Wee Bin
Chinese businessman
Wee Bin (Chinese: 黃敏; pinyin: Huáng Mǐn; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Ûiⁿ Bín) born in China in about 1823, was a Chinese migrant of the mid-nineteenth century who founded what was, at the time, Singapore's largest Chinese shipping firm.
Career
At the age of thirty-three, Wee founded Wee Bin & Co., under the chop Hong Guan, in 1856. The firm was based in Market Street, and became prominent in the 1860s. Wee ran the firm according to Western business practices.
Wee, through his firm, carried on business as merchants and shipowners. At first, he began business relations with various trading houses in Bali (then part of the Dutch Indies), and eventually became the greatest importer of products from that port. Wee also traded in all kinds of earthenware, and later on built up a fleet of over twenty vessels for the Chinese and Dutch Indies trade.
With increasing interest in the tin mining industry and the need for more and more people to work the mines, Wee was also responsible for carrying migrant workers from China to work in the Straits Settlements.
Personal life
Wee married the daughter of Kiong Kong Tuan. He died in 1868 at the age of 45, leaving a son, Wee Boon Teck, and a daughter.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wee Bin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.