Goh Khuay Par has spent over 50 years crafting traditional Chinese coffins known as Mei Hua, or "plum blossom" coffins, in Malaysia. This is a family trade that has been passed down through three generations. Goh, now 69, runs the workshop with his brother in Muar, a town about 175 kilometers southeast of Kuala Lumpur. He was trained by his father, who taught him for two and a half years before he started working on his own. The Mei Hua design is deeply rooted in Chinese tradition, and it reflects cultural beliefs about death and the afterlife. Each coffin is made entirely by hand and requires significant craftsmanship. In the past, when the workshop had more workers and more orders, they could produce up to five coffins a month. Today, Goh and his brother make only about two every six to seven weeks. This decline is partly due to the availability of newer coffin styles. The Mei Hua coffins have long been used by Malaysia’s Chinese community, which makes up about 22% of the population. In the past, Goh’s workshop also received orders from Singapore, another country with a large Chinese population, but those have since stopped. Goh says the times have changed, and he worries that his craft will eventually disappear without someone to take over. Traditional Chinese beliefs about death and the afterlife differ from Western religious views. Instead of seeing death as the end, many Chinese believe in an afterlife that closely resembles the world of the living. Over time, Buddhist ideas of reincarnation and karma influenced these beliefs, linking a person's fate after death to their actions in life. Scholars like Ling Tek Soon, from the University of Malaya’s Institute of China Studies, explain that funeral rituals, burial practices, and even tomb designs are deeply connected to these beliefs. For example, Taoist traditions include symbolic rites like the "Naihe Bridge," representing the deceased’s final journey from the living world. Other customs, like the Qingming Festival, allow families to maintain a connection with their ancestors by visiting graves and offering food and items burned as symbolic gifts. In traditional Chinese culture, coffins are viewed as the permanent resting place for the deceased and are made from durable, natural materials like the keledang wood used by Goh. These coffins are not only a sign of respect and filial piety but also reflect the family's social status. However, changing attitudes toward death and the body have led to a decline in the use of traditional coffins. Cremation, once considered disrespectful, has become more widely accepted, especially among younger generations. This shift has affected the demand for traditional crafts like Goh’s, making it harder to sustain the trade. Goh begins each coffin by tracing the design on the wood and then carefully shaping it with hand tools like an adze and an axe. The keledang wood, once readily available in southern Malaysia, now has to be sourced from the north. The pieces of the coffin are assembled like a puzzle, with nails only used to hold them together. The process has remained largely unchanged for over 50 years, providing Goh with a steady livelihood. However, he notes that the physical demands of the work are high, and some pieces of wood are particularly difficult to shape. As he works on a challenging coffin in his workshop, Goh expresses concern about the future of his craft. He questions whether young people would be willing to take up the trade, acknowledging that it is not about hope, but about the reality of a disappearing tradition.