I have always been interested in collecting. There is difference between collecting and hoarding. Hoarding is indiscriminate amassing without a focus. Collecting is a discipline with focus. It is the art of acquiring with discernment.

When I was a schoolboy, I learned the art of collecting spiders. Unlike many of my friends who spent days in the bush picking them up at random, I remember spending hours studying the type, size and characteristics of specimens and the type of vegetation they thrive in. Only then did I embark on my collecting adventure. I did not own many, but they were of good fighting quality. My friends would then buy one or two from me for 5 cents each. This was when I discovered collecting has an investment value.

My interest in beautiful objects of art was kindled by my late father. He collected Chinese Ming and Qing porcelain vases, water pots, and wrist rests, collectibles for the scholar’s writing desk. I used to admire (and still do) the potter’s ability to mould, decorate and fire such fine kaolin to produce top quality porcelain. The decoration was never busy. A single sprig of prunus delicately painted and under-glazed onto a vase no taller than 10 cm was a good example.

So over the years, I developed a taste for small size collectibles, having lived amongst them since childhood. But I did not venture out to purchase on my own until a small revelation transformed my passive interest into active pursuit.

During my first month of employment after graduation, I chanced across an article on Chinese snuff bottles in an early edition of “Arts of Asia”, a tastefully illustrated arts magazine.

I was simply astounded by the beauty and exquisite crafting of these tiny bottles. I soon bought then the only English book on the subject – “Chinese Snuff Bottles – The Adventures & Studies of a Collector”, by the late Lilla Perry.

From Lilla, I learned that snuff was grounded tobacco imported by Europeans into China during the early Qing dynasty in the 17th C. In Europe, snuff was consumed by sniffing a small quantity and inhaled into each nostril thereby producing a few loud sneezes. It was supposed to clear the nostril passage ways and result in a sense of well being, if not aphrodisiac sensations. It was used by the gentry during the courts of Louis XIV (1643-1715) and elsewhere and was considered fashionable by men and women to carry a snuff box in their pockets.

When snuff was introduced into China to the Kangxi court (1662-1722) by Jesuits, it was soon realized that box containers were not practical as the mandarin robe did not have pockets. Instead, it was ideal to store snuff into small bottles (no more than 5 cm high) wherein the user was able to tuck it into the long sleeves of his robe.

These small bottles soon caught on not only in the Chinese court but in business circles where merchants presented them as gifts and bribes. They soon became a collector’s item and hence various forms of material were used to make them. These included glass, quartz, jade, silver, hornbill, porcelain, sharkskin, and other organic and non organic material. Intricate decorations were also employed – carving, pasting, and later a technique known as inside painted, where a painting was executed inside a glass bottle.

I vividly remember my first acquisition. It was bought at a local antiques shop known as “Moon Gate”. It was a late 19th C glass overlay bottle with intricate carving of figures toasting each other. Almost half of my first month’ salary went to acquiring this beauty and I have kept it to this day. It was probably a good investment as these beauties would have appreciated at least 15-20 times since then.

My first snuff bottle

Through the years, I acquired other bottles. Another favourite is this porcelain carved bottle with a green jade tablet (likely taken from a Mandarin’s hat) attached into the middle. The bottle was acquired in London and would have been dated circa 1870. I take it out even now to admire it.

There were a few cardinal rules about collecting snuff bottles (which also apply to other forms of collecting) which I adhere to closely. First, the bottle has to be in mint or near mint condition. Don’t risk the temptation to purchase bottles which have cracks or defaced decorations, no matter how well crafted. Second, make sure it is of the age period attributed. There are countless modern bottles attributed to the Qing dynasty in today’s market. Nowadays I attest to the 90-10 rule. Assume 90% in today’s market are fakes to begin with. The challenge is to search out the 10%. Third, buy the best you can afford. It is more satisfying to resist the temptation of amassing poor quality pieces when you can live with just one of the best in its class. At present, I have only one or at most two bottles from each type of material. Fourth, buy pieces which appeal for its artistic value to you personally and not only for investment value. After all you will have to live with them on a daily basis!

