Buddha Tooth Relic Temple

This guide to the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple in Chinatown opens in 1980 in Mrauk-U, Myanmar, where a monk restoring a collapsed stupa found a large tooth unlike anything in a human mouth, and kept it for two decades before handing it to a Singapore monk to build it a home. It follows Venerable Shi Fa Zhao's year of solitary retreat and the community donations of gold jewelry and heirlooms that funded the temple, up to its 2007 opening by President S. R. Nathan. Look up at the red lacquer and gold leaf of the main hall, cast in part from donated family jewelry.