ASEAN-Russia: Foundations and Future Prospects

Food for the Soul and the Stomach

290 FOOD FOR THE SOUL AND THE STOMACH Julia Sherstyuk-Viswanathan It is only in recent years that Singapore and Russia have stepped up their engagement. While the future Russian Tsar Nicolas II visited Singapore as early as 1891 during his year-long voyage to the East, Russia and Singapore had only a nodding acquaintance until much later. Geography may be to blame as the huge distance between Russia and Singapore conditioned the absence of long political and trade connections. Another culprit is mass media. While Western publications offered a rather slanted and biased vision of Russia to most of the world, their Russian counterparts of recent times perpetuated false statements and misleading facts about the city-state. Luckily, in today’s Singapore, myths about Russia are being dispelled and stereotypes are being broken. Behind this shift in awareness were a number of people and organizations, both Singaporean and Russian. One of them was Mr G.K. Goh, whose father’s company Yew Lian Pte. Ltd. exported rubber to Russia in the 1960s, dealing with Raznoimport Moscow. There was also Moscow Narodny Bank, predecessor of VTB Capital, Russia’s leading investment company today. Founded in 1911 and later becoming a cornerstone of Soviet trade, Moscow Narodny Bank opened its branch in Singapore in 1971 and for about three decades provided a financial bridge between the Soviet Union and the global economy. Six years ago, Ambassador Michael Tay founded the Russia-Singapore Business Forum, which is a business-to-business platform engaging Food for the Soul and the Stomach 291 entrepreneurs from Russia, Singapore and other Asian and CIS countries. There is a Muscovite, Katya Drozdova, who set up a Russian language school in Singapore and has a great number of locals as her students. After spending seven years in Singapore, I felt I could contribute to the further building of Singaporean-Russian ties initiated by all these people before me. While the city-state’s history may be short, Singapore definitely has a story to tell the world, especially so in the Russian language as, apart from travel guides, there were very few books about Singapore in Russian. On the other hand, I am proud to be Russian and wanted to help unveil this riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, as Winston Churchill once characterized my country, to Singaporeans. With the assistance of my closest friends, the idea of publishing a bilingual English-Russian magazine was born. We wanted it to serve as a cultural bridge between Singapore and Russia, or, in a wider context, in all the countries where both the Russian and English languages are widely spoken. FILLING IN THE CULTURAL GAPS The pilot issue was published under the name of Russian Singapore. However, very soon we realized that it did not do justice or give full credit to the rather comprehensive coverage of our magazine, which consisted of sections like Diplomacy, Business, Traditions, Food, Lifestyle, Science, Trends, History, Faces of Russia and Literature. This was why as early as Issue 2 was in the pipeline we renamed it 103rd Meridian East. This is the imaginary line that runs through both Singapore, straight above Changi Airport, and Russia, where it lies a few kilometres west of Baikal Lake, one of the most recognized natural icons. In our initial stage, three years ago, we conducted a survey in several Russian cities and towns, where we asked people what they knew about Singapore. The results were rather disappointing: • “Banana-lemon Singapore” was the most common answer, which referred to a line from Tango Magnolia, a song popular in Russia a good century ago; • the chewing of gum in Singapore is punishable by caning; • ogling at women in Singapore will lead to jail time; • men wearing shorts and women sporting deep necklines are heavily fined; 292 Julia Sherstyuk-Viswanathan • married couples are not allowed to have more than two children; • it is in China… Hong Kong… Africa… India… One rare treat was when somebody mentioned “Singapore has the coolest airport in the world” and that Singapore used to be a British colony. The survey reassured us that writing about Singapore in Russian was timely, as there were definitely some geographical and cultural gaps for us to fill. At the same time, we also asked Singaporeans what they knew about Russia. The answers we received boiled down to the following: • Russia is a very cold country; • Russian women...