SINGAPORE – Before Singapore became Singapore, in Temasek times, there were hawkers, according to a new book, From Streets To Stalls, by Singaporean author Ryan Kueh.
From research, he found that the three conditions that make it likely for hawkers to ply their trade were present at the time, when Temasek was a thriving trading hub. There was the flow of travellers and merchants coming here to trade, local artisans who were able to sell their goods and services, and currency to facilitate trading.
His family has ties to the hawker trade too. His maternal grandparents sold Teochew fish soup in the Serangoon area in the 1980s. His parents, who were dating at the time, helped out at the stall. But mostly, the book, put out by World Scientific Publishing, is built on scholarly research rather than anecdotes. It looks at the proliferation of itinerant hawkers plying the trade during British rule, which led to hygiene and other lapses. Legislation and the rise of hawker shelters, proper structures with running water, were introduced to clean up the trade.Hawker centres started out being functional – places that brought order, hygiene and racial equality to the trade.
He asks to meet this reporter at Clementi 448 Market & Food Centre because that was where he hung out as a university student. He likes the Whampoa Soya Bean stall there. They will be moving into a Housing Board flat in Sin Ming near Shunfu Mart, and that is where he plans to introduce his children, if he has any, to hawker culture.
The inspiration this time comes from two sources. The first is gastronaut and medical doctor Wong Chiang Yin’s 2021 book, How To Eat, which looks at hawker and Cantonese food origins, among other gastronomic subjects.
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