Eu Tong Sen 余東璇 |
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| Preceded by | - |
| Succeeded by | - |
| Preceded by | - |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1877 Penang Malaysia |
| Died | 1941 Singapore |
Eu Tong Sen (born 1877, Penang;[1] died May 1941, Singapore) was a leading businessman in Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong during the late 19th and early 20th century. He was the son of Eu Kong Pui and Kong Pui's first wife, Madam Leung in Foshan, China.[2] He was vice-president of the Anti-Opium Society and a member of the Kinta Sanitary Board.[3]
His father, Eu Kong Pui (1853)[2] also known as Eu Kong, was a Chinese immigrant from Foshan, Guangdong to Penang to work as a grocery shop assistant.[4] He had a wife in Foshan, Madam Leung, and a wife in Malaya, Madam Man.[2][3]
He built his fortune by acquiring from the British, monopolies for tax or revenue farming (opium, alcohol or spirits, gambling and pawn broking) in Perak in the 1880s and when tin started to boom, he acquired land for mining tin. He expanded this to retailing and taxing goods from China that he sold to the miners he employed[2][3] and set up in Gopeng, Perak, a grocery shop that was later expanded to include a Chinese dispensary to treat Chinese immigrants. He operated his businesses under the mark Chop Yan Sang.[2][3] He had two younger brothers, Eu Kong Chun and Eu Kong Tak. His business partner was Chiu Tong Hin and his attorney was Mr. Grant Mackie of the Straits Trading Company.[2][3]
In 1890[3] or On 24 March 1891[5] at only thirty eight years of age, Eu Kong Pui died, suddenly.[2]
While he was still a child, Eu Tong Sen had been sent back to his mother in Foshan, China, to study. However, with the sudden death of his father, he found himself, at only thirteen years of age, heir to the family estates and tin mining businesses. He returned to Malaya in 1892 [6][7] but his stay with his two uncles and his step mother was short. He moved to the home of Mr. R. Butler and lived there for two and a half years, taking private tuition in English from Mr. F. W. Harley. From there he moved to Ipoh and enrolled in a Government school.[2][5] Later he would move to Singapore where he lived for some time before moving to Hong Kong when business conditions changed.[2]
In 1898, at the age of twenty one, he took over his father's estate from Mr. Mackie and discovered the business to be in decline. Over the next ten years he was to expand the family business and multiply his fortune many times over. He expanded his business empire in Singapore, Malaya and Hong Kong and, at thirty years of age, was one of the richest men in the region.[4]
In Malaya and the Straits, when tax farming was abolished and tin prices started to fall, Eu Tong Sen ventured into rubber plantations in British Malaya and remittances between Malaya and Hong Kong.[2]
Aside from his involvement in the tin mining and rubber industries, he was also responsible for extending the family business of traditional Chinese medicine manufacturer Eu Yan Sang into Hong Kong; he felt it was necessary to diversify out of the tin industry, which was coming under increasing government regulation.[6][8] He transformed the business his father left him, originating from that single dispensary in Gopeng, into a chain of traditional medicine shops. In 1908 his medicine shops in Kampar and Gopeng were flourishing.[3]
At its peak his businesses owned a total of 11 mines and employed 12,000 miners.[4] The tin business, however, was in a state of decline by the time he took over management. By 1908 he owned two mines at Kampar, three at Gopeng, one at Tronoh, one at Chenderiang, and one at Papan, together employing about 8,000 coolies. In Selangor he owned one mine at Ampang and one at Kancheng, together employing 3,000 coolies. In Batang Benna, Negri Sembilan he owned one mine employing 1,000 coolies.[3]
He set up the Sang Woh Foundry and extended his business into the manufacture and export of tin-made items which he shipped to China and Southeast Asian countries.[2]
In 1908 he commenced planting two estates of 450 and 250 acres (1.0 km2)[3] and eventually grew his fathers business from their original two estates of 450 and 550 acres (2.2 km2)[2] until his rubber estates covered more than 283 hectares of land.[4]
Under Eu Tong Sen, Yan Sang shops in Gopeng and Kampar, extended to providing remittance services, allowing Chinese miners and plantation workers to send their earnings home.[1][2][3] As the remittance and medicines businesses expanded, branches were set up in Penang, Ipoh, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and Singapore. In 1909 Eu Tong Sen established a branch in the Sheung Wan district of Hong Kong. As his branches increased and his business spread out geographically, his potential market grew accordingly.[2][9]
In 1914, he expanded the remittance business to reach throughout Malaya as well as the Dutch East Indies, Hong Kong, and southern China.[6][8] In the 1920s when the rubber business in Malaya deteriorated, Eu Tong Sen shifted his focus to the remittance business in Hong Kong.[2]
By the late 20s the most profitable part of the Eu Yan Sang medicine shop business was in remittances not medicines. Eu Tong Sen moved from Singapore to Hong Kong in 1928. On January 7, 1932, he formed Eu Tong Sen Limited in Singapore but controlled it from Hong Kong where his remittance business was showing the best potential.
