish.

So food here is Arab Arabian. Yes, the kachang pool is quite popular. Yes, it's over there. Tahu Goring. Tahu Goring is Japanese. So it's very diverse. The menu, although this is a Malay-style eatery. it reflects that cosmopolitan composition,

the diverse composition of Kampungglam in particular and port cities in the Malay world and Java more generally. Where we're sitting is very close to where ships bearing spices and goods used to arrive in the 19th and early 20th centuries. So, Imran, what about a block away from Beach Road? Explain to me why that road, that road matters both in historical terms and where we are today. So where we are right now, Beach Road, it refers to beach or harbour, the front of a

harbour in name only today. You cannot see the harbour anymore. And that is because of land reclamation. So there is a lot of land reclamation in cities worldwide. And in Singapore, this is no exception. And because of this, Kampung Glam, as the former port town of Singapore, has lost that connection to the sea. Beach Road intersects with another street that caught my attention, Arab Street. So Arab Street, it intersects Beach Road, and where it intersects Beach Road, was a stone pier. And there is a magnificent photograph from the 1890s,

showing this stone pier with the horizon of the harbour full of Bugis and Malay vessels. So this was the connection between the trade and shipping of the river. region and then the sale of textiles. Now, by that point, one of the textiles that had become important as well was Batik from Java. That was also important. And to this day, if you go to Arab Street, Batik is one of the primary attractions. As we were walking through Kampong glum, I noticed streets named Muscat, Basra and Kandahar Street. My first assumption is that these names go back to the 1820s when Arab merchants started to arrive in Singapore. But Imran tells me that these names were added almost 100 years later at the beginning of the 20th century.

And so why were they given these names in 1909, 1911 and so on? It's so far an unanswered question. There have been some oral history interviews of residents who were very elderly in the 1990s, who, one of whom mentioned that the renaming was after popular places, in the Malay opera of the time. So these were called Bangsawan plays, and a lot of the plays were derived from either Arabic or Persian literature, literary works, dramatized.

So that's one explanation. A few blocks from this cafe, there's a grand mosque called Masjit Sultan, a place of worship and a tourist attraction in one. So Basra Street is the street that leads from beach, road to Masjit Sultan. Of course this is can you imagine how important this was for the pilgrimage

trade? So when it was haj season, ships and people sending folks off for pilgrimage this street was chocco block and abuzz with life. So people would come to Campong glum and then get on ships to go to Mecca, on

road to Mecca? And you're saying that some of them would probably pray at the mosque if it was built by then? A huge number of these pilgrims came from what is today Indonesia, in this era would be Java, Sumatra, or the Netherlands East Indies at a certain point in history. It was also called that. So why did people from Java and Sumatra come to Singapore? Because the restrictions here were lighter. Heavy restrictions were imposed on those going directly from the Netherlands East Indies. Potas and other stipulations. So a lot of them came over to Singapore.

first and stayed here several months, sometimes to collect money as well, before embarking on the onward journey. And so then the send-off party would usually be huge. And so then this became an international Hodge departure point. And lodging on the street and neighboring streets were full. And can you imagine all the associated services? There's one popular product from Singapore, unique to Singapore, the Hodge Belt. I don't know what that is. So a Hodge belt. I think some Other port cities also then had the selling of these Hage belts, but Singapore was one of the primary centres for selling it. It's actually, no, because when you're wearing the Ihram,

the unstitched garment that you use for pilgrimage, you're not supposed to wear anything with, it doesn't have pockets, right? It's unstitched. And so then where do you carry your valuables? So the Hage belt was the solution. I mean, that's very interesting to me, because in one way, the Hodge become another manifestation of the port city. like the passage of people and now also innovation and creativity

