SINGAPORE IS CRAZIER RICH

FROM A SLEEPY COLONIAL TRADING POST INTO A GLOBAL FINANCIAL CAPITAL, SINGAPORE HAS MADE A REMARKABLE TRANSFORMATION

While movie audiences worldwide relish the million-dollar earrings and private jets of Crazy Rich Asians, Singaporeans would like you to know that in reality, things here can get even richer and even crazier.

One described a wedding reception where Diana Ross performed. An heir to a business fortune admitted — no, more like bragged — to a newspaper that he’d once walked into a designer shoe store and said: “I’ll take one pair of everything you have, in every colour.”

The real-life stories of Singapore’s ultra-rich illustrate this tiny citystate’s remarkable transformation from a sleepy colonial trading post with no natural resourc- es into a global inancial capital and playground for the 1 per cent.

But the tales of excess hardly square with the obsessively disciplined, authoritarian ethos that propelled the island to prosperity over the last half-century. Even as many Singaporeans revel in Hollywood’s sumptuous portrayal, Crazy Rich Asians has renewed questions about inequality and privilege in a society that has long prized hard work, equal opportunity and social order.

“The movie has lit a spark because it seems to be celebrating wealth that 99 per cent of the country can’t access,” said Aun Koh, an entrepreneur.

The signs of Singapore’s success are everywhere — the Instagram-ready pool parties