Love

We headed down to Geylang Bahru Food Centre to meet with Mdm Tan Siew Giok, 57,owner of Lian Yuan Vegetarian. Her warm and motherly demeanour struck us immediately when she greeted us with a bright smile and asked whether we wanted anything to eat before proceeding on with the interview.

I used to teach vegetarian cooking classes at the temple for three years, once every two weeks. The classes were usually quite crowded as many people had an interest in vegetarian food. I think it is a natural talent I have. I flip through cookbooks and adapt some of the recipes to be vegetarian. My aunt encouraged me for three years then I considered for about a year before deciding to set up the stall.

Being a hawker was not part of her initial plan. She confessed to wanting to set up a provision store instead. However, due to her desire to make vegetarian food more mainstream and more widely available to the masses, she took up the role of a hawker eventually.

Mdm Tan’s love for cooking translates to her natural flair in whipping up tasty vegetarian dishes. She would flip through cookbooks in her spare time and adapt those recipes to be suitable for the needs of a vegetarian. She even taught cooking classes at the temple which were often over-subscribed.

Her aunt encouraged her for three years before she took the leap of faith to set up a shop in 1984, which later moved to Blk 69 Geylang Bahru in 1985. It’s been 30 years since she sold her first plate of vegetarian delight.

Her love and passion for food coupled with her determination and grit, is what she felt helped her to overcome all the huddles thus far.

When she embarked on this long and arduous journey, her father told her to not throw in the towel despite the doubts surrounding her ability to endure the hardships of being a hawker. Her ex-boss even told her that she would be back within three months. The lack of faith from others only burned her desire to succeed in the hawker trade.

She shared with us candidly her thoughts on the hawker scene and her daily life.

One of the greatest challenges that she is facing is the rise in cost of her supplies. Sandwiched between her suppliers and consumers, Mdm Tan has a hard time in deciding to raise her prices. A slight increase of 20 cents for curry vegetables proved to be a distaste for some of her regular customers who would slowly cease patronising her stall. She has since resigned herself to having a smaller profit margin. Pulling out her earnings from the past few days, she admitted that it is worrying but she chooses to remain optimistic and take things one day at a time.

It does not really matter to have one more stall around and it is not a bad thing. Before this stall came, I also did not have enough help here to handle to the crowd. However, having one more stall around means having less business overall. I do not mind, if you come to my stall, I will serve you with all that I have. However having competition definitely affects the business, I am not going to lie to you. The other stall sells the same thing as us so people will patronize the other stall when they get sick of us and vice versa. My earnings before the other stall came were different as compared to now. However now that my children have grown up, we just take things one day at a time. Too many hawker centers will influence the business. New hawker centers have better facilities and it will attract more people for the first few months.

Moreover, with the announcement of plans to build more hawker centres over the next 20 years, the scene will become increasingly saturated. Future generations of hawkers would likely have a more difficult time in sustaining their businesses. Even within the hawker centre which she operates in, Mdm Tan has to compete with another vegetarian stall. While she doesn’t mind the competition, there is no doubt that it has adversely impacted her business. Although consumers can enjoy the variety, the move spells tougher competition and lower profit margins for hawkers as a result of the dispersion of the crowd.

What can we say? There’s nothing we can say. We don’t want to waste our time. We don’t have the time to go there. I feel that this is our own personal responsibility. The government has already helped us plenty. They have given us a safe and stable place for us to do business and we are thankful for that. What more can we ask from them? For example, if you have children in future, you can’t expect for the grandmothers to be looking after your children for you. As mothers, we have done our duty in raising you and now you need to stand on your own two feet. The government has done plenty. Why should we still trouble them? We can handle and solve this. Why add to their burdens? However, I think if they don’t open up so many hawker centers then we would already be very grateful.

Despite such difficulties, she believes that the government has already done plenty for the hawkers by giving them a safe and stable place to conduct their business; unlike food courts and coffeeshops that increase rents once a stall has good business. This makes it taxing for stall owners to sustain their income. She laughed as she mentioned that it would be a small mercy for hawkers if the government decides not to open more new hawker centres.

When it comes to passing on the torch to the younger generation, Mdm Tan said that it would require great passion and that one needs to be highly motivated in giving their all. Being a hawker is not easy and absolute commitment is crucial for sustaining the business. Though Mdm Tan felt that the Hawker Master Trainer Program is a good initiative, the probability of youngsters wanting to become hawkers is quite low. Personally, she believes that it has a lot to do with an individual’s destiny and calling.

Mdm Tan also cautioned that one cannot harbour hopes on the trade to get rich. While it is possible, it requires bones of steel and a lot of hard work. She recounted how despite experiencing excruciating pain in her back at times--to the extent of her barely being able to stand-- Mdm Tan still had to come to the stall and sell as much as possible to meet ends meet.

I think hawker centers and the tradition will still go on but I don’t know what it will be like in future. It will go on for a long while more since it’s under the government but I don’t know what it will be like?

Ultimately, she’s confident that the hawker scene will persist for a long while more as it is under the purview of the government. However she admits that it would definitely be difficult for future hawkers who will have their own new sets of problems.

#Hawker #hawkerculture #food #vegetarian