Penang-born Tan Cheng Guan first heard about Jesus as a tot in India during World War II. 

The retired barrister-of-law (also journalist, oil executive and househusband) started going to church when he entered Raffles Institution in Singapore.

At age 15, he asked his father for permission to get baptised. But his father –  the first local-born judge of the Supreme Court in Singapore – advised him to wait till he was 21.

Cheng Guan and wife, Anne-Marie, with the leather-bound Bible inscribed with his name. He saved up his pocket money to buy it when he was 13. It has travelled with him all over the world, and lives at his bedside. Photo by Gemma Koh.

Tan, now a grandfather, finally got baptised in August – two months after his 80th birthday – at St George’s Church in Singapore. What prompted him to finally get baptised more than 60 years after coming to know the Lord?

The RI connection

Tan’s family moved to Singapore when he was about a year old. His father, the late Justice Tan Ah Tah, was one of the first two local men in the Straits Settlements to be accepted into the colonial legal service.

Just before the Japanese invaded Singapore, Tan’s mother and her eldest sister took the children to Madras, India. The Namazie family had helped them find “a lovely bungalow on Stirling Road”.

Tan wouldn’t meet his earthly father till after the war, but knew that he was a lawyer. It was during this time that Tan would first get to know about his heavenly Father.

“When I was four years, my brother, my sister  and I were taken by rickshaw to kindergarten a mile and a half away from the bungalow where we lived. It was a Roman Catholic convent, run by Catholic nuns from Italy. And that’s where I was introduced to Christ,” Tan told Salt&Light.

Cheng Guan (right) and his brother, Cheng Lim, were both prefects in Raffles Institution. With their sister, Eileen, and mother, Mdm Choo Yu Keun. Their father, Justice Tan Ah Tah, was the first local to be appointed a Supreme Court Judge in Singapore in 1955 and the first local Acting Chief Justice in 1958. All photos courtesy of Tan Cheng Guan unless otherwise stated.

Cheng Guan (left), and his brother, in their RI uniforms, with their parents and sister.

His family was not Christian, “although we had Christian values, and my father knew the Bible”.

It was only when he entered secondary school – Raffles Institution (RI) in Singapore – that he and started attending church with a group of friends. It was Bethesda Hall, which was near their school. At that time, both were on Bras Basah Road. 

“Some 25 boys from RI were regular attendees of this church, and we went three times a week.” Among them, was one who later gave up his job as a manager in a global beverage company to become a pastor. The two men are still in touch.

So fervent was the boys’ faith, they composed and published a tract in an attempt to convert their friends and family.”We contributed money, bought stamps and posted it to everybody we knew. Even to my grandfather in Kuala Lumpur. He was a Christian, and he was highly amused to receive it.”

Cheng Guan in the role of Romeo in a school play. “Juliet” was from Raffles Girls School.

Tan’s maternal grandfather was Choo Kia Peng (after which Jalan Kia Peng in Kuala Lumpur is named), who was Kapitan Cina of the state of  Selangor. Choo assisted poor immigrants from China who had no money and nowhere to go.  The British Resident consulted him on affairs of the Chinese community. Choo was invited to represent Malaya at the coronation of King George VI.

“My grandfather was a rather unusual man for his day and age. He was very anglicised, and the English influenced him a lot. The British were kind to him and liked him.”

At age 15, Tan told his father: “I wanted to get baptised.

“My father said to me: ‘It is a very serious step to take. And you don’t fully understand what you’re asking for. What if you later change your mind?’

“My father was a very wise. He said, ‘You may not understand what I’m saying to you now. But when you’re 21 years old, you can get baptised without bothering to ask.”

Intellectual rubbish

Tan didn’t change his mind. “I never lost my faith.”

However, at age 21, Tan questioned it. Looking back, he calls his questioning “intellectual rubbish”.

He was then a law undergraduate at Cambridge University in the UK. “It was fashionable to say you’re an intellectual and you don’t believe a virgin can give birth.

He wrote to his “American father” – a top surgeon and an elder in a Presbyterian church in Baltimore City, Maryland.  They had met when Tan did a year of high school in Grade 12 on a scholarship from the American Field Service. Tan was among four of the first Singaporeans to go. The year was 1957.

Originally a badminton player who played for Cambridge, Cheng Guan picked up squash while in university. He subsequently became a national squash player for Singapore.

“I wrote him a letter saying I was having some difficulty about this.

“The good man wrote me a two-page letter in his own writing explaining that what is important is that you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Literally, metaphorically, it doesn’t matter. That’s all you have to believe. That helped me immensely.”

As for his favourite verse, Tan said: “I know it sound very uninteresting. But it is John 3:16: For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

“Nothing else summarises Christianity better than that.”

Then there was the incident at the Cambridge Union. The union debates are a famous and big part of the education at the prestigious university, where participants have included the world’s greatest speakers and statesmen.

“At one debate, speaker after speaker was denouncing Christianity and other religions. And they were desecrating God and talking like intellectuals.

“I couldn’t stand it. I didn’t intend to speak. You have to speak very well when you stand up there. But I found myself standing up, and I spoke for five minutes and I berated the whole lot. I said, ‘You people think by speaking like this you prove you’re an intellectual and you’ve got a good mind. What nonsense! Religion has its place in life.’ I forget most of what I said. But I scolded them roundly and felt a bit silly after I sat down.

