Palace of Ghosts: Singapore's Untold History

The Singapore Years A 1910 postcard showing the main entrance to The House of Tan Yeok Nee The unexplained departure of Tan Yeok Nee from his official roles in Johor has been interpreted by some as the result of a conspiracy hatched by rivals intent of ousting him from his position of influence in Johor. The previous post explained why this is hard to believe and that an obvious alternative explanation exists: that for years Tan may have been developing a grand plan for a path to semi-retirement. The years following his departure from Johor saw him complete the construction of his palace in Chao’an, China. He would go on to build another beautiful mansion in Singapore, continue his close association with Maharaja Abu Bakar (soon to become Sultan), while continuing to manage his own personal business interests through his Singapore Boat Quay trading company Kwan Hong. Tan may have had a close eye on a quieter life. His new residence in Chao’an, southern China, must have been part of his...

Tan Yeok Nee's Zi Zheng Di palace, situated in Chao'an, Guangdong province, China, is several times larger than Singapore's The House of Tan Yeok Nee. This, and the fact that its central halls are adorned with highly intricate and unique stone carvings, accounts for why it took Tan a decade or more longer to complete its construction when compared to his Singapore mansion. Only after Zi Zheng Di was completed did he go on to build The House of Tan Yeok Nee in Singapore.  Very little has been written about Zi Zheng Di, in either Chinese or English, with the notable exception of a chapter by Gretchen Liu which appeared in the 2003 book The House of Tan Yeok Nee: The Conservation of a National Monument. The chapter she wrote sets out in some detail, for the first time, how the architectural style of Tan's second mansion in Singapore was so heavily influenced by his first mansion in Chao'an specifically, but also by that region's architectural heritage more generall...

Introduction: The Life and Times of Tan Yeok Nee Tan Yeok Nee is a towering figure in the history of 19th-century Johor and Singapore. He started out as a youthful immigrant from China, enduring indentured labour on his arrival in Pahang. He eventually became one of the most powerful men in Johor and Singapore during the 1860s-1880s. Today he has streets named after him in Johor Bahru and buildings that bear his name in Singapore. More fundamentally, however, we see everyday the successful economies of Johor and Singapore and the ever improving livelihoods of their inhabitants. Although he played a major, and foundational, role in creating this phenomenon, relatively little is known about him. This is the first post I have published in some months in the on-going story about the writing of  Palace of Ghosts . The reason for the break is that when I first had the idea to include a post on Tan Yeok Nee, who is an important yet secondary character in Palace of Ghosts, I imagined that...