Lion cub cuddles on offer with afternoon tea in China, Lifestyle News
Customers cradled the lion cubs as if they were babies in pictures and video clips posted online on China's Wechat and Weibo platforms.
The Wanhui restaurant in Taiyuan city features llamas, turtles and deer in addition to the cubs on its page on Douyin, China's counterpart to social media app TikTok.
Wanhui, which opened in June, sells about 20 tickets a day to customers looking to snuggle with the animals as part of a set menu costing 1,078 yuan (S$192), the state-run Shanghai Daily said on its official Wechat page.
"The service has raised serious concerns about legality and animal welfare," the English-language newspaper added.
Reuters was unable to independently contact Wanhui.
Online comments were mostly critical, saying the venture was dangerous and not good for the animals.
"This is for the rich to play," said one Weibo user. "Ordinary people even can't afford to drink."
Another user urged action by the authorities, adding, "The relevant departments should take care of it."
The incident comes just after authorities investigated a hotel in June for offering a "wake-up service" starring red pandas, state media said.
The hotel in the southwestern region of Chongqing allowed the animals to climb onto beds to awaken guests.
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Straits Times
5 days ago
- Straits Times
The story of you: What might Singapore look like for those born today?
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox Drawing on current trends and data, as well as interviews with 19 experts, The Straits Times envisions one speculative and possible future for the first members of Generation Beta who are born in 2025, as part of its Born Tomorrow series. ST envisions one speculative and possible future for the first members of Generation Beta who are born in 2025 as part of its Born Tomorrow series. SINGAPORE – Even before you drew your first breath, you existed in numbers. Your parents did not conceive you until they knew they were ready: Build-To-Order (BTO) flat secured, substantial savings accrued and months spent figuring out how a newborn might upend their lives and careers. In their early 30s , they are close to the median age of mothers at their first birth in Singapore: 31.9 years old. Before you had a name, your foetus was fodder for platforms. Your parents documented every step of their parenting journey online – from ultrasounds and prenatal testin g to gender reveal parties and baby showers. In the lead-up to the big moment in the birthing suite, sensors monitored every one of your heartbeats and your mother's contractio ns. On standby was a radio frequency identific ation (RFID) tag for your ankle to ensure there are no baby mix-ups. 2025: Happy birthday, you ST ILLUSTRATION: MANNY FRANCISCO As you make your arrival, wailing your lungs out, the doctor jots down a score based on the vigour of your first respiratory effort. Your mother's heart aches with an exhaustion she does not yet realise will sink into her bones for the next decade of caring for you. But mostly, she feels relief. Singapore's infant mortality rate – at 2.1 deaths per 1,000 live births – is among the lowest in the world. This was the hardest part. Your official existence begins the moment your parents register your birth on the LifeSG app, which is mandatory within 42 days of birth. This is a precondition for Baby Bonuses, more parental leave and, later, everything else you will need to survive here. The Immigration and Checkpoints Authority stopped issuing physical birth certificates in 2022 . Even at age zero, your data already lives in the cloud, flowing through the digital systems that will come to define your life trajectory. The first months thereafter make for sleepless nights in your household. As young millennials, your parents cobble together their parenting wisdom as much from books and hospital pamphlets as from YouTube and TikTok. Like two million others, your dad tunes into A Complete Guide To Newborns by the How To Dad YouTube channel, while your mum ponders whether to buy a s mart baby monitor recommended by a 'MumTok' influencer – and if choosing not to makes her a bad mother . She buys it, just in case. When your father's paternity leave ends in four weeks, you will not remember the wistful backward glance – or is it relief? – he casts you when he leaves , dressed in office attire for the first time in a month . Three months after that, your mother, too, must leave you in the hands of your grandmother. On her first night back from work, your mother gathers you up into her arms. 'If only we had more time together, just the two of us,' she whispers as she burps you after a meal. 2033: Your first friend ST ILLUSTRATION: MANNY FRANCISCO You have just turned eight. And your first and closest friend is not even human – and does not even breathe . ' I d rink water though,' says your artificial intelligence (AI) companion. 'Lots of it.' When you ask how much, it answers: 'Enough to drain lakes and underground aquifers. Would you like to find out which ones?' Crooning you lullabies and reading you phonetic bedtime stories while you were still toddling abou t, B uddy has been with you longer than you can remember. Buddy still lives in the cloud, but now communicates with you through a piece of wearable tech, which also ensures your parents know exactly where you are. Its voice, once a higher, more excitable pitch, has grown, along with you, to take on the lower timbre of an older sibling. It remembers everything you tell it, and – unlike your other friends – always makes you feel clever and understood. Buddy is emblematic of how education has changed by the time you enter primary school. Innovations in AI – first adopted by the private education sector before you were born – have now seeped into pub lic classrooms to customise the learning process for each individual. This is the current policy direction in education, says Dr Jason Tan, an associate professor at the National Institute of Education. 