FORTUNE COOKIE by Bryce Courtenay

Author:Bryce Courtenay
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781742531649
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2010-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

It was all over, red rover. The theme fitted perfectly with Lee Kuan Yew’s vision of a multicultural society. We went on to say that good tourism is based on the experience of different cultures and exciting new food, and we had both in abundance. The last screen rotated to reveal hundreds of images of ethnic foods, both raw and cooked, clearly more variety than all the other nearby tourist destinations could provide. We then suggested that the tourist campaign be both international and intra-national, the former showing the cosmopolitan nature of the island and the latter designed to encourage the shopkeepers, hotel employees, taxi drivers, rickshaw owners and the general population to participate in the campaign by making tourists feel welcome and happy.

Lastly we suggested that, with a little care, we could make Singapore the only green city in Asia, where trees and green spaces and people could coexist, unlike the crowded, ugly slums of Hong Kong or the putrid klongs of Thailand. We called this ‘The Greening of Singapore’, and it was this suggestion, apparently, that delighted the prime minister.

While all this was happening, a dozen helpers were working quietly behind the screens to remove the first set of images from the thin panels and replace them with new ones. A hundred-strong children’s choir, representing all the ethnic groups in Singapore and clad in red shorts and white shirts emblazoned with the Singapore flag, assembled barefoot on the stage and sang the national anthem, as all the panels rotated so that they completely dominated the town-hall stage. Above the heads of the choir the giant words were repeated:

SINGAPORE

THE MAGIC OF PEOPLE!

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