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Immigrant Ong Bee Thye With His Bicycle In Kampar, (Rickshaw Puller Made Good)
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Subject :Immigrant Ong Bee Thye with his Bicycle in Kampar, (Rickshaw Puller Made Good)
Published By : None
Location : Kampar, Perak
Estimated Year : 1920
Media Type : Photograph
Source : Ong Kor Leong, Tapah
Remark : The photograph shows Ong Bee Thye in Kampar, posing with his bicycle in 1920. Ong Bee Thye was born in 1886 in a fishing village known as Khang Kow (said to mean the mouth of the river or a port), in the district of Potian in Fujian Province China. He was the sixth brother of seven boys. There may well have been baby sisters, but this was a very poor fishing family and the local tradition was that any daughters born to his mother would have been quickly taken to the beach and buried alive, (infanticide), rather than have to feed them as they grew up. Girls were not strong enough to go to sea to fish and therefore had no value to the family.
When Bee Thye was around 18 years old, he won $26 gambling with his friends and using that as the fare he caught a ship to Singapore, arriving in 1904, a penniless immigrant. Work was needed urgently and so he took the first job available as a Rickshaw Puller. Although life was tough pulling a rickshaw around Singapore, the fisherman from Potian worked long hours and saved all that he could from his wages and before too long he had enough money to move North to the boom area of the Kinta Valley and its tin.
He found his way to Tapah, but instead of joining all the coolies in the mines, he worked hard at different jobs, becoming a gun repairer for the government, moved into the bicycle trade, became a motor mechanic to repair motorcycles (and later cars) and soon became a dealer for Ford Spares as well. In parallel with his various projects, our ex Rickshaw Puller discovered that there was a government scheme where you could lease land to plant rubber and once you had earned sufficient you could then pay the government premium and own the land. This he did with great success and after paying for the land he saved to buy business premises from Harper Gilfarland. The building was a godown in Tapah, at the time used for washing and storing tin ore. The size of three shophouses, it cost 17,000 dollars when bought by Ong Bee Thye in 1917.
But the entrepreneur did not stop there! He also had his own lorry transport company, Tapah Taiping Transport, carrying goods. He was also one of a few people in Tapah to own a motor car. An Austin from England, its registration number was PK 7. Grandson Ong Kor Leong, who kindly provided the above information as well as a great selection of family photographs, still has the Calometer (today spelt calorimeter), an external radiator temperature gauge, and winding clock from the car that was given to him by his grandmother some 45 years ago.
In between all this business activity, the ex Rickshaw Puller found time to return to his village in China in 1908 marry and bring his new wife back to Tapah. She was named Tan Siew Ewe, but known by all in the family as Luc Sim Ma (sixth Grandma) as she had married the sixth son. They had three boys and three girls, but sadly Ong Bee Thye passed away in Tapah in 1922, a young man who had achieved so much in his 36 years.
Descendants of Ong Bee Thye still live in Tapah, Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh and UK and there is a lot of information about the family in this archive as for a young man to start in Singapore as a Rickshaw Puller and within such a few years set himself up as a Towkay and father of six is a very unusual story.
To see portraits of Ong Bee Thye and his Wife Tan Siew Ewe, click here.
To read more about Tan Siew Ewe, click here.
To read more about The Ong family of Tapah, click here.
To read more about the Ong family premises in Tapah, click here.
To read a brief history of the Rickshaw, click here.
When Bee Thye was around 18 years old, he won $26 gambling with his friends and using that as the fare he caught a ship to Singapore, arriving in 1904, a penniless immigrant. Work was needed urgently and so he took the first job available as a Rickshaw Puller. Although life was tough pulling a rickshaw around Singapore, the fisherman from Potian worked long hours and saved all that he could from his wages and before too long he had enough money to move North to the boom area of the Kinta Valley and its tin.
He found his way to Tapah, but instead of joining all the coolies in the mines, he worked hard at different jobs, becoming a gun repairer for the government, moved into the bicycle trade, became a motor mechanic to repair motorcycles (and later cars) and soon became a dealer for Ford Spares as well. In parallel with his various projects, our ex Rickshaw Puller discovered that there was a government scheme where you could lease land to plant rubber and once you had earned sufficient you could then pay the government premium and own the land. This he did with great success and after paying for the land he saved to buy business premises from Harper Gilfarland. The building was a godown in Tapah, at the time used for washing and storing tin ore. The size of three shophouses, it cost 17,000 dollars when bought by Ong Bee Thye in 1917.
But the entrepreneur did not stop there! He also had his own lorry transport company, Tapah Taiping Transport, carrying goods. He was also one of a few people in Tapah to own a motor car. An Austin from England, its registration number was PK 7. Grandson Ong Kor Leong, who kindly provided the above information as well as a great selection of family photographs, still has the Calometer (today spelt calorimeter), an external radiator temperature gauge, and winding clock from the car that was given to him by his grandmother some 45 years ago.
In between all this business activity, the ex Rickshaw Puller found time to return to his village in China in 1908 marry and bring his new wife back to Tapah. She was named Tan Siew Ewe, but known by all in the family as Luc Sim Ma (sixth Grandma) as she had married the sixth son. They had three boys and three girls, but sadly Ong Bee Thye passed away in Tapah in 1922, a young man who had achieved so much in his 36 years.
Descendants of Ong Bee Thye still live in Tapah, Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh and UK and there is a lot of information about the family in this archive as for a young man to start in Singapore as a Rickshaw Puller and within such a few years set himself up as a Towkay and father of six is a very unusual story.
To see portraits of Ong Bee Thye and his Wife Tan Siew Ewe, click here.
To read more about Tan Siew Ewe, click here.
To read more about The Ong family of Tapah, click here.
To read more about the Ong family premises in Tapah, click here.
To read a brief history of the Rickshaw, click here.
Filename : 20080515-001