梁世瓏-987336 (3) The True Meaning of "City"

For the first case, I would like to choose Xiamen (廈門) city in china as my presentation. First of all, what (江湖) means here is not directly translated to its English word, which means river and lake, but it means advanced, developed and metropolitan city. For a small city (or even a village) that wants to grow up to become a city, there must be something that will be sacrificed. It likes, there’s lost for gain. and for of course, evolution of a village to become city would sacrifice things like the close relationship among people, the peaceful and mundane lively life of the village etc. those things would be changed as the way a great city supposed to be is, whereas people would be more concerning about themselves, and people start to have different vision and their aims and goals in their lives. It changed the way it used to be. people start working for their own lives, pursuing their own aims, interests, and status. There would be less and lesser shared world, and togetherness among them, and finally more and less becoming more individually than their original relationship. That is what happening in Xiamen lately, I choose this city because I had been there before for 1year, and I experienced a lot when I lived there. And for these several years, I found it very different than the way it used to be.
Xiamen is definitely a growing city, it is developing faster and faster during these years. Xiamen used to be a port of trade used by the European, its mainly economic activities used to be fishing, and the people there used to live their lives together as a fisher. And Xiamen also experienced its city to be an educational place, where the atmosphere there are purposely built to be suitable for students’ life, and for elderly people to spent their aging lives. The city even recently named China's 2nd 'most suitable city for living.it used to be far from those modernisation and those trading buildings and stuffs. But now there are certainly many changes in different aspects. The way they socialize with each other now has getting more and more individually, and many people there worked day and night to be able to pay the school fee of their children (they even start to work at 4a.m.), they wants better education for their children. The area slowly started to be used as a investment place, and place for manufacturing factories, and stuffs for commercials and trading. So Xiamen started to throw away their lively life as being fisher and togetherness to grow up and being a developed place and eventually becoming a metropolitan city, where big buildings and enormous architectures were built there, shopping mall, and tourism sites. Finally the thought of the people were affected by the developing condition, and changed to be more likely as city people. They realize that their lives ware not well enough, and started to understand the thought of city people to pursuing prosperity and success for their own lives. And that is what makes them changed. And now Xiamen is known as the china’s top 10cities in its developing progress and economic growth.
For the second case, the second babel tower, I would prefer to choose Singapore as a multi-culture city, as well as country. The reason why I choose Singapore, is because it is proven to be one of the most advance city in the world. if we could see Singapore, it is simply just a small country with one city as well as its capital city, but the economy growth and the overall prosperity level in the country is superior enough to be one of the most potential developed country. How could it be? How could a small country (I prefer to call it a city, because it is even smaller than Jakarta city) like Singapore could produce such a gigantic result in its developing? Or evenmore we should see the case that Singapore has to overcome is the multi-cultural society and the various different language which proven to be the most difficult obstacle for a city in order to grow more. A multicultural city often meets problems such as clan clashes, ethnic social status, different beliefs and religions, all about unifying it without losing or sacrificing any of their identity. What makes it able to overcome those obstacles is a government and one who could take control of everything, to make everything stands in order, but with a justice, equal treatment to everyone, and powerful rules, law and constitution.



The city eventually succeed to develop its every aspect, and to make a new vision in each of its people to see that they are live in a multi-cultural city, but without any discrimination to everyone, everyone despite of their origins, ethnicity, language or even culture, would be treat equally, and have the same rights and obligations. They even developed a language which could unify their differences, and used Singapore-english (Singlish) instead of using proper English (which would be a hard solution for elderly people who would like to learn English). Singlish basically is a same language with English but without any proper British nor American accent, no tenses rules, and an English that only like a combine of root words to become a sentence. In This way, nobody would meet any problem to communicate with everybody. Indians (who have the Indian accent), Chinese (who have Chinese accent), Western people who are known to dominate the city, and many other nationality could communicate freely with Singlish. The people also gain any freedom they wish to build any type of buildings they like, any cultural buildings, any religious buildings, all are allowed. We could see there are lots of Chinese style architectures, as well as Indian architectures, traditional as well as modern architectures, western as well as eastern architectures. Even in the foodcourt or foodcity, it would be a whole package of various cuisines from various countries, in every shopping centres, buildings, or even the dwelling areas like apartments, HDB, complex of landed house, they got to be at least a foodcourt with various chooses of cuisines, like Korean, Thai, Chinese, Indian, Malaysian, Indonesian, western food etc. So people from different countries who live in it would feel so comfortable to know that their cultures and ethnics are being legally and generally accepted in the whole city. The city also divided into several major parts where we could find that each part has its own type. For example if in the center-north of the city, they got Indian style of architectures (the place itself called little India), then the other part of the center-south also has Chinese type of architectures (the area itself called Chinatown), etc.
So the city and the people in it, live their every day with a mixing style, and cultures of the whole world, but without sacrificing any of it. And with the powerful of the regulations and laws in Singapore, it makes the whole Singapore in a complete neat order, and world-wide known as the safest city in the world.
God Bless You!!