A young man from overseas who bears his father's debt

On October 21, 1874, Tan Kah Kee was born in Jimei Village, Tong'an County, Fujian Province. Due to the constant war, many people went to Southeast Asia to seek life. , here has become a famous hometown of overseas Chinese. Tan Kah Kee's family is also an overseas Chinese family. When he was born, his father was in Singapore, running a rice shop and a small factory. Since childhood, his mother raised him alone.

The southern Fujian area once had a very glorious history. From the national hero Zheng Chenggong to Lin Zexu, who suppressed opium in Humen, these stories have left a profound impact on little Jiageng's heart. Jimei Village also has Zheng Chenggong's "Guo Surname Village" and "Guo Surname Well". According to the legends of the older generation, Tan Kah Kee has been full of admiration for these patriotic heroes since he was a child. The corruption and incompetence of the Qing government made him eager to serve the motherland as soon as possible.

In 1890, Tan Kah Kee was 17 years old. His father asked him to come to Singapore to see the world, so he left his hometown and his loving mother and went to Nanyang alone. Although the prosperity of the city was a temptation, he remained unmoved and stayed in the store honestly, learning how to manage from the old man, and soon became his father's right-hand man.

In 1898, his mother died of illness. After hearing the bad news, Tan Kah Kee immediately returned to his hometown to bury his mother. Before setting off, he handed over the accounts he managed to his clan uncle. At that time, his father's business operations were going smoothly and he had assets of about 350,000 yuan. However, when Tan Kah Kee returned to Singapore after three years of mourning his mother's death, he found that the once prosperous rice store had become desolate and the debt had reached more than 300,000 yuan. It turned out that the father's concubine had given birth to a son, and took advantage of Tan Kah Kee's absence to spend as much money as he wanted, leading to heavy debts and facing bankruptcy.

According to Singaporean law, a son does not have to repay his father's debt. Moreover, Tan Kah Kee was penniless and how could he repay it? However, he was deeply educated in Confucianism and faced his father's desolation, but he still resolutely took on the debt and inherited this mess. , he was not yet 31 years old at the time. From then on, this outstanding entrepreneur began his own independent business journey.

Pineapple "Sultan", Rubber King

The journey of starting a business on your own is extremely difficult. Tan Kah Kee only has a little capital in his hands, so what can he invest in to achieve success? After detailed investigation, Tan Kah Kee found that canned pineapples have strong sales, short cycle time, and low capital requirements, which is very suitable for his situation. So he decided to build a pineapple canning factory.

With insufficient funds, Tan Kah Kee borrowed 7,000 yuan and started building a pineapple canning factory in the Tamsui Harbor Hilllands, 10 miles away from urban Singapore. After saving and saving everything, the 7,000 yuan borrowed was finally enough to build the factory. The tin and sugar required for making canned pineapples can be obtained on credit from other merchants. There was finally no problem in starting the work. As soon as pineapples came on the market in April, Tan Kah Kee's "New Lichuan" factory began production. In order to win in the competition, Tan Kah Kee named the trademark of his canned pineapples "Sudan", which means the king of canned pineapples.

Under Tan Kah Kee’s careful management, the cannery is operating well and sales are increasing. At the end of the month, the net profit was more than NT$9,000. Not only has the entire investment in building the factory been recovered, but there is also a surplus. The economic benefits are truly astonishing.

Tan Kah Kee, who fought his way out of a desperate situation and won the first battle, took "Xin Lichuan" as a foothold and concurrently ran the Yuexin Pineapple Factory in partnership with his father's company, and then opened Qianyi Rice. The rice store also serves as the business office of the cannery.

As the canned pineapple business grows, the demand for pineapple raw materials is also growing. In order to solve this problem, Tan Kah Kee purchased a piece of open land near "Xinlichuan" to grow pineapples. Named "Fushan Garden", in fact, this planting land was indeed a blessed land, and later became the largest pineapple plantation in the area.

