June 16th, 2008 Singapore Trip 2008
Photos at:
http://flickr.com/photos/licheong/sets/72157605643208454/
Singapore Arts Festival 2008 official website
http://www.singaporeartsfest.com/
Opening of the Arts Festival, “Water Fools” at Boat Quay (youtube)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSM-sMmzfiM&feature=related
11 Jun 2008
I met a girl from Wuhan today taking the same flight, I lent my tourist book to her, and she bought me a coke. She’s a dancer and plans to work in singapore. And then we chatted and she invited me to take her family’s car at airport, and dropped me off somewhere near my hostel. What a pity I didn’t took a photo with her. Sigh….
The hostel is interesting, it rests in little India, with Indian smell in the street. Indian pop songs can be heard from bars in the street.
I went to Esplanade (the cultural centre here) to get the tickets I’ve bought online, and then watched a free Hip-hop dance performance there. Walked along the riverside (Boat Quay), it was pretty much like Lan Gwai Fong + Lei Yu Mun, many bars and seafood stalls at night. There’s a bungy-jump there too.
I get into a bar called Crazy elephant, got a beer and listen to some loud blues music, the band wasn’t that great. At around 12:00a.m. I took the MRT (same as MTR in HK) back to hostel. It was already the last train and I was the last person to leave the station, and a security guy came after me and shuts the gate.
And strange enough, the hostel featured not only mixed dorm, but mixed washroom, that you’d find a girl brushing her teeth besides you. And probably some girls were showering when I was shitting. That’s really ODD.
It’s also interesting to see that many people in Singapore wear shorts and slippers, even if they dressed formally on top, perhaps it’s really too hot and wet here.
12 June 2008
Breakfast was provided by hostel: 2 breads and there’s toaster, jam & butter, tea or coffee, and 2 eggs, one can cook by himself (but I didn’t). Self-serviced. Then I went around the little india district, eat an indian prata (very thin and umlet-like) with cheese and mushroom. And then I passed through Waterloo street, a women-street-like hawkers’ area, drank a fresh coconut, ate some snacks.
Went to national library, it has 10 floors, its design is much better then Hong Kong Central Library - modern and yet space are fully utilized, while HKCL is much like a shopping-mall. I walked pass a few churches, got into an Arts museum that is free in lunch hour, featuring some south east asian artists’ new painting, as well as some chinese painting by 徐悲鴻 when he was in Singapore.
Then the Singapore national museum, with living gallery featuring their different cultures, fashion, films, foods, indian languages, and then the history gallery. There’s no written description on each displayed items, but visitors were given a mp3-like machine, but the machine was huge and bulky. It’s annoying to listen to the descriptions, while I could see and walk past an item within a few seconds, the mp3 was as long as 2 minutes that I totally lost my patience to listen to it. The history description was quite supporting their former governor Lee Kuan Yew, a bit like propaganda.
Then I took MRT to the arabian district, but seems it’s more like an indonesian district, with people dressing like indonesian we saw in HK. They were selling carpets from middle east, and also crafts and souvenirs which were not quite attractive to me. There’s a huge mosque there, but visitor could only have a look outside but not walk into the sacred area. Eat again, this time some middle-east food, mutton murtabak, which was indeed very similar to indian food, with curry-like sauce provide, but very cheap (S$3) and quite big and oily.
I was nearly fainted in the heat and went back hostel, I’ve bought a lot of bottles of water a day already. Reading a local newspaper that mentioned a news about two young person died of heat-stroke in military training, so the government spared all the trainees to have 3 days of holiday, that’s why I saw quite a few people wearing military suits today.
I walked into an indian classical music instrument store nearby, the store keeper was teaching a student, an indian girl to sing traditional indian song accompanied by an accordian.
And then I went back to national library, here’s also where the drama theatre situated (on the 3rd and 5th floor)! The theatre is a bit like APA’s lyric theatre, with stall, circle and upper circle, though the shape is more square-like. I sat in the first row in the upper circle. Audience around are mostly teenagers, they spoke English fluently, though with singaporean accent. Surely all young people use English in their daily life, not like in HK, as there are so many different ethnic groups here: chinese, malaysian, indian, indonesian. Well, Singapore is much more like an international city than HK!
