The Many Lenses of Miranda

<In response to the New York Times’ “Local Lens” photo essay prompt>

Making your way through the colorful stalls and multilingual signboards, you can already smell the savory aroma of dishes wafting in the air. While Singapore’s hawker centers have attained UNESCO heritage status, they remain, first and foremost, community dining centers, staying true to their original intentions: selling local dishes at affordable prices.

The best way to eat hawker food is slurping up savory broth while sweating through your thin cotton shirt in the eternally humid, hot weather. But don’t let any humble appearances fool you –for the price of only 6 SGD (4.68 USD), you might be able to have one of the best meals you’ve ever had. Each hawker stall boasts a unique fusion of ethnic dishes with local climate that entices all: spot the quintessential Singaporean uncle (“uncle” is a common honorific used to describe an older man), or families having lunch – you might even spot businessmen equipped with Apple devices seeking their favorite hawker dish. It’s a conglomeration of individuals from every walk of life, united through the art of eating in its simple, most pleasurable form.

Moreover, hawker centers are a medium for shared experiences. They’ve witnessed the childhood of our country: There are stalls run for decades by veteran hawkers or secret recipes refined over years of trial and error. As I bite into a goreng pisang, my mother shares stories about buying the same fried bananas as a child, and we trade opinions on the best toppings for Yong Tau Foo noodles. Each dish is a piece of living history that carries through us.

It’s Singapore, and it’s a way of life. The steam from the stalls still clings to your shirt even when you leave, but this is home, and amidst all the “crazy rich Asians” and high-rise buildings, this is us.

In his 30 years of frequenting the hawker center at Sim’s Drive, Uncle Peter has seen the neighboring park transformed into a community center, and the way of life change, yet the act of sharing comfort street food remains. According to him, some hawkers have been here as long as he has: “Of course I know them,” he says. “When I approach their stall, they recognize me and know what I want to order”.

Uncle Peter and co. have several favourite dishes from stalls across the center: mee soto, fishball noodles, seafood porridge… “I come here a lot…though I’m old and a bit picky, these dishes still satisfy my appetite”, says Uncle Peter’s friend, Mr. Su. In a changing Singapore, hawker centers remain familiar spaces for older generations – one tip from them: a stall with a long queue will definitely be something that will blow your taste buds away.

“The same table, these 30 years. Number 19” says Uncle Feng (on the right, floral shirt) proudly. While seats are usually hard to ‘chope’ (aka reserve), these seasoned old timers have their ways. Meeting every Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday, their group’s attendance might fluctuate. But in a public space like a hawker center, they know that they’ll always meet a couple of “old goats” to sip kopi (coffee) with.

Wok hei –the way high-temperature woks sear and season their dishes. It is the secret ingredient of many hawker dishes, and a culinary intuition that could take years to master. Wok hei belongs to the scorching fire of the stove and the heat of the open-air hawker kitchen, non-replicable in closed kitchens without high temperatures. When abroad, the craving for the unique, smoky aroma of hawker food will always be an anchor back home.

Serving customers with a spring in his step, he laughs as I ask if he’s a second-generation hawker. It’s hard to imagine that this uncle is 70 years old and still persevering with the daily 6 AM  preparation work of running a stall. “I wear sunglasses to shield the ‘oldness’”, he explains. Perhaps he hopes that each of his dishes is like a capsule, evoking memories of earlier days, despite the changing tides of society.

This group of friends met as classmates at Singapore’s famous Dunman High Secondary School in the 60s. In a small island country, it’s not uncommon to connect with strangers through shared coincidences – as I quickly learned when I told them that my parents are alumnae from the same school. As I squeeze onto the bench next to them, they offer me a banana from a nearby fruit stall, and suddenly, we are acquainted.

As the gathered friends tell me about the old hawker stall they frequently support, and the story of reconnecting at this center, I think about how the act of eating so intimately threads us together through space and time. We each carry a piece of a greater identity within us. Perhaps none of us truly understands the depth of it all, but we hold it, nonetheless, within this shared space and the food we consume.