Wonderin' Where the Lions Are

Singapore's merlion

The last two posts have featured furry felines of the stone lion variety. I like a good triple play as much as anyone, so I thought I'd revisit my old home grounds in Singapore to bring you the third in our series on stone lions of Indochina. Here in all its fishy, fuzzy glory is one of the most surreal things ever turned out by the tourism industry: the Singapore merlion. This mythical aquatic animal is no creature of ancient mythology. It was completely fabricated about 50 years ago by the Singapore Tourism Board. You'll find the merlion on keychains, refrigerator magnets, and coffee mugs in souvenir shops all over the island. So, why a hybrid between a lion and a fish?

It all comes down to the history of the word Singapore. As the story goes, the island was named by a prince from an ancient Indonesian civilization called Srivijaya, who stumbled upon the island during a hunting trip. In the Srivijaya language, the word Singa means lion. This solves the mystery of the lion's half of the merlion (the lion's share, if you will). If I were to guess, the other half of the beast is to be fished out of Singapore's geography. As an island nation, Singapore identifies with the ocean through its strategic port and rich fishing grounds. Or maybe they just thought a merlion would be a good pet for a mermaid.

In the origin story of Singapore's name, the prince caught a glimpse of a big cat on the island. If he ever really saw one, it probably wasn't a lion. Tigers, on the other hand, have a historic range that extends all the way into Indonesia, including the extant Sumatran tiger, as well as the extinct Javan and Bali tigers. Seems to me the prince got his lions crossed.

It's worth a mention here that there is a lion that has range in Asia. It's called the Asiatic lion. Although it doesn't seem to have ever reached as far as Singapore, its easternmost range is adjacent to historic tiger territory. Realistically, the lion and the tiger territory never overlapped significantly. They probably avoided each other or vied for hunting grounds. But if hybridization had ever been a possibility, well, you Napolean Dynamite fans out there know exactly what that implies: real life wild ligers. It's like my favorite animal.

Another note on lions: Singapore has a pride or two that skulks about in the zoo on the north side of the island. It's particularly fun to visit them at night, during the zoo's nocturnal animal exhibit. All the animal enclosures are designed to look like they're not there. That means you feel like you're in the lion's space when you first see the pride through a break in the trees. Your body courses with the fight-or-flight sensation. This feeling is even stronger when you don't see them, when all you hear is throaty roars in the darkness. The lion's power stirs our instinctive sense of awe and terror, as old as time. It's no wonder why depictions of lions are so pervasive across world cultures.

So next time you see a statue of a lion, try to imagine that prehistoric sense of the predator and prey relationship. For a moment, pretend the stone softens to flesh, a heart starts to beat, the lungs swell with breath. Feel what it's like to stand in the presence of one of these beasts. And if it falls over and flops around gasping for air, maybe you could be nice and push it into the water.

I swear it was yesterday I was living in Hong Kong. All of a sudden, two months have gone by... and even longer since I wrote anything.

I still remember coming to Singapore, on Christmas eve nonetheless. Readjusting to the new location was a struggle, but not because there's anything wrong with Singapore. Imagine yourself blindfolded, and spun in circles until dizzy; when you take off your blindfold you are what is called “disoriented”. This time, imagine yourself blindfolded and spun, and then teleported to an unrecognizable place. That's being unoriented, and that's exactly how I feel every time I land in a new city.

The other thing I felt when I first arrived in Singapore was the intense tropical heat. Wow. Only a few miles north of the Equator here. But, as a consequence of hopping from country to country (and losing all sense of currency conversion to boot), I've acclimated to the sweltering heat and humidity.

See, when I left home in June last year, it was around 104 degrees in Tucson, and past 110 degrees in Boulder City, Arizona, where I spent my last weekend. That's around 45 degrees Celsius, btw. The temperature in Taiwan the following weekend, was around 32 degrees Celsius; somewhere in the mid 70s, perhaps. But the humidity was awful. In Taiwan I sweat a lot on the way back and forth to the class.

But when I got to Hong Kong, holy crap...I smelled like a wet dog. Every day. Within one hour of taking a shower even. I was tired of it. But my Tom's of Maine organic deodorant with hops just wasn't making the grade. Looking for some sterner stuff, I went to one of the pharmacy shops you find every eight feet or so, and perused their pit-stick section. No Toms of Maine, of course. And no pure deodorant. Everything was an antiperspirant.

Personally, I'm against the use of antiperspirants. They use aluminum to shut down your pores, so you don't sweat. Not sweating is not natural. It's like fire suppression--not natural--and we wonder why California burns down every year. Plus, there are concerns in the paranoid-hypochondriac community, fueled by limited scientific research that generally goes unnoticed, that aluminum causes brain damage later in life.

I have enough of a problem now getting my brain to do what I want it to, so I said phuket and went next door to a traditional Chinese medicine place. You've seen it in movies like "Gremlins." The narrative goes: the dumb and afflicted westerner wanders into one of these dusky herb and animal-part-filled stores, where the ancient shopkeeper understands English, but speaks at length in his own tongue as he ducks back behind the counter. He returns, draws forth a dusty sandalwood box, blows off the dust and opens it to reveal the cure-all made of tiger's penis. Or Mowgli. Either way, the Westerner, discomforted but obligated, pays and leaves, skeptical and eager to disappear.

In my case however, standing in this brightly lit, clean to the point of sterile apothecary's office, I had no reason to be nervous. The guy at the counter had already said hello to me in English, so I knew I could tell him about my problem But there was a woman with him, and it was either wait, or interrupt him and tell him, Hi, I'm a Westerner and I smell bad, can you help me? So instead, I floated around the store, pretending to look at the products behind glass in the white cabinets. A man from the back came out, so I asked him. He went into the back of the store. I was so excited because my fantasy was playing out. I started thinking he was going to find that secret Chinese medicine that was going to not only clear up my smell, but make me 3 inches taller and straighten my teeth. He came back out again, with a spray can in his hand. The old Chinese medicine vendor recommended Lysol for my armpits. I've since relented to using an antiperspirant, in spite of my concerns regarding aluminum. Of course, who's to say. Do the people who tell us fluoride is bad say that aluminum is good? Who are the experts here???

Post Script: I ditched the antiperspirant and got something even better. Many years ago in a dusty bar in NYC, a friend of mine told me about a rock that solved his chronic odor problem; he just rubbed the rock under his arm the way you would rub a baseball into a mitt, and his stink was gone, he said. Sometimes, he used it on his feet, too. Cynical, I asked him when he got into new age hocus-pocus feel good crap. But he was adamant it's the real deal. And he was right. The rock is actually a crystal salt, which dissolves a little in your wet armpit and creates an acidic environment in which bacteria can't survive. I got one and loved it, but lost it in Ireland (if you don't lose it, it lasts forever; I think I had my first one for 2 years) and didn't get another until a friend I made in Hong Kong told me about a store on the island that stocks them. She said she'd got one there. So I went there and got one. Later on she asked me if I ever went to the store and picked one up. I said I did. She asked, in her bright cheery Australian-accent, How does it work? To which I replied, you just rub it under your armpits.