In Malaysia, a Mei Hua Coffin Maker Carries On a Three-Generation Craft

For 52 years, Goh Khuay Par has shaped wood into coffins in a modest workshop in Muar, a town about 175 kilometres southeast of Kuala Lumpur. The 69-year-old craftsman builds the traditional Chinese design known as the Mei Hua coffin, named for the plum blossom, or "mei hua" in Mandarin — a trade his family has practised in Malaysia for three generations.

"My father was my master," Goh said, recalling the two and a half years of training he received from him. He no longer remembers the details of the first coffin he carved, though it was probably a small, thin piece like the ones his father set him to make as a beginner. Over time his work grew thicker and more striking in appearance.

Every coffin is made by hand. Goh traces outlines on the wood with a pencil, then cuts and shapes it using hand tools including an adze and an axe. He assembles the two sides first, fitting in smaller pieces before adding the top and bottom. The parts join like a puzzle, with nails used only to hold them in place. The wood is a Malaysian timber called keledang, long prized for coffin-making among the country's Chinese community; it once came from southern Malaysia but must now be sourced from the north.

Years ago, when the workshop had more craftsmen and more orders, it could produce up to five coffins a month. Today Goh and his brother make about two every six to seven weeks. Other craftsmen who once worked alongside him in Muar have retired, leaving the brothers as the last to carry on the family trade. The workshop has also stopped taking orders from Singapore, where a large Chinese diaspora community had been occasional clients.

"In the past there weren't newer styles, so people used this kind," Goh said. "Now there are many different kinds to choose from."

Ethnic Chinese make up about 22% of Malaysia's population, according to the country's Department of Statistics, and coffins remain intertwined with traditions surrounding death and burial. Ling Tek Soon, a scholar at the University of Malaya's Institute of China Studies, said traditional Chinese beliefs envisioned an afterlife that mirrored the world of the living, rather than a final heaven or hell. Buddhism later introduced ideas of reincarnation and karmic retribution, linking a person's fate after death to their actions in life.

"Chinese funeral rituals, burial practices, and tomb designs must almost all be understood through this lens," Ling said. Taoist funeral rites include the symbolic crossing of the "Naihe Bridge," or Bridge of Helplessness, marking the deceased's final departure from the living, while the Qingming Festival each April sees families visit ancestral graves with food offerings and burn incense and paper replicas of everyday goods.

In this framework, the coffin is regarded as the deceased's permanent physical resting place, Ling said, and should be made from natural, heavy and durable materials — ideally the finest timber a family can afford. "Providing such a coffin expresses the family's respect and filial piety toward the deceased," he said. A high-quality coffin can also reflect the prestige and dignity of the deceased and their family, and preserving the body in a premium coffin subtly holds a lingering hope for a future resurrection or rebirth.

Yet attitudes toward death and the body have shifted. Cremation, once widely considered an act of disrespect, is now accepted by the vast majority of Chinese people across the Greater China cultural sphere, Ling said — a change that has contributed to the decline of traditional crafts like Goh's.

The work itself remains physically demanding, and some coffins are harder to make than others. The one currently taking shape in his workshop is among the difficult ones because of the hardness of the wood. "When you come across very hard wood, that's what you dread," Goh said. "The thing you fear most is getting a really hard piece."

Even so, the craft has provided him with a livelihood for more than five decades. "It's been all right," he said. "It puts food on the table."

As for its future, Goh is doubtful. "Times have changed," he said. "This line of work will eventually be phased out. There's no one to take over." Asked whether he hopes for a successor, he replied: "It's not about hoping. Young people, would they want to do it?"