A traditional Chinese coffin maker in Malaysia preserves a fading family craft

MUAR, Malaysia (AP) — It’s been 52 years since Goh Khuay Par carved his first Mei Hua coffin.

The traditional Chinese design takes its name from the plum blossom, or “mei hua” in Mandarin, and has been part of his family’s trade in Malaysia for three generations.

“My father was my master,” said Goh, now 69, at the modest workshop he runs with his brother in the town of Muar, about 175 kilometers (110 miles) southeast of Kuala Lumpur. “He taught me for two and a half years.”

Goh no longer recalls details of his first coffin. It was most likely a small, thin piece, like the ones his father had him make when he was just starting out. His products became thicker over time for a more striking appearance.

Each coffin is made by hand and requires extensive work. Years ago, when the workshop had more craftsmen and more orders, they could turn out up to five a month. These days Goh and his brother make about two every six to seven weeks.

“In the past there weren’t newer styles, so people used this kind,” Goh said. “Now there are many different kinds to choose from.”

His workshop has long served Malaysia’s Chinese community, where coffins are intertwined with traditions related to death and burial. Ethnic Chinese currently make up about 22% of Malaysia’s population, according to the country’s Department of Statistics.

On occasion, Goh's workshop also made coffins for clients in Singapore, home to another large Chinese diaspora community. Those orders have ceased.

“Times have changed,” he said. “This line of work will eventually be phased out. There’s no one to take over.”

Traditional Chinese beliefs envisioned an afterlife that in many ways mirrored the world of the living, rather than the Christian or Islamic conception of heaven or hell as a person’s ultimate destination. Over time, Buddhism introduced ideas of reincarnation and karmic retribution, linking a person’s fate after death to their actions in life.

“Chinese funeral rituals, burial practices, and tomb designs must almost all be understood through this lens,” said Ling Tek Soon, a scholar at the University of Malaya’s Institute of China Studies.

Ling said Taoist funeral rituals include the symbolic crossing of the “Naihe Bridge,” or Bridge of Helplessness. The rite symbolizes the deceased’s final departure from the world of the living and helps the family come to terms with the loss. Other traditions, however, provide ways for the living to maintain a connection with the dead.

During the Qingming Festival, observed each year in April, families visit ancestral graves with food offerings and burn incense and paper replicas of everyday goods for their ancestors.

“The symbolism behind this practice is that burning transfers these physical worldly goods to the deceased,” Ling said. “These actions are all modes of communicating with the ancestors.”

The bond between the living and their ancestors can also have a physical dimension.

“In traditional Chinese belief, the coffin is viewed as the permanent physical resting place for the deceased,” Ling said.

It should be made from natural, heavy and durable materials — much like the wood used by Goh — and, when affordable, from the finest timber.

“Providing such a coffin expresses the family’s respect and filial piety toward the deceased,” Ling added.

A high-quality coffin can also reflect the prestige and dignity of both the deceased and their family. But its significance can extend beyond status, reflecting an ancient aspiration for immortality.

“Preserving the physical body in a premium-quality coffin subtly holds a lingering hope for a future resurrection or rebirth,” Ling said.

Those beliefs have long shaped the role of traditional coffins in Chinese funeral customs. Yet changing attitudes toward death and the body have gradually altered that role.

Cremation has become more widely accepted across generations, contributing to the decline of traditional crafts like Goh’s.

“It was widely believed that burning the human form through cremation was an act of disrespect,” Ling said. “With changing times, the vast majority of Chinese people today — across the entire Greater China cultural sphere — have come to accept the concept.”

Goh begins each coffin by tracing the outlines on the wood with a pencil before cutting and shaping it. He uses hand tools including an adze and an axe.

His coffins are made from a Malaysian timber known as “keledang,” traditionally prized for coffin-making among the country’s Chinese community. Goh said the wood once came from southern Malaysia but must now be sourced from the north.

To assemble a coffin, Goh starts with the two sides, adding smaller pieces in the middle and, eventually, the top and bottom. The pieces fit together like a puzzle, with nails used only to hold them in place.

He said the basic process has remained unchanged over the years, providing him with a livelihood for more than five decades.

“It’s been all right,” Goh said. “It puts food on the table.”

A few other craftsmen once carved coffins in Muar and worked alongside Goh at his family’s workshop. But they retired, leaving only Goh and his brother to carry on the family trade.

His work demands physical strength, and some coffins are harder to make than others. The one currently taking shape in his workshop is among the difficult ones, Goh said, because of the hardness of the wood.

“When you come across very hard wood, that’s what you dread,” he said. “The thing you fear most is getting a really hard piece.”

Those physical demands also leave Goh wondering about the future of his craft.

“It’s not about hoping,” he said. “Young people, would they want to do it?”

