187410 June 2 1 day, Chen Jiageng was born in Jimei Village, Tongan County, Fujian Province. Because of the constant war, many people go to Nanyang to make a living, and it has become a famous hometown of overseas Chinese. Chen Jiageng's family is also an overseas Chinese family. When he was born, his father was in Singapore, running a rice shop and a small factory. It was his mother who raised him since he was a child. Southern Fujian once had a glorious history. From national hero Zheng Chenggong to Lin Zexu in Humen Opium War, these stories left a very profound influence on Xiao Jiageng's mind. In Jimei Village, there are also Zheng Chenggong's "Country Name Village" and "Country Name Well". According to the legend of the older generation, Chen Jiageng admired these patriotic heroes from an early age. The corruption and incompetence of the Qing government made him eager to serve the motherland as soon as possible. 1890, Chen Jiageng 17 years old. His father asked him to come to Singapore to see the world, so he left his hometown and his mother and went to Nanyang alone. Although the prosperity of the city was a temptation, he remained unmoved, stayed in the shop honestly, studied management with his old buddy, and soon became his father's right-hand man. 1898, mother died of illness. Hearing the bad news, Chen Jiageng immediately went back to his hometown to bury his mother. Before leaving, he will manage his Chen Jiageng-related works.
The account was handed over to his uncle. At that time, my father's various operations were very smooth, with assets of about 350,000 yuan. However, when Chen Jiageng returned to Singapore after mourning for her mother for three years, she found that the once prosperous rice shop had been left out in the cold, and the debt had reached more than 300,000 yuan. It turned out that my father's aunt and son were profligate when Chen Jiageng was away, which led to heavy debts and was on the verge of bankruptcy. According to Singapore law, my son doesn't have to pay his father's debts. Besides, Chen Jiageng is penniless. How should he repay it? But deeply educated by Confucianism, he resolutely assumed the debt and inherited this mess. He was less than 365,438+0 years old at that time. Since then, this outstanding entrepreneur has started his own independent entrepreneurial journey.
2, pineapple "Sultan", rubber king
The journey of starting a business alone is extremely difficult. Chen Jiageng has only a little money in his hand. What can be invested to succeed? After a detailed investigation, Chen Jiageng found that canned pineapples sell well, and the cycle is short, and the funds needed are not much, which is very suitable for his own situation. So he decided to set up a pineapple cannery. Insufficient funds, Chen Jiageng borrowed 7,000 yuan to build a pineapple cannery in the mountainous area of Danshui Port, which is 0/0 mile away from downtown Singapore/KLOC-0. Everything is frugal, and the borrowed 7000 yuan is finally barely enough to build a factory. Tin and sugar needed to make canned pineapples can be bought on credit from other businessmen. It's finally okay to do it. As soon as the pineapple went on the market in April, the "Xinlichuan" factory in Chen Jiageng started production. In order to win the competition, Chen Jiageng named his trademark of canned pineapple "Sultan", which means the king of canned pineapple. Under the careful management of Chen Jiageng, the cannery is doing well and its sales are considerable. As a result, the net profit at the end of the month was more than 9000 yuan. Not only has the investment of the factory been fully recovered, but there is also a surplus, and the economic benefits are really amazing. Chen Jiageng, who came out of despair, won the first battle. Based on "Xinlichuan", he operated his father's enterprise and the Xinyue Pineapple Factory, which was a partnership with others, and then opened Qian Yi Rice, which was also used as the business organ of the cannery. With the growing canned pineapple business, the demand for pineapple raw materials is also increasing. In order to solve this problem, Chen Jiageng bought a clearing near Xinlichuan to grow pineapples, and named it Fushan Garden. In fact, this planting area is indeed a blessed land, and later became the largest pineapple plantation in the area. The road to entrepreneurship is not always smooth. At the same time, the pineapple business is developing smoothly. 