1.

The streets are always clean. The bushes grow wild in the hot tropical heat and early afternoon downpours, but they are always trimmed back judiciously by middle-aged women wearing large straw hats. Snip, snip, snipping away the excess, the leaves and flowers fall in rhythm with the latest gossip. “So-and-so’s daughter’s got a $5,000 a month job at a bank, but she never gives her mother any money,” they whisper loudly to each other in disbelief, and shake their heads and click their tongues.

Snip, snip, “ah, but did you hear of so-and-so’s son? He married a Vietnamese woman and now doesn’t even visit his family during Chinese New Year!” How terrible! What horrible luck! The gods must be punishing for something she has done, if not in this life, the previous, or the life before that. “It is better to be barren than to have ten unfilial sons,” they say and shake their heads some more.

There is never an idle moment for this industrious city state. It buzzes with snipping work -- this is how a country grows strong. Trees grow in straight rows here.

The children line up in straight two-by-twos. Early on, they are taught which finger is the “shush finger” and where their lips are, and how to place the finger vertical to the lips. Kids learn it quickly. But still they forget and talk anyway, until the teacher in exasperation brings out the masking tape, and suddenly, the child grows up.

I had never liked to talk anyway.