because the invention of this Hodge Belt speaks to the ingenuity of the local population as is the case for many port cities where there is innovation, there's creativity. Yes, indeed. From Campong Glam in Singapore, UBC journalism professor Kamala Sulele, with the first installment of our series on Port. Port Cities. This is Ideas. I'm Nala Ayad. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson and I host the Daily News podcast, Front Burner, and lately I'll see a story about, I don't know, political corruption or something and think, during a normal time,

we'd be talking about this for weeks, but then it's almost immediately overwhelmed by something else. On Front Burner, we are trying to pull lots of story threads together so that you don't lose the plot. So you can learn how all these threads fit together. Follow Frontburner wherever you get your podcasts. This is the timeless Singapore, where the vessels, the produce they carry, the noise, the smells, and even the people, are much as they ever were. No murn in frankincense, perhaps, no peacocks and little ivory. But the everyday produce of the archipelago gathered by the traders and sailors who built Singapore's prosperity and shaped its character. This is the city's backdoor, and here lies much of its prosperity and most of its charm.

The port city of Singapore has many birthdays. One is 1819 when Sir Raffles founded their British trading port there. Another is 1965. Singapore shall forever be a sovereign, democratic, independent nation, founded upon the principles of liberty and justice, and ever seeking the welfare and happiness of a people in a more just and equal society. After a tumultuous period, which included a brutal Japanese occupation during the Second World War, then the return of British control once the war was over,

Singapore was finally on the road to independence. I'm speaking with Camales Soleil. The years between 1959 and 1965 have shaped the Singapore we know today the most. In 1959, Singapore gains independence from the British and becomes a self-governing colony from 1959 to 1963. And between 1963 and 1965, this is a two-year period, where it becomes a state of the independent republic of Malaysia. And in 1965, it becomes an independent republic. a nation welded into existence by a forceful and charismatic leader, Lee Kuanu, is Prime Minister for almost 31 years.

Whenever we talk of modern Singapore, whether that's, you know, we want to praise it or criticize it, we're really talking about the determination and drive of one man. And let there be no mistakes about this. Whoever governs Singapore must have that iron in him or give it up. Here's Lekewon You, speaking in 1980. This is not a game of cards. This is your life and mine. I've spent a whole lifetime building this.

And as long as I'm in charge, nobody's going to knock it down. The image that comes to me, and I would like to emphasize, it's just my reading, is of a mercurial figure, magnificent public speaker. And the phrase the benevolent tyrant has been applied to him as well. he had distinct ideas about how Singapore should be run or ruled really because that's what he did. He ruled over Singapore. To our ears today, some of his phrasing about how Oriental should be governed is probably terribly dated and essentialist.

But he had a formula in mind and that formula is provide security, economic prosperity, education, public service, judiciary, free from corruption, clean and safe streets. reliable public transport, a completely functioning society. But at this point, I should really point out that is not a welfare state. He never liked the idea of a welfare state. He always expected Singaporean to contribute to the making of that society. In exchange for all that, the public will concede some of their autonomy and other signifiers of liberal democracies like free speech, assembly rights. So what you have in effect here is a liberal economy without liberal democracy?

I always feel that the decisions that are made in Singapore are again stemming from the fact that we are a port city. And our focus is on trade, on survival, on commerce. And so decisions made are pragmatic. Being a port city, you're small, but you're also open and very, very vulnerable. This importance of security and safety and efficiency is, again, pragmately driven because we want to be the best port for everything. And so the rule of law is very important. And being able to protect private property, being able to protect people who come here, that, you know, and I think these rankings of, like, you know, the ease of doing business, that's very important. But that, again, stands from the very pragmatic, you know, idea that we want to remain.

this very important port open for business. You know, I think it's strange that we are both a port city and a nation state. Whereas if you look at, let's say Indonesia, Indonesia is a nation state. And when you are a nation state, like I think there are other imperatives. A lot of it has to do, it has very little to do with trade. It has to do with nationhood and identity versus the very pragmatic notion of trade. I wonder, for example, if let's say, Jakarta remained its own sort of political entity, whether it would also not make these pragmatic decisions.

