香港｜细说从头——鸭巴甸街的印艺传奇

The origin tale of modern Singapore cultivates the image of a gleaming city rising from the wilderness – most recently rehashed in a certain hit film that makes a glib reference to the island being nothing but ‘jungle and pig farms’ before Chinese immigrants arrived, clearing the landscape and making themselves ‘crazy rich’ in the process. In this story, tigers are the antagonist, a feral threat it was impossible to eliminate completely: Singapore is an island, and tigers are excellent swimmers. As late as 1869, Alfred Russel Wallace wrote, in The Malay Archipelago, that ‘there are always a few tigers roaming about Singapore, and they kill, on average, a Chinaman every day’. – 现代新加坡的起源故事塑造了一个从荒野中崛起的闪闪发光的城市形象——最近在一部热门电影中重新演绎，这部电影巧妙地提到了在中国移民到来之前，这个岛除了“丛林和养猪场”之外别无他物。在这个过程中，让自己变得“疯狂富”。在这个故事中，老虎是敌人，一个无法完全消除的凶猛威胁：新加坡是一个岛屿，老虎是优秀的游泳运动员。早在1869年，阿尔弗雷德·拉塞尔·华莱士（Alfred Russel Wallace）在《马来群岛》（The Malay Archipelago）中就写道：“在新加坡到处游荡的老虎总是不多，平均每天会杀死一个中国人。”