The road to entrepreneurship was not smooth sailing. While the pineapple business was developing smoothly, in the summer of 1906, the canned pineapple market plummeted. Tan Kah Kee could only barely keep a profit of 10,000 yuan. This blow made him Realizing that shopping malls are like battlefields, it is impossible to adapt to the rapid changes in the market by relying solely on one product, so he needs to look for new projects.

By chance, Tan Kah Kee learned that a rubber businessman had sold his rubber plantation at a high price. He immediately realized that this was an opportunity, so he quickly contacted the businessman and purchased 180,000 rubber tablets from him. Rubber seeds.

At that time, due to the sluggish pineapple business, many people sold their pineapple orchards. Tan Kah Kee took this opportunity to purchase large tracts of land, which became his future rubber plantations.

By 1913, Tan Kah Kee’s pineapple production accounted for more than half of the entire Singapore, leaping to the top of the list and truly becoming the Sultan of the industry. In this year, he already owned two rubber factories. He is an overseas Chinese entrepreneur who has four pineapple canning factories, a rice factory and a rice store in the park, with fixed assets and net profit of 4 to 50 million yuan.

However, the market situation was changing. In the autumn of 1914, just as the peak production season for canned pineapples was approaching, the First World War broke out, and European countries restricted the import of canned pineapples. As a result, various foreign companies stopped purchasing. Tan Kah Kee's pineapple canning factory was hit hard, with tens of thousands of boxes of product in stock that could not be sold. Not only that, the war also caused trouble for Tan Kah Kee's rice industry, especially after many merchant ships were attacked by German warships in the East Indian Ocean, and the already tense shipping almost came to a standstill. There are more than 10,000 bags of cooked rice stacked in the warehouse of Tan Kah Kee Rice Factory. The direct consequence of product backlog is difficulty in capital circulation. Factory rent cannot be paid back overdue, and workers' living expenses must not be in arrears. Tan Kah Kee fell into a situation of "difficult to maintain, living like a year".

In the winter of 1914, Tan Kah Kee finally sold all the goods. At this time, he made a decisive decision to engage in the shipping industry. He first relied on chartering ships, renting two ships, the "Wantong" with a load capacity of 1,300 tons and the "Wanda" with a load capacity of 2,500 tons, to transport cooked rice, which was in high demand. , and then sent to India for sale. Soon, due to the expansion of the market, he added two more ships to specifically undertake cargo from the British government. His assessment of the situation and timely changes in business strategies resulted in substantial profits. Just one year later, he made a profit of more than 200,000 yuan. After that, he purchased many ships, but he did not operate them himself. Instead, he leased them to the French government. This not only saved trouble and avoided risks, but also made quick profits.

In 1916, Tan Kah Kee made another epoch-making move. At that time, European countries were fighting each other, which provided a rare opportunity for the U.S. economy to take off. The rapid development of American industry has stimulated the demand for rubber products and driven Malaya's rubber industry to become a pillar industry, with output ranking first in the world. Malaya became the world's "rubber kingdom". Tan Kah Kee's previous investment finally paid off, and he was recognized in history as one of the "Four Heroes of the Malayan Rubber Kingdom".

In the next two years, Tan Kah Kee gradually shifted his focus to the rubber industry. He successively converted the pineapple canning factory and Hengmei cooked rice factory in Tu Tau Kiu, Singapore into the "Qianyi" rubber factory, specializing in rubber cloth and realizing The rubber business has made a leap from single agricultural cultivation to industrial manufacturing. Then, he managed to establish a relationship with the American Rubber Industry Association, promoted advertising in the United States, and sold most of the products of the "Qianyi" rubber factory directly to the United States. In this way, he achieved the second leap: integrating rubber agriculture, industry, and trade operations into one, and setting a precedent for overseas Chinese to trade directly with foreign merchants without going through foreign companies during the century of British rule in Singapore.

Throughout the First World War, Tan Kah Kee not only suffered no losses, but remained safe and sound. Relying on rice, gum, ship shipping and the sale of iron sheets accumulated in the pineapple cannery, Tan Kah Kee earned more than 4.5 million yuan. After deducting various expenses, the actual assets are 4.3 million yuan. As a result, he quickly became one of the richest people in Singapore, and also became a famous entrepreneur and an overseas Chinese tycoon in Singapore.

