SEVEN WONDERS OF THE WORLD
Time travel to colonial days…our migrant forefathers by boat to our harbour, their first sight of Singapore: “Pearl of the East”—our bund, glorious. Demolished after Singapore’s independence, this was seen by me, aged four in the 1950s, who, with Papa (Robert Davison was an architect for the Singapore Improvement Trust in the 1950s) and Uncle Commodore, had sailed into town by kolek from Changi.
My heart sang lords-a-leaping. Faraway from Aunt Doris’ chilly Battersea flat—swaddled in “the land of counterpane”, in Singapore I glowed golden, yearning to join my fellow “sea nomads” diving from the cliffs at yonder “Parrot Islands”—Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The wonders of the ancient world I recited at bedtime; now wide awake, in panorama and Technicolor, the Singapore waterfront loomed before me—majestic the pyramids!
Here were 1920s blockbusters: Ocean Building, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, Union Building, and the Fullerton Building, so mammoth because of their cutting-edge, lighter reinforced concrete frame and artificial stone cladding. Thus, arcades more commodious than the Roman Colosseum, triple-storied colonnades dwarfed the Temple of Artemis, and sculptured ornaments rivalled the Mausoleum at Halicanassus. Brilliantly from afar was the bank’s cathedral glass, where the female figure of Commerce reigned over ships and tribes babbling the Tower of Babel; through Olympian bronze doors the marbled interiors would Zeus enthrone. Crowning the Bank, Ocean and Union Buildings were lighthouses at Alexandria. Flanking either end, the skyscrapers of Asia Insurance Building and the Bank of China were gigantic legs soaring to the clouds, beyond the heavenly torso of the Colossus at Rhodes, bellowing “Fee-fi-fo-fum!”
Then, I became Sinbad prizing the stately pleasure domes of Oriental merchant princes: steadfast tin soldiers guarding Loke Yew’s Winchester House, and Ali Baba’s jewels in the Alkaff family’s Arcade sprouting magical onions—conjured by swarthy genies swathed in turbans at Change Alley. They must have clapped abracadabra, for suddenly, from my flimsy sailboat blown to port, the pier opened wide its arc mouth as Jonah’s whale, truss ribcage ravenous, spraying Art Deco sunburst, its steely pair of lantern eyes in blood lust.
My father always laughs when he remembers how, noting four generations of Empire builders coursing through my veins, I “the little prince”, stood to attention and saluted, for waving to me atop Clifford Pier, Pax Britannica at full mast.
