Former House of Tan Teng Niah

This guide to the Former House of Tan Teng Niah in Singapore's Little India opens with a puzzle: the candy-coloured villa passersby photograph today was originally painted plain white. It traces the life of Tan Teng Niah, a ten-year-old arrival from China who built a string of sugarcane confectionery factories along Serangoon Road, and the two-storey house he raised for his wife around 1900, complete with a gilded name meaning Elegant Pine. Look up above the entrance for that gilded calligraphy as you pass through Kerbau Road.