On the first day of the year that Kit Chan turned 40, she uttered a deeply intentional prayer.

“Thank You so much for the last 40 years. Thank You, God, for giving me all these ups and downs and but in the end, life is still good,” she prayed and thanked Him.

Up to that point, the celebrated performer felt that she had lived a rather interesting life. She was genuinely grateful for that as she valued having an interesting life more than a stable one.

To date, the renowned singer and performer has numerous albums to her name, and has performed leading roles in many stage musicals.

She is probably best known as the singer of the beloved National Day ballad, “Home”, which she first sang at the National Day Parade (NDP) in 1998. She can also be heard on the theme song of Netflix series Emerald Hill, the spin-off to The Little Nyonya.

This year, she will be returning to the NDP stage to perform its theme song “Here We Are” for the SG60 show, alongside fellow Singaporeans Charlie Lim and The Island Voices. 

Kit performing at Marina Bay Sands Theatre in 2021.

Handing the reins of her life over 

Then she made an honest admission to God.

“I acknowledge that I’ve pretty much lived the way I want to. And You were just very nice and You always carried me through it. But now that I am in the second half of my life, I am going to hand it over to You.

“Why don’t You take over and You navigate the second half of my life,” she said to God.

“Gosh, I always warn people to be very careful when they say that,” said Kit, now 52, in an interview with Salt&Light.

On hindsight, she realised that it was a significant prayer to offer as “a lot of bad things” happened in her life shortly after.

Various tumultuous events left her reeling and wondering what was going on: The last straw came when she discovered she could not even hit some of the notes in the hymns that were being sung in church.

“When it came to certain notes, I had no voice. I was there singing, and suddenly it came to a point when there was no sound,” she said.

Over the course of her music career, the singer had developed nodules on her vocal cords three times. These were bumps on her vocal cords that had likely formed from overuse, but they went away after she took steroids and rested.

Kit working on her 30th anniversary song in 2023.

“But that year I barely sang because I was busy with other things. I just remembered I had a lot of phlegm for half a year, which I kept coughing up,” said Kit.

Initially, she simply ignored this aberration as she was not on tour.

But her voice got worse and so she went to a Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) doctor who put a scope down her throat.

“Oh, you have a polyp,” he remarked.

She asked if it was a nodule.

“No, it’s not a nodule. It’s a polyp that won’t go away unless a surgery is done,” came the reply that she wished she had not heard.

The dreadful prospect of vocal cord surgery 

One of the most horrifying things for a professional singer like Kit is to face vocal cord surgery.

She tried arguing with her doctor on whether the diagnosis was a mistake. It could not be, she reasoned, as she did not sing much that year.

“Why don’t you give me some steroids and I will rest,” she pleaded with him. He relented and eventually gave in, though it was clear from his facial expression that he did not agree with that course of action.

When she came back for her next check up, there was no good news.

“It’s still there, and it got worse,” the doctor informed her.

Seeing that she was very upset, the doctor suggested a less scary alternative to surgery ­– going for vocal therapy.

The vocal therapist tried to help Kit, but she also told the singer that she had seen others with the same condition who needed surgery.

After doing some sessions with her, the therapist recommended Kit to another doctor.

That doctor said it would be an honour for him to operate on veteran songbird Kit but he felt she deserved the best voice box doctor. So he referred her to a third doctor.

From one polyp to two

The doctor she eventually went to also told her that it was necessary for her to do vocal cord surgery, based on his years of experience. 

Vehemently, she told him that she did not want to do surgery. Instead, she proposed to him that she would rest and pray.

He smiled.

“Faith is a very good thing, but we also have to rely on science,” he told her.  

“Don’t you believe in a miracle?” she challenged him, obstinately.

That doctor also allowed her not to operate.

When she returned for a follow-up, however, another rude surprise awaited her.

This time, the doctor found not just one, but two polyps. As she had dragged her feet about going under the knife, the existing polyp on one vocal cord had rubbed against the other vocal cord and caused a second polyp to emerge.

“I was devastated,” Kit told Salt&Light. “I also felt like, ‘What did I do to deserve this?’ It was a dark period in my life, because I started to question a lot of things.”

She descended into a dark place because her voice meant many things to her.

“It has become my identity, quite literally. It’s also my career. It’s my livelihood. It’s a lot of things,” she said.

Kit at a performance, dressed in Frederick Lee Couture.

A distant relationship with God due to self-sufficiency 

All this time, Kit’s relationship with God was one that was very respectful and cordial, but not intimate.

“I really respect God, and so I would just walk with Him from a respectful distance. I was not close to Him,” she admitted.

Other Christians, she observed, often tend to ask God for all kinds of things when they pray.

For her, however, she realised she did not ask God for anything.

“If I really dig deep, it’s a kind of pride. I’m just thinking, ‘If You don’t give me, then don’t give me lah.’ Like, I’m not going ask for it, you know. Maybe I would still pray for a general things like safety, but I wouldn’t ask Him for anything specific.

