It seemed odd to me that Singapore, where 70 per cent of the population is Chinese and the biggest annual all-consuming holiday is Chinese New Year, would have a Chinatown. But there it was, as promised by the tourist map and guaranteed in the name of a subway station: a few colorful lines of old shop houses against a backdrop of tall buildings in the mumble of traffic.

Unlike neighboring Little India, Singapore’s Chinatown is no ethnic enclave (the streets do not teem), but it does have distinct cultural markers in the form of temples (red and gold and traditional). The grandest of these is a new four-tiered building with upturned eaves in the Tang dynasty style that occupies a city block between two streets named Sago. Completed in 2009 at a cost of nearly $50 million, mostly from donations, it has the unlikely (from a tourist’s perspective) name: Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum. I found the sacred relic’s chamber, highly secured and shining with leaf gold, at the architectural center of the temple. All the mainland Asian traditions of Buddhism are represented here, up to and including the rooftop garden with a giant Tibetan prayer wheel, although the obvious center of activity is the high main-floor sanctuary of Maitreya (the Buddha of the Future) where resident monks chant, believers pray and tourists shoot pictures.
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