Another favourite of mine is this inside painted bottle of an opera actor. It is dated 1911 and signed Ma Shao-Hsuan. Ma was one of the first artist to paint portraits. The technique was to paint in reverse using a small pointed brush inserted into the mouth of the bottle. It is micro painting in its highest form! There are now thousands of bottles attributed to Ma but most are contemporary fakes. I acquired this bottle in 1965 from a reputable dealer in Hong Kong.

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In the mid 1990s my family and I lived in London for 2 years on a cross posting. London is often considered the Mecca of the antiques and fine market. Indeed so. In almost every nook and corner was an antique shop of sorts. Some dealing in 17th C European paintings, some in early 20th C art deco collectibles and others in heirloom bric bracs. Saturday mornings would catch us trotting over to Portobello Market to browse at the vast quantities of antiques but seldom to buy. The sheer crowd from across the globe was sufficient to satisfy as a study of cross cultural interest and tastes. A couple from France, for example, would be hunting for Russian orthodox icons. A single woman from Tokyo would be looking for pre World War Two diaries printed by His Majesty’s Stationers. It was there that I was introduced to another area of collecting – 18th C English drinking glasses!

I was simply fascinated by the various shapes, designs, and sizes, of what we know as a drinking glass. As usual, I read up on the subject, the most illustrated and readable book being “An Illustrated Guide to Eighteenth Century Drinking Glass” by L.M. Bickerton.

From it, I learned the virtual monopoly in glass making held by Venice was broken in the late 16th C when England produced some very fine ale mugs and wine goblets. The early English glasses were heavy as they were mixed with lead which acted as a ballast to prevent the contents from spilling. A typical glass would be made in three pieces – the bowl (which holds the liquid), the stem and the foot.

As time passed, the British Government passed an Excise Tax on the lead content and from the late 17th C onwards, glasses were lighter, but with the growth of the industry, more intricate designs and shapes were added.

On reflection, collecting English drinking glasses and Chinese snuff bottles, has its parallels. Both function as containers. Both have a body, a stem (in the case of snuff bottles a stopper) and a foot. My collection of bottles and glasses is also quite parallel in period – the Qinlong period onwards in China and the Georgian period onwards in England). There is however one very perceptible difference. Chinese snuff bottles were made from a myriad of materials whereas English glasses were just forms of silica.

Nevertheless, drinking glasses (like snuff bottles) were also classified according to form, shape and decoration.. There were mugs, drams (whisky glasses), goblets, balusters etc. Stems came in various shapes – moulded pedestal stem, straight stem, air twist stem, colour stem, and incised twist stem. The decoration is often an art in itself – from common engraving to engraving in commemoration of an event eg Royal Coronation; or a baby’s christening.

One of my early acquisitions is a most interesting ladies cocktail glass which has an opague twist stem engraved with a bird in flight. The engraving is actually a secret code. The bird signifies the return of Bonnie Prince Charles from exile to claim the English throne. Owners of these glasses were invariably supporters of the Prince! I bought this from a collector in Bath.

Some decorations were produced to represent a society or commercial enterprise. I have a dram (whisky drinking glass) which represented a particular Masonic Lodge in Scotland. It was engraved “Lodge of Harmony No 559”. The compass and slide rule emblem is clearly visible. A local Masonic friend helped me trace the Lodge to one which existed in Dunedin Scotland circa 1768.

In the course of my work overseas, I occasionally stayed over the weekend to browse the local flea market and antique shops. The anticipation was the optimistic prospect one might stumble onto an unexpected gem. Most times, the results were disappointing but all it took was one unexpected find to fuel the enthusiasm once more. I visited an antique shop in Mumbai in 2002 to discover a treasure trove! Scattered around the display cabinets were finely blown 19th C English drinking glasses. Some were cocktail glasses, some were after dinner liquour stem glasses; some were brandy tumblers. All bore an identical. engraved emblem – the royal insignia of the Maharaja of Rajustan. The dealer informed me the entire dinner set collection was commissioned to be sold in his shop but sensing he would find it difficult to sell it as a set, he was willing to sell single pieces. I picked up three glasses of different shapes, the most interesting being the one illustrated below.

These last two years, I have embarked on yet another collecting adventure – antique pocket watches, but a discourse of this newly found joy will run well beyond the space permitted for this article.