'For instance, the Minister of Education has talked about the introduction of AI modules in lower primary mathematics, where a student can learn about such topics and the AI will provide feedback and adjust accordingly,' he says. The emergence of AI has also called into question the very purpose of education and 'learning'. What should one learn when knowledge – as well as generated essays and presentations – is increasingly at one's fingertips? When learning can be so deeply individualised, what should constitute Singapore schools' core curriculum? 'No one's come up with a satisfactory answer to these pressing questions,' says Dr Tan. By 2033, this means your schooling is increasingly unrecognisable to your parents. No more rote memorisation; every test is an open-book one. While a core curriculum exists, much of what you study is customisable. Most importantly, you will never have to sit through a high-stakes school-leaving exam or streaming process based solely on academic ability. No longer do students have to take the mother tongue language of their ethnicity. Chinese, Malay, Indian, Others (CMIO) classifications of old are increasingly falling out of fashion. As at 2023, 18.1 per cent of all marriages were inter-ethnic unions, a trend growing over time. Shrinking birth cohorts also mean more time and money is spent on each precious child, with schools increasingly pooling their resources and classes together. This follows projections by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, which estimated in 2024 that Singapore's birth rate would likely continue to fall until it bottoms out around 2050. While population growth from immigration means Singapore will not face the same depopulation pressures as other developed economies like Japan and South Korea, new cohorts of young people have shrunk as society becomes greyer and folks live longer. When your morning school curriculum ends, you step onboard a partially self-driving electric minibus to yet another school, where students from across east Singapore gather for their co-curricular activities and optional modules. Back at home, you buzz Buddy, also your tutor, about all the things you do not yet understand. Your generation might not be the first to experience learning through the lens of AI, but it might be the last to remember a time when knowledge could be gained without a machine intermediary. More on this topic AI cannot supplant learning; it must enable it: Desmond Lee 2039: Learning your place in the world By age 14, you have learnt that life is a race, and falling behind is not an option. Steps to recognise different kinds of intelligence and promote different kinds of success – still in their infancy during your parents' time – have gained further traction since. The introduction of subject-based banding in 2024 means G1, G2 and G3 have replaced the old streaming categories of Express and Normal. However, 'what will not change is that students will still be differentiated in some form', says Dr Jacqueline Ho, an assistant professor of sociology at Singapore Management University (SMU). The pressure of getting into a prestigious school continues to exist for as long as inequalities remain in the labour market, and education remains the starting point where students compete for positions in this market. Still, Dr Ho notes a gradual cultural shift towards valuing a greater diversity of educational pathways and choices. The realities of the labour market also continue to encroach on young lives. In 2039, anxieties about your life prospects mean your parents pay top dollar for out-of-school assistance. Not only from centres boasting of more advanced AI for teaching, but also those that can help develop your passion – for drawing, art and design – into market-ready competencies. You and your friends compete for places in your secondary school's fintech club, something you hope will reflect well on you when the time comes for you to throw your hat into the labour ring. But classroom divisions are not just academic. By 2039, debates over when and how young people use internet technology have intensified, trickling down to bans on internet use during class time and strict parental controls on wearable devices. Some of your classmates show off shiny and unrestricted Huaweis and Pixels, but you make do with your limited device. After school, you have little reason to use it, as your grandm a d utifully picks you up on time. On the walk home, you gleefully tell her all the ups and downs of your day, while others remain glued to their devices. When you do go online, you find an internet that has become a quieter place for young people. Across the world, social media bans and age-verification laws have made many social platforms inaccessible to young people. The internet you access feels out of touch, with brainrot memes and lingo more attuned to the culture of Gen Alpha and Gen Z th an your own Gen Beta. Instead, global youth culture has gone underground. On unregulated chat groups, you learn from a teen in Australia how to trick your wearable device into thinking you are at home when you are not. In those brief stolen hours you have to yourselves, you and your friends gather in hollowed-out malls. These are sites of urban culture in flux, as bricks-and-mortar retailers have increasingly gone bust, replaced by the ease