SINGAPORE: Chophouse Chopin

In the three weeks since he took over as Singapore’s first Prime Minister after 140 years of British colonial rule, slim Lee Kuan Yew has not yet justified all the fears of what his leftish People’s Action Party might do to capitalism. But as a determined anti-imperialist, Cantabrigian Lee went to work right away on what he thought were imperialism’s decadent gifts to Asia. Cracking down on Singapore s boisterous seamy side, Lee banned jukeboxes, closed down some 1,200 pinball machines, and ordered the Singapore radio to stop broadcasting rock ‘n’ roll. Later he ruled that the jukeboxes could stay if they stuck to the classics—Beethoven and Chopin, for example. Meanwhile, police cleared the newsstands of pornography, padlocked eight girlie-magazine publishers and swooped through bars, sending B-girls home. Mapping a massive assault on Singapore’s notorious gangsterism, police debated issuing identification cards to Singapore’s 7,000 known hoods and pimps. The immediate, unexpected result: for the first time in memory, a full week went by without a kidnaping, extortion or gangland rumble reported.