"Yellow culture" was a literal translation of the Mandarin phrase for the decadent and degenerate behaviour that had brought China to its knees in the 19th century: gambling, opium-smoking, pornography, multiple wives and concubines, the selling of daughters into prostitution, corruption and nepotism.

This aversion to "yellow culture" had been imported by schoolteachers from China, who infused into our students and their parents the spirit of national revival that was evident in every chapter of the textbooks they brought with them, whether on literature, history or geography.

And it was reinforced by articles of left-wing Chinese newspaper journalists enthralled by the glowing reports of a clean, honest, dynamic, revolutionary China.

Pang Boon moved quickly, outflanking the communists with puritanical zeal. He ordered a clean-up of Chinese secret society gangsters, and outlawed pornography, striptease shows, pin-table saloons, even decadent songs.

It did no harm apart from adding somewhat to unemployment and making Singapore less attractive to tourists.

But the seamen who had always been a part of Singapore's transient population soon found their way to the amenities still offered in the more obscure corners of the island to which we turned a blind eye.

Prostitution continued discreetly; we left it alone because we could not ban it without taking silly and ineffective action.