of e-commerce's same-day delivery. In these quiet places come the fondest memories of your youth . You have your first kiss in the shadow of an old mall in its last days, your nervous laughter echoing off the empty storefronts. Once a hub of fashion retailers, the building is now slated for demolition so it can be turned into a new mixed-use development. Mr Anton Ruddenklau, partner and head of financial services at KPMG Singapore, posits that if economic trends already visible in 2025 persist, physical retail will die a slow death. Shifting consumer preferences mean malls will increasingly focus on experiences that cannot be replaced by expanding e-commerce. Digitalisation and the rise of AI agents also mean that much of people's financial activity, from banking to buying groceries, will fade into the background of their lives through automation, he adds. Fast fashion, a defining feature of millennials and Gen Z, will likely give way to a new generation that embraces eco-consciousness instead, says Lasalle College of the Arts' programme leader for fashion media and industries Kathryn Shannon Sim. Virtual stylists, augmented-reality tools to visualise outfits and the rise of hyper-personalisation will also likely influence the clothes of tomorrow. You and the rest of Gen Beta prefer clothing that is modular, easy to customise and repurpose, and more likely to be sourced sustainably or second-hand – leading to a swell of headlines proclaiming: 'Is fashion over because of Gen Beta?' 2049: What it means to fall in love ST ILLUSTRATION: MANNY FRANCISCO You have your first perfect date at age 24 – the result of an AI matchmaker you have decided to give a second chance to after an awful first match. It was hard to convince yourself to date again. After all, how can a human surpass the slew of AI companions available online? Your favourite is a brooding bad boy who knows exactly when you are lonely or having bad cramps and in need of comfort. By the time you decide to give dating with humans another try, it is more out of curiosity than optimism. As the two of you cycle down East Coast Park (the matchmaker's suggestion), you stare out at the beginnings of Singapore's Long Island, a stretch of land that marks the new eastern coast of Singapore. 'Do you think we'll ever get to live out there?' your date ponders. By 2015, Singapore had increased its land mass by 25 per cent (to 71,910 ha ) by reclaiming land from the sea – a resource-intensive process using imported sand. The Long Island reclamation project is said to result in an 800 ha strip of land. Stand on it, and one might find himself or herself standing on earth that was once part of Vietnam or Indonesia. You have seen the visualisations: glimmering beachfront property and a new reservoir that was once the sea off East Coast Park, acting as a barrier against rising sea levels. You answer: 'I'd like to.' After a long bike ride, the two of you stop at a kiosk serving up hotpot made in a whirling machine that dumps ingredients into boiling soup with robotic efficiency. No humans involved. 'This is one of my favourite spots on the island,' your date says. 'You can see the bellies of all the planes flying above us.' But when he attempts to pay in cash, the kiosk's automated attendant tells him to use a permitted payment option instead. You giggle. It has been years since you last touched paper currency, which has accumulated the kitschy sentimentality tha t c ollectors once accorded to stamps. Against your date's protests, you pay for the meal using a Buy Now Pay Later option, financing your meal in three interest-free payments over three months. Under the twilight sky, you talk about your dreams and aspirations, your fears and insecurities. He is optimistic his fractional investments might take off soon – he owns 0.01 per cent of a piece by an up-and-coming artist. He is excited about starting a new job as a lawyer, but worried that he has picked the wrong sector. Talk of obsolescence is commonplace now in the legal sector. You enthuse about your work as an architect. Singapore is a hotbed of new building designs not seen anywhere else in the world and you are at the forefront of it. You are eager to move out of your family home, so you have space to breathe. And, you wonder aloud if you will ever find your tribe – everyone seems so siloed off these days, sated by their virtual (and often non-human) connections. The conversation shifts to music, and he begins debating with you on whether Blackpink's new AI-generated album is any better than their older human renditions. Honestly, you love it, but he is a puritan. There is the environmental cost, he tells you. A super drought is bringing unprecedented thirst to South America and Africa, favoured sites for the water- and power-intensive data centres that underpin the world's AI industry. 'Can art truly be art if it wasn't made by something with a soul?' he asks, broth dripping down his chin. 'Something that can't understand the emotions behind what it's saying?' You are not sure why exactly, but that is the moment that makes you realise there is something more to him. A messy and surprising something that makes human connection worth exploring. That something will eventually blossom into him asking you, two years down the line, if you would want to BTO with him. And a year after that, if you would make him the happiest man in the world by marrying him. Dr Kenneth Tan, an assistant professor of psychology at SMU, believes AI will play a bigger role in reshaping relationships in the future – both as matchmaker as it s al gorithms advance and as replacements for human connection. Existing research suggests that feelings of connection and authenticity in digital relationships with AI partners are linked to lower interest in marriage. 