Four Characteristics of Hawker Culture in Singapore • Multicultural, Urban, Community & Artisanal Hawkers

In its 2019 submission to the United Nations for inclusion of Singapore hawker culture in the UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, Singapore highlighted four key characteristics of Hawker Culture in Singapore.

Singapore hawker culture is multicultural in nature, set in an urban setting, hawker centres provide social glue as common eating spaces for Singapore's diverse communities, hawkers and their craft are the lynch pins of Singapore hawker culture.

1. A reflection of Singapore’s multicultural society

Today's Singapore nation and Singapore hawker culture were born regional. By that I mean that we were blessed with diverse cultures and cuisines from regional countries right from the very beginning of modern Singapore.

When Sir Stamford Raffles landed in Singapore in 1819, there were around 1,000 inhabitants, mainly Orang Laut (sea nomads) and fishermen on the island. When Raffles opened the trading post for the British East India Company, he needed lots of manpower to run the port. These Raffles duly imported regionally from Indonesia, India and China. Hence, Singapore instantly inherited the ancient cultures and cuisines of these countries.

Right from the beginning, multiculturalism is ingrained in Singapore society as modern Singapore is born multicultural. Hence, Singapore hawker culture and its hawker shrines, hawker centres, are multicultural institutions.

Malay / Indonesian stalls sit comfortably side by side with Indian and Chinese stalls. Today, we also have Japanese, Korean, Thai, and Italian stalls just to name a few. More are being added and welcome in the same way the first traditions were, at the beginning of modern Singapore.

2. A thriving culture in a highly urban environment

Since the beginning of Singapore, street hawkers plied the streets, alleys and five foot ways wherever there were customers. By the turn of the last century, the colonial authorities began licensing and putting hawkers in shelters for control and hygiene reasons.

Golden Mile Hawker Centre built in 1975. National Archives of Singapore

In 1970, the newly independent country launched the ambitious nation wide public housing programme to provide every family their own home. Now, 81% of Singaporeans live in such public housing. The hawker centre building programme to provide every hawker a hawker centre stall was launched in tandem. Every precinct is served by a hawker centre which is deeply embedded in the nation's social fabric.

Singapore's country wide public housing programme is unparalleled. So too is its attendant nation wide hawker centre building programme.

By 1986, 110 hawker centres were built across the island, some in the Central Business District but most are in public housing estates where 81% of Singaporeans live. Many Singaporeans live and work conveniently within walking distance from a hawker centre. Some lucky people literally have hawker centres at their doorsteps, at the foot of their flats.

Even today, as more public housing estates are built, new hawker centres are built to serve the residents.

3. Hawker centres as community dining spaces for everyone

Chong Pang Hawker Centre

People of all ethnic communities and social status eat together in hawker centres which are the country's "community dining rooms". No one is excluded from eating in hawker centres. The wealthy and powerful eat with workers, retirees, children, etc. Everyone queues and eat at common tables. 80% of Singaporeans visit a hawker centre at least once a week.

National Archives of Singapore

Hawker culture, hawker centres, and hawker food are integral to everyday living in Singapore life. Hawker centres are social hubs where every creed and every race enjoy the pleasures of affordable hawker fare together. Hawker centres are important nodes that hold the diverse threads of the Singapore social fabric together.

National Archives of Singapore

Hawker centres are where you need to be to meet Singaporeans from every community and walks of life.

4. Mastery of skills by hawkers, who are the bearers of hawker culinary practices

Roti John hawker

Culture is about people - hawkers and their skills are the lynch pins of Singapore hawker culture.

Inspired by Singapore's multicultural heritage, our hawkers adapt and even create dishes which embody the Singapore experience. Examples are Hainanese chicken rice, Hainanese curry rice, roti John, curry fish head, chili crab, Indian rojak, just to name a few.

Appreciation of and pride in the Singapore cuisine is for many Singaporeans a mark of their identify. In a National Heritage Board poll, most Singaporeans picked "food heritage" as the top intangible cultural heritage of Singapore.

Hawker food is our common religion deeply ingrained in our daily living. I mean, hawker food is not unique to Singapore, but the level of devotion at the personal and national level is unequalled anywhere in this world. Singaporeans are known to be the most homesick for food people in the world.

Covent Garden Kway Chap

Singapore hawkers spend years cooking only one dish but many thousands of servings through the years in business. Fifty year hawker careers are not uncommon. Naturally, their craftsmanship is honed to a high level of artistry through daily grind. The depth of a hawker's implicit knowledge is a priceless intangible treasure trove but is very difficult to transfer.

Ghim Moh Chwee Kueh

That is why the lack of hawker succession is so vexing. The median age of Singapore hawkers today is 59 years old. The current hawkers are retiring at a faster rate than they could be replaced by new blood. Unless there are effective ways to transmit the hawkers' skills accumulated over a lifetime to the next generation, these skills moulded during a unique period in Singapore's history will be gone forever.

The Future of Singapore Hawker Culture

From Born Regional to Global City

The digital economy and affordable mass air travel make the global village even smaller. Food trends and fads reach every corner of the world in the time it takes to take a picture and post it on Instagram i.e. in an instant. Food stalls responding to these trends and fads will appear in Singapore's hawker centres. These will be additional layers of flavours on top our Malay / Indonesia, Indian, Chinese culinary foundations. Singapore hawker culture will only be more exciting.

Ultra Urban City

Singapore public housing is reaching into new "frontiers" across the island e.g. Tengah.The tight coupling between public housing and hawker centre building will ensure the urban nature of Singapore hawker culture. This differs from the global trend where urbanisation lead to the decline of hawkers. In Singapore, hawker centres and hawkers are integral to the government urban development policies reaching deep into the urban heartland.

Community

Due to urbanisation, Singapore population density will be denser than ever. More ethnic communities will join our social fabric of Malay, Indian, Chinese, Others. The need for social nodes that serve as social glue to bring diverse communities closer is felt now more than ever. Paradoxically, living side by side, next door, doesn't mean people are closer together. Flat dwellers often lament about missing the warmth of the kampong (village) spirit. So, the crucial role of the hawker centres as "community dining rooms" as a common space for everyone in the flats to meet casually, regularly is more critical than ever.

The Men / Women in the Centre

At the very heart of Singapore hawker culture are hawkers - the women and men who are masters of their craft. The pioneer generation are not replaced by new blood in sufficient numbers. The new breed of hawkers are also unlike their predecessors. Some aspire to be master craftsman like their forefathers. Other hawkerpreneurs do not operate under the old model of craftsman hawkers - they are into scalability, automation, production in volume, emphasis on marketing, wide distribution network, delivery platforms, cloud kitchens, etc. They are closer to the trader / entrepreneur end of the food business spectrum than craftsman.

1 comment:

Chew16 October 2021 at 10:07
Unfortunately, it's a matter of whether you can still earn a decent living as a hawker in Singapore. Rental cost has always been an issue, and the long hours coupled with the small hot environment in such hawker food centres have probably led to many of the younger generation forsaking them as a living. I think in Malaysia, it is the opposite, and probably has been a boon for many of the younger generation as they find that they can still earn a decent living being a hawker. If nothing else, the pandemic has seen a growth in hawker culture as more and more of the younger generation find it difficult to get a permanent job with companies facing lean times.

Since the 1980s depression, various Malaysian ministers and authorities have encouraged the unemployed to sell nasi lemak or such hawker fares to cope with being unemployed during depressions.
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