So for me, collecting is a continuous journey. There are always new areas to explore. But delving into a new subject to collect does not devalue the previous subjects. I still cherish my snuff bottles and English drinking glasses. Often, it is not the collectibles that one cherishes but tales of how they were acquired and the interesting types of people one meets in the trial of acquisition which is etched in memory.

About the Writer

• He has the good fortune of visiting many interesting places and meeting extraordinary people in his 35 year career as a HR director.
• He has also participated in arts forums as speaker and has contributed to events organized by auction houses such as Sothebys.
• He is interested in many forms of the arts and can be found frequently attending concerts at the Esplanade and Young Siew Toh Music Conservatory.
• He is a council member of the SE Asia Ceramics Society and the China Society.
• He is an unabashed lover of all good things, notably food and wine.

There were two days in November this year that were considered highly auspicious and much sought after by couples planning to get married. One was 11 November 2011 (11.11.11) and the other, 20 November 2011 (20.11.2011). The rare coincidence of the repeated numbers representing the day, month and year also intrigued and interested many others, not just those involved in matrimony.

Unlike these two “star” days, another day in November probably did not attract as much attention. Sunday, 13 November came and went without most people being aware of what it stood for or its significance. That it was World Kindness Day likely caused some Singaporeans, myself included, to scratch their heads and go: “Huh, what’s that?”

Well, at least one group of people knew better as they were direct beneficiaries. In an appropriate act of kindness, contract cleaners in Marine Parade were given the day off to commemorate World Kindness Day. As reported by the media, resident volunteers in the estate took over the cleaning for the day, led by Emeritus Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong and his fellow members of parliament.

Elsewhere in Singapore, volunteers stationed at shopping malls and other public areas gave away thousands of yellow gerbera daisies as symbols of kindness. Some schools and tertiary institutions also marked the day with special programmes.

The day was perhaps marred for at least one volunteer who observed on blog that some people were hoarding flowers they were given and asking for more! World Kindness Day was also celebrated in countries around the world. In Sydney, friends and strangers exchanged hugs, in the UK people sent text messages expressing appreciation for acts of kindness and in Vancouver, a “Kindness” concert was the main event.

World Kindness Day has a relatively short history, it was officially inaugurated in 1998 and celebrated annually since. Behind it is an organisation called the World Kindness Movement whose vision is to “inspire individuals towards greater kindness and to connect nations to create a kinder world.”

The movement was in fact launched right here in Singapore which is a founding member together with countries like Thailand, Japan, UK and the US. Its local affiliate is the Singapore Kindness Movement which has none other than the Prime Minister as its Patron. The Singapore Movement has its roots in the long running National Courtesy Campaign which several generations of Singaporeans have grown up with.

Having discovered World Kindness Day and its vision belatedly, I was struck by the profound irony of the event this year. For a month earlier, exactly to the day, the world witnessed a horrific act of man’s inhumanity that had probably not been seen outside the ravages of a war zone.

A little girl in China’s Foshan city, injured by a hit-and-run driver and later ran over by another vehicle was ignored as she laid hapless and bleeding on a busy street. No fewer than 18 passers-by could have come to her aid but none did until an old lady collecting refuse chanced upon her. The toddler named Yue Yue unfortunately succumbed to her massive injuries and her tragic story grabbed world headlines.

Kindness obviously took a back seat to other considerations that day in Foshan city. Compassion, consideration and concern for others, charitable behaviour, however one chooses to define kindness, were sadly absent in those who turned a blind eye to the plight of little Yue Yue.

While the public debate raged on in China about the kind of society they have that could have nurtured such anti-social behaviour, my thoughts turned to Singapore and I could not help but wonder whether a “Foshan” would ever occur here. I would like to think not.

Even though Singaporeans will probably not score high on graciousness and courtesy, especially in public transport and on the roads, I am inclined to believe that collectively our heart and values are anchored in the right place and our sense of civic duty is intact.

By most accounts, Singaporeans are a charitable lot with a strong spirit of giving, be it time or money, to causes deserving of support. Whether it is a relief fund for victims of natural disasters in neighbouring countries or home-grown calls for help or even media stories of complete strangers in need of assistance, Singaporeans are known to respond whole-heartedly and generously.

But more can certainly be done to strengthen our social fibre and in this regard, two recent initiatives aimed at our young will hopefully prevent the possibility of a “Foshan” happening in the future.

