For more than a hundred years, Hu Wenhu was an argumentative figure.
The bumpy history of Hu Wenhu and the Tiger and Leopard Family has a profound imprint of the times, and they do not have to make too many super-contemporary requirements; however, solving the mystery of the rise and fall of the Hu Wen Tiger and Panther Family can still provide us with useful enlightenment.
Hu Wenhu, originally from Zhongkeng Village, Yongding, Fujian Province, was born in 1882 in Yangon, Burma, a Hakka family.
It is estimated that the expenditure of the Hu surname into Burma by China coincided with the second climax of the Sino-British invasion of Hainan in the mid-19th century, before and after the Opium War between China and Britain, about a hundred years ago.
Hu Wenhu's father, Hu Ziqin, is generally said to have migrated to Yangon from China in his early years, but no one knows when he came, nor does anyone know whether he had relatives living in Myanmar before.
After the deaths of Hu Ziqin and Hu Wenhu, this problem has always been a mystery, and I am afraid that no one in the world and in the future will solve it again.
Hu Ziqin is a Traditional Chinese medicine practitioner who also runs a "Yong An Tang" Chinese medicine shop. Similarly, no one knows whether this medicine shop was founded by Hu Ziqin, inherited from his ancestors, or inherited from others.
The business of the "Yong'an Tang" medicine shop is still quite prosperous, and judging from its name, as the name suggests, Mr. Hu Lao, like many overseas Chinese in that era, never forgot his hometown in Yongding.
In 1907, Hu Ziqin died of illness, and the Yong'an Hall left behind was jointly inherited by two brothers, Wen Hu and Wen Bao. He originally had three sons, the eldest son Wenlong unfortunately died, the second son Wenhu was sent back to his hometown of Yongding in China to study when he was ten years old, and the third son, Wen Bao, studied foreign language at the Yangon British School to cope with the local environment.
At that time, overseas Chinese were relatively conservative, and their children were mostly educated in Chinese, at least to be sent back to China to study at university. After returning to Nanyang, these second-generation overseas Chinese who have been baptized by Chinese culture are by no means inferior to their grandparents and fathers, can also bear hardships and stand hard work, know how to work together to overcome the environment, and because they are good at absorbing new knowledge and new things, their vision is wider, so they are more capable.
This generation of overseas Chinese is no longer a coolie, on the contrary, they rely on their own struggles, and each of them has gathered a considerable amount of wealth, but this does not mean that they will get rid of the disaster and swim to the land of wealth and nobility.
They experienced more brutal oppression than the coolies they had been treated, especially when the Imperial Japanese Army marched south into Southeast Asia.
For example, after the occupation of Singapore, the people were forced to pay 50 million yuan at a time to "pay money", and if they refused to complain, they were stabbed and shot, and many people were slaughtered by 50,000 or 60,000 people at a time, and singapore's waterfront park still stands a monument reflecting this historical suffering.
Hu Wenhu was spared at that time, and he was trusted to flee in time.
However, yu Dafu, the editor of his Sin Chew Daily supplement, did not escape the disaster and was captured and killed by the Japanese army on an island in Indonesia.
Due to their lack of knowledge of Qi Huang, after the two brothers inherited the Yong'an Hall, they could not hang the pot like their father, and could only cooperate in the medicinal materials business. At that time, the business of Chinese medicine stores was better than now, but the market was still limited, so at the same time, it was necessary to engage in wholesale business.
Wen Bao sits in Yangon, and Wen Hu travels to Singapore, Malaysia, Siam, Hong Kong, China, and even Japan.
When Hu Wenhu was twenty-four years old, in 1904, he married his original wife, Hu Guoshi, in Penang, a west coast of Malaysia near Yangon, known as the "Oriental Garden".
Later, Wen Hu moved to Singapore and started the golden oil business on which he became famous.
Hu Wenhu may have been interested in running a newspaper very early, but he officially ran a newspaper quite late. There are many rumors in this regard, but most of them do not stand up to scrutiny.
Some people say that Hu Wenhu Newspaper was founded in Yangon City, Myanmar, and I don't know where to start. Hu Wenhu never went to Yangon for a long period of time. This may be related to rumors that he was deported by Myanmar authorities that year.
Because he lived a little longer than he is now, there are more things to spread false rumors.
Another theory is that in 1925, Hu Wenhu co-founded the "Yangon Daily" in Yangon, and The Hu family accounted for most of the capital. This is not necessarily true either.
Because according to the author, Yangon Daily is a newspaper run by Fujian people and has always had nothing to do with Yong'an Hall.
Hu Wenhu's own newspapers are crowned with the word "xing", and if Yangon Daily is his office, it should be called "Xingguang Daily" or "Xingmian Daily".
In addition, Hu Wenhu is a very strong personality, and he has never run any business with anyone in his life.
Hu Wenhu developed in Singapore, and the first newspaper to be founded was also in Singapore, that is, the "Sin Chew Daily" founded in 1929. This was carried out shortly after Chen Jiageng founded the Nanyang Shangbao in 1923, and it was another position of confrontation between Hu and Chen.
The establishment of Hu Wenhu Sin Chew Daily was influenced by Chen Jiageng's founding of Nanyang Shang Bao, and this is absolutely true.
Overseas Chinese newspapers in Singapore and Malaysia have a very long history, and some say that they started earlier than Chinese newspapers. Malacca's "Monthly Statistics biography of the World" (founded in 1823) and "Tianxia News" (founded in 1828), and Singapore's "Monthly Statistical Biography of the Eastern and Western Examinations" (founded in 1833), although they can not be regarded as official newspapers, but can only be regarded as the prototype of newspapers.
