Kwan Swee Lian

The seventh child of the family, Kwan was born 1933 in Kluang, Johor, Malaysia. Kwan's father was a labourer and her mother was a homemaker.[2] She studied at Kuan Cheng Girls' School in Kuala Lumpur, where her family relocated to later. After two years of secondary education, Kwan decided to pursue a professional career. Starting out as a salesperson, she established Sakura, a hair salon, around 1958.[2] Sakura was subsequently converted into a restaurant some two decades later.[2]

Due to unspecified bad choices, Kwan had to sell Sakura around the year 2000. The new owners of the restaurant then sacked her, leaving Kwan with just a little cash.[2] Deciding to work from a rented food stall, Kwan suffered another setback when no profits were made. Instead, large losses were incurred due to the high rent and the cost of the ingredients.[2] As a "tribute" to Kwan, her youngest son Rudy decided to forgo his career in the stock market and establish Madam Kwan's, a Malaysia-based restaurant selling similar food items as Sakura does, in 1999.[2][3] The rendang sold at Madam Kwan's is personally cooked by Kwan, alongside other food items. The restaurant is recognised for its beef rendang and nasi lemak, the latter selling around a thousand plates a day. Kwan also serves as a food taster for Madam Kwan's.[2]

Kwan wed Foo Lum Choon, a medical doctor, in 1962. Born 1917, Foo died in 2007, leaving Kwan a widow.[2] They had four children: three sons and a daughter. Among the three sons, two of them have died as of 2013. The surviving son, Rudy, is an accountant and the head of Madam Kwan's.[2] Their daughter Shirley is a homemaker.[2] Kwan is an avid hat collector with about twenty in her collection.[2] She labels herself as a "perfectionist".[4]