Passion

At first glance, the nondescript Ah Xia, in his white checkered shirt with short sleeves, did not seem to be the hawker that we were looking for. In fact, he blended in with the hawker crowd perfectly.

We could not be more wrong.

He whetted our appetites with a generous serving of homemade sambal chilli atop his signature Hokkien Prawn Noodles, a dish he perfected in his 50 odd years of experience.

It is easy to indulge in this flavourful dish and fail to appreciate how the brilliant recipe did not just arise out of nowhere. Rather, it is a result of Ah Xia's years of perseverance in fine-tuning this traditional delicacy.​

Ah Xia’s relationship with the wok dates back to his schooling days when he would help his dad out after school, following him around to fry kway teow and carrot cake. Those were the days of hawking on the streets and he had to help push his dad’s mobile stall around. “The gas is a potential threat...it might just explode [without warning],” recounted Xia when we asked him the dangers of street hawking.

He then later moved to various other places like Whampoa, Eunos and Pasir Ris before coming to Toa Payoh. Despite having to move around Singapore, he does not find it stressful or too much of a bother.

Yet, his passion for what he does might not run on in the younger generation. He asked us if we, as young graduates-to-be, would choose to join the hawker trade upon graduation and we found ourselves at a loss because we had indeed never thought of being hawkers.

“If I ask you to be a hawker...you also don’t want lah! As students, finish your studies, get a job and earn some experience first...you won’t earn much if you do this right after graduation,” shared Ah Xia.​

Despite how he thinks that the hawker business is “laborious and demanding”, his cheerful attitude has led him to be appreciative of many other things like the lower rent he pays compared to having a stall at Orchard or at a foodcourt, the authorities’ continual efforts in making hawker centres better and the convenience and diversity of food choices which hawker centres afford. His positive outlook was evident when he shared with us that cooking “is like exercise” and helps him to stay healthy in reply to our question on the health hazards of breathing in so much smoke on a daily basis.

In Ah Xia, we see a man with a passion in not just perfecting his culinary skills but to offer his best for the masses and preserve the heritage of a traditional local cuisine. In his spare time, when the market is closed for cleaning or maintenance, he would help to cook at his friends’ stalls. And he has no intention of stopping even when he retires. “I’d [still] help out and probably find less strenous jobs that have no pressure,” Ah Xia replied when asked about his retirement plans.

We then quizzed him on his opinion of Dr. Tay’s suggestion of a government initiative to recognise and reward long-time hawkers with at least 50 years of service in the hawker industry. He lamented that it would be hard to realise because he has been moving around all these years and the government would not be able to track how long hawkers have been working for.

Well, if the government ain’t able to do that, we believe it’s time members of the public should express their appreciation of the cheap and good food our hawkers provide for us.

#Hokkienmee #hawkerculture #Food #Hawkercentre