One was the launch of a Character and Citizenship Education programme by the Ministry of Education that focuses on values driven and student-centric lessons. One of the desired outcomes of this new focus on character building is to have our students show care and concern for others.

The other is the launch of a Seed Kindness Fund by the Singapore Kindness Movement. It aims to encourage students and teachers to generate and run creative ideas that will promote values of care and consideration for others in and out of the classroom.

With such proactive programmes to instil the desired values in our young, Singapore can claim to continue to contribute positively to the World Kindness Movement’s vision to “inspire individuals towards greater kindness and to connect nations to create a kinder world.”

About the Writer

The writer is a former corporate executive who is now discovering a whole new world beyond the narrow confines of an office cubicle.

The writer’s wife is one of the granddaughters of TKK. She and I were just two of the many of his extended family members from Singapore and overseas who attended this memorable seminar. My wife was too young to remember much of her famous grandfather, but can still recall vividly her family’s post World War II annual visit on Chinese New Year Day to pay their respects to him at his favourite club, Ee Hoe Hean, where they would meet numerous relatives and an endless stream of other visitors who would also call on him on this auspicious day. This club had become his home where he would spend most of his time holding meetings and discussions with others on community work, often well past midnight. He had less and less time for his own large family and seeing them only on special occasions. I had never met TKK but had garnered my knowledge of him through my late mother-in-law who had lived with her father both in Singapore and in China for a period before her marriage, and through reading books and other publications about him. I was both amused and impressed by his business acumen to marry off her daughter to my father-in-law, who was one of his ablest staff, in order that he would not lose his services to others!

TKK emigrated from his native Jimei Village, near Xiamen City in China’s Fujian Province, to Singapore in 1891 at the age of 17 in order to seek his pot of gold there. Despite having had only eight years’ schooling, he was nevertheless highly literate. He joined his father’s sundry goods business as his assistant and book-keeper. He quickly proved his entrepreneurial flair in commercial matters. By 1906, he had already become a wealthy man through the widening of his initial business activities to include rubber trading and manufacturing, rice mills and pineapple canning. From then on his businesses expanded further to encompass enterprises like shipping, real estate, shoes manufacturing and newspaper publishing. By the time he was 45, he had become one of the richest men in Singapore and in this region. He also made his mark as the undisputed leader of the Singapore’s Chinese community and his views and support were often sought by the colonial government, especially on matters which affected Chinese Singaporeans. At the peak of his commercial career between 1918 and 1925, his business enterprises throughout Southeast Asia and China employed more than 10,000 people. He had amassed a colossal fortune exceeding $12 million Singapore dollars.

By this time, he had already founded and funded many schools and colleges in his native Fujian and in Singapore and had also generously supported other charitable causes too. The poor pupils in China enjoyed free of charge schooling. In 1920, he established the first private university in China, the Xiamen University. He had earlier sought funding support from among the many wealthy Chinese business tycoons both in Singapore and in the region.To his great disappointment, not much was forthcoming. He had no choice but to almost singlehandedly funded its annual operating expenses himself in order not to delay the launch of this ambitious but much needed project. He bore this heavy financial burden for several years until financial help emerged from others, especially from his wealthy close relatives and friends. TKK continued to help finance the university and other educational institutions in China with his vastly reduced fortune even after his businesses failed because of the severe worldwide depression of the late 1920s. Altogether, he had given away virtually all his wealth of more than 12 million dollars, leaving nothing for his large family. It is estimated what he had donated to support education would be equivalent to today’s several hundred million US dollars (based on present day purchase price parity computation).

What motivated TKK to give away all his wealth to advance education in China and elsewhere? In a nutshell, he believed with unwavering conviction that it was only through education that a nation could become economically and technologically advanced. In the context of the then China, the bulk of its massive population were illiterate as they could not afford basic schooling. His own native Fujian Province was no exception. With a population of more than 10 million, it had a paucity of schools and no university until he established the Xiamen University there in 1920.