1906 Summer, the canned pineapple market plummeted, and Chen Jiageng managed to keep the profit of 1 10,000 yuan. This blow made him realize that shopping malls, like battlefields, can't adapt to the rapid changes in the market by dealing in only one product. He must find a new project. By chance, Chen Jiageng learned that a rubber merchant had sold his rubber plantation at a high price. He immediately realized that this was an opportunity, so he quickly contacted the businessman and bought 6.5438+0.8 million rubber seeds from him. At that time, because of the sluggish pineapple business, many people sold their pineapple orchards. Chen Jiageng took this opportunity to buy a large piece of land and become his future rubber plantation. By 19 13, Chen Jiageng's pineapple production has accounted for more than half of the whole Singapore, ranking first and becoming the sultan of the industry. This year, he has been an overseas Chinese entrepreneur, with two rubber plantations, four pineapple canneries, a rice mill and a rice shop, fixed assets and a net profit of 400,000 to 500,000 yuan. However, the market is changeable. 19 14 autumn, the peak season of canned pineapple production came, and World War I broke out, and European countries restricted the import of canned pineapple. Therefore, foreign companies stopped buying. Chen Jiageng's pineapple cannery was hit hard, and tens of thousands of boxes of products could not be sold. Not only that, the war also put Chen Jiageng's rice industry in trouble, especially after many merchant ships were attacked by German warships in the East Indian Ocean, the already tense shipping almost stopped. There are more than 10000 bales of rice in the warehouse of Chen Jiageng Rice Factory. The direct consequence of the backlog of products is that the capital turnover is difficult, the factory rent cannot be repaid after the deadline, and the workers' living expenses cannot be defaulted. Chen Jiageng has fallen into the situation of "drag out an ignoble existence and live like a year". In the winter of 19 14, Chen Jiageng finally sold all the goods. At this time, he decided to run the shipping industry immediately. First, he rented two ships, Wantong (1.300 tons) and Wanda (2,500 tons), and shipped the cooked rice in great demand to India for sale. Soon, due to the expansion of the market, he added two more ships to undertake the goods of the British government. He sized up the situation, changed his business strategy in time and won considerable profits. Just one year later, it made a profit of more than 200,000. After that, I bought a batch of ships, but I didn't manage them myself, but rented them to the French government, which saved trouble, avoided risks and made quick profits. 19 16, Chen Jiageng made another epoch-making move. At that time, European countries were fighting on their own, which provided a rare opportunity for the American economy to take off. The rapid development of American industry stimulated the demand for rubber products, promoted the development of Malaya rubber industry, and became the pillar industry with the largest output in the world. Malaya has become the "rubber kingdom" of the world. Chen Jiageng's previous investment finally paid off, and he was recognized as one of the "Four Heroes of Malaya Rubber Kingdom" and went down in history. In the next two years, Chen Jiageng gradually shifted his attention to the rubber industry. He successively changed the pineapple cannery and Hengmei cooked rice factory in Tutouqiao into "Qian Yi" rubber factory and autocratic adhesive tape, realizing the leap of rubber management from single agricultural planting to industrial manufacturing. Then, he managed to get in touch with the American Rubber Industry Association, put an advertisement in the United States, and sold most of the products of the "Qian Yi" rubber factory directly to the United States. In this way, he achieved the second leap: he integrated the management of rubber industry, agriculture and commerce, and created a precedent for overseas Chinese to trade directly with foreign businessmen without going through foreign firms in Singapore for a hundred years under British rule. Throughout the First World War, Chen Jiageng not only suffered no losses, but also was safe and sound. Relying on rice, gum, shipping and selling iron sheets accumulated by pineapple cannery, Chen Jiageng earned more than 4.5 million yuan, and its real assets were 4.3 million yuan after deducting various expenses. As a result, he soon became one of the richest people in Singapore and a famous entrepreneur and overseas Chinese tycoon in Singapore.