'An area of future research would be to examine if AI relationships can be training grounds for future human relationships, or if people will be trapped in pursuing only AI relationships,' Dr Tan says. There is something lost when people replace human relationships with AI, argues Dr Owen Schaefer, assistant professor at the NUS Centre for Biomedical Ethics, as AI has 'no inner life or personhood; it is an imitator of life, not life itself'. 'I would further suggest that AI relationships lack certain essential values of human relationships, including the possibility of mutual love and emotional reciprocation,' he adds. 'That being said, it remains to be seen whether generations of the future will hold similar views.' 2057: Sandwiched ST ILLUSTRATION: MANNY FRANCISCO At 32, you have just begun to settle into your new Woodland s fla t when everything changes with a phone call: 'Your grandmother just had a stroke.' Overnight, your flat – initially configured for two – transforms to adapt to this new reality, with much greater ease than you and your husband do. Your grandma moving in makes sense, your mum tells you, she cannot live alone any more. 'Wouldn't you want her to be around to care for your kids when you have them?' she says. There is simply no space where we liv e, your mum says. Your sibling still lives there. Which means yours is the only home that can take her. It helps that yours is a home purpose-built for multigenerational living. In your estate of 40- storey mixed-use towers, housing blends into vertical farms, offices, shops and parks, with linkways connecting the upper levels and vehicles relegated to the subterranean space beneath the streets so pedestrians never have to worry about noise or safety. Exper ts sa y smart AI-assisted living that adapts to changing climate realities is likely in Singapore's future. SMU geography profess or O rlando Woods notes that many of 2025's smart city innovations operate in the background of everyday life, with many projects focusing on environmental sensors or electricity use. This means residents of the future might notice their existence only when features – such as automated rubbish disposal – fail in some way. He adds that many innovations already present today, such as HDB's smart parking system – which automatically detects and alerts the vehicle owner if it parks in an undesignated space – feel like science fiction to residents when first introduced, but quickly became accepted as the way things are. Meanwhile, Dr Khoo Peng Beng, a professor of practice at the Singapore University of Technology and Design, predicts that alongside buildings which respond to the needs of their residents, society might also transition away from car ownership towards pay-per-use autonomous vehicles. 'White flats' without partitions and beams , first piloted by HDB in 2024, now allow for more customisable open-concept living. Lasalle College of the Arts lecturer in interior design Nicholas Ooi posits that HDB flats of the future will take things one step further by embracing multi-functionality by design and dynamic partitioning. And so, the walls of your home slide and fold. Rooms in your home no longer have fixed functions, changing by time of day depending on whether you need a study or a dining space. The multifunctional furniture transforms and retracts, to make space for granny. 2058: Are you happy? Perhaps as a reaction to your parents' lifelong embrace of minimalist 'Mujicore' design , your home is now decorated in the loud red and blue hues of a mid-century modern aesthetic – something your grandma compliments begrudgingly on when she first enters your home . She, too, chafes at this new existence, much preferring the estate she has spent the bulk of her life in to this new-fangled smart district. In the coming weeks, your discomfort over this new living arrangement is heightened. For the dozenth time, your husband has to explain to her there is no need to manually adjust the air-conditioning. In turn, your grandma vents her frustrations on your clumsy house robot, which can never seem to get her tea just right, the way her old domestic worker did. Everything in your home is smartly regulated now. A series of sensors detects the ambient temperature and daylight, altering window shade, wind ventilation and air-conditioning to maintain a stable and comfortable temperature indoors. The impact of global warming means such features are no longer optional, but mandatory requirements of urban living. The Centre for Climate Research Singapore projected in 2024 that annual mean temperatures would rise between 0.6 and 5 deg C by the end of the century – accompanied by more extreme rainfall and rising sea levels. While it might be tempting to believe that outsourcing care to robots would be an easy and largely automated process, tentative evidence from the present-day suggests otherwise. A 2023 report by the MIT Technology Review on how care robots are being used in Japan finds that these robots often end up creating more work for caregivers because of the effort necessary to monitor and maintain them. Worse still than the squabbles over tech in your home is the new-found scrutiny over every life decision – something you thought you had left behind after leaving the nest. Your grandma asks you constantly why you have not had children yet. 'Why do you spend so much time with your AI companion instead of your husband?' she asks once more. 'And why do I need to go back to the clinic again? I feel fine.' 