So this is the first Singapore Arts Festival performance I watched. The drama was “The King Lear project”, performed by Fran Borgia, a drama group directed by Ho Tzu Nyen. The audiences seemed to know King Lear well, that they do discuss and enjoy the drama, seem like they must all have drama lessons in their school , which I can only understand 70-80%!! (There’s no english or chinese subtitle provided, and the singaporean accent is difficult to grasp for me, and I know little about King Lear).
The plot was very creative, a drama about drama rehearsal, that they tried with different interpretation of King Lear on stage, which was very inspiring! They tried different styles on stage: realistic? Realistic killing on stage just make audience burst into laughter. Drama suggested sex as Freud said? Putting a black sausage that pees on stage was simply hilarious. Music and sound effects sometimes fought with the actors’ speech that could be just distracting. Fancy lighting, like disco, was also laugh-provoking. That’s the first scene. Here came the second scene: they tried to stabbed a person and made him blind. They tested it with facing the audience, against the audience, in the dark, or even in the backstage, that shows so many possibilities to interpret the same piece. Even the tone of speaking, office-like or hyper-emotional, makes a big different. The third scene: the director (in the drama) tried to be multimedia and put some slide show on stage, which is simply “word-painting”, that you saw an eye when the actor mentioned the word “eye”, and a real “heart” when he mentioned the word “heart”. Finally found out all these just didn’t work, an actor suggested that in Shakespeare time there’s no director. So the director surrendered, leaving the actors alone. The actos went well without any support, but then the director come and suggested, why not try to act with the voice alone? Light out, the actors recite in the dark, well, that’s indeed even more powerful sometimes, and then silence, the play ends! No curtain call, no applause. But the enthusiastic audience waited outside the theatre after the show. When the actors come out, they received their big applause! But to be a bit skeptical, the actors are a bit amateur and overacting, I guess actors in HK are far more solid in their acting and know much better about action and rhythm!
13 June 2008
Today I took a 2-deck bus to china town (牛車水). The bus is pretty much the same as in HK. Had a little walk in the Hindu temple in the china town. There’re a few drama society there too. Camera runs out of battery and I went back hostel. And then I took a taxi to city links, a shopping mall in the city centre and met with Phuah . Got some spicy singaporean food at a food court in the shopping mall (pretty much the same as those food courts in HK), then I went together with Phuah to visit the buddhist centre here, had some chats, and as he needed to continue to work in the afternoon, so I left and took the MRT, this time, around the whole singapore in a circle for 2 hours, exceeding the time limit and paid a fine of $2. Sometimes the train went upon the ground, a good way to have a look of the different districts. But as most places are plain areas, lack of hills, with sometimes just a few lakes, neighbourhoods are quite homogeneous everywhere.
Back to the city hall station, and walked through the Asian Civilization Museum. Just desides, there’s an old building that is now used as Arts House, functioning like the Art Centre in HK, with small film screening rooms, small exhibition halls, small drama theatres, and then a nice little CD and book shop with cafe. The CD shop “Earshot” features Singaporean composers and artists, with some BIS CDs by Singaporean Symphony orchestra and Lan Shui, as well as those by the Chinese Orchestra and Yeh Tsong. I bought some CDs, walked around riverside and took some indonesian food, and then went to Victoria Theatre. It looked like a beautiful roman-style building: one side is the concert hall, the other side is the theatre.
The programme was “Awakening”, music by Qu Xiao Song + Singapore Chinese Orchestra conducted by Yeh Tsung, together with Wei Chun Rong, the singer-actress, accompanied by dizi and percussion, members from the Northern Kunqu Opera Theatre; and an English early music ensemble called Globe which plays early music from Shakespeare’s time. The concept was: both Shakespeare and Tang Xian Zu are drama writers at the same period in history, so they’ve took made a crossover between Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Ophelia, and The Peony Pavilion in Kunqu opera. The result, is just a prelude by Qu Xiao Song, followed by Kunqu opera, followed by Shakespeare songs, and then an interlude by Qu Xiao Song, and then going on alternatively, and lastly a Finale that all the different groups finally mixed together to perform as a single ensemble. The whole process was just like putting many bricks together without really building a house, quite disappointing as a whole, though part of the performance are well done. Qu’s music, was as simple as always his style, full of meditative long notes. The Finale was written beautifully, that the sound of western early music ensemble and chinese ensemble are very coherent and blended well. The pure voice of the singer from the Globe (forget her name), and the voice of Kunqu singer Wei Chun Rong were both great.
