Bryan Lee: Putting faith in Eastern wellness principles
The low-profile businessman reveals his ambitious plans for two heritage properties in Labrador Park and beyond
BRYAN LEE IS A BIT of a mystery.
Google him and just about the only information you’ll find is a July 2024 Singapore Exchange announcement stating he’s been appointed chief executive officer of investment holding company Southern Archipelago.
“If we didn’t meet in person, you may think all this is a bit dodgy,” acknowledges the amiable 43-year-old Malaysian businessman, who has been based in Singapore since 2021. “By nature, I’m an introvert and never really had a reason to be high-profile.”
Things are different now though.
While he’s still somewhat under the radar, the restaurants he’s personally involved in here may be more familiar. There’s Asu, which focuses on progressive Asian fine dining helmed by Singapore chef Ace Tan, and smart-casual Shan, which serves Chinese food. Both are located in the 10,000-square-foot Labrador House.
The beautiful, black-and-white colonial bungalow and another conservation building nearby that houses the 20-room Labrador Villa boutique hotel are both leased by Labrador Hill, an entity Lee controls. They form the core of a new wellness hospitality concept that integrates Eastern and Western healing modalities.
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East meets West
Lee’s vision for the two properties, which are nestled in the lush forest of Labrador Park nature reserve, is to turn them into a luxury wellness hub. By that, he doesn’t mean “spas and yoga”. Instead, it would be a refuge offering preventive care and health maintenance, where the focus is on putting the body into balance by integrating Eastern healing methodologies such as traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) with their Western counterparts.
“In China’s universities, they call it modern Chinese medicine,” Lee notes. “A lot of the stuff we’re talking about with our technical partners is clinically trialled and tested. It’s not the TCM that people imagine, which is a little shop with a bunch of cabinets and weird dried things everywhere.”
He will be working with different practitioners, facilitators and even institutions, to provide various bespoke services and treatments. These would include elements such as food, exercise, wellness retreats and other services in an upscale, pampering environment.
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“We’re not a clinic,” he emphasises. “This is a place you come to stay healthy. And it’s just a 10-, 15-minute drive from town.”
Indeed, Asu is a gentle introduction to the concept, starting with eating according to the seasons as nature intended and using food as therapy. “It’s not about telling you to do a 180-degree turn, but about integrating different elements into your lifestyle, so it becomes a way of life.”
As the Lunar New Year kicks off, so too, are the refurbishment plans for the hotel. Lee is potentially working with a listed company on the project, with the hotel side starting “to come alive” towards the second half of 2025.
Having sunk “eight figures” into the properties so far, Lee’s idea is to use them as a launchpad to bring the concept to the region, such as Malaysia and Indonesia, where he and other potential partners own land.
The horrible child
Lee is the only son and eldest of four children of businessman Lee Teck Yuen, who is currently non-executive director of Bursa-listed construction company IJM Corporation.
You can’t tell from his genial demeanour but Lee says he was a “horrible son” who didn’t understand why he needed to get a degree.
With dreams of turning professional, he headed to a golf school in Sydney instead of accepting offers from universities in Perth. But the Tiger Woods wannabe got a reality check when he met people “who would roll out of bed and shoot under par without even trying”. A spinal injury followed, ending his golfing ambitions.
He went on to dabble in a few other ventures, including fashion and GT3 racing – his other passion. “I loved cars before golf,” he confesses. Motor racing, however, is an extremely expensive sport. “We had a race team and went round begging for sponsorship the whole time.”
Again, he got real and gave it up. That was also when a childhood friend’s father suddenly died. “My friend had such a big regret. He’d gone and worked in a firm and was planning to return to the family business, but never had the chance to do that and learn from his father.”
That was a wake-up call for Lee, who realised it was “a bit stupid” if he made the same mistake. So he started working for his father’s various property and development-related businesses “the proper way, like a nobody, dealing with the most boring, most mundane things” for a few years.
That eventually led to him moving here with his wife, in part to run his father’s family office, Mezzanotte Capital.
It’s definitely personal
The reason why Lee is venturing into the health and wellness space is deeply personal.
His wife had been afflicted with health issues, including ovarian cancer and reproductive health ailments that left her in constant pain. After spending years visiting specialists who were all about “operating and cutting”, the cancerous ovary was removed but the pain remained. After trying unsuccessfully for a child via in-vitro fertilisation, they were told children were not on the cards.
In desperation, they turned to a clinic in Kuala Lumpur recommended by a friend.
“We ended up spending about five hours with the doctor,” recalls Lee. Instead of giving a prescription, the physician delved into his wife’s medical and lifestyle history. “You are looked at not just for your symptoms, but as a whole. So it was about reading signs from the body that can show up if you know what to check and test for.”
Three years after “rebalancing” her system, including adjustments to her diet, sleep patterns and taking compounds and herbal remedies from the doctor, his wife was pain-free. She went on to conceive their son naturally, with the toddler set to turn two in April.
Lee himself developed an intolerance to salmon and broccoli that he overcame by working on his gut microbiome and slowly challenging his digestive system. Coincidentally, Lee’s father had been benefiting from TCM treatments.
“Then I realised that a lot of the stuff that we’ve been doing with this doctor had similarities with TCM. We didn’t have acupuncture and things like that, but the essence was the same; we just called them different names. And that’s how we started going down this path – creating a place where people can go and making these options more accessible, rather than as a last resort.”
He is well aware of the desire for instant gratification, when what he’s offering are small, incremental changes that can eventually lead to big ones.
“If somebody walks in here with insomnia, goes through the programme and is finally able to sleep, it’s life-changing for that person. It potentially means they can live a longer, healthier life,” he points out. “In Asia, we get so obsessed with long life. But I say nobody wants a long life. We want a long, healthy life. So if people understand this, and the right government bodies support it, then we have a fighting chance.”
Credits: Photography: Darren Gabriel Leow Fashion direction: CK Make-up: Alison Tay, using Dior Beauty & Goldwell
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