Spent all his wealth to cultivate talents

After the First World War, Tan Kah Kee realized the dangers and temporary nature of the shipping industry, so he stopped continuing and began to expand his rubber kingdom. .

In 1919, with the widespread application of rubber products, British investors continued to come to Malaya to seize the market, and powerful overseas Chinese businessmen and small gardeners also set up rubber plantations or set up small rubber factories. , competition is becoming increasingly fierce. Faced with the challenge, Tan Kah Kee adjusted himself and achieved the third leap: he expanded the scale of the "Qianyi" rubber factory and changed the rough-processing raw rubber factory into a deep-processing rubber cooked product factory; he exited the 50-million-dollar investment two years ago 3 rubber companies invested 10,000 yuan in shares; Tan Kah Kee Company was established, and Qianyi was listed under it in the name of General Rubber Company.

In 1922, excessive free competition under capitalism caused market depression. Rubber prices fell for three consecutive years, and many small-scale rubber gardens and rubber factories were forced to suspend production. At this time, Tan Kah Kee's company was full of enthusiasm. He concluded that the rubber industry was an emerging industry and good times were still ahead.

After inspecting various places in Malaya, Tan Kah Kee bought 9 rubber factories at once.

In 1924, he opened more than 10 rubber branches in Malaya and Indonesia, and later opened branches, branches or offices in other places. The purpose is to expand product sales and raw material sources and reduce losses caused by intermediate links. In this year, in order to raise the price of rubber in the international market and monopolize profits from it, the British government implemented a plan to restrict rubber production in Singapore and Malaya. Some results were achieved in the second year. Coupled with the impact of the rapid development of the American automobile industry, Rubber prices rose sharply. This year was the peak of Tan Kah Kee's rubber business. In the British minister's inspection book on Singapore's industry, Tan Kah Kee's company was also mentioned, saying that it was "the largest enterprise in Asia."

At the same time, Tan Kah Kee has not forgotten his hometown-Jimei, Fujian. He believed that the purpose of revitalizing industry and commerce was to serve the country, but the key to serving the country was to promote education, so he was "determined to use the financial profits he earned throughout his life to develop education." In 1893, when he was 20 years old, he founded the "Tiqi School" in his hometown. In 1913, Jimei Primary School was founded. Later, together with his brother Mr. Chen Jingxian, he raised funds while running schools, and the scale of the school continued to expand. He successively founded Jimei schools in his hometown, including kindergarten, primary school, middle school, normal school, fishery, navigation, commerce, agriculture and forestry, Jimei light industry and other schools. and Xiamen University; funded more than 110 schools in 20 counties and cities in southern Fujian; and initiated and sponsored Daonan Primary School, Aitong Primary School, Chongfu Primary School, Nanqiao Middle School, Nanqiao Normal School Fisheries and Navigation and many other schools in Singapore, where overseas Chinese live . He spent more than $100 million on education, almost equal to his entire family fortune. People affectionately call Mr. Tan Kah Kee the “school master”.

Some people say that Tan Kah Kee runs so many schools just to improve his reputation, but this is not the case when Tan Kah Kee runs schools. He did not use it as a kind of capital, but made huge sacrifices for it.

Since 1926, Tan Kah Kee has made many efforts to maintain the funding of Jimei School and Xiamen University. When funds were scarce, he even sold the rubber plantation at a low price.

In October 1929, the economic crisis broke out in the capitalist world. The largest exports from Singapore and Malaya are rubber and tin, and the largest buyer is the United States. The recession in the United States caused the Great Depression in the rubber and tin industries of Singapore and Malaysia. However, Tan Kah Kee has been providing funding for schools in Jimei and Xiamen amounting to NT$900,000. At that time, Tan Kah Kee's company owed nearly NT$4 million in bank debt. The company's assets are only over 2 million yuan and it is already insolvent. Creditor banks, led by the British HSBC Bank, asked Tan Kah Kee to stop supporting Jimei Xiamen University, but Tan Kah Kee flatly refused. He believes that he cannot and should not give up his obligations. Once the school is established, it must be maintained. Once the school closes, there is no hope of recovery. If the school is closed, it will not only delay the future of young people, but also have a bad impact on society, which is a serious crime. If your business fails because you have to pay for the school in Jixia, this is the success or failure of your personal career.