So I think the way Singapore has made decisions has everything to do with it being a port city. Now, remember earlier we talked about the raffles plan, like give every people a piece of land. Lee Kuanu had a completely different strategy. You know, his strategy was a common good framework that absorbs and neutralizes differences, the creation of one society. So there's an investment in housing plans and sort of putting people together to live in the same housing complex or the same high-rise. The government's housing policy to build more and more low-cost flats and houses

is also hastening the process of... breaking down barriers. Not only are the slums disappearing, but bright, airy homes like these, with playgrounds around them, and shops and markets close at hand, are uniting Singapore's different peoples in their efforts for still higher standards of living. And the idea is that when people get to know each other, live in close proximity, they understand where each one is coming from, which is very obviously different from, okay, you have this land, you have this ghetto,

and I'll give you that other group, that other piece, and that becomes your ghetto. I'm accused often of interfering in private lives of citizens. Leak won you in 1986. If I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn't be here today. We'd be the old Singapore, speaking four languages, not interacting,

we wouldn't have them all living in the same new towns, learning to be good neighbors? At the same time, he kind of made sure that there are few subjects were taboo, so you don't discuss religion, race, or culture. I watched an interview with him. He was probably 80 years old at the time with PBS, and he would say, he told the interview, that's like, these are no-go areas, like the red line.

You don't talk about religion or race in Singapore. And to this day, Singapore celebrates what it calls the racial harmony day. Rational Harmony Day is a day when... We get to know more about the different cultures, the different races. I learn to respect them. I do have friends from adult racers, and I do treasure the friendship within them.

However, there are some voices who see it as working in theory more than practice. The four racial categories enshrined in Singapore's constitution, Chinese, Malay, Indian, and other, which could include Arabs, Armenians, Jews, and more, continue to shape discussions about identity in Singapore today. Singapore loves a neat category, but so many aspects of my identity don't, fit or spill out of there. And so I think when an entire population is educated about difference and race with these neat but unfortunately artificial categories, many of us, and I think increasingly now, do not fit into those boxes. I'm Pugia Nancy. I'm a poet and a teacher living in Singapore. I asked Puja to read excerpts from her most recent poetry collection. We may

space is divine. Are you Singaporean? Yes. Really? Yes. But were you born here? No. So where are you really from? I was born in India and came here with my parents when I was only a year old. So really, I've grown up here entirely. So your parents are India Indians. Yes. Yes. My parents grew up in India. Oh, I thought so. So north or south? My father grew up in Mumbai, my mother in Gujarat. So you're north.

Really, if we wanted to be technical, that's West India. So you're West Indian. No, because West Indians come from the Caribbean. Oh, so you are... My mother was born in Nairobi, Kenya. She grew up in Badodra, which is the third largest city in the state of Gujarat. To say that my mother was born in Africa is to say a Singaporean was born in Asia. To say my father is India-Indian makes even less sense than to say that someone is Singapore-Singaporean.

I do not feel Indian in the way some of my cousins who have lived three decades in an Indian metropolis do. I do not feel Singaporean in the way most of my friends do, and I most certainly do not feel Singaporean Indian or Indian-Singaporean, and in any case there is no doubt. difference because hyphenated people are always identified by the less dominant category. I do not speak Indian. I do not know anyone who does. I'm Gujarati. Both my parents are Gujarati. We are not Singaporean Gujaratis, even though we are Singaporean citizens. Singaporean Gujarati is traced their roots back in Singapore three or four generations. We have only one plane trip that happened in 1983 to account for our grand narrative.

We might be Gujarati Singaporeans, but I haven't thought hard enough about that. So I don't want to talk about where I'm from anymore because I feel like that is always really a question about where you belong. And India is 3.287 million square kilometres large. So one can't really come from go to or go back to India fam. The India of Slumdog Millionaire and the best exotic Marigold Hotel is the Singapore of crazy rich Asians. So maybe I am Gujarati and woman and maybe Indian and maybe Singaporean. But I am definitely when the baseline drops at the 26th second in a little wane track. I am all about that cocktail bar that serves the best olives on ice on Kandahar Street.