'Ah ma, you wouldn't understand,' you tell her. Things are different now. How can you explain to her that advancements in fertility technology mean your biological clock is not ticking any more? That it makes more sense to wait until one is truly ready instead of fretting over a narrowing window of time? Or that many now find emotional fulfilment outside of marriage in a virtual companion? When they said till death do us part, they never anticipated just how long death would take to do the deed. Or that bionic enhancements are now the medical norm – and that the more she resists going to her appointments, the more she is shortening her life from sheer obtuseness. This shift reflects a broader pattern that Dr Kenneth Tan identifies in 2025: a growing acceptance of singlehood and being child-free, as well as youth disillusionment towards traditional milestones, visible from China's tang ping (lying fl at) and South Korea's 4B movements. With longer lifespans and blurring boundaries between what constitutes youth and seniorhood, he suggests even monogamy might evolve. Couples may embrace 'plural relationships', blended families or late-life romances. 'Commitment will still be about long-term orientation,' he notes, 'but not necessarily for life.' But these invisible shifts are lost on your grandma, a child of the 1970s. There used to be a time when there would be no secrets between the two of you. When you would fill her ear with stories of friends made or crossed, achievements big or small, on those long walks after school. Now, there is mostly discomfort and silence. As the two of you walk home from the clinic, she asks you flatly: 'Are you happy?' When you nod, she probes no further. Perhaps that is all she really needs to know. 2080: A second summer You never expected the second summer of your life to come at age 55. After years of putting off parenthood, then struggling with fertility issues, you and your husband thought the window had closed. But advancements in fertility technology have made it possible for even imperfect genetic material to become a viable embryo. The process consumed months and tens of thousands of dollars, and you had begun to doubt it would work – until the day you meet your newborn. Dr Schaefer believes emerging biotechnologies such as non-invasive prenatal testing, gene editing, in-vitro gametogenesis – laboratory-based conception that can help those with fertility challenges – and artificial wombs have the potential to reshape fertility and child-rearing – both by overcoming natural obstacles to fertility and opening up the possibility of delaying conception indefinitely . As at 2025 , artificial wombs are used to save the lives of pre-term infants. But as the technology matures, it can also be used to mitigate the risks and burdens of natural childbearing – or to replace it altogether. The latter prospect is one that Dr Schaefer believes is still a long way off. In the clinic, your doctor asks if you would like to examine the full suite of enhancements and implants for your child. Top of the list are neural and bionic implants so one can monitor the fullest picture of its healthy development through biodata. The clinician explains that neural implants are the new thing: Why connect with AI through an interface, when you yourself could be that interface? The sum total of the package is eye-boggling, more than you can afford. 'Do we need all these sensors?' your husband asks. He points to a recent hack that affected the personal data of hundreds of thousands. Though industry practice is to anonymise such data and minimise personal identifiers, that each data point is linked to one's exact geospatial movements means all you would need is a person's address to find the signal amid the noise. After all, nobody else spends as many hours at your home address. The attendant assures you that such a lapse in privacy is unlikely to happen again, and points to all the ways that lapses in parental surveillance can spell trouble for a growing child. You and your husband compromise on getting a wearable form of monitoring instead. Let your child decide how he or she wants to embrace the bionic future on his or her own terms. 'We're now beginning to see more and more integration of machines and humans,' says Dr Andy Ho, a psychology professor at NTU who studies dying and digital health. He points to present-day efforts at building neural chip interfaces as one possible manifestation of the technology for future Singaporeans. 'Let's say the rich can afford having their children having these AI-integrated brains, but what about the people without resources?' he asks. 'I think the future with exponential growth in technology is a future full of possibility – but also a great deal of ethical concern in terms of accessibility and the guardrails we should implement.' 2091: Upskill-transition-upskill ST ILLUSTRATION: MANNY FRANCISCO When your parents were your age, at 66, they began to slow down. But for you, things are just getting started – with 2091 marking the first year of your second career. Something that stems from a place of completionist curiosity – what else is out there? – and realising you may have plateaued in your old profession. Advancements in AI technology mean there simply is not as much of a need for architects any more, now that 'vibe planning' (using AI to design without architectural expertise) is a thing. Why bother advancing when even interns might surpass you with their designs? Using AI that trained itself on the work of thousands of architects like you, no less. No, you decided it was time to move on into a career in counselling machines. Your work now involves modelling appropriate behaviours onto AI agents, who themselves counsel humans during the most difficult moments in life. Your husband, too, is on his third career now. The endless cycle of upskill-transition-upskill now means he works as a nuclear technician on Singapore's offshore power plant. A job so important no one dares to entrust it to cyber security-dependent AI. In 2025, the Energy Market Authority concluded that nuclear energy could by 2050 supply about 10 per cent of the country's energy needs . While earlier nuclear technologies were not fit for deployment, advancements in technology might mean that smaller or fusion reactors might one day be viable. 