In 1932, the company that Tan Kah Kee worked hard to establish was finally closed down. Although his career came to an end, Tan Kah Kee never regretted it because he successfully founded so many schools, especially Xiamen University and Jimei University. School.

On August 12, 1961, this great entrepreneur and educator died of illness in Beijing. When he was dying, he still ardently looked forward to Taiwan's return to the motherland, and told him to "keep Jimei School running" and dedicate his entire inheritance of 3 million yuan to the country. In order to thank him for his immortal contributions to the country over the years, the Communist Party of China granted him the honor of a state funeral. His coffin was transported back to Jimei and buried in his hometown to comfort this once brilliant, broad-minded and selfless patriotic overseas Chinese.

Frugal and selfless throughout his life

Mr. Tan Kah Kee was frugal throughout his life and never boasted about himself, but he spared no expense in investing in running schools. According to statistics from relevant personnel, based on the ratio of RMB to gold in 1981, Mr. Chen’s lifetime donations for running schools amounted to more than 100 million US dollars. In Tan Kah Kee's former residence, judging from the mosquito nets, beddings, clothes, top hats, leather shoes and other items on display, they are all shabby and old-fashioned. A broken tea cup turned over, with a candle stuck on the bottom of the cup, is the candle tray he designed himself. His family is extremely wealthy, but when it comes to his family affairs, he "seems to be lacking rather than perfect." The school building and his home were both destroyed by Japanese bombing raids.

However, between the school building and the residence, he insisted on building the school building first, and said: "The school building has not been restored. If we build the residence first, it will inevitably violate the motto of worrying first and rejoicing later!" After his death, he still had 300 yuan in domestic savings. There was a surplus of 10,000 yuan, but according to his will, he did not leave a penny to his descendants. On this issue, he said: "Whoever does not love his son must do so with moral love. Only by leaving too much money can we call it virtuous love." A wise person who has too much wealth will harm his ambition, but a fool who has too much wealth will benefit his fault."

Don't forget the reunification, Ao Yuan engraving

In his later years, Tan Kah Kee never forgot the reunification of the country and Taiwan. return! In 1950, he founded Aoyuan in Jimei Mei Village. In the middle of the stone screen of the "Museum" in Aoyuan Garden, a mason was asked to burn five maps. The top one is the "World Map", and below it are four maps, namely the "Map of the People's Republic of China", "Fujian Province Map", "Taiwan Province Map" and "Tongan County Map". The picture is engraved with "A Brief History of Taiwan" written by himself. The first sentence of "A Brief History of Taiwan" written by Mr. Tan Kah Kee reads: "Taiwan is a large island in the southeast of my country."

After the outbreak of the Korean War, the U.S. Seventh Fleet entered the Taiwan Strait to obstruct the reunification cause of the Chinese people. In response to the US aggression, on July 4, 1950, Tan Kah Kee issued a statement through the Fujian Daily, clearly stating that Taiwan is China's territory and foreign interference will never be allowed. After that, he issued a series of talks and statements to reporters, interviews with overseas Chinese, etc. It has been repeatedly stated that Taiwan is China's territory and will never allow foreign occupation or interference, and calls on overseas Chinese to contribute to the great cause of Taiwan's reunification with the motherland.

The reunification of the motherland was the first major event in Tan Kah Kee's last will and testament. His last words were "Taiwan must return to China." He believes that his wish will definitely come true, and it must come true. This is the most important reason why Mr. Tan Kah Kee engraved "the entire map of Taiwan Province" on the map burned by "Aoyuan".

On March 11, 1990, the International Minor Planet Center and the Asteroid Nomenclature Committee named the asteroid No. 2963 discovered by the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1964 as "Tan Kah Kee's Star" in recognition of Tan Kah Kee's contribution to education. Outstanding contribution to the cause.