I am the dialogues I know by heart from the 1987 Emil Ardolino movie. And sometimes I really just represent Marine Parade. and I rep hard. I can tell you all about the odd dolphin statues at the promenade or how the snooker hall we used to go to play cheap games in as teenagers has made way for the MRT. You can go to Marine Parade. And I can tell you exactly which bus you can take.

Maybe you can just kind of take us into, you know, the opportunities, the challenges of being a creative person in such a small, and contained land, a land that has very strict or very definitive sort of notion of statehood and belonging and issues around security and otherness and all these things. And that space between being someone who roams above all of that and yet works in an environment that is contained by it. I think it's true for all artists of any kind in Singapore. that we're always up against state narratives versus the truth of our lived experiences.

And I think, like many of us would say, that we feel that our job is to constantly renegotiate those things through the work that we make. Much of my work is very autobiographical and very personal. It's about my immigrant existence. It's about growing up in this country that is home, in a way. that nowhere else is. You know, like the collection opens with a quote by Simon Tay, who's a Singaporean poet, from his poem, Singapore Night's Song, and the ending lines are,

if you cannot learn to love, yes, love this city, you have no other. And that always struck me because I don't have anywhere else to call home. And so it is out of my deep love for this city or like the version of the city that I know and I've grown up in, and I've seen, it's my hope that state narratives catch up to it, catch up to the reality of, like, the beauty of this place. Because I've grown up with such a diversity of friendships. And that's the best of Singapore, right?

And the worst of Singapore is, of course, that, like, we don't know how to talk critically about race or we are just so terrified of difference or mess because there's this anxiety around managing difference or not having kind of discord. I'm fascinating in that space between the things that make a space like Singapore Divine from the title of your book and the efficient narrative. Tell me a little bit about the Singapore that people who don't know Singapore

or who only come in as tourists or come in and visit don't get to see. I feel that this is a very lively and creative city. And I can't help but also believing that is because it's, a port city at the same time. I feel like the two are connected. Yeah, I mean, I think we, your instinct is definitely like correct. Because it's a port city, we have so many influences and so many cultural, um, heritages to like draw from. And so it creates this quite organic mishmash and hodgepodge, which is messy. It's messy and it's delightful in its messiness. For Puzha, one of the best places to see that organic, messy, intermessinging.

of people was the hip-hop clubs she and her friends frequented in the 1990s. We are going to leave all our tiredness, our mispronounced names, our generalized existence at the door. We are going to look for new voices. Tired of the ones that are loudest in our streets. Those voices take taxis past us on Saturday nights, down to Madam Wong and Zuck on Zion Road. We do not follow. We are tired of our names being checked on our. guest lists in our own country. These nights, we will dance only to our beats. We are tired of you being everything, being face of skincare, face of condo living.

We are tired of you touching everything, singing airy hipster versions of earthy Zubair's songs, tired of your under-consonated participation in Muniru Valibah. We don't care if you know the words tonight. Don't want you to shout along. Don't want you to touch, take over, ruin this. These are our songs. In this place you do not know about are maybe even scared to come to. These are our songs.

But every angry brown spine turns syrup sweet when Donnell Jones plays. Suddenly bodies forget the defense they have held all day and we melt into each other. Say, ooh, say what? Say what? Say what? say it is safe here. Because for the first time, there is no shame. Be as angry as you are. Be a body full of blood. The speakers are our prophets, sending out prayer calls. Things are getting way hot and the DJ slips the track into that Sean Paul song. Here we are so visible, so audible,

you can almost touch what it means to be this alive. Here we are all upro and and Yenna Mike Saraka and Mina reggaeton, and the beat goes on and on and on, and all of us so young, so free, so lost, but this club has got us. We dance some time till light breaks. We stumble out for Prata, for first bus. We'll come back next week for another world.

