Every Step Is Home

Just returned from CNY vacation in my hometown. Realized that nowadays I often have to rethink the context before using the term "hometown" -- should I say "birth town" instead? While I was here I'd say "go back to Indonesia" but while I was there I'd say "go back to Singapore". =X

Recalled that at my citizenship ceremony, Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan said something along the line of belonging to the nation without denying our ancestry or forgetting where we came from, all of which shaped who we are. That point of view really impressed me at that time and had dispersed the conflicted feeling I used to have about my nationality.

A recent article that addresses the topic of the Singaporean identity in connection to the White Paper on Population also resonates with the above point of view:
6.9 million people and an emotional hump

Not sure whether that link will be permanent, so I hope it won't violate any copyright to quote the relevant parts here:

Singaporean is by definition a nationality, not an ethnicity nor a race.

It makes some sense for the Japanese to fear immigration as they want to preserve their ethnic homogeneity. Recently, when Hong Kong’s leaders made similar remarks that Hong Kong’s ethnic homogeneity of Cantonese people will be threatened by more Mainland Chinese immigration, it made sense too, even if one argues they are all ethnic Chinese.

But Singaporean? What is that?

It is neither race nor ethnicity, neither a language group nor even a religious community. Singapore is Singapore precisely because of its diversity, not because of homogeneity.

We seem to have forgotten the Singapore Story. It is a story of an island of immigrants forged from many races, many religions, many cultures. It is a story of a nation that welcomed different people who wanted to make a better life to find a new home. It is a story of a country whose descendants of these original people still celebrate various festivals, where Mosque meets Temple, where Christians live alongside Hindus, and even if most of us speak English or Singlish, we still preserve our ‘native’ tongues.

[...]

In the end, like others, I feel nobody defined it more eloquently than one of our founding fathers and the author of the Singapore Pledge, S. Rajaratnam.

He said, "Being a Singaporean is not a matter of ancestry. It is conviction and choice."