14 Jun 2008
Went to a port, and found out that all ships to Indonesian Islands needed to be booked beforehand and one needed to pass through the immigration to go there. I gave up. Instead, I took a MRT to Harbour Front and got a bus to Sentosa - one of the nearest resort islands that’s like ocean park in singapore.
Went to the beaches and took a lot of photos of the sun and beach and girls and babies there. Eat a big bowl of “seafood symphony”, very nice. Walked in the hill of that island, and then took a tram back.
Bought an indian flute and a book when I passed through the Indian music store again. Then have dinner at a food market nearby: fried Kway Teow, and then a dessert called Chendol, with durian, coconut juice, xi-mi, that tasted really fantastic!
Got into LASALLE - an academy of performing arts there, that has music, drama, dance, fine arts and film departments. Took a photo of gamelan there. Then I passed by the Nayang Arts Institute too. Finally I ran to the concert hall (Esplande), so poor that I needed to pass through dozens of shopping malls and underground tunnels in order to get there. …and once again in my life, I found out that the concert started at 7:30p.m. not 8p.m., I was late and missed two pieces, including a premiere of a work by local composer. Yet I watched Macdowell’s piano concerto No. 2 played by the chinese pianist Shen Wen Yu, and then Cerman Fantasy by a Singaporean 24-year-old violinist Tee Khoon Tang. SWY is bizarre in his technique, TKT also good, though her tone quality is a bit tense and harsh in louder notes.
The hall sounds great, 100 times better than HKCC! Reverb is a bit long but diffuses well, thus the audience can still hear the direct sound clearly. And the soloist’s position is the sweet spot of the hall, that it sounds like amplified and every detail can be heard clearly! Singapore Festival Orchestra, conducted by Chan Tze Law, though not perfect, but very musical. Perhaps because of the long reverb of the hall, sometimes the winds and the strings don’t attack on the notes at the very same moment.
Walked through the seashore, and saw that there’s live band show outdoor, they are teenagers, but the young keyboard player’s jazz-piano is just fantastic, and the vocal sings like any black jazz singers too. And they are not shy at all, well-prepared, and the acoustics of the outdoor performance area was really great.
15 Jun 2008
Went to National University of Singapore, and walked into their Conservatory of Music. The campus is huge, very much like any campus in US, much larger than CUHK or HKU. The conservatory of music is very big and splendid. They have orchestra hall, recital hall, ensemble studio, recording studio… so great!
Have a final lunch at little india, chicken tikka with nan. Then pack the things and left the hostel. hurry to airport, just $1.5 MRT fare, that’s good. Got the Jetstar plane and back to HK.
Some afterthoughts
Singapore, much to my surprise, although it is a small city, actually it has much more open area, a wider, bluer and cleaner sky than in Hong Kong. Much more trees, much more green. Teenagers look stronger (as they have to be trained as soldiers?) and healthier, and more confident in themselves, girls are not as skinny and thin as those in Hong Kong.
There are so many beautiful old buildings, including those theatres and concert halls, and local flats, which are well preserved, while in HK, there aren’t much left.
Many roomates in the hostel go to Singapore just because they pass-by here. They are either going towards Australia or New Zealand, or going back from there. Singapore acts as a great hub for people from the southern and the northern hemisphere, as well as a middle stop for far east, south east asia to india and middle east. Singapore continues its role as an international city, while Hong Kong, seems to me, its international identity is fading, and it will sooner or later become simply a local Chinese city.
For performing arts, Hong Kong is really not bad in the Asian region. I do think HK’s orchestra, theatre groups are indeed pretty good, the cultural scene in HK is actually vibrant, but what is lacking, is the variety of culture, while Singapore is constantly bombarded by so many different cultures nearby.