CHEE YAM CHUAN (CHEE SWEE CHENG’S GRANDFATHER)
by Baba Ronney Tan Koon Siang
Portrait of Baba Chee Yam Chuan.
Baba Chee Yam Chuan was among an elite group of merchants called “the Malacca Chinese”.
They were already successful businessmen and traders – entrepreneurial and adaptable. They were among the early merchants invited by Colonel William Farquhar to come to Singapore to kick-start the fledgling economy.
Born on 24 May 1819, Yam Chuan grew the family fortune and amassed wealth from his engagement in opium farms, trading, property investment, financing tin mines and as a creditor of the royal family of Selangor.
At the age of 21, Yam Chuan was elected head of the Hokkien community in Melaka. After his father Chee Kim Guan died in 1839, he inherited membership in then powerful Keng Teck Whay, a private family benefit society.
Membership in the Keng Teck Whay is restricted to its founding members and their direct male descendants. Some describe it as Singapore’s earliest known Hokkien Peranakan mutual-aid society.
Yam Chuan died suddenly on 28 July 1862, after his brother-in-law fatally shot him at a Chinese wedding dinner for refusing to lend him money.
THE CHEE FAMILY AND THE KENG TECK WHAY
Members of Keng Teck Whay presented this plaque as a gesture of appreciation to Baba Chee Swee Cheng. They gave him “sole credit” for his help when the society faced a financial crisis and appointed him president from 1897 to 1903. Photo by Colin Chee.
In 1890, Chee Swee Cheng had served as trustee of Keng Teck Whay, a private mutual benefit society formed in 1831 by 36 Melaka Chinese merchants who had spread their business interests to Singapore at the behest of Colonel William Farquhar.
Sir Stamford Raffles had instructed Farquhar to use his good ties with the Melaka merchants to help the new Singapore economy grow.
Trade enabled Singapore to flourish so quickly that by 1840, the island had eclipsed and relegated Melaka to being “a sleepy hollow” until its revival in 1904 fuelled by the rubber boom.
Swee Cheng`s great-grandfather, Baba Chee Kim Guan, and uncles, Chee Teang Why and Chee Kim Sam, were also founder members of Keng Teck Whay. Chee Kim Guan had the distinction of being one of two Chinese merchants who were in the first Singapore Chamber of Commerce in 1837.
Around 1895, when the Keng Teck Whay faced a cash flow crisis, Chee Swee Cheng intervened and saved the day.
Perhaps as a repayment of kindness rendered back in 1895, Keng Teck Whay loaned Chee Swee Cheng $30,000 (Straits dollars) in 1931 at the height of the world financial crisis which hit Ho Hong Bank.
Britain went off the gold standard. This adversely affected the bank’s bottom line. The Keng Teck Whay archives record that Swee Cheng paid interest of $258 on a one-year loan and he fully repaid the principal sum the following year.
To the Babas this was the ultimate “bayar budi balek” (repayment of kindness in full).