Hernández reported from Beijing. AP video journalist Syawalludin Zain contributed to this report.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Bothers Goh Khuay Par, left, and Goh Khuay Hou inspect a completed Mei Hua coffin at their family's workshop in Muar, Malaysia, Monday, Sept. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Vincent Thian)

Goh Khuay Par applies a coat of finish to a Mei Hua coffin at his family's workshop in Muar, Malaysia, Monday, Sept. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Vincent Thian)

Goh Khuay Par works on a Mei Hua coffin at his family's workshop in Muar, Malaysia, Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Vincent Thian)

Traditional Chinese coffin maker Goh Khuay Par, left, carves a Mei Hua coffin as his brother Goh Khuay Hou paints another at their workshop in Muar, Johor state, Malaysia, Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Vincent Thian)

Goh Khuay Hou applies red paint to a Mei Hua coffin at his family workshop in Muar, Malaysia, Tuesday, July 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Vincent Thian)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A former Syrian military official convicted of torturing prisoners during the rule of former President Bashar Assad was sentenced Thursday to 60 years in a U.S. prison after a federal judge recounted the “unimaginably cruel" details of his abuse.

A jury in March found Samir Ousman Alsheikh guilty on all six counts including torture and conspiracy to commit torture for his actions while in charge of Syria's infamous Adra Prison from roughly 2005 to 2008.

“The conduct was heinous, unimaginably cruel, and almost unspeakably violent and brutal,” U.S. District Judge Hernan D. Vera said before announcing the sentence. The judge said a hearing to determine financial restitution would be scheduled in the coming months.

Alsheikh, dressed in a khaki prison uniform and shackled at the ankles, was expressionless after he learned his fate. He waved to members of his family in the gallery before officers handcuffed him and led him from the courtroom.

Defense attorneys said they will appeal the sentence.

Human rights groups and United Nations officials have accused the Syrian government of widespread abuses in its detention facilities, including torture and arbitrary detention of thousands of people, in many cases without informing their families.

Prosecutors said Alsheikh, seeking to quash political dissent, sent certain prisoners to a notorious wing of Adra where they were held in small isolation cells and brutalized. During the trial, three victims recounted beatings while suspended from pipes on the ceiling and the use of a device that folded their bodies in half at the waist. One person testified that Alsheikh stomped on the device with his foot.

Alsheikh came to the U.S. in 2020 and applied for citizenship, but prosecutors say he concealed his involvement in torture. Federal authorities detained him at Los Angeles International Airport in July 2024.

In a three-hour hearing, the judge heard statements of support from Alsheikh’s son and daughter. Rami Alsheikh, his son, said the family cannot reconcile his kindness and compassion with the accusations he faced at trial.

“They did, and still do not, make sense to us, given the man we know and love,” he said.

Before the sentencing, Alsheikh himself also addressed the court in a rambling statement in which he said he tried to fight corruption and clean up Adra Prison. Alsheikh said through an interpreter that he was not an Assad loyalist and that he “only served as an employee.”

Alsheikh is the highest-ranking former member of the Assad government to be tried and convicted in person outside of Syria, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

“Criminals who inflict the type of savage brutality that this defendant did on his victims must never be granted refuge in our country,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said Thursday. “We hope today’s sentence gives some semblance of healing and closure to this defendant’s victims.”

In a sentencing memo filed this month, DOJ prosecutors said Alsheikh participated in the torture of his victims because he had the power to do so and because he thought he would never be held accountable.

The memo included statements from several victims, one of whom, Nidal Shikhani, said he can “still hear the screams of others begging for mercy, repeating, ‘Leave me, leave me.’ ”

Prosecutors had asked for a minimum sentence of 80 years. Alsheikh's attorneys, Nina Marino and Collin Cate, called for a five-year sentence, noting that he is 74 years old and has “significant medical and cognitive conditions.” They also said he was willing to be deported to Syria, where a new government has sought to hold Assad-era security officials accountable.

Jurors also convicted Alsheikh in March of lying to U.S. immigration authorities and fraudulently obtaining a green card and attempting to naturalize as a U.S. citizen.

Alsheikh was arrested with help from the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a U.S.-based opposition organization. One of its staff members, a former Syrian detainee, was first tipped off in 2022 by a refugee that Alsheikh was in the United States. The organization alerted several federal agencies and began working with them to build a case against him.

"We are committed to a peaceful and democratic Syria, and that cannot happen without justice and accountability for the remnants of Assad’s regime," Mouaz Moustafa, the task force's executive director, said Thursday.

Assad was ousted in a lightning rebel offensive in December 2024, bringing a 14-year civil war to an end. But the country has continued to suffer from sporadic outbreaks of violence.

In March 2025, armed groups aligned with Assad ambushed the new government’s security forces on Syria’s coast. A government counteroffensive then spiraled into sectarian revenge attacks and the massacre of hundreds of civilians from the Alawite religious minority, to which Assad belongs.

On Thursday, three people were sentenced in the Syrian city of Aleppo in connection with the violence. Two members of the pro-Assad groups were sentenced to death and life in prison, while a member of the security forces who took part in the revenge attacks was convicted of murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Thanawala reported from Atlanta.

The exterior of the federal courthouse is seen March 27, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Eric Thayer, File)