Besides being a philanthropist extraordinary, TKK was a passionate believer in social justice for Singapore’s Chinese Singaporeans. Whenever they were unfairly treated by the colonial government. he would fearlessly speak up for them or take firm action to protect their interests. As a Chinese national living overseas, he remained patriotic to his motherland. For instance, when Japan invaded China in 1937 and an eight-year war ensued between them, TKK took immediate decisive action to raise large sums of money from the Chinese community in Singapore to support China’s war efforts against the Japanese invaders. He also organised a contingent of Chinese Singaporean volunteers to participate in the war. In view of his unflinching anti-Japan stand, the Japanese military regime would have had him killed when they conquered Singapore in 1941. He managed to escape to Indonesia, which also fell to the Japanese, and succeeded to survive there, largely because he was loyally shielded by the Chinese community during his four years’ stay. I learnt that he always had with him a packet of poison substance so that he could swallow it and die as a patriot if needs be, rather than falling into the enemy’s hands and be executed by them. TKK returned to Singapore after the war and was accorded a rousing welcome by its Chinese community.

TKK continued his active public work in Singapore and kept in close touch with the progress of his educational institutions in China. He finally decided to return to China for good in 1950 so that he could devote his time there to more closely supervising those institutions established by him. He died in 1961 at the age of 87 at a Beijing hospital. He was accorded a state funeral presided over by Prime Minister Zhou Enlai and attended by many top Chinese political elites and other prominent Chinese from other walks of life. Even Chairman Mao praised him as an outstanding overseas Chinese leader and a glory to the Chinese race. A rare honour indeed for TKK who had lived in Singapore for more than 60 years of his life and his passing was deeply mourned in his adopted country. He was buried in his beloved native Jimei Village, very close to some of the educational institutions founded by him. His entire asset exceeding one million RMB, a considerable sum then, was given to the educational bodies there, and none to his family.

TKK has often been compared with the legendary American multi-millionaires Dale Carnegie and Henry Ford, both of whom had richly endowed educational institutions in America and had also set up trust foundations to do so to this day. However, there is a fine distinction between him and them and the rich anywhere else. In TKK’s case he gave away virtually his entire fortune leaving practically nothing at all for his large family; his counterparts in other countries would always preserve a significant portion of their enormous wealth for their own family members, before giving the remainder away. It is quite unlikely that Singapore or any other country can produce someone as selfless as TKK for a long time to come. Another hallmark of his greatness was that he eschewed self-glorification for what he had done and had firmly declined repeated attempts by educational institutions founded by him to name some of the important buildings or other facilities in his honour.

Long after TKK’s death, another feather in his cap came from an unexpected source. In order to further enhance his international reputation as a life long staunch supporter of education, Prof. Y.T Lee, of the University of California’s world-renowned Berkeley Campus, who is a chemistry Nobel price winner and an ardent admirer of TKK, spearheaded a fund raising campaign in 1990 to have the new US$ 40 million 7-storey new postgraduate chemical engineering building named after him provided he succeeded in raising US$ 8.5 million by a certain deadline. The professor, who had never met TKK, believed that this would be a concrete recognition of TKK’s achievements and unwavering belief in the importance of education in national development, which has a universal value, and Berkeley would be the suitable place to do it. He then traveled to many cities in the States and to Southeast Asia and Hong Kong at his own expense to persuade would be donors to support this worthy project. His hard work over several years finally paid off and he managed to obtain the 8.5 million needed to name the structure after TKK. The bulk of the money came from donors in Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand and United States. The Tan Kah Kee Hall is commonly called the Tan (pronounced as Ten) Hall by Berkeley staff and students for ease of remembering it.

This brings to mind an article that I wrote in 1997 on TKK’s contributions to education and his achievements in business and in other fields, and the naming of the chemical engineering building at Berkeley in his honour . An edited version appeared as the Cover Story in Singapore’s leading newspaper The Straits Times’ Life! Supplement on September 11, 1997. I would like to share the original version of it with my readers and it is posted immediately after the above article.

Lam Pin Foo

Among the prominent ethnic Chinese business leaders in Southeast Asia, one man stands apart from the rest of the pack and achieved a stature and acclaim not accorded to others. His name is Tan Kah Kee (1874-1961), who became a legend in his life time. A man of great vision, drive and unflinching convictions, he was an indefatigable champion of education and social justice, and a philanthropist par excellence and patriot.

Throughout his long life, he utilised his considerable financial resources and personal influence for the maximum benefit of the communities in China, Singapore and the region. Tan Kah Kee’s greatest and most enduring contributions, for which posterity will remember him affectionately, are in the field of education.