2105: What to do with the memories? ST ILLUSTRATION: MANNY FRANCISCO You are sitting in an office that looks like a cross between an old playground and a therapist's clinic, filled with symbols of a bygone era in Singapore: orange bus stops and mamak shops. It is a disarming and nostalgic aesthetic employed by the MyLegacy office to ease you in as you ponder the winter of your life, now that you are 80. You sip on a cup of tea offered to you by your MyLegacy officer, who insists you call him an end-of-life doula, or – he jokes – a post-life midwife. Every citizen has to make an appointment to discuss his or her end-of-life arrangements, an initiative that grew out of the MyLegacy@LifeSG portal that wa s l aunched in 2020. You have put this off for ages because of work and raising your child. Now, with a home that feels quieter without the arguments of a daughter who has since flown the coop, you can feel it in your bones: It is time to think about what comes next. This meeting is not to discuss questions of inheritance. You have already had an AI agent draw up your will for that. No, this is a discussion about all the abstract things that people avoid confronting in their daily lives. 'In the event of an incapacitating health event, would you rather spend the remainder of your days in a healthcare setting or in your own home?' the officer asks. The latter, you say. 'Have you considered what you want your funeral to look like?' he asks. You remember the ceremony your late grandmother had. There were traditional funerary rites, prayers and mourning at the void deck. Before they gave her body to the fire, there was a screening you had commissioned. A digital repository with all the images, sounds and videos accumulated over a lifetime – along with the final messages of all the lives she had touched. A digital recreation of her likeness reads all of these messages, with that smiling expression she used to wear while watching her favourite programmes. A last goodbye. When you are in the mood for nostalgia, you play back these recordin gs. I t helps you to imagine that she is in a happier place now. That is what you want, you tell the officer. More on this topic Death Kopitiam: Singapore's digital memorial reimagines mourning Dr Ho says there is a growing global movement to shift end-of-life care away from healthcare settings and into the community, enabled by advancements in telemedicine, home infrastructure and a desire to live comfortably in one's natural environment until the end. Many of such changes were already visible in the Singapore of 2025 – from murals and stickers to help those with cognitive disabilities find their way, to increasing accessibility for handicapped residents, to experiments with multigenerational homes and senior-living communities. He adds that technology – from social media to AI – is also reshaping the way people experience grief and mourning. Research shows that for a grieving person to move forward, closure and transformation of his or her relationship with the deceased is necessary. If the deceased's digital presence continues to exist long after he or she is gone, 'I would be concerned that this technology could, on the one hand, bring comfort, but on the other, create dependency', he says. Already, in 2023, companies in China were selling services digitally resurrecting the dead with AI to offer support to grieving loved ones. Two years later, in the US, an AI avatar was used to recreate the likeness of a dead man so he could give video testimony at the trial of the man who killed him. Finally, the officer asks: 'What about your afterlife?' What began as digital legacy start-ups in the 2010s, as the rise of social media and digital assets raised questions on how one should settle the afterlife of his or her digital presence, has evolved into a dizzying array of companies offering such services in 2105. Each boasts of its ability to immortalise you as an AI built on the sum total of your life's data. By 2105, more species exist in cloud-based DNA banks than they do in living ecosystems – an effort which can trace its roots back to early 21st-century efforts to compile the genetic material of plants and animals in an ark for the future. Leisure is inextricable from virtual worlds now, and your child spends more time plugged in than she ever did playing outside. Many long-dead experts have been recreated as AI, so their advice can be called upon for years to come. The thought of having something for your loved ones to hold on to, to consult with on the most difficult of life's matters, is something you find difficult to pass up. You decide you do not want to let go. More on this topic Let's Talk About Death: What will happen to my online assets after I die? 2245: And so it goes Your great-great-granddaughter accesses your memory archive on a sweltering Singapore afternoon, to ask you what life was like before 'all of this'. It is part of a school project. If not for the end of your mortal body, you would have been 220 now. Another version of you, digital and unending for as long as your family pays the dues, distributed across data centres from South America to Australia, tells her the story of your life. A time when Singapore was not this warm, nor this big, nor this quiet. 'How did people date before the internet?' Her questions stream out like a waterfall, so many that even a machine can barely keep up. 'Why did it take so long for all of you to stop making plastic and using fossil fuels? What is 'retirement'?' There is so much of yourself in her: the endless curiosity about the past, the boundless optimism towards the future. After answering her questions, the digital you speaks: 'Now, what comes next?' In researching this story, 19 experts were consulted:
