The Mystery and Mastery of Tan Yeok Nee (Part 1)

Introduction: The Life and Times of Tan Yeok Nee

Tan Yeok Nee is a towering figure in the history of 19th-century Johor and Singapore. He started out as a youthful immigrant from China, enduring indentured labour on his arrival in Pahang. He eventually became one of the most powerful men in Johor and Singapore during the 1860s-1880s. Today he has streets named after him in Johor Bahru and buildings that bear his name in Singapore. More fundamentally, however, we see everyday the successful economies of Johor and Singapore and the ever improving livelihoods of their inhabitants. Although he played a major, and foundational, role in creating this phenomenon, relatively little is known about him.

This is the first post I have published in some months in the on-going story about the writing of Palace of Ghosts. The reason for the break is that when I first had the idea to include a post on Tan Yeok Nee, who is an important yet secondary character in Palace of Ghosts, I imagined that the usual two or three weeks it takes me to properly research and write a post would suffice. This was not to be the case. Of course, the part of Palace of Ghosts where Tan appears and plays a direct role in the story was well known to me. However the deeper I subsequently dug while researching who he was and what was his story, the more I became apprehensive about what I was taking on in presenting a potted bio of his life and times. The short couple of postings I had originally envisaged will now stretch to multiple posts. Moreover, as time went by I became a little more haunted by the idiom of not knowing what I don't know. This feeling emerged as I realised there was much that I, and many other commentors who had already written short articles and blogs about Tan, had not understood, nor had failed to join the dots between several different and intriguing aspects of his life and career. This series of blog posts will, I hope, contribute to a greater understanding of Tan Yeok Nee and his contribution to the region's development.

The only known photograph of Tan Yeok Nee, thought to have been taken c. 1894 when in his late 60s. The photograph has been edited, retouched and colourised many times, and so there a many versions of it floating around, but this was how the orginal image looked.

When a penniless seventeen-year-old migrant from the Chao'an region in China’s southern Guangdong province arrived in Southeast Asia he could not have had any inkling of the fabulous wealth ahead of him. He was one of many Chinese immigrants who identified themselves as “Teochew”. He faced a life of uncertainty with bleak prospects, but within a couple of decades, he had risen spectacularly within the elite circles of Malay social hierarchy, fraternizing with royalty. His status would be eventually even acknowledged a world away by the Chinese Empress Dowager Cixi. He became known in Singapore, Johor, and the region as Tan Yeok Nee (sometimes also as Tan Hiok Nee or Tan Yiok Nee) and remained known by that name throughout Southeast Asia right up to the present day, but he was born as Chen Yuyi and is now known in China as Chen Xunian.

Tan Yeok Nee makes a deceptively brief appearance in Chapter 5 of Palace of Ghosts, but his influence on subsequent events is unsurpassed and enduring. On one level, he was typical of the many 19th-century Chinese immigrants to what they called Nanyang (i.e. the coastlines around the South China Sea and Southeast Asia). They scoured the region in the hope they may stumble upon some way to eke out a living, a way to scratch together some kind of livelihood, something that would be better than the desperate situation in China from which they had escaped. Many arrived as indentured labour. Their survival stories, determination, and hard work against all odds are the bedrock of the Singapore success story. There are many examples of this original 19th-century pioneering spirit in the region and, as such, Tan’s life story may be considered a microcosm of the 19th-century development of Singapore and Johor.

On another level, however, Tan sits in a class of its own. He stands out because he not only survived and prospered but rose to become one of the most powerful individuals in 19th-century Southeast Asia. He was unique in his incredible ascent as a non-Malay, within Johor’s governing Malay hierarchy. He was responsible for the stupendous wealth that was generated from the previously unpenetrated jungle and swampy coastline that constituted Johor in the mid 19th century. Tan’s efforts underpinned the economic rise of the state of Johor. It provided, inadvertently, Singapore with a much-needed economic hinterland and therefore significantly contributed to its success too. The resulting economic boom placed the future Sultans of Johor among some of the richest people on earth at the time, and established Singapore as a preminent global port city in the modern era. 

Simply put, this particular wandering migrant turned out to be a genius. He was a very private individual and one of superior intellect and high energy. His instincts for survival were quickly honed into razor sharp business acumen and commercial insight. In partnership with Abu Bakar–who ultimately became the first Sultan of Johor–he created a new and thriving economy out of nothing. However, the mystery that continues to puzzle historians to this day is what happened to him. Many commentaries appear satisfied to assign the final decades of his life to a vague story about him becoming dissatisfied with the noise from the construction site next to his Singapore home and so returned to China where he died. However, there is much more to the story than this. A hidden chapter to his life lies among today’s back alleys of his Chao’an hometown, a village called Jinsha. It not only adds additional perspective to the circumstances of his “retirement,” but also potentially adds some clarification to previously unexplained episodes from earlier in his life, and by extension also provides insight into certain episodes of the history of Singapore and Johor. In particular, it sheds light on one of the greatest and most significant chapters of the commercial and economic history of Singapore, Johor, and the region during the 1870s: the formation of the Great Opium Syndicate.  

A plaque displayed outside Tan’s former home in Singapore, now known as The House of Tan Yeok Nee, refers to him, its builder, as a “successful gambier and pepper planter in Johor.” On its Infopedia website, the Singapore’s National Library Board tells us that Tan was an “influential Teochew businessman,” adding that he was involved in “opium and spirit farming” without elaborating further. However, he was far more than that. The beautiful House of Tan Yeok Nee is recognizable by its distinctive southern Chinese architectural style. Many passers-by are familiar with the bright yellow painted building but few know much, if anything, about its creator and original resident.

The building certainly stands out as it is the only traditional Teochew courtyard style home still standing in Singapore. Its impressive façade, surrounded by Singapore’s signature glass, steel, and concrete tributes to modernity, overlooks the corner of the busy thoroughfares of Clemenceau Avenue and Penang Road. In the past, it was clearly visible from and, at a slightly higher elevation, even loomed over the grand entrance to The Istana, formerly the residence of Singapore’s Governors just 100 metres away (now the office of the President of The Republic of Singapore). It appears as a sentinel, almost as if its presence was a constant reminder to the British who passed through the gates of Government House of where the real source of local influence and wealth in the region resided. Constructed between 1882 and 1885, the House of Tan Yeok Nee is a National Monument, gazetted as such about half a century ago in 1974.

Palace of Ghosts is an untold story of Singapore’s history told through the lens of a hidden royal palace and the people and events connected to it, the most important of which were Sultan Abu Bakar of Johor and his son Sultan Ibrahim. Tan Yeok Nee is only indirectly connected to the palace. Therefore, with the exception of where he does directly and meaningfully interact with the main characters, much of his own story falls outside the scope of my book. However, he remains a dominant figure of influence and power in the context of the events that are described in Palace of Ghosts, especially those that are linked to the economic and commercial currents of development that made the main characters in the book fabulously wealthy: therein lies the link. However, the story of Tan Yeok Nee is fascinating and significant in its own right. This, and subsequent posts, constitute a multi-part mini-series on the life and times of Tan Yeok Nee who, despite playing such a crucial role in transforming the economic fortunes of the Southeast Asian region in the second half of the 19th century, is now largely forgotten.

Part 2 dives into the world Tan encountered on arriving in Southeast Asia.