He was the first Chinese to have founded a major university, the Xiamen University, single-handedly. He also founded colleges and schools in his native Jimei, near Xiamen in Fujian province, and provided the pupils there with free education at a time when this was inaccessible. His colleges in Jimei came of age in recent years and were upgraded to a full-fledge university in 1996, a dream envisaged by him long ago.

In Singapore, many schools and tertiary institutions had benefited from his farsighted leadership and munificence. The Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce set up the Tan Kah Kee Foundation and also endowed a chair in history at the Nanyang Technological University to promote scholarship and innovations in his memory.

Thirty-five years after his death, his fame has now spread beyond the shores of Asia, to far away United States. The world-renowned University of California, Berkeley, which has produced more Nobel prize winners than any other universities, recently commissioned a US$ 40 million major science building and named it Tan Kah Kee Hall, in recognition of his distinguished service to education.

How the Berkeley accolade came about makes interesting reading. In the 1980s, the University was planning to construct a major chemical engineering building to cater to its growing needs. It would consider naming it after a deserving benefactor who would donate a substantial sum towards the building cost.

Professor Y T Lee, then teaching chemistry at Berkeley and who was the fourth ethnic Chinese to have won a Nobel prize in chemistry in 1986, is an ardent admirer of Tan Kah Kee for his selfless and unwavering commitment to education for its own sake. He believed that Tan ought to have international recognition, such as extended to Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford, for his unprecedented efforts and exceptional achievements and that Berkeley would be an eminently suitable forum for it. This would also raise the level of American awareness of Chinese culture and civilisation, and their profound love and respect for scholarship, which most Americans were blissfully ignorant of.

With the active support of Prof. Tien Chang-Lin, the first Chinese-American to be appointed Chancellor of Berkeley in 1990 and himself an admirer of Tan Kah Kee, Prof. Lee spearheaded the unenviable and daunting task to raise the targeted sum of US$ 8.5 million in order to secure the naming right in honour of the famous educationalist. He then travelled around the United States, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and other ASEAN countries at his own expense in order to seek support and donations for this worthy cause. Everywhere he went he received an enthusiastic response from many quarters, including Dr K K Phua of the Tan Kah Kee Foundation here, who immediately grasped the significance of his quest.

The aim was not to confine the fund-raising campaign to only the rich and powerful and those who knew Tan Kah Kee or were related to him. From the outset, the organisers felt that it would be more meaningful for those who simply admired his greatness but had nothing at all to do with him to also come forward spontaneously to support the project.

Through the untiring efforts of Prof. Lee and the numerous co-campaigners who shared his vision, widespread public donations from both continents poured in and the mission was thus successfully accomplished, several years after the idea was first mooted. The bulk of the donations came from Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand and the United States.

The seven-storey Tan Kah Kee Hall is primarily used for postgraduate teaching and research, and houses a number of laboratories, a large lecture hall, a state-of-the-art computer facility, conference rooms and administrative offices. It is part of the College of Chemistry and has enhanced the needs of its School of Chemical Engineering.

The Berkeley project led to the formation of the Tan Kah Kee International Society, with Prof. Lee as its first chairman and Singaporean Dr K K Phua as Secretary, to further Tan’s aims to propagate education and culture including the raising of funds to expand the Overseas Chinese Museum in Xiamen and the conversion of the Jimei colleges into a university.

What propelled Tan Kah Kee to persevere in his abiding labour of love with education? What makes his achievements so unique, in view that many prominent business tycoons everywhere also actively support education and charitable projects? With only eight years’ schooling, he emigrated to Singapore at the age of 17 to help his father run his sundry goods business. He quickly showed his mettle in business. By 1906, he had become a wealthy businessman, with interests which included rubber trading and manufacturing, rice mills and pineapple canning.

His businesses continued to expand and prosper by leaps and bounds, and he ventured into new fields such as shipping, sawmills, real estate and shoe manufacturing. By the time he was 45, he had become one of the richest men in Singapore and Malaya. Tan Kah Kee believed passionately that, for any nation to be strong and economically affluent, its people must first become literate and well-educated. He often lamented that, while China is a country with 5000 years of continuous civilisation, a vast number of Chinese were too poor to attend school, and that education was a luxury that only the well off could afford to indulge in.

