Some countries build palaces or temples as monuments to their greatness. Singapore builds hawker centers. Put casually on a plate or banana leaf are the dishes such as Indian roti prata and Singapore laksa which are mixed with what is from Malaysia.

And since one can eat one’s fill in a hawker center at a reasonable price, it is no surprise that eight in ten Singaporeans visit such places at least once a week, according to a survey conducted by the National Environment Agency in 2018. Singapore is so proud of its street food that it hopes UNESCO will include it in its catalogue of humanity’s most precious arts.

The UN’s heritage inspectors had better hurry. The average age of the chefs is 60, so sustaining the hawker trade in the long run is hard. When old chefs pass away, many take their recipes with them, says K.F. Seetoh. Only Singaporean citizens can work in hawker centers managed by the government. But young Singaporeans have little appetite for working in piping-hot stalls for long hours and little pay.

The few young Singaporeans willing to put up with such conditions often live hand-to-mouth. When Yu Ting Gay and Alex Ho opened their Italian-Japanese fusion stall in 2017, they hoped to earn $1,474 a month each. Most of the time they made half that. “Our pockets were quite tight,” says Ms. Yu.

Older hawkers have an unfair advantage. Many of those pay discounted rents: $200 a month on average. They still account for 55% of the 5,500 stalls rented by the government. But a report published by the Ministry of Trade in 2015 found that even though younger hawkers have an average 15% higher operating costs, they do not pass them on to their customers, which is discouraged by the government too.

Suppose you come across two doctors. One is handsome while the other looks plain. Who would you trust with your surgery? Most people would probably want to get treated by the handsome one. And most people are likely to be wrong about that.

When you look at the sun, you sometimes see it clearly. But sometimes you’ll see it shining way bigger than its actual shape. That circle of light called a halo makes it look bigger. This effect, known as the halo effect, also happens when a person, product, or company shines like the sun. Then we don’t see them clearly and associate all sorts of unrelated qualities to them.

The halo effect was once studied by the psychologist Edward Thorndike, who asked flight commanders to evaluate their pilots in various distinct aspects such as physical appearance, intelligence, and leadership. He found that the pilots who got high scores for their physical appearance, also got rated high on intelligence and leadership skills — a link that seemed wrong. It appears that the commanders were unable to evaluate specific qualities independently of others. They thought of their pilots in broad terms, either “good” or “bad”, and allowed this general feeling to influence the specific qualities they credited to their pilots. Some pilots profited from their halo.

The halo effect also explains why some teachers give better-looking students higher grades. One study looked at the grades of 4,500 pupils, who were sorted by volunteers into three groups: below-average, average, and above-average looking. The researchers then compared students’ grades between classes taken in conventional classrooms with those taken online where there was no face-to-face interaction. The researchers found that students who were rated as good-looking earned significantly lower grades in online courses compared to conventional classrooms.

Since the physical appearance of good-looking people seems to naturally make them also appear intelligent, strong, and trustworthy, here is one good rule. If you meet with an accident and have to choose between two equally qualified doctors, ignore their halo and choose the less handsome one. He might have worked twice as hard to gain the same reputation and is likely better at his job.

When French musical Mozart-L’opera Rock toured nine Chinese cities in the last two years, it drew a big crowd of fans, including Chen Yike, a 28-year-old resident of Hangzhou.

“It was the first French musical that I had ever seen,” Chen said. She was so captivated by the show that she saw the production two more times.

Chen is one of many young Chinese who are increasingly fueling the country’s performing arts market. More and more young people are investing time and money in live performances, such as concerts and plays.

According to a report released by the Lighthouse Research Institute and ticketing firm Damai on March 25, young Chinese accounted for a record 55 percent of consumers of performing arts ticket sales in 2019 and 72 percent of concert attendees were people born after 1990.

Xiaomi, a 25-year-old girl from Chongqing became a loyal fan of singer Hua Chenyu after she saw his concert at the National Stadium in Beijing in 2018. Last year, she and three of her friends even traveled to Hainan province to see one of his concerts.

“It has now become a way of life for young people to spend money on performances by their idols,” Zhang Yiwu, a professor at Peking University, told China Daily.

Apart from young audiences, Chinese young performers are also doing increasingly well in the domestic (国内的) market and show a great potential for indigenous (本土的) culture to build a stronghold (大本营).

For example, the 19-year-old Chinese singer-actor Jackson Yee (易烊千玺) featured as a coach on the reality show Street Dance of China (《这！就是街舞》). With more than 80 million followers on his Sina Weibo platform, Yee’s participation helped attract audiences to an otherwise less known art.

On the iQiYi’s The Big Band, many young bands got the opportunity to show their music, and some have become quite popular. As a result, music that would have remained underground is now in the spotlight. “Many young bands on the The Big Band inspire me to learn more about their stories and indie (独立制作的) music,” Yang Zixu, a fan of The Big Band, wrote on the Chinese Q&A platform Zhihu.

Thanks to the joint effort of young audiences and performers, there’s “a driving force for Chinese cultural and creative industries” and it also “indicates China has entered a higher stage of development with better economic and social foundations,” according to China Daily.