Singapore (AFP)

Cooks from hawker centers, community canteens in Singapore, this week applauded their inclusion in the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by Unesco.

The open-air centers, which bring together stalls of varied and inexpensive foods such as sticky mango rice, seafood noodles or chicken satay skewers, are present in most neighborhoods of the city-state of 'South East Asia.

They entered the UNESCO Intangible Heritage of Humanity list on Wednesday, joining yoga, Chinese calligraphy and flamenco.

“In the past, it was a job that was looked down upon, it was considered a miserable business,” explains Ng Kok Hua, who sells fried foods in his micro-kitchen.

"And now it's a Singaporean cultural institution that is recognized around the world."

Next to Ng's stand, you can find Hainan chicken rice, distinguished by the Michelin guide, for 5 Singaporean dollars (3 euros).

Stemming from the tradition of street food vendors, "hawker centers have become symbols of the multicultural city-state of Singapore, whose population is made up of Chinese, Malays and Indians, among others," notes the Unesco on its site.

"A large number of them have a specialty, which they have been perfecting for several years", and pass their recipes on to their families or to their apprentices.

Ng's stand, for example, was founded by his father, and is one of the few that still offers "ngoh hiang", a roll containing meat seasoned with spices.

"Hawker culture is not elitist, it is popular and all Singaporeans can celebrate it," said Pasha Siraj, who offers modern Indian cuisine on her stand.

According to Humphrey Lim, a Singaporean who came to the center for lunch, "most Singaporeans go there every day."

The hawker centers were born from the 1950s during the urbanization of Singapore as a solution to the hygiene and town planning problems posed by the street food vendors.

They kept the name of their humble origins, "hawker" meaning "peddler".

This recognition by Unesco has been "a long but fruitful journey," Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong wrote on Facebook on Wednesday.

"The biggest thanks must go to the generations of hawkers who fed the stomachs and sustained the morale of the nation."

© 2020 AFP