What he said was reported in the university newspaper, just as they reported what everyone else had said.

LKY’s lawyer’s assistant

Tan would go on to a varied and colourful career (and be a househusband at age 55) which would see him living across four continents. Excluding Singapore, he’s lived in eight countries in the course of his life. 

The Bible that he saved up as a 13-year-old to buy, has been on his bedside wherever he’s lived.

Tan started his working life in the legal firm of Rodyk & Davidson, arguably the oldest law firm in Singapore. His boss was Graham Starforth Hill, the lawyer of then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. On Day One, Tan was asked to draft a writ of libel on behalf of Lee Kuan Yew.

Four years later, he was wooed to The Straits Times Group by Adrian Zecha (who would later go on to become a hotelier and form Aman Resorts). He was sent by the company to Australia and England as a trainee journalist. And in between, to the graduate school of journalism at Columbia University, New York, where he co-won the Henry N Taylor Award, given to the best international student. At 33, he stepped into Wee Kim Wee’s big shoes as editorial manager when the latter was appointed by the government as High Commissioner in Kuala Lumpur. (Wee would later become the 4th President of Singapore.)

Tan would return to law for three years, before joining Mobil Oil, where he was eventually its head of government and public relations. He stayed for 18 years, before retiring at 55.

It was part of an agreement that he made when he married German diplomat, Dr Anne-Marie Schleich, five years earlier: He would work for five more years while she took leave to look after the family, after which, they would reverse roles and she would rejoin the foreign service.

Cheng Guan retired at age 55 to become the trailing spouse to his German diplomat wife, and full-time dad to their daughter, Stephanie, who was born in Singapore. During their posting to Pakistan, he wrote Animal Friends and Other Stephanie Stories, a book of 12 bedtime stories he told Stephanie when she was age 4. They are set in places that Stephanie had travelled to with her parents.

Daughter Stephanie Tan (right) followed in the footsteps of her father and grandfather to read law at Cambridge. She lives and works in London. Cheng Guan’s son, Mark Tan, and his wife, Looi Ming Ming, are practising lawyers who have two daughters.

For 22 years, Tan was the trailing spouse, organising their moves  (to Islamabad, Bonn, Berlin, London, Melbourne, and Wellington), looking after their daughter, and attending meetings of diplomat spouses.

His love for Jesus has been one constant. “I can claim that every step of the way, He was guiding me.” 

Three months to live

It was during his wife’s last posting – to New Zealand,  where she was the ambassador for Germany – when Tan almost met his Maker.

He had a cancer scare.

“The top expert in Wellington said to me, ‘I’m very sorry to tell you: You have to put your affairs in order. You have three months to live.'” 

“The nurse said, ‘I will pray for you. But you must settle your will and other important things. Don’t waste time.'”

The family was supported in prayer by Tan’s good friend, who was the ambassador from the Vatican, an Archbishop. 

“I went for treatment for six days a week for a whole month.” That was five years ago. 

“I was cured. It’s a miracle.”

It wasn’t Tan’s first encounter with God’s healing grace. The first happened when he was under 20 years old. While an undergraduate in his first year at Cambridge, he had what he will only describe as “a serious illness”.

“My poor mother came out to look after me in England to make sure nothing went wrong.

“I was not allowed to study for more than two hours a day for one year because I was not allowed to stress myself.”

He had to skip the exams, and special arrangements were made for him to be tutored privately during the summer break. He managed to pass.

God was his comfort during “this trying period”. He also found comfort and encouragement at the Round Church, which he still visits on trips to Cambridge.

Zoom baptism course

Tan and his wife finally moved back to Singapore in 2016. They are now retired.

They attended a wedding at St George’s Church.

“We thought, ‘What a beautiful church: Open sides, no aircon, so breezy. Like being a garden.'” And it is near their home. 

While he had worshipped at churches in every country he’s lived in since coming to Christ, he said: “I’ve never really had a church which I regarded as my lifelong church. So now that I’m home, I thought it’s time I actually belong to a church.”

In the midst of the Covid period, Tan decided to get baptised. He went through Zoom baptism sessions with Rev Ian Hadfield, the Vicar of St George’s Church. They studied the Gospel of Mark. 

When churches were allowed to resume services, the octogenarian was baptised at St George’s on National Day. Before baptising him, Rev Ian asked: “If Jesus was to come back today, what would you like to say to Him?” 

Tan answered: “I’d say: ‘Dear Lord, thank you for saving my soul. Help me to live the way You would like to see me live … I would like to be with You forever more even after my death.'”

Cheng Guan (centre), with his sister, Eileen, a retired piano tutor, and their brother, Prof Tan Cheng Lim.

A big inspiration in Tan’s life – his older brother – was not around to witness the occasion. Prof Tan Cheng Lim, a pioneer in paediatrics and KK Women & Children’s Hospital, who was well-known for his compassion and humility, had passed on in January 2019.

Tan recalls that when he around 8, he was very playful and didn’t do well in school. It was his older brother who encouraged him to study hard.

And so, eight months before the entrance exam, after coming back from school and having lunch, “instead of going play kites and tops, I took my books, climbed up the frangipani tree in the back and studied”.

He got into RI. Which led him to the church and his God.

Of his older brother, he said: “I know he is heaven, and I will see him again.”

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