His own native Fujian province was a case in point. It was then one of the poorer parts of China. With a population of more than 10 millions, there was a paucity of schools and no university to speak of. His simple philosophy was that, as one derives one’s wealth from the community in which one operates in, it is imperative that this should be extended to the advantage of the community and not for personal glorification. He began to practise what he firmly believed in by initiating and establishing a succession of schools in Jimei from 1913 onwards, and providing the funds needed to uplift the children of poor homes in Fujian. This was followed by the founding of a teachers’ training college and colleges for agriculture and forestry, fisheries and marine navigation, also in Jimei.

His generosity extended to schools elsewhere in the province, where such support was most acutely felt. Not content with merely endowing these infant institutions, he took a continuing interest in their management through regular correspondence and by making periodic prolonged visits there in order to keep abreast with their progress and development. Tan Kah Kee’s enterprises reached their zenith between 1919 and 1925. He was now one of the richest entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia, with a net worth of more than $12 millions, a colossal fortune in those distant days. His business empire became even more diversified and spread out in China and throughout the region, employing a combined workforce exceeding 10,000.

Tan Kah Kee was most fortunate to have had good people working for him. Two of his most able and trusted employees, Lee Kong Chian, the would be rubber magnate and founder of Lee Foundation and Oon Khye Hong, a chemical engineer from MIT, became his sons-in-law; while the third, the legendary and inimitable Tan Lark Sye, who also made his fortunes in rubber, co-founded the Nanyang University in 1955 and donated $5 millions to it.

In 1919, he launched his most ambitious project, the setting up of the Xiamen University. An initial funding of $1 million was needed, together with an operating budget of $3 millions for the next 12 years. With his characteristic decisiveness and resolve, he decided to shoulder the above financial burden himself, in order not to delay the launch of this momentous scheme.

He later described vividly his repeated futile attempts to raise the urgently needed endowment fund, from amongst the richest Chinese in the region for the long term viability of the fledgling University, as one of the most disappointing episodes of his life. Simultaneous with supporting education in China, Tan Kah Kee did not forget the needs of his adopted country. He led the establishment and funding of several Chinese language schools in Singapore from 1918 onwards, which were then grossly neglected by the colonial government.

Among the schools that owe their existence to his pioneering efforts are the Chinese High School and Nanyang Girls’ High School, both of which have become leading schools here. He also made substantial donations to the local English language institutions including the Anglo Chinese School and Raffles College, one of the predecessor institutions of the National University of Singapore. The dark clouds of the Great Depression of the late 1920s started to cast its sinister impact on his extensive business ventures, as the Malayan and Singapore economies took a precipitous plunge which resulted in drastic declines in rubber and tin prices, the two territories’ biggest revenue earners.

Even while Tan Kah Kee was trying desperately, to keep his businesses afloat and to cope with the mounting cash-flow problems, he continued to finance his educational projects in China, rather than let them flounder due to lack of funds. Even after the inevitable winding up of his business conglomerate in 1934, he still managed to remit monies to China, relying on his now greatly reduced personal resources and generous financial assistance of his loyal friends and relatives. It must have been a tremendous relief to him that the Chinese Government was finally prevailed upon to take over the financing and running of Xiamen University in 1940. He retired to Jimei in 1950, and devoted much of his time to overseeing the direction and development of the schools and colleges he founded there.

What makes Tan Kah Kee’s contributions to education so unique was his all-consuming belief in its importance and role in nation building, to the extent that, instead of giving only a portion of his wealth as other benefactors the world over would have done, he gave practically all he had for the advancement of education, leaving virtually nothing to his own large family. Moreover, it is a hallmark of his greatness that he eschewed personal publicity and recognition for what he had done and had consistently and tenaciously declined repeated attempts by his well-wishers to have some of the important edifices named after him.

He died in 1961 at the age of 87 and was buried in his beloved native Jimei. He left his entire fortune of more than ¥1 million RMB to the schools there, which he first founded almost 50 years earlier. Today, his birthplace has become one of the top attractions in Xiamen as visitors, both from China and overseas, flock there to pay fitting tributes to a visionary who was well ahead of his time.

Lam Pin Foo