陈嘉庚纪念馆英文讲解

1 The First Part

As we know Tan Kah Kee (Chen Jiageng) (1874-1961) was an eminent leader of overseas

Chinese, an industrialist, educationist and social activist. As a teenager, he went to

Singapore to learn business and later became a world-famous Chinese manufacturer of the

first generation. Convinced that education is the foundation of a powerful country and

that it is the duty of a citizen to run education, he devoted all his resources and time

to education and other public welfare; ardently loving his motherland, he was always

standing in the forefront of the times, supporting the 1911 revolution, organizing the

overseas Chinese for China’s war effort against Japan, and coming back to join in the

founding and governing of New China.

Now we will go into the first hall.it is talk about TKK how to make business in

singapore about 34 years. Tan Kah Kee (Chen Jiageng) (1874-1961) was an eminent leader

of overseas Chinese, an industrialist, educationist and social activist. When our chinese

won the anti-Japanese war in 1945, Chair Mao describe TKK as "the banner of

overchinese,the glory of china". Please look at the stone carving, it means when 1840s,the

first opium war broke out,the background described the TKK born and grow times.and next

we will look at these pictures. All the pictures are made by stone . how to make the

pictures ?the worker use the drill to drill the stone and control the power to drill

depth or pale. the famous stone skill is called “yingdiao” from fujian province. At

the other side ,here shows all the life of TKK, we can learn something from here. And

the detail we will make introduction in each halls. Here we show the tkk company’s all

the office building and factory in malaya. And these two villa is belong to tkk in

singapore ,because the economic crisis of 1929～1933 in America ,in order to build the

XIAMEN univercity ,he sold the villas and send the money back to china. When tkk was

a little child ,his father went to singapore to do business , so he only lived and worked

with his mother .when his 9 years old ,he went to “ nanxuansishu”to study, and as we

know ,before the education is not standard, when the teacher was die.and at the same

time tkk received his father letter ,ask him went to singapore to help his father do

business.so tkk was 17 years old ,this is the his first time went to singapore.this is 2 tkk’s father, Tan Kee Peck (Chen Jibo), Tan Kah Kee’s father, went to Singapore in

the 1870s. He ran a rice shop named Soon Ann & Co. and concurrently engaged in real

estates, establishing a well-organized business network. He was one of the community

leaders of the Tan Clan in Singapore.After his father company close down and .Tan Kah

Kee repaid the debts his father’s enterprises had owed and won a great reputation in

the community. Trustworthy, keen and persistent, he became a distinguished entrepreneur

in Southeast Asia soon after he started his own business.and tkk start his business in

1904, his start his businuss from the pineapple canne. we simulate that tkk plant the

rubber trees in his pineapple farmland. At the beginning of the 20 century, Tan Kah Kee

was quick to see the great prospects of rubber in industry, transportation and military,

and succeeded in planting rubber among pineapple crops with increasing scale. The display

case show the product of tkk company.and the l”zhong” lable is tkk company lable,it

means our overchines even in foreign country,but we also should love our mortherland

our chinese product. Tan Kah Kee & Co. had a diversity of business lines such as shipping,

food processing, soap-making, pharmacy and sawmilling as well as rubber planting,

processing and trading which constituted the main part of the company. Up to 1925, the

company had possessed 15,000 acres of rubber plantations, and rubber mills, rubber goods

factories, sawmills, pineapple canneries ---totaling over 30; it had opened over 100

branches as sales outlet all over the world, and 49 agencies in more than 40 countries

and regions in five continents. It was the biggest enterprise then in Singapore with

30,000 workers and staff, and assets up to SS＄12 million. In 1928 Tan Kah Kee called

on the Chinese in Singapore to boycott Japanese goods as a protest against Japanese

invasion of Ji’nan. The Japanese hired arsons to burn down Tan’s rubber goods factory

in revenge. Tan Kah Kee wrote about it in his letter to Ye Yuan. Tan Kah Kee & Co. was

forced to be transformed into a private liability company, Tan Kah Kee & Co. Ltd., in

1931 because it was heavily indebted to banks.Tan disagreed with the board of directors