Years later, we asked which of us knew this small shophouse floor on number 10, Mohamed Sultan Road, was big enough to hold a world. Singapore keeps evolving, always with an eye to the future of ports. The invention of shipping containers revolutionized global trade. Singapore was among the first countries in the world to update its port facilities to accommodate larger container ships.

The first container ship docked Singapore's Tanganyang Pagar in 1972 after a maiden voyage from Rochidam. Within 14 years, Tanjong Pager had become the best. busiest port in the world in terms of shipping tonnage. Today, Singapore is building the world's first fully automated port, set to open in the 2040s. But we're also trying to be another kind of port now. A port in the electronic digital sense of the term, with Singapore is like a port where you plug in and you get all kinds of information.

And, you know, what I find fascinating is that in all these kinds of waves of new technologies, the word port is still there. The idea that a port, whether it's air shipping or containerization or today, the sort of transfers of information and technology, data port, the word port is still there. And Singapore is trying to be that port, whatever, whether it's data or whatever. So what can we learn from that about the place that port cities have in the 21st century? Well, for one thing, it tells me how far we as humans have come and how much we've remained the same.

We're still very much living in the world created by the ancient and original port cities. I mean, global trade routes and by definition the global economy and security are still influenced by these gateway cities at the intersection of oceans and seas. If I may go back to Yemen one more time, I'm sure our lesson. our listeners were remember how the current Houthi government there has disrupted trade routes through Babel Mendup in 2024 to protest the war in Gaza. Another example closer to home, as Canada looks at alternative economic models to its reliance on trade with the U.S., the port of Churchill in Manitoba is being talked up as like a new trade hub for energy and natural resources. and to become sort of a year-round gateway to shipping routes in the Arctic. We've seen the impact of the COVID pandemic on global supply chain routes

for everything from agricultural products to manufacturing, which has in part led to a hike in inflation and a cost of living crisis. So we are where port cities take us. That is really my firm belief. That's a wonderful way to think about it. We are where port cities take us. So my question for you is, how do you think port cities might still shape our world in the centuries to come?

Oh gosh, I really thought about that one, that question for a long, I've been thinking about it for a long time, and I'm just going to come out and say, like, on a deep personal level, I believe that both, you know, Port cities could serve as bulwark against the kind of mindless nationalism and anti-globalism and protectionism, them versus, us sentiments and policies that have made the last 10 years or so hellish, to be honest, and sort of dragged us all into division and polarization. I think Port City show a better way forward by just looking back at how things have worked out.

I'm thinking about the exchange of ideas, technology, movement of people and goods. Again, I don't want to undermine that some of that came from conflict, but a lot of it also came through diplomacy. I feel like I should say, like, it was ever thus, and I hope it remains for centuries to come. So I know that Singapore is betting on it, and I must say I understand why. I'll bet on whatever Singapore is betting on.

Kamal, thank you so much for taking us on this epic journey across the history, space, time of Singapore. Thank you so much. Thank you, and Alice. It's a pleasure to talk to you. Same here. That was UBC Journalism Professor Kamala Soleil, in our conversation about Singapore

and about how port cities shape the world as we know it. We go to Africa's so-called Golden Coast for our next stop in our series on significant port cities around the world. The town of Elmina is the site of the first so-called slave castle built by Europeans more than 400 years ago. Over the course of its operation, hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans

were forced through its door of no return across the Atlantic. Historically, it is considered ground zero for global economic and racial injustice. The town today is vibrant, full of life, while contending with the complicated roots of its history. That's coming up on ideas. This episode was produced by Camales Soleil and Pauline Holdsworth. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso.

Technical production, Sam McNulty. Our senior producer is Nicola Luxchich. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of ideas, and I'm Nala Ayyad. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca.com.