|
 Leong rises around 4 a.m. to do some accounting and prayers
before her son drives her to the local market to buy ingredients
for the day ahead.
From 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., she is hunched over a pot of simmering
noodles, slicing char siu - barbecued pork belly - or serving
bowls of bargain-price hot food.
"I try to do this as long as I can, but I am old," said Leong,
one of many older food vendors or 'hawkers' in the Asian
city-state.
"I am afraid that all the experience that I have accumulated
over the years will be lost. None of my children can take over."
The city has about 110 hawker centers - open-air food courts set
up to house former street vendors in an effort to clean up the
island in the 1970s - and their over 6,000 stalls are mostly
packed.
The government has said it will submit a bid this month to add
its hawker culture to UNESCO's Representative List of the
Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
"We're putting the finishing touches (on the nomination)," Yeo
Kirk Siang, a director at Singapore's National Heritage Board,
told Reuters. Nominations will be accepted until March 31 to be
included on the list next year.
Celebrity chefs Anthony Bourdain and Gordon Ramsay have effused
over typically Singaporean dishes like chicken rice; some hawker
stalls serve up the cheapest Michelin star meals at $2; and last
year's Hollywood hit film Crazy Rich Asians showed its stars
tucking into heaped plates at a famous Singapore night market.
But the enthusiasm cannot mask one underlying problem -
Singapore's hawkers are getting older and their better-educated
sons and daughters are increasingly shunning cramped, sweaty
kitchens for office jobs.
The average age of hawkers is 59, according to a government
report, well above the national workforce average of 43.
"UNESCO is not a silver bullet, it is just one of the things we
need to do... to keep hawker culture alive," said Yeo.
FACING EXTINCTION?
To encourage Singapore's street hawkers to resettle into the
centers in the 1970s, the government heavily subsidized hawker
rentals.
[to top of second column] |
While around 40 percent of older hawkers still enjoy low rents, new
hawker stalls are sold in an open bidding process, often making
rentals much more expensive, especially at popular sites.
One hawker, 38 year-old Lance Ngo, said that finding hawkers in
their 20s "is more difficult than finding gold".
The government has introduced schemes in recent years to get veteran
hawkers to pass on their skills to the next generation, teach
business skills and subsidize equipment and rent to reduce overhead
costs.
This has attracted some young hawkers looking for an escape route
from dead-end office jobs.
"A lot of young people do see it as an avenue to be able to create
and be their own boss," 32 year-old coffee stall owner Faye Sai
said. "This has attracted younger hawkers and career switchers but
that's a minority."
But others say more needs to be done to make the business more
lucrative longer term.
"Before applying for that (UNESCO), I think they have to settle the
problems in front of them first. Twenty years down the road when all
the older generation pass away, who is going to take over?," said
Alan Choong, a 24-year-old owner of Sino-Japanese fusion food stall
Prawnaholic.
Lee Sah Bah, a hawker in his late 60s who sells Chwee Kueh rice
cakes at less than S$2 a portion, says he also faces the prospect of
his legacy dying out.
His two daughters - one a lecturer at a university in Melbourne and
the other an accountant in Singapore - won't take over his business.
"I don't think hawker centers will exist in the next 50 years," Lee
said. "It's too much hard work, we have to put in 16 hours a day
sometimes. It's hot. Kids nowadays wouldn't want to work here."
(Reporting by Fathin Ungku and John Geddie, Additional reporting by
Edgar Su,; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
[© 2019 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2019 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content. |
