Born Tan Tiow Phuang (1911-1983) in Singapore, Dr Tan Tsze Chor went to China at age four for his education and returned at 17. A successful businessman known in the region as the ‘pepper king’, he was an avid collector of Chinese art and a philanthropist who donated money and artworks to various institutions, including the University of Malaya (now National University of Singapore) and the Singapore Art Society.Writing in his unique style which combines the seal, regular, running and cursive scripts in a single calligraphy, Tan’s maturity and confidence is clearly evident in this poem by Yue Fei (1103-1142), the Song dynasty (960-1279) hero, in which he expressed disappointment that he was obstructed by his own people from recovering lost Song land.
