Singaporean artisan family keeps religious effigy art alive
Tan Chwee Lian picks up a small paddle, her finger resting on a groove worn into the wood over 70 years of making Buddhist and Taoist deity statues in her shop. But with competition from mass-produced items and lacking heirs to take up the trade, the craft is in danger of dying out.
Transcript
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
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00:51 The statues that we receive and which we work on,
00:55 I know that they are very important pieces
00:57 in the lives of our customers.
00:59 Because maybe they went through illnesses,
01:03 or maybe retrenchment, or bad patches in their lives.
01:07 And throughout that time, these effigies
01:11 were the ones that gave them the hope and the encouragement
01:14 to move on.
01:15 [MUSIC PLAYING]
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01:25 [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
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01:30 [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
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01:42 I do hope that we can find a system and a structure
01:47 to make sure that this shop can carry on for another 100 years.
01:51 [MUSIC PLAYING]
01:54 (upbeat music)