She made gods for 70 years: meet the matriarch of Singapore’s last handcrafted Taoist deity producer

Singaporean Tan Chwee Lian, now 92, has spent the best part of seven decades carving warriors and Taoist deities from blocks of camphor wood and painting them

The business is tapping into the tourism market, with walking tours and cultural workshops – one is called ‘How to Give a Middle Finger, Song Dynasty Style’

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Tan Chwee Lian is the matriarch behind Say Tian Hng, Singapore’s last Taoist idol business. She is retired, but the business continues through her family. Photo: Ronan O’Connell

Published: 7:15am, 5 Dec 2023Updated: 7:58am, 15 Dec 2023

“How to give a Middle Finger, Song Dynasty Style” is an unusual name for a workshop, to say the least, so to find out more, I accept an invitation to step into a timeworn studio in Singapore’s Tanjong Pagar district, where a 71-year-old artist is hard at work.

Wielding a brush thinner than a pencil, Ng Yeow Hua stares intently and ever so carefully begins to paint. Each stroke is painstakingly slow and delicate. It pays to be precise when dealing with a goddess with dozens of arms.

He is colouring the lips of a golden statue of Guanyin. Known as Kwun Yum in Hong Kong (a towering, white statue of her looms over Tsz Shan Monastery, in Tai Po in the New Territories) and revered in Taoist, Buddhist and Chinese folk religions, she is the goddess of mercy depicted in Chinese temples across the planet.

In Singapore, small versions of this goddess are birthed each week at Say Tian Hng, the city state’s only surviving Taoist idol workshop. Its family of artisans hand carve a variety of deities from blocks of camphor wood before embellishing them with paint.

Ng Yeow Hua colouring the lips of a golden statue of Guanyin. Photo: Ronan O’Connell

For many years, the face of this well-known business has been Ng Yeow Hua’s now 92-year-old mother, Tan Chwee Lian.