By Sylvia Toh Paik Choo

There's no running away from it in Singapore, the creed or motto we live by: Two for the price of one.

Take the valuable snuff bottles, painted with extreme precision by China artist Dong Xue. They feature Mao Zedong, Princess Diana, Teresa Teng, Queen Elizabeth, on one side with some floral designs on the reverse.

Except for this precious one, worth $20,000. A Singaporean collector requested that the crystal snuff bottle be painted with the likeness of Mr Lee Kuan Yew on one side and Mrs Lee Kuan Yew on the other side.

Anything to do with copyright costs?

Mr Ng Geok Soon, of Dong Lee Investment, the exhibitors, said: 'None involved. There's no image copyright for this, in painting.'

The laughing portraits of Mr and Mrs Lee meticulously painted inside the 8x5cm bottles were chosen from a book and a website. 'The artist selected his favourite photos of the couple which the collector, a Mr T, was happy with,' said Mr Ng.

Dong Xue, 46, from Hebei, is one of China's best-known portrait painters. He has not met Mr and Mrs Lee before but has 'great respect for Lee Kuan Yew's leadership, taking Singapore from poverty to this stage'.

He takes a month to do each painted snuff bottle (they date from Ching dynasty), working up to 10 hours a day. He uses a right-angled brush and the media is oils and water-colours.

The exquisite collection, with its representations of the famous, form part of Exhibition With A Difference, to be held at the Banyan Room of Shangri-la Hotel on Friday and Saturday.

The difference is, visitors will be treated to piano recitals while looking at the bottles and 100 oil paintings by China masters, including one art piece which has never been displayed in China, the 2x4m Lushen Orchestra by Miao Yaosheng, worth $1.5m.

Said Mr Ng: 'Dong Lee Investment's owner Mrs Wei Dong's two sons William and Rex are gifted young musicians. They've been admitted to the Manhattan School of Music, New York, as piano majors, under world-class professor Dr Peter Vinograde. He handpicks six students a year.'

William, 10, and Rex, 14, practise 10 hours daily and watch no TV, nor do they play any computer games. Their only other pleasure - besides Mendelssohn and Mozart et al - is Lego.

'We have a 5,000 bricks one, Star Wars,' said the cheeky boys who are excited at the prospect of life in New York City for the next few years. 'It cost $999.'

Depending on what art pieces sell at the exhibition, the brothers may get mum to graduate to a 10,000-brick Lego set.

This article was first published in The New Paper on August 18, 2008.