Hawker culture in Singapore comprises hawker centers, hawkers, and hawker food. It is a living heritage shared by those who prepare hawker food and those who dine and mingle over hawker food in “community dining rooms” called hawker centers. It encompasses people from all walks of life, a wide range of affordable multicultural food, and common shared spaces. While similar food practices can be found in neighboring countries and internationally, they each have their respective historical contexts, cultural influences, and sociocultural functions.

In March 2019 Singapore submitted its nomination to inscribe its hawker culture onto the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Hawker culture in Singapore comprises hawker centers (community dining rooms), hawkers, and hawker food. It is a living heritage shared by those who prepare hawker food and those who dine and mingle over hawker food in hawker centers.\n\nAs part of the Singapore government’s ongoing efforts to safeguard Singapore’s hawker culture for future generations, the National Heritage Board (NHB), the National Environment Agency (NEA), and the Federation of Merchants’ Associations, Singapore (FMAS) have partnered with Google to document Singapore’s beloved hawker centers on Google Maps to make them discoverable to anyone looking for quality and affordable hawker food.\n\nThrough this public–private partnership, the parties involved hope to bring Singapore’s hawker culture into the digital age and help hawkers in Singapore establish their presence online through Google Maps and Search. The joint project also hopes to attract more customers and drive footfall to Singapore’s hawker centers, enabling the rest of the world to learn more about Singapore’s hawker culture.\n\nThe project comprises a collection of 360-degree imagery of Singapore’s hawker centers using Google Maps’ Street View that allows visitors to explore each hawker center to capture more accurate information about individual hawker stalls, such as name, stall number, and photographs. In addition, each hawker stall will receive a separate pin on Google Maps, showing its exact location within the hawker center, thereby allowing both local and visiting fans of Singapore’s hawker food to find their favorite stalls more easily.\n\nAccording to Mr. Lim Gek Meng, Vice-President of FMAS and Chairman of the Chinatown Complex Hawkers’ Association: “Finding your way through a hawker center can be confusing, especially at bigger centers such as Chinatown Market. This project is beneficial to the hawker community as it will help customers locate hawker stalls with ease. Hawkers will also be able to personalize their online presence to reach out to more customers, at no cost and with little effort.”\n\nAs these hawker centers are located all over Singapore, from downtown to residential estates, a team of Google operators will travel to every hawker center and use the new Street View Trekker to capture the required imagery. Mounted on a wearable backpack, the new trekker comprises a state-of-the-art 360-degree camera system that captures and produces high-resolution panoramic images every two seconds.\n\nGoogle’s team of operators will collect indoor imagery of all 114 hawker centers in Singapore, including Chinatown Complex, Geylang Serai Market, Tekka Market, Maxwell Food Centre, and Golden Mile Food Centre. The collection of imagery will be carried out in phases, and it is expected to be completed and launched on Google Maps by early 2020.\n\nPhoto : An operator carrying a Google Street View Trekker ⓒ Google, Singapore

Central Asia is a region that has served as the centre of social and economic, in particular cultural interrelations of East and West. The nations of this region have a rich cultural heritage and ancient traditions like any nation in the world. The nations of Central Asia - Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan – make up a unified cultural space, defined by great grassland steppes and famous mountains, nomadic culture and common history, relics and traditions. Throughout this region we find petroglyphs, keregsur, steles, ruins and other monuments attesting to the mingling of peoples in the Central Asian steppe since prehistory. The territory of our own nation, Mongolia, has indeed been the centre several nomadic empires at various stages in history, established by different peoples of Central Asia sharing a similar cultural origin – Hunnu, Khitan, Turks, Uighurs, Kyrgyz and Mongols.

Abstract: This paper discusses lion dances as an example of shared heritage. In the local communities of Japan, there are several thousand lion dance troupes. These types of performances, where the dancers don animal costumes, can be found in various locations across Asia. While the dances are similar in shape, they vary in meaning, religious background, music, style, etc. Such differences are a manifestation of diversity. As such, when considering shared heritage, it is important to recognize the aspect of diversity.\n\nJapan has never made a multinational nomination to the UNESCO’s List of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH). The reason for this lies in Japan’s method of selecting candidate properties for nomination. That is, Japan abides by a unique policy of selecting candidate properties from among those designated as cultural properties by the national government. “Cultural properties” refer comprehensively to the system for safeguarding cultural heritage in Japan and can be designated not only by the national government but also by local administrative units such as prefectures and municipalities. However, only nationally designated cultural properties have so far been eligible for nomination as a UNESCO’s List of ICHs, and the national designation criteria include no requirement to consider international compatibility. The designation criteria of local governments include no such requirement, either.\n\nIn other words, as long as Japan’s criteria for selecting candidate properties for nomination to the UNESCO’s List of ICHs conform to the domestic criteria for selecting cultural properties, making a multinational nomination would continue to be extremely difficult. Under the present system, responding to proposals from other countries would also be difficult. Yet, I have hope. In 2021, the cultural properties system for ICH in Japan was slightly modified. In place of the conventional system of designation, a system of registration was adopted with respect to intangible cultural heritage to provide more flexibility in safeguarding a wider scope of properties than ever before. Such a new system might promote the awareness of the need to take a more international perspective. At the same time, views that Japan should strive to make multinational nominations are emerging within discussions about UNESCO’s List of ICHs. When considering such trends, the prospect of Japan making multinational nominations or responding to proposals from other countries may be realized in the future.\n\nThus, in this paper, I wish to discuss what types of multinational nominations would be possible, based on case examples of folk performing arts, my specialty area. It should firstly be noted, however, that there are two categories of performing arts in Japan, namely traditional performing arts and folk performing arts. Traditional performing arts are fundamentally performed in theaters by professional performers. There are also amateur performers of traditional performing arts, who generally study under a specific master. Folk performing arts, on the other hand, are fundamentally performed by amateur performers within a specific event held in a particular region. Most are linked to faith and have been inherited through festivals and annual events. In placing them under the domestic system for safeguarding cultural properties, traditional performing arts are judged by their artistic and historical value, and folk performing arts are evaluated mainly by their folkloric value (stipulated by law as performing arts that show transitions in lifestyles). A large number of folk performing arts exist in Japan. As of 2020, as many as 8443 properties, including festivals and annual events, have been nationally or locally designated for safeguarding as intangible folk cultural properties. When including properties that have not been designated, more than several tens of thousands of performing arts are thought to exist. These folk performing arts have emerged from diverse historical contexts and are further classified into a number of subcategories. Among these performing arts, I wish to focus on Lion Dances, or “Shishi-mai.” I must, however, confess that I am regrettably not well-versed in the intangible cultural heritage situation in East Asia as a whole. I, therefore, wish to apologize in advance that the case examples I present herein are not necessarily common to all countries in East Asia.

Abstract: East Asian countries such as Mongolia, the Republic of Korea, the People’s Republic of China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and Japan have had interactions and cultural exchanges for a long time ago. This paper is therefore about safeguarding the “Shared Heritage” in East Asia. Writing down the shared intangible cultural heritage in East Asia requires an understanding of the concept of sharedness from the perspective of commonality, similarity and recognition, and mutual acceptance. \n\nThis paper enumerates the Mongolian government’s initiatives and efforts to safeguard the shared intangible cultural heritage elements, such as “Falconry, a living human heritage,” and the challenges we face.