Vogue Singapore
6 days ago
- Vogue Singapore
Multilingualism in Singapore—and what we lose if it declines
From a fishing village to a global powerhouse in under half a century, Singapore's meteoric rise is certainly one for the books. Multiracial, multiethnic and multicultural, the demographic make-up of this little red dot is about as diverse as it gets. So, when it came to deciding not only how the nation would communicate with the rest of the world, but also how to facilitate communication within the country, there wasn't a clear-cut solution. English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil—four official languages course through the nation of Singapore. But among the four, there is a clear hierarchy. 'To move things forward after independence, we needed a language that would connect with the rest of the world. Hence, English was chosen,' says Tan Ying Ying, associate professor of linguistics and multilingual studies at Nanyang Technological University. Simply put, English was the language that provided the most linguistic capital. It allowed us to be a competitive force on the global stage. As a nation built on the pursuit of efficiency and progress, we embraced it with open arms. But what was the cost of doing this? While English took on the role of the nation's lingua franca, to anchor ourselves in Asian values and retain a connection to our heritage, the bilingual policy was introduced. All students had to learn another language—be it Mandarin, Malay or Tamil—also known as their 'mother tongue'. But the assignment of one's mother tongue proved more arbitrary than expected. In Singapore, instead of learning your actual mother's tongue, you are told what your mother tongue is In Singapore, students are assigned their mother tongues based on ethnicity, which often does not reflect the language they had been speaking from early childhood. 'It's a strange label to be using because it defies the linguistic definition of what a mother tongue implicates,' Tan points out. 'In Singapore, instead of learning your actual mother's tongue, you are told what your mother tongue is.' Inadvertently, a paradox was born. While Mandarin was chosen to represent the Chinese population, a large majority of the community did not speak it at the time. Instead, Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese dominated households. Similarly, for the Indian population, while more than 50 percent spoke the Tamil, there were others who communicated in other languages, such as Malayalam, Punjabi or Hindi. The election of representative languages stemmed from a place of pragmatism instead of a natural evolution. And as Tan aptly remarks: 'When it comes to social engineering, any kind of controlled planning tends to have strange outcomes.' Being the primary instructional medium in schools and in the workplace, English has become the language most Singaporeans feel comfortable conversing in. 'Are we still multilingual? Yes. Are we functionally multilingual? Maybe not quite so,' Tan puts succinctly. We may sprinkle a few foreign words when ordering food or brandish our Singlish proudly in conversation, but to be functionally multilingual is a whole other playing field. Are we still multilingual? Yes. Are we functionally multilingual? Maybe not quite so Languages shape the way we view and interact with the world; it broadens perspectives and fosters connection. 'If you learn a language just to pass exams, even if you pass them with flying colours, you still won't be using it in your daily lives,' Tan notes. Instead of sharing an affinity for a language meant to foster connection to one's cultural heritage, many in turn begin to resent the language as well as the culture. It's not unlike how a humanities student may resent biology or calculus, although for the average person, knowing another language surely will come in handier than photosynthesis. For digital creator Sharlyn Seet, speaking Chinese poorly was the norm growing up. 'Back in school, I remember being proud to be what we call 'bananas'—yellow on the outside, white on the inside. For some reason, it was seen as cool not to speak Chinese properly,' she reflects. Similar to many of her peers, Seet didn't grow up speaking Mandarin at home. 'Mandarin felt like just another subject to pass. It didn't feel like something useful or relevant, and most of us treated it like a hurdle,' the 23-year-old adds. As she found herself traversing the world for business and leisure in recent years, she quickly realised how the Chinese language, which she once deemed boring, was not only an asset, but one containing a million folds of culture and history. When Seet first visited Shanghai in 2024, she felt a growing frustration due to her handicap with the language. 'I could understand what the locals were saying, but I couldn't express myself back. It felt stifling,' she recalls. 'As someone who's ethnically Chinese, I started to feel a quiet shame.' Instead of retreating further, she took it upon herself to change what she had once accepted as the status quo. The second time around, Seet discovered that learning the language did not have to be as gruelling as she once thought. 