In 1920, at forty two years of age, Eu Tong Sen, together with Wu Sing Pang, a rich Cantonese merchant in Singapore, founded the Lee Wah Bank with business operations in Guangdong, Singapore and Malaya. The bank was a "Cantonese" bank as opposed to the Hokkien banks like the Ho Hong Bank etc.,[10] meaning it was set up to cater mainly to the Cantonese (or Cantonese-speaking) community.[4]
His other commercial interests included shareholding in opium farms in Singapore and Penang.[6][8]
Outside of his businesses, Eu was an early admirer of the Shaw Brothers and invited them to Singapore as his guests.[11] He had a large family, with three wives and twenty-five children.[12] He also organised and oversaw the 1928 construction on that same street of the Majestic Theatre, a performing hall for Cantonese opera, and for forming an opera troupe to perform there, all in order to entertain one of his wives who was a fan of Cantonese opera.[13] Later, he would become the first non-European commoner to be admitted to the Royal Ipoh Club.[14]
In May 1912 he was appointed a permanent Unofficial Member of the Federal Council of the Federated Malay States, the seat having fallen vacant on the demise of Leong Fee.[15][16]
Eu Tong Sen and Chung Thye Phin were "blood" brothers. They went through Chinese ceremony to become "Keet Bye Heng Tai". When Chung Thye Phin travelled to Hong Kong, he stayed in Eu Tong Sen's villa there and they kept an account of his expenses in the company's account books. Eu Tong Sen's villa in HK was called "Eucliff". It has been torn down. It was built at Repulse Bay, HK, overlooking the sea. The property was huge. It was built with stone like a castle. It included within its walled area a tennis court and also a swimming pool. Eu Tong Sen and Chung Thye Phin had common interests – motorcars, racehorses, country houses, etc. 1903 when the Ipoh Gymkhana Club was founded, both of them decided to enter their thoroughbreds regularly in the Ipoh races. They jointly built a weekend retreat, “Forest Lodge”, at Gopeng Road with a large stable. When Eu Tong Sen was appointed to the Federal Council, Chung Thye Phin sold his half-lot to Eu Tong Sen who desired grander accommodations following the latter's elevation in status. Chung Thye Phin in turn bought Drummond’s Hill in Taiping, a 50-acre (200,000 m2) estate and the former Residency of Sir Hugh Low.[16] In 1908, together with Chung Thye Phin he built a large Chinese theatre in the important mining town of Kampar near Ipoh.[3] Chung Thye Phin's Penang firms served as the agent for Eu, Tong Sen in Penang before he (Eu) opened a branch on the island. Eu Tong Sen's Penang branch, at least according to business directories, was the latest in his branch office network. It seemed to have opened only in 1920. Eu Tong Sen and Chung Thye Phin were also members of the Board of Directors of the Eastern Smelting Company, Ltd along with Ng Boo Bee, Ong Hung Chong, Khaw Joo Tok and his nephew Khaw Bian Kee.[17]
He donated HK$55,000 to the University of Hong Kong during one of his visits there in 1918.[2]
"Eu Tong Sen is a notable with his twenty-five millions of gold dollars. He has two palaces in Ipoh; one more in Kampar, and a castle with a garden and lake in Singapore. Art treasures selected in Europe by himself fill these various residences of the great Chinese tin magnate; the marble for his houses was brought from Italy." -- Herman Norden[18]
Eu Tong Sen took a keen interest in horse-racing, motoring and rifle-shooting. He imported the first motor car into Perak.[3]
Eu Tong Sen was also the pioneer of Singapore to bring in calf racing. Calf racing evolves around 2 men and 2 calfs(young of a cow. Then, they will ride the calf through a series of obstacles before finally falling into a water body. The men then will have to finally swim to land and run back to the starting point, the first becoming the winner
In 1919, Singapore's Wayang Street was renamed to Eu Tong Sen Street in his honour.[7] The honour was given in recognition of his contributions of a scout fighter plane called No. 1 Eu Tong Sen, and 6,000 pounds for a tank that had two "eyes" to further the British efforts in World War I.[2][4] Mr. Addison, the Minister of Munitions commissioned a painting of the tank and presented the painting to Eu Tong Sen.[2][5]
He purchased an official title from the Qing Government in 1903.[2] He sold it back in 1906
In May 1941, in Hong Kong, at the age of sixty three, Eu Tong Sen died of a heart attack.[4] However, before that fatal heart attack, Eu Tong Sen survived multiples of heart attacks and suffered a 5-day collapse a few times. He also had lung cancer but was cured of immediately