The Lims of Ipoh and Tapah: Loan Sharks, a Girl of 15 and the Back Door to Penang
YLCO FAMILIES | PART 4 OF 10
The loan sharks wanted a girl of 15 as payment for her father's debts.
Her family slipped out the back door. More than a century later, the YLCO Gallery of Families, The Living Archive (formerly the YLCO Museum), sits in a building linked to their descendants.
If you have ever waited at a jetty in Penang, watching for a ferry, you know how long a few minutes can feel.
Now imagine waiting at a port in China, with men behind you who want to take your sister.
The YLCO Gallery's panels say that is how one of Ipoh's families came to Malaya. One panel is headed simply: "IT ALL BEGAN HERE".
So who was the girl, and what became of her family?
Hold on to that question. We will come back to it.
Previously in Part 3: we met the Chews, and Chew Boon Juan, the cook's assistant who came up the Kinta River in 1892, co-founded Ban Hoe Seng, later bought 62, 64 and 64A Belfield Street and brought his brothers with him. Today, we meet the Lims.
WHO WAS LIM SEOK TAN?
Lim Seok Tan, of Tapah, is one of the ancestors named on the YLCO Gallery's panels, which date his arrival in Malaya to 1895. A local paper names him as the brother of Lim Siew Tong, who married the Ipoh textile merchant Yeoh Khuan Joo, and as the grandfather of Dato' Lim Keng Kay and Tun Dr Lim Keng Yaik. Beside the panels hang two portraits labelled "Mr. & Mrs. Lim Seok Tan".
IT ALL BEGAN WITH A DEBT
The museum's panels tell it like this.
The loan sharks were harassing Father Lim. He owed them money, and they had named their price: his beautiful 15-year-old daughter, taken as payment for his debts.
Lim Seok Tan made what the panels call "the big decision".
"Let's escape from back door and leave China."
So they slipped out the back.
They reached the seaport, and they waited, anxiously, the panels say, to board the ship to Malaya. Think about that wait: a family on the quay, a debt behind them, a girl of 15 among them, and nothing to do but watch for the ship.
At last, they arrived safely in Penang, Malaya.
Year 1900.
WHO WAS THE GIRL?
The panels never name her. But read them in order, and they suggest who she was. On the museum's timeline of arrivals, the name beside 1900 is Lim Siew Tong.
You may notice something else on that timeline. Lim Seok Tan's own year is 1895, five years before the escape the panels date to 1900. The panels do not say how the two fit together, and we will not guess.
What the panels do say is what happened next: "In 1903, Yeoh Khuan Joo married Lim Siew Tong."
If the panels point where they seem to, the girl the loan sharks wanted as payment became, three years later, the wife of an Ipoh textile merchant, and the mother of the four sons of the "House of Four Wisdoms" we met in Part 2.
THE LIMS OF TAPAH
Her brother's line stayed close to Perak. A local paper lists two brothers among Lim Seok Tan's grandsons: Dato' Lim Keng Kay, the Ipoh industrialist known as K.K. Lim, and his younger brother, Tun Dr Lim Keng Yaik, the Perak politician who became a federal minister. Ignatius Chew, whose grandmother was Lim Siew Tong, calls Tun Dr Lim Keng Yaik "my cousin".
THE BUILDING ON JALAN LASAM
Here is where the story comes full circle.
Since 2022, the YLCO Gallery has been on the fourth floor of 1 Lasam, at No. 1, Jalan Lasam, Greentown, Ipoh. The building's own site calls it the former residence of Dato' K.K. Lim from 1975. Today it is the headquarters of Bonanza Venture Holdings (BVH), whose chairman, Dato' Lim Si Boon, is K.K. Lim's son. The Lims and the Chews were already bound together by business: in 2016, according to Ignatius Chew, only the Honda dealership subsidiary, Ban Hoe Seng (Auto), passed to Bonanza Holdings, Dato' Lim Si Boon's family company. Ban Hoe Seng Sdn Bhd itself was not acquired; it remains the Chew family's holding company.
It was Dato' Lim Si Boon who, in 2022, offered Ignatius the fourth floor for the museum, after Covid-19 had shrunk it to a small display. The museum moved out of the Chew family bungalow, which Ban Hoe Seng Sdn Bhd, the Chew family's holding company, still owns and rents to Morel Restaurant.
So the family that once fled through a back door now gives the four families a front door.
SO WHO WAS THE GIRL, AND WHAT BECAME OF HER FAMILY?
Back to our question.
The panels suggest she was Lim Siew Tong. If so, she escaped a debt in 1900, married in 1903 and became the mother of a family that would fill much of this museum.
Her brother's family grew to include a federal minister and, generations later, the man who gave the YLCO Gallery its home.
And one more thing. The panels have a line marked "Amazing Fact" about Yeoh Khuan Joo and Lim Siew Tong's descendants. We are saving it for Part 10.
THE MILLIONAIRE LESSON
As the founder of Ipoh – The City of Millionaires, here is what I want every student, parent and young entrepreneur to take from the Lims.
First lesson: a setback is not the end of your story.
A family left China by the back door. Within three years, a daughter had married in Malaya. Generations later, their descendants are on a museum wall in Ipoh.
Second lesson: make the big decision.
The panels call it exactly that. Lim Seok Tan could have stayed and hoped. He chose to leave, with everything that cost.
Third lesson: open the door for others.
The family that left by a back door now hosts the museum that welcomes everyone else. In my book, The You Economy, I wrote about how digital media was changing the way we do business. The tools change. Generosity still compounds.
Does your family have a story that began with a setback? Tell us
A debt, a back door and a ship to Penang.
Ipoh shaped their story. Whose story will Ipoh shape next?
NEXT IN YLCO FAMILIES: PART 5 OF 10, THE OHS
Next: the fourth name on the wall. Oh Cheng Keat, who arrived in Malaya in 1894, the panels say, and the family that made the YLCO Gallery's name complete.
Sources: the YLCO Gallery's story panels; a local community newspaper in Ipoh; the 1 Lasam website; the Ban Hoe Seng family blog; Ignatius Chew.
A note on sources: This story is shared to the best of our knowledge. It draws partly on family accounts, panels and recollections, which reflect the perspectives of their time and context. Dates and details may differ between sources; where they do, we have said so.
This story carries our Ipoh Connections label, for people whose stories run through Ipoh and Perak. It is part of Ipoh Stories, our City of Millionaires heritage series. At EdQuest International School in Ipoh, we believe history, character and critical thinking are best learned through real stories, including the stories of our own city.
Stories in this series are shared for informational and educational purposes. Where accounts differ, we say so. We respect all races, religions and cultures, and we do not represent or endorse any political party or movement.