3. Spend all your money and train talents.
After World War I, Chen Jiageng realized that shipping was dangerous and temporary, so he didn't continue. He began to expand his rubber kingdom. 19 19, with the wide application of rubber products, British investors rushed to Malaya to seize the market, and powerful overseas Chinese businessmen and small garden owners also switched to rubber plantations or set up small rubber factories, and the competition became increasingly fierce. Facing the challenge, Chen Jiageng adjusted itself and achieved the third leap: expanding the scale of "Qian Yi" rubber factory, changing the rubber rough processing factory into a deep processing rubber cooked product factory; Withdraw from the three rubber companies that invested 500,000 shares two years ago; Chen Jiageng Company was established, and Qian Yi was listed as a rubber company. During the period of 1922, due to excessive free competition of capitalism and market depression, rubber prices fell for three consecutive years, and many small-scale rubber plantations and rubber factories were forced to stop production. At this time, Chen Jiageng Company was full of energy, and he concluded that the rubber industry was a new industry, and the good days were still ahead. After visiting all parts of Malaya, Chen Jiageng bought nine rubber factories at once. 10 set up more than10 rubber branches in Malaya and Indonesia in 1924, and later set up branches, branches or offices in other places. The purpose is to expand product sales and raw material sources and reduce losses caused by intermediate links. In order to raise the price of rubber in the international market this year and monopolize profits from it, the British government implemented a plan to limit the production of rubber in Singapore and Malaya, and achieved some results in the second year. Coupled with the impact of the rapid development of the American automobile industry, the price of rubber has risen sharply. This year is the peak of rubber industry in Chen Jiageng. In the report of the British Minister's inspection of Singaporean industry, he also mentioned that Chen Jiageng's companies are "the largest enterprises in Asia". At the same time, Chen Jiageng has not forgotten his hometown-Jimei, Fujian. He believes that the purpose of revitalizing industry and commerce is to serve the country, but the key to serving the country is to advocate education, so he "aims at the economic benefits gained in his life and generously runs education." 1893, 20 years old, founded "Qi-lifting Science Book" in his hometown. Jimei Primary School was founded in 19 13. Later, together with his younger brother, Mr. Chen Jingxian, he raised funds while running a school, and the scale of running a school continued to expand. He founded Jimei School and Xiamen University successively in his hometown, including kindergartens, primary schools, middle schools, normal schools, aquatic products, navigation, commerce, agriculture and forestry, Jimei light industry and other schools. Subsidize more than 20 schools in 20 counties and cities in southern Fujian 1 10; He also initiated and sponsored many schools, such as Daonan Primary School, Aitong Primary School, Chongfu Primary School, Nanqiao Middle School and Nanqiao Normal School. He spends more than 1 billion dollars on education, which is almost equivalent to all his family wealth. People affectionately call Mr. Chen Jiageng "the headmaster". Some people say that running so many schools in Chen Jiageng is nothing more than improving their reputation, but running schools in Chen Jiageng is not like this. He didn't regard it as a kind of capital, on the contrary, he made great sacrifices for it. Since 1926, Chen Jiageng has made a lot of efforts to keep the funds of Jimei School and Xiamen University uninterrupted. When funds were scarce, he even sold the rubber plantation at a low price. 1929 10, the capitalist world economic crisis broke out. The biggest exports of Singapore and Malaya are rubber and tin, and the biggest buyers are the United States. The depression in the United States led to the Great Depression of the rubber and tin industries in Singapore and Malaysia. However, Chen Jiageng has provided 900,000 yuan for schools in Jimei and Xiamen University. At that time, Chen Jiageng Company owed the bank nearly 4 million yuan. The company's assets are only over 2 million, and it is insolvent. The creditor bank headed by HSBC asked Chen Jiageng to stop supporting Jimei Xiamen University, but Chen Jiageng flatly refused. He thought he couldn't and shouldn't give up his obligations, so the school held a memorial service for Chen Jiageng.
