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Lee Beng Chuan Joss Sticks
When Lee Beng Chuan died at 92, he was Penang's last handmade joss stick maker. His son died the following year. The craft survived through Piwan, his Thai-born daughter-in-law — an unexpected successor who now operates the workshop alone, with no apprentice and no successor of her own.
Lee Beng Chuan’s joss stick workshop at 1 Lorong Muda, off Stewart Lane in George Town, is the last place in Penang where incense sticks are still made entirely by hand. The workshop produces sandalwood incense sticks and elaborate decorative dragons using techniques that have remained unchanged for three generations.
The brand’s story is a cautionary tale of succession as survival. Lee Beng Chuan, the founder, died in 2020 at the age of 92. His son, Lee Chin Poh, died the following year. The craft now continues through Piwan — Lee Chin Poh’s Thai-born wife — who learned the trade through decades of working alongside her husband and father-in-law rather than through any family lineage in incense-making.
Piwan’s sole-operator status earned the workshop the Penang Heritage Trust’s Special Living Heritage Treasure award in 2020 — a recognition that simultaneously honours the craft and underscores its fragility. Discovery Channel featured the workshop in a documentary on endangered traditional trades. The Living Heritage Treasure programme, established in 2004, carries a RM2,000 annual stipend with a maximum of eight living recipients at any time.
The workshop’s survival depends entirely on one person. There is no successor identified, no apprentice in training, and no commercial infrastructure beyond the workshop itself. Lee Beng Chuan Joss Sticks represents the extreme end of Penang’s heritage succession cliff — where a craft’s continuity rests not on institutional resilience but on the commitment of a single individual.