American historian and creative non-fiction writer Michael Meyer has written books about rural China and the hutongs of Beijing. Last year, he moved to Tiong Bahru with his wife and young son and has since been observing the layers and idiosyncrasies of life in Singapore. Here, he talks us about the city’s invisible borders, the difference between being a creative writer and a journalist and why Tiong Bahru is more than just a hipster place.

Locals write Tiong Bahru off as the hipster place. But it’s still 80% local with a lot of elderly people who have lived through a lot of eras here.

I’ve done heritage. I’ve lived in Beijing, in the hutong and stuff. I get it. I don’t need a $4.80 coffee to be happy. 

For us, the notion of what Tiong Bahru is didn’t matter.  It was, “Oh that school is awesome. We want our kid to go there.”

I see everything now through the eyes of a father. It’s not what I think about Singapore so much as what my three year-old thinks of Singapore and what his teachers think of Singapore—how they’re compensated, what training they receive, what options do they have.

Cars go really fast in Tiong Bahru. A lot of people in the neighborhood don’t drive, so people come from outside and they drive like they would in their wide open estates in Queenstown. We have a lot of curves, a lot of elderly people walking, a lot of kids everywhere.

Singapore is the Orange County of Asia. Malaysia would be LA and Indonesia would be Mexico. It’s an interesting in-between place that rewards deeper investigation.

I’m so interested in MRT stops. If you know why Aljunied is named Aljunied, or why Eunos is Eunos, you know there were Malaysian princes that once owned a farm here and they funded the construction of Victoria Road. 

Because of SG50, people’s idea of history has gone back to 1965. But we have to start at 1500 and move forward.

After my talks [at the American Writers Festival in September], I got quite a few emails from people saying, “You said it’s hard in Singapore because there aren’t a lot of visible borders. But let me tell you: as a gay person, there certainly are. As a woman, there certainly are.” 

One thing the students said to me is: to be a 23 year-old in Singapore is a border right now.  There’s a pioneer generation, and there’s a lot of talk of SG100, but what about SG55, because that they’re going to want to buy a home and start a family.

I grew up in a very rural area with woods and creeks. You played outside until your parents yelled for you to get inside. The doors remained unlocked all night. I don’t know if that’s a better way to grow up. 

A lot of people reminisce about the kampong in a way that HDB people reminisce about growing up in an HDB. I’m interested in how a city’s design influences our upbringing and our education and the choices we make.

I’m interested in crime. It’s hard to find crime reports here. I was running in East Coast Park yesterday and somebody had died and they had police tape around the body. I got home, and I wanted to find out what happened. And that story is not in the paper, it’s not on any of the websites. Where do you find that? 

You read “So and so insulted the modesty of someone else” but you don’t read about ah longs, for example.

My family uses the Green Corridor and my kid loves it. I hope it stays like this. I hope it stays a bit wild and doesn’t become all cemented with drink stands and lights. I hope it’s preserved.

When I was a journalist, you’re assigned a story and you say, “Yes boss,” and you’re out the door and you have a deadline to go solve the puzzle handed to you. I was terrible at it.

I was always bad at getting someone on the phone to tell me why the devaluation of the Chinese yuan matters. My conversation with that person would always be like, “What are you looking at right now? What’s on your screen? Where are you sitting? What are you wearing?” I was always more interested in the anthropology of their profession.

I play dumb. I wander around and see what catches my eye. But I also like it when someone approaches me and says, “What are you looking for? How can I help you?”

I start every conversation with, “Can you help me?” That changes the psychology. People lean forward. And I end every conversation with, “Who should I talk to next?” And I very slowly collect data. It’s not a terribly efficient way of doing it.

When you’re a journalist, you’re a vampire. You land in, you take a bite, take your nourishment and fly out. The way I’m doing things, I’m a toothless vampire, being invited in, gumming on somebody for a while and flying away, then coming back again and gumming again.

I’m a factual creative writer. My mom read the Beijing book and said, “I don’t get it. Is it a novel or a textbook?” And I said it’s both. You’re using the reporting and fact-checking skills of journalism and telling the story with the devices a novelist uses to keep you turning the page. You’re creating characters, there’s something at stake, there’s suspense created.

I’m not on Facebook. I’ve never tweeted. A very important thing about being a writer is sitting in a room by yourself, and I don’t want to lose that. I don’t want to constantly react to the outside.