If you come, you must maintain it. Once the door is closed, there is no hope of recovery. If the school is closed, it will not only delay the future of young people, but also have a bad influence on society, and it is a great sin. If starting a business fails because of the financial burden of Xia Ji's schools, it will be a personal career. 1932, the enterprise founded by Chen Jiageng finally closed down. Although his career ended, Chen Jiageng never regretted it, because he successfully founded many schools, especially Xiamen University and Jimei School. 196 1 02 August 12, this great entrepreneur and educator died in Beijing. On his deathbed, he was still eagerly looking forward to the return of Taiwan Province Province to the motherland, and entrusted him to "run Jimei School well" and hand over all his 3 million yuan legacy to the country. In order to thank him for his immortal contribution to the country for so many years, the people of China held a state funeral for him, and the coffin was transported back to Jimei and buried in his hometown to comfort this once brilliant and selfless patriotic overseas Chinese.
5, a simple life, public and forget private.
Mr. Jia Geng was frugal all his life and never boasted, but he did not hesitate to invest in running a school. According to the statistics of relevant personnel, calculated by the exchange rate between RMB and gold in 198 1 year, Chen Lao donated more than 1 billion dollars to run schools in his life. In Chen Jiageng's former residence, mosquito nets, bedding, clothes, hats, shoes and other things on display are worn and old-fashioned. A broken teacup is upside down, with candles in the bottom. It is a candle tray designed by himself. His family is rich, but for his own family affairs, he is "seeking for lack and not seeking perfection." The school building and his residence were bombed by Japanese planes. However, between the school building and the house, he insisted on building the school building first, and said: "If the school building is not restored first, it will inevitably violate the training ear of worrying and enjoying the world first!" After his death, there were more than 3 million yuan in domestic deposits, but according to the will, there was no money left for future generations. On this issue, he said: "Who doesn't love his son, only moral love, not excessive money, can be called moral love. Moreover, being smart and having more money will damage his ambition, while being stupid and having more money will benefit him. " [7]
6. Don't forget the lettering of Unity and Aoyuan.
In his later years, Chen Jiageng was preoccupied with national reunification and Taiwan Province's return! 1950 Established the Olympic Park in Jimei School Village. In the middle of the "natural history view" of the Olympic Garden, please ask the masons to burn five maps. The top one is a map of the world, and the following four maps are tied together, namely, a map of People's Republic of China (PRC), a map of Fujian Province, a map of Taiwan Province Province and a map of Tongan County. The personal history of Taiwan Province Province is engraved on the map. The first sentence of A Brief History of Taiwan Province Province written by Mr. Chen Jiageng reads: "Taiwan Province Province is a big island in the southeast of China". After the Korean War broke out, the US Seventh Fleet entered the Taiwan Province Strait, obstructing the cause of China's people's reunification. In response to the American invasion,1On July 4th, 950, Chen Jiageng made a speech through Fujian Daily, clearly pointing out that Taiwan Province Province is the territory of China, and no foreign interference is allowed. Since then, he has made a series of talks and statements to reporters and delivered a speech to meet overseas Chinese. It has repeatedly stated that Taiwan Province Province is the territory of China and will never allow foreign occupation or interference, and called on overseas Chinese to contribute to the reunification of the motherland in Taiwan Province Province. Reunification of the motherland is the first important event in Chen Jiageng's will, and his last words are "Taiwan Province Province must belong to China". He believes that his wish will come true, and it will certainly come true. This is also the most important reason why Mr. Chen Jiageng carved "the map of the whole Taiwan province" on the burnt-out map of "Olympic Garden". 1990 March 1 1 day, the International Asteroid Center and the Asteroid Nomenclature Committee named 1964 the No.2963 asteroid discovered by the Purple Mountain Observatory of China Academy of Sciences as "Tan Kah Kee Star" in recognition of Chen Jiageng's outstanding contribution to education.
* Public-endless dedication
* Loyalty-unshakable patriotism
* Yi-a powerful national glory that never gives up-Chen Jiageng
* Honesty-Never destroy the pride of commitment.
I am particularly impressed by yearning for being light on money, heavy on obligation, honest, kind, loving my hometown and patriotism, but I am ashamed that I have not done any of them. I am deeply willing to encourage the people.