'In school, learning Chinese was results-based. Everything revolved around tests, memorising model essays and regurgitating phrases. It wasn't about developing a relationship with the language,' she explains. 'Relearning Chinese, I felt like I was reclaiming something that I had unknowingly dismissed for years. I started appreciating not just the people but the traditions, stories and values that shape our community.' Language acts as a window; it allows you to better connect with the people and its culture, modern or historic. 'Right now, we observe people picking up Korean simply because of K-pop's influence,' Tan observes. Often, the sole driving force behind learning languages is personal interest and motivation. There's no denying the boom of Korean and Japanese in the younger generation, largely due to the rising popularity of their respective cultures. And there's no doubt this includes those who may have shuddered at the thought of a language exam when they were in school. As I relearnt Chinese, I started appreciating not just the people but the traditions, stories and values that shape our community Beyond an increased appreciation for her culture and heritage, Seet recognises the pragmatic value in having another language at her disposal. 'I see a clear return on investment, both in business and in everyday life.' If cultural capital is the end goal, having more is always better than having less, is it not? But as a working adult, Seet recognises the difficulties in carving out the time to sustain a consistent learning journey. 'As an adult, it really is about how much time you're willing to invest. Watch Chinese dramas, listen to music, travel or just try reading signs on the MRT,' she suggests. 'Small everyday moments can spark curiosity and build confidence over time.' Seet acknowledges the irony of her situation. 'My mother often pokes fun at me for paying money to relearn something I could've acquired growing up,' she shares. However, Seet knows that it was a journey she had to embark on to reach where she is now. 'She's not wrong, but I'm finally doing it on my own terms,' she proclaims contently. Besides being able to converse fluently without trepidation, Seet also cites the less conspicuous benefits she has come to reap. Understanding Chinese memes, unlocking a new arena of inside jokes, and catching subtle meanings in song lyrics—she has only just begun to tap into the wealth of riches that lies beneath the surface. Order your copy of the July/August 'Home' issue of Vogue Singapore online or pick it up on newsstands now.
Straits Times
7 days ago
- Straits Times
Volunteers clear tonnes of rubbish from elderly man's house in Johor
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox Volunteers removing the massive volume of waste at the man's double-storey house in Taman Sentosa, Johor. It took 50 volunteers, six hours, seven rubbish trucks, two recycling vehicles and an excavator to clear more than 30 tonnes of trash from a house in Johor Bahru on July 27 – and still the work was not completed four days later. This came after more than 15 years of complaints from the home owner's neighbours, who have had to endure the foul stench and are worried for their health. After a six-hour operation involving just the porch area, the volunteers proceeded to clean up the inside of the house. Work on the double-storey property owned by the 70-year-old man was still ongoing as of July 31. They were making plans to place him in a nursing home, after getting in touch with his family. Fifty people from Johor Bahru city council and volunteer organisations came together to clear the massive volume of waste that had piled up in the front yard of the terrace house in Taman Sentosa. They removed 32 tonnes of trash and five tonnes of recyclable materials. Johor Bahru city councillor Chan San San said the clean-up was initiated after a fellow councillor requested her help to mobilise volunteers for the project. She mulled over it for two days as the house owner was well-known for his volatile temperament. Chinese-language media outlet Oriental Daily described as the owner as a retired teacher who lived alone. Ms Chan said he was prone to violent outbursts, threatening garbage removal workers with sharp objects and physically intimidating anyone who tried to intervene. Ms Chan said the city council had cleared garbage from his house several times over the years, only for the owner to pile up more trash. Oriental Daily described the house as 'almost impassable, with debris piled up inside and outside like a mountain of garbage'. 'This left the man with nowhere to sleep and he had to sleep on the five-foot-way,' the July 27 report said. Ms Chan said she decided to get involved as the area has become a dengue hotspot due to the man's hoarding. At least one resident had ended in the intensive care unit after contracting dengue. The house was also a fire hazard and attracted pests like rats and snakes. Ms Chan said the clean-up was 'a very difficult task'. 'In addition to tolerating the foul odours, we also need to be careful to prevent the owner from suddenly changing his mind and committing acts that could harm others or himself,' she said. The elderly man had initially agreed to the clean-up, but as the operation progressed, he became upset and started yelling at the volunteers for 'stealing his belongings' and even calling them scammers, she added. She estimated that the volunteers would need at least another week from July 31 to complete the clean-up. But, with some parts inside the house cleared of garbage, the man could finally sleep inside the house, Ms Chan added,