“So, I became very, very self-sufficient and I was proud of that,” said Kit.

On hindsight, she realised that being self-sufficient was a “blockage” in her relationship with God.

“Although I have a heart for God, I never relied on God. I didn’t know how to. But I think that is one of the key elements of being a mature Christian.

“If you look at human relationships, if you cannot rely on a spouse or a friend, then you are definitely not as intimate,” she noted.

Meanwhile, the doctor was very confident about the surgery as it was a simple one and he had done it many times.

“But in my mind, if I go under the knife, I must be prepared that I’m going to lose my voice, because it could happen. And what the doctor cannot promise is, he doesn’t know how my cords are going to heal because everyone heals differently,” she related to Salt&Light.

It took the drastic circumstances of her having polyps and the fear of the consequences of going through vocal surgery that made Kit desperate enough to cling on to God.

She prayed hard. There was nothing else that she could do but to hold on to Jesus.

“I knew all the things I have to do to keep my vocal cords healthy, and I did them,” she said. “So this was a curve ball that I did not understand.”

“So why do I have this voice?”

As she sat before God, she asked herself a question: “So why do I have this voice?”

She came to the conclusion that the reason she had the success that she had was because she has a “very recognisable” voice, and that is not of her own doing.

“So finally I got to the point where I have to accept that I didn’t do anything to get this voice, and if God is going to take it away, there’s also nothing I can do. I cannot blame Him, because at least He let me have it for so long and I have benefitted so much from it,” she said.

Only when she reached the point of acceptance and surrender did she consent to go for the vocal cord surgery in 2014.

As she was wheeled towards the operating theatre into a space between two doors, it reminded her of being backstage.

Just before the surgery commenced, the doctor leaned over and asked her if he could say a prayer for her. He smiled when she expressed her surprise that he is a believer.

In that moment, she felt less alone in the room.

“Suddenly, I felt so confident and I was very joyful,” Kit told Salt&Light.

“Let the show begin,” she announced dramatically, as the doors to the operating theatre opened and she saw those bright lights awaiting her.

The surgery and her post-op recovery went well.

Ironically, Kit said her voice became better after the surgery.

 “I always had a natural bump on my vocal cord. It’s been there since I was born. But when the doctor sliced it, of course he made it perfectly straight. So actually, now my vocal cord can close really, really tight,” she noted.

Following the health scare with her vocal cords, Kit learnt where – or rather Whom – to place her identity in.

She feared going for vocal cord surgery in the event she would lose her voice, but she discovered her voice became better after the surgery.

“This episode has shown me enough that I should not put my confidence and reliance on any form of identity, except being a child of God. Everything else doesn’t matter because it’s all transient,” she concluded.

Had she truly learnt this lesson? She was immediately put to the test.

After she had fully recovered from the surgery, a close Taiwanese friend of hers came to Singapore to meet her.

As they chatted, her Taiwanese friend told her about a reality singing contest in China called I Am A Singer.

“It’s quite a good show. I think it would be suitable for you. Have you watched it?” she asked Kit.

Kit had not seen the show.

“Why don’t you go and watch it? Have they invited you to be on the show before?” her friend continued.

“No, they haven’t,” Kit replied.

At that moment, serendipitously, the director of the show happened to call her friend. Her friend told him that she was in Singapore and was just talking to Kit.

Immediately, the director took the opportunity to ask Kit to be on the show.

It turned out that this was the third time he had tried inviting Kit to the show. The first two invitations had come through middlemen and Kit – not knowing anything about the show – had forgotten that she had dismissed them.

The next thing she knew – the director was flying to Singapore to talk to her.

First performance after vocal cord surgery 

That was how she landed herself her first singing job after her vocal cord surgery. I Am A Singer was a popular and prestigious Chinese singing competition that was broadcast on Hunan Television. Established musicians from around the world performed on the show and competed with each other each week. 

“I was asking God, ‘Are You kidding?’ The first job was so exposed,” she said, referring to the fact that it was a TV show that had a huge following.

“But I know I had to trust Him. By then, I was very brave because I had been to hell and back.”

In 2015, Chan became the first Singaporean artiste to take part in the Chinese TV reality show series. Even though she was eliminated after the first round, the competition sparked a significant comeback as it won her many fans in China.

That year, she also signed on with China’s Taihe Music Group.

Kit was a contestant on the third season of I Am A Singer.

Kit, however, emphasised that her joining the competition was never about a career move to enter the Chinese market.

“I think I am at that age where I am not trying to carve out anything anymore. I just want to enjoy my work. But the nice thing is, because of that exposure, it opened doors for other projects to come in,” she said.

Every time she has a concert, she says, it is another chance for her to plant positive messages, whether it is in her choice of songs or in the preamble before her performances.

“Very often, I am just sort of talking about life and being encouraging. Sometimes, people come up to me and say they really needed to hear that at that moment,” said Kit.

