Honourable Mansion: The Invisible Hands Behind Singapore’s Last Traditional Teochew House

“Yeo delivers an exceptional history of the House of Tan Yeok Nee with exemplary rigour and clarity. He traces the mansion from private residence to public use, and to its recent restoration. Along the way he illuminates the intricacies of traditional Chinese construction, and explains how evidence, craft, and judgement inform conservation best practices. The result is more than a case study: it sets a benchmark for architectural conservation in Singapore and the region, and offers readers, from students to specialists, a rare blend of scholarly insight and engaging narrative.”
—William Chapman, heritage conservation academic; Director of the Historic Preservation Programme, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

“The House of Tan Yeok Nee is fortunate to have been documented with such detail and care. Yeo presents an impressive documentation of its architectural and social history, tracing the residence from its late-nineteenth-century origins to the most recent restoration. As the sole survivor of the ‘Four Great Mansions’ built by leading Teochew merchants, it is a significant monument in Singapore’s history. Yeo carefully reconstructs the successive renovations since the early twentieth century, clarifying what changed and why, in preparation for the latest restoration of the mansion which he has been involved in.”
—Kwa Chong Guan, historian; co-author of Seven Hundred Years: A History of Singapore, and co-editor of A General History of the Chinese in Singapore

“As Yeo reflects on the granite inscription 資政第 (Zīzhèngdì), he offers a nuanced interpretation that the House of Tan Yeok Nee is ‘a declaration of identity, ambition, and belonging’. His deep knowledge of Chinese architectural heritage, coupled with years of restoration practice, allows him to craft with quiet authority a masterful work of authorship and scholarship, informed by conservation praxis. Page by page, discoveries unfold—architectural and human alike. Few works match its blend of technical depth, literary clarity, and visual storytelling. A landmark contribution that sets a new benchmark for architectural historiography in Singapore and the wider Asia–Pacific region.”
—Laurence Loh, conservation architect; owner of the Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion (The Blue Mansion), George Town, Malaysia

Yeo Kang Shua is Associate Professor and Hokkien Foundation Professor in Architectural Conservation at the Singapore University of Technology and Design. He specialises in Singapore and Southeast Asia’s architectural history and conservation, with special interest in the built heritage of Chinese diaspora. His previous books,《 粵 海清廟：建築與歷史的對話 》(ASD Press, 2020) and Divine Custody: A History of Singapore’s Oldest Teochew Temple (NUS Press, 2021), explore Teochew religious architecture in Singapore. This book on the House of Tan Yeok Nee focuses on the residential tradition, offering a complementary perspective on Teochew architectural expression in the city-state.