John Lee Lum

For John Lee Lum, for Shim Gott (father of William H Scott), for Leon Marlay, George Marfoe, Edward Marchack — and others who prospered in their adopted country — the main reason for leaving the land of their birth was the intermittent quasi-civil wars, rebellions and riots that broke out with monotonous regularity as the Chinese Empire tottered on the brink of disaster.

Yet, on the whole, the immigrants never lost their identity as Chinese, speaking Chinese at home and in the Associations, writing to relatives and friends still in China to find Chinese ‘picture’ wives for their sons (one hopes when they arrived the brides were as young and pretty as they looked in their photographs).

Most Chinese immigrants in Trinidad learned to adapt to their new home by cutting off their distinctive pigtails, wearing Western clothes, adopting Western names, speaking, reading and writing English; many, if not most, converted to Christianity. In a kind of cultural exchange, Trinidadians acquired a taste for Chinese food and, like duck to water, took to “Whe Whe” which is a version of a Chinese gambling game.

Education was always of great importance to the Chinese community; last week we noted how the Associations helped to finance children’s education at prestige schools in Port-of-Spain and San Fernando; those who could afford to do so often sent their children back to China (or Hong Kong) for part of their education.

Chinese children born in Trinidad found their families had two allegiances: to Trinidad — and to China. In time the Chinese community formed two distinct groups… those who cherished the Chinese tradition, spoke Chinese, kept in close contact with China, and those who, apart from certain physical characteristics, were part of the Western world mixed freely with the rest of the community, were accepted in white society and married outside the Chinese community.

However, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Though comparatively few in number, the Chinese very soon (as early as 1910, or thereabouts) became respected and valued members of society in TT. The extraordinary career of John Lee Lum is, perhaps, the best example of the Chinese meteoric rise from workers to businessmen to entrepreneurs to leaders in society.

John Lee Lum was born in 1842 in Hsunhui, Guangdong Province in S E China, about 100 miles from Guangzhou (Canton). He married, had two children: Edwin, and a daughter. In 1870, aged 28 he left his wife and children to cross the Pacific to work in the Californian goldfields. We don’t know how long he stayed in that poorly paid job. We know he went to work as a labourer on the Trans-Pacific railway in Canada. From there he went to Brazil, then on to British Guiana.

Ten years after he left China a friend, Kong Lee, invited him to Trinidad to help manage a general store on the corner of Queen and Charlotte Street.

Five years later, in 1885, John Lee Lum went into business on his own, opening a grocery store at 31 Charlotte Street. Meantime, having made enough money to retire, Kong Lee returned to China leaving the grocery business to Lee Lum. Those grocery stores were the foundation of his fortunes.

He saw the need for grocery stores in small villages across Trinidad. He opened a chain of 20 grocery/general stores in (among other remote — at that time — communities) Arouca, Brasso, Cedros, Fyzabad, Guayaguayare, La Brea, Moruga. These stores sold agricultural equipment, medicine and goods imported by Lee Lum himself direct from the Far East as well as groceries.

A prime example of John Lee Lum’s original approach to business is the fact, hard as it is to believe today, that he issued his own coins, minted in Birmingham, UK, for use in his stores. In those days estate owners and mangers paid their workers with IOUs instead of cash because, although the estates had to pay workers and buy agricultural equipment etc. right through the year, there were no funds, no cash money to pay for wages and goods until the crops were sold. Many an estate survived on credit from one year’s end to the next.

When the workers presented their IOUs to Lee Lum’s stores they couldn’t get change in cash because the store manager had to hold the IOUs until crop time to get paid. The accounting for IOUs soon became a nightmare of slips of paper notes on who had how much credit still remaining from how many of the original notes. Lee Lum’s token coins, between 1 and 24 cents in value, solved the problem; workers were given ‘change’ in tokens to spend the next time they came to the stores. The coins were square and, like the Chinese coins “cash” had a hole in the middle so that they could be strung together as a string of cash (maybe readers already know the Chinese coined to the word ‘cash’? If so I apologise).

John Lee Lum’s token coins, were in circulation (in his stores only, of course) from 1890 to 1906 — according to Dr Look Lai — Trevor Millette, in his book The Chinese in Trinidad states they stayed in circulation until 1920. Are there, I wonder, any Lee Lum coins in the Central Bank Museum?

Lee Lum still had to wait for crop time to cash in the IOUs; however, his business interests prospered so much that he was able to extend credit to the estate owners themselves. When notes fell due and, as sometimes happened, the owner couldn’t pay off the debt, the estate reverted to John Lee Lum who, over time, acquired a considerable amount of property in Trinidad.

By 1910 John Lee Lum had sold most of his retail outlets to spend more time on his cocoa and coconut estates, on real estate and his profitable import-export business — it’s probably about this time that he became a member of the exclusive and influential West India Committee. True to the Association tradition of helping others, he sold the small village stores — on the instalment plan — to the store managers who, in all probability, had, like himself, come here from China to better themselves.

From 1893 to 1895 John Lee Lum, the Chinese wife he married in Trinidad and their children, Aldric, Oliver, Ronald, Inez and Gladys, lived in Hong Kong. When the family returned to Trinidad John Lee Lum became a pioneer in the fledgling oil business.

Ever since 1893 Randolph Thomas Hammond Rust “the father of the oil industry in TT” had been drilling for oil in the La Brea area — without success. While walking through the forest on a tour of inspection of his property in Guayaguayare John Lee Lum found seepage of petroleum, he collected a sample and took it to Rust.

It should surprise no one to learn that Lee Lum knew he had found evidence of oil because the Chinese had been drilling for gas and oil — using bits attached to bamboo poles — since the Fourth Century (readers who doubt this can check with petroleum sites on Google). Together Rust and Lee Lum set up the Guayaguyare Oil Company, but luck was not with them.

It’s said that Lee Lum spent a small fortune financing Rust’s attempts to find oil. It was the Canadian Oil Company who took over the finances when Lee Lum quitted the business before Rust (who eventually drilled the first successful well in Guaya). Nevertheless, Rust declared that he never had a better friend than John Lee Lum. Indeed, John Lee Lum was the friend and patron of many besides Rust. He helped fellow Chinese to start their own businesses, gave liberally to charity.

He spent his last years in Hong Kong where he died in 1917 and lies buried in the Christian cemetery there. His lasting epitaph published in the West India Chronicle described John Lee Lum as “one of the most patriotic and public spirited men” in Trinidad.

Next week: The Chinese in the professions, art and politics.