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.

His 174-page book looks at the history and evolution of hawking and hawker centres here.

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.

The 27-year-old says he was inspired to research hawker centres as a politics, philosophy, economics and history student at Yale-NUS College in early 2021.

This was just after Singapore’s hawker centres were added to Unesco’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in December 2020.

Kueh says: “For me, as a Singaporean who grew up in the age of hawker centres, it was quite surprising that we got the Unesco recognition over Malaysia and Thailand. I wanted to do more research into it.”

The nomination form, he adds, made the case not for street food, but for street food “performed through hawker centres”, as he puts it.

His family has ties to the hawker trade too. His maternal grandparents sold Teochew fish soup in the Serangoon a...