Biography

Mr Tan Kah Kee was a prominent businessman, community leader, and philanthropist in colonial Singapore. He was born in Jimei, Xiamen, Fujian Province, China, and went to Singapore in 1890, when he was 16 years old, to work for his father's rice store. When the business collapsed in 1903, he started his own business and built an empire from rubber plantations and manufacturing, sawmills, canneries, real estate, import and export brokerage, ocean transport to rice trading. He died in 1961 in Beijing and was given a state funeral by the People's Republic of China.