The album which she put out in the 25th year of her career, A Time for Everything, was inspired by Ecclesiastes 3:1-15, one of her favourite verses from the Bible.

The album cover of A Time For Everything.

Though she receives requests to sing in church, she is adamant about not doing so.

There was once she was with her church group, standing behind a buffet line helping to dish out food for other members, when an old woman noticed the star. The elderly woman commented that Kit should not “waste” her time scooping food when she could have spent the time singing them a song.

Kit begged to differ. 

“If I go up there and sing, am I really singing for God? As a professional, I have high standards. I don’t want to go up there and perform and complain about the sound system. That’s not worship, right?” she explained.

Members of Kit’s disciple group supporting her in a musical she performed in – Forbidden City: Portrait of an Empress.

She felt that her calling is not found in the Church, and avoided working with it.

Working with the church 

Once, veteran Hong Kong actor Damian Lau approached Kit to work on a play.

Kit was thrilled as she admired his acting and had grown up watching his gongfu films. But when she heard from him that it was a church project, her enthusiasm tapered off. She was hesitant about working with the church as she was afraid it would not trust them enough to give them the space to work professionally.

Damian – the executive producer of the play – came down from Hong Kong to reassure Kit that they would be able to uphold professional standards. During their meeting, he spent six hours reading the script and talking to her.

But Kit’s heart was hardened and she had already decided to say no to the project. To stop him from investing more time in trying to get her on board, she asked for a toilet break and slipped away. She had intended to politely decline him after the break.

Then, they were in a restaurant that had very light music playing in the background. But when she went into the toilet, the music was blasting so loudly that Kit thought the speakers were spoilt.

“I was alone in there and the music just got louder and louder to the point where it was very deafening and disorienting,” said Kit.

Initially, she blocked out the noise but later she found herself tuning in to hear what song was playing.

It was the 60s hit song “Turn! Turn! Turn!” by The Byrds, and its lyrics came from the third chapter of Ecclesiastes, about having a time and place for everything.

This happened after Kit herself had released a song from that very same chapter of the Bible.

“God shows me a lot of ‘magic’. I was thinking, ‘Why must it be this play?’” said Kit, who felt that God was speaking to her about the play through this song in the restroom. 

As she washed her hands in the sink, the music seemed to get yet louder, to the point that she felt the whole place was going to collapse.

Not being able to hear herself, she yelled out loud to God in the bathroom: “Okay, okay, I am just going to say yes, okay? I got it.”

Then she went out of the toilet, knelt down beside Damian and related to him about how something weird had just happened and so she had to say yes to the project now.

Damian, who is also a Christian, kept laughing and said in Cantonese: “Now you know! I also did not want to do this at first and tried to run away. You cannot run away now, right?”

Kit with Damian Lau.

Both of them went on to work on Matteo Ricci The Musical, where she played the servant of Matteo, one of the first Jesuit missionaries to China in the 16th century.

It was so well-received that the musical had two more runs in Hong Kong, after the first was performed in 2019. The church they partnered with turned out to be supportive and professional.

Kit performing in Matteo Ricci The Musical.

Nonetheless, Kit is clear-eyed that her calling lies outside the Church, to those who are overlooked in her industry.

“Since I was a kid, I was able to be the friend to those whom nobody liked. It was very easy for me because I always found them attractive,” she said.

She is also cognisant that she is not an “exemplary” Christian.

“I am not the best example of what a Christian should be like… I just hope that my ordinary journey with God can speak to and encourage others who are similarly broken,” said Kit.

This Easter in April, Kit made a public declaration of her faith in Jesus on Instagram.

Kit made the news early this year when she disclosed on the CNA interview series The Assembly that she did not get a divorce when she split from her banker partner in 2017 because she was never legally married to him. It turned out that they had only held a “wedding dinner” in 2012.

Without going into details, Kit told Salt&Light that she felt that “God wanted (her) out of there”.

If marriage happens in the future, “it has to be something that comes from God”, said Kit.

When asked if she has plans for marriage in future, she said if it happens, it would have to “come from God”.

“I am very amazed at my parents’ marriage, and I actually now can say that I would want something they had. So I don’t have a negative impression of marriage, but somehow it just hasn’t arrived for me. It still has to be something that comes from God,” said Kit, who describes her relationship with the Lord now as one which is “very joyful and intimate”.  

She also has no particular plans for the future, preferring to live in the moment.

Kit worked with fellow singer Charlie Lim (left) and producer Sydney Tan on “Here We Are”, the SG60 National Day song.

“God always had a hand in my life so I am not really concerned about anything. I can live in the moment more and more. Being human, I still have wishes, but I always say, ‘God willing’ because I have learnt that sometimes what we want is just not the best thing for us at that particular moment,” she said.

“I really like the verse about God being the Potter and we are the clay (Jeremiah 18:6), because who are we to tell Him what to do? It really puts us in our place.”

Click here to read Part One of Kit’s story – how she first came to Christ, and how God drew her back to Him after 10 years in the wilderness.

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