The Ropebridge

Extract from Pico Iyer's Sun After Dark, about Tibet:

"The Chinese would say that.......Tibet is poor precisely because it devotes its time to gods and prayer and superstition. Many Tibetans might reply that karaoke parlors and industrial cranes look to them like what is truly barbaric. The traveler, anxious in most cases to see the particular beauty and dignity of an ancient culture preserved- yet in no position to suggest that its people live without the schools and hospitals he finds so essential himself- walks between the sides as across one of the ropebridges that famously span the gorges of the Himalayas. Swaying one way, as the wind catches the bridge, swaying the other."

Reading this reminds me of our own predicament back home. The only difference is the little "beauty" and "dignity" of a "culture preserved"to start with is already wearing so thin in Singapore.