There was no theatre scene to speak of. Even the traditional Chinese cross-talk performances had died out 'because one half of Taiwan's best xiangsheng duo had migrated to the United States to sell beef noodles', the 54-year-old director drily observed at a forum on culture and creativity here last Saturday.

Over the years, he managed to revitalise xiangsheng and build up a lively theatre scene redolent with the forms and stories of the island.

Now one of Asia's most acclaimed directors, he thinks his creative success all boils down to 'looking within and back, in order to move forward'.

In other words, a grounding in one's local culture is the essence of creativity - a belief shared by two other speakers at the same forum.

Art and media products should aim, first and foremost, to connect with domestic audiences, 'even if they are not of a high international standard', says Hong Kong writer and media guru John Chan Koon Chung, 56.

The regional culture and audience is important in Singapore's case too, as it is hard to separate its local culture from the ancestral histories and cultures of its immigrant population, suggests Singaporean advertising whizz Lim Sau Hoong, who is in her 40s.

She frames it rhetorically: 'In developing our culture and creative industries, which standards are we using - the world's or the region's?'

Ms Lim thinks that Singapore should retilt towards the latter. Loss of connection to Singaporeans' former hinterland cultures is causing the 'cultural wellspring that sustains the creative spirit' to 'dry up', she argues.

Embracing the cultural 'mongrel'

BILINGUAL creative talent who have staked their careers on being cosmopolitan, Chinese and yet local, the trio's remarks throw up a compelling debate on the relationship between identity and creativity.

How much of a heartlander or global soul do you need to be to thrive creatively?

When does the process of what the Chinese call bentuhua (localisation) become tu (thick), and when does it become narrow-minded and insular?

It would appear that Hong Kong and Taiwan have had an easier time establishing what constitutes the 'local' culture, compared to multiracial, multicultural and predominantly English-speaking Singapore.

Though exposed to Western influences - Hong Kong through over a century of British rule and Taiwan from nearly 60 years of political and military links with United States - both places are more or less culturally Chinese.

Each has distinct provincial and dialect influences: Cantonese for Hong Kong and Minnan (Hokkien) for Taiwan, although the latter also has Hakka and aboriginal minorities.

In particular, Hong Kongers have a history of being proud and conscious of their culture, much more so than economically pragmatic Singapore.

It became the cultural hub of greater China in the 1940s, with a burgeoning film industry and pool of exiled writers and intellectuals who had fled the communist mainland.

With Singapore now trying to ramp up culture and the creative industries, Mr Chan suggests that it take a leaf out of the book of the 1980s and 1990s Hong Kong.

Then, a generation of affluent, confident Hong Kongers had begun producing Cantonese movies, TV dramas and pop songs, to the extent that they became more popular at home than Western or Taiwanese Mandarin imports.

'They kept doing it until people decided it was not bad,' he recalls with a soft chuckle, looking every inch the typical Hong Kong yuppie intellectual in his casual jacket, sling bag and wire-rimmed glasses.

'When you've got that audience, then you can expand and raise standards,' he suggests.

The film and TV producer, screenwriter and magazine producer should know. He was part of that wave of 'mongrel' Hong Kongers - as he terms it - who have imbibed a haphazard mix of Cantonese, Chinese and Western influences.

A journalism graduate from Boston University, he had returned to the territory in 1976 and founded its first and what was to become very successful lifestyle and culture magazine Hao Wai (City Magazine).

A few years later, he went into movies and wrote and produced films and TV dramas, mostly in Mandarin and Cantonese.

These days, however, Hong Kong culture has got so 'local' that international news has disappeared from its newspapers, he observes.

This extreme, he clarifies, is not healthy and Singapore should not descend into that kind of parochialism.

Recovering the cultural meme

AT THE other extreme, Singapore should not be over-reliant on Western forms and formulas, says Dr Stan Lai, a frequent visitor whose plays have been well-received here.

Broadway theatre skills, for example, may not be 'enough to forge a theatre distinctive to Singapore', he suggests.

His rumpled chin-length locks and beard now streaked with grey, he reminisces how he built up Performance Workshop - Taiwan's leading theatre company - by 'listening to the voices around (him)'.

From the early 1980s, he wrote original plays by improvising with actors and drawing on real-life stories and social histories.

The best known of these is the long-running Secret Love In Peach Blossom Land, about separation across the Taiwan Strait. This was hailed by the New York Times as 'an iconic play in contemporary Chinese theatre'. It was first staged in 1986.

The growth of Taiwan's cultural scene dovetailed with the political opening up of the island, which had gone in the blink of a few years from an authoritarian government - martial law was ended in 1987 - to a multi-party democracy in the 1990s.

The hunger to watch and produce art is all the more remarkable, given that government funding for the arts remains a pittance, says Dr Lai.

In recent years, Taiwanese arts groups have received only over NT$2 million a year (S$90,000) in total - equivalent to what a single theatre company in Hong Kong or Singapore might get.

Ms Lim, CEO of Singapore advertising agency 10AM Communications, acknowledges that the Singapore Government's push for the arts and creative industries is a 'laudable act'.

The issue, however, goes much deeper than dollars and cents, she argues.

The dominance of the English language here is causing Chinese Singaporeans to lose their bilingual, bicultural edge. This has consequences not just for how China and the West perceive them, but the future of their own culture.

Every individual has a cultural meme or gene, observes the daughter of Chinese-educated parents.

With self-deprecating humour, she recalls that her earliest memory was of singing Chinese communist anthems like The East Is Red, while other kids of English-speaking families were learning nursery rhymes.

She credits her Chinese literati sensibilities and international exposure in later life for helping her to create unique award-winning commercials for the likes of Guinness Stout and Chinese state broadcaster CCTV2.

In the old days, Singapore could successfully lay claim to being bicultural and a bridge between East and West, says the elfin, stylish Ms Lim.

However, it is steadily losing this advantage.

'Many Singaporeans can only pretend to be superficial China hands in the world of Westerners, while in China, these Singaporeans suddenly become 'fake Westerners',' she asserts.

This can only affect the health of the creative industries here, because instead of path-breaking originality, Singaporeans will have to take the 'shortcut of imitating' others' ideas.

Hence, as she puts it, 'we have to ask of our creative industries, what is its inexhaustible fountainhead?'

clare@sph.com.sg