As for Singapore's "Rak Pao" (1881), "Star" (1890), "Tin Nam Shin Pao", and Malaya Penang "Penang New Pao" (1896), although from the modern point of view, their form and content are very old, but they are really real newspapers, and they have a lifespan of more than a hundred years.
In the past hundred years and more, due to China's defeat in the Sino-British Opium War, foreign insults have come to an end, and the country is Japanese and African, although overseas Chinese were called recalcitrant people outside the territory during the Manchu Qing government era, the kangliang reform law caused by the idea of loyalty, patriotism, restoration, and reform of the law among the qing people who were exiled to Nanyang, and sun Yat-sen's subsequent expulsion of the Tartars and the advocacy of the national revolutionary movement, have all set off an uproar in the overseas Chinese society in Nanyang. Newspapers became popular for a while, and most of them focused on advocating politics.
Most political newspapers are short-lived, weak in their succession, and even short-lived.
The emergence of purely commercial newspapers, the first is the Singapore business magnate rubber king Tan Kah Keung founded in 1923 "Nanyang Shang Bao".
This was founded by Chen's business from rice shops, pineapple canning factories, land, real estate, etc. to the planting and processing of pineapples and rubber at the need of sales.
Although at first it was ugly, shoddily made, and ridiculously naïve, and hardly resembled a newspaper, but because it was well-funded and had no competitors at the time, such a naïve commercial newspaper actually flourished and developed into a newspaper that held the local overseas Chinese newspaper.
The success of the ShangBao was not a big stimulus for Hu Wenhu, but at least a big revelation: Since Chen Jiageng could use the newspaper to sell his "Chen Jiageng shoes", why couldn't Yong'an Tang also run a newspaper to sell Tiger Label Panjin Oil?
So, in May 1929, Hu Wenhu solely founded his first galaxy newspaper, "Sin Chew Daily".
The book "Biography of Hong Kong's Billionaires" said of Hu Wenhu: "He has no higher education, has never considered himself an intellectual, and the newspaper he runs rarely advocates or advocates any political ideas." ”
So, why is Hu's keen to run a newspaper? Hu Wenhu said: "... In order to promote the golden oil, instead of spending money on advertising, why not run your own newspaper?" Therefore, although he ran so many newspapers, he never knew that he was a real newspaperman.
Running a newspaper is also like Yong'an Tang, only know how to use Hakka, preferably surnamed Hu, and it is Yongding Hakka. This is the limitation of Chinese, or it can be said that Chinese the source of cohesion.
Among Hu Wenhu's sons, only Hu Hao knew how to run newspapers and was really enthusiastic about running newspapers.
Unfortunately, Hu Hao's life was short, and he crashed in the aircraft during the inspection operation, and returned to the west before his father. Because of his enthusiasm and wit, the lightning light that appeared in Sin Chew Daily disappeared.
After Hu Wenhu's death, his heirs did not play the banner of inheriting his father's business and maintained the Yong'an Hall and wanjin oil, but the galaxy newspaper industry unexpectedly became the Hu family's first-line single-line business, which no one thought of and seemed unreasonable.
Although Hu Jiao was once successful in Singapore, he soon failed, and he was completely defeated. Hu Xian's Sing Tao newspaper in Hong Kong is a miracle that it is a miracle that it is called "probably the world's first veritable world newspaper" by the red-haired foreigners.
I'm afraid that when Hu Wenhu was alive, he didn't even dream about it, and the Hu family could run a newspaper to do this job, because he had never had such ambitions.
Sin Chew Daily was founded solely by Hu Wenhu. However, in the first year of publication, the printing plant was a part of the share capital of Chunyuan Printing House operated by Deng Lisheng to participate in the cooperation, so the initial general manager was Deng Lisheng, the chief writer was Zhu Baojun, and the editorial director was Zhou Yinong.
Less than a year later, Deng Lisheng withdrew, and Hu Wenhu rehired Lin Aimin as general manager and Fu Wuxian as editor-in-chief. Lin Fu and the two are both professional newspaper people, with ink in their chests, and their pens are very good, and they have made great contributions to Sin Chew Daily.
On the first anniversary of the first year, they printed a huge special issue of more than 600,000 words, which was a groundbreaking initiative in the history of the newspaper industry of overseas Chinese in Nanyang.
Since then, the once invincible Nanyang Shang Bao has encountered fierce enemies, such as the newborn Calf's Sin Chew Daily, and has not shown much respect for Big Brother, but is aggressive and sharp.
Because these two major newspapers have strong capital as a pillar and can recruit a considerable number of talents, in the process of continuous competition and continuous improvement, they are equal in strength and evenly matched.
It was not until after the "May Storm" in Singapore in 1971 that the two newspapers were taken over by the authorities, resulting in the merger of the two newspapers in March 1983, and the confrontation between Nanyang and Sin Chew ended in the same end.
In the Hu-Chen controversy, the Nanyang ShangBao newspaper increased its number of copies by 30,000 in one month.
However, this laid the first mine for the "May Storm" of 1971. The newly established Tiger and Leopard Brothers Co., Ltd. suddenly collapsed at this time, was picked up by a British investment company, and bought all at once, so that the lifelong career of Hu Wenhu, the "King of Ten Thousand Gold Oils" of Yong'an Hall, who was famous in Southeast Asia at that time, except for the part under the jurisdiction of Hu Xian in Hong Kong, the rest was completely defeated. Hu Qingcai, the designated heir of the "tiger", was ashamed and embarrassed, and it was difficult to face his ancestors, so he had to go far away and fly high, taking poison and committing suicide during the journey, ending his life.