Hidden among Tanjong Pagar's skyscrapers and hipster bars, you'll find a small 6th-generation family business that has been hand-crafting wooden statues of Daoist and Buddhist deities since 1840. 

Say Tian Hng ("Garden of Western Heaven" in Hokkien) is filled from floor to ceiling with hundreds of statues, some as large as a chair, some as small as an iPhone.

Among them are fearsome warlords and fair maidens, drunk monks and steely-faced magistrates, infants in arms, serpents, tigers and parrots.