陈嘉庚
Chen Jiageng's biography
Patriot Chen Jiageng
爱国者陈嘉庚
陈嘉庚先生在抗战期间发动南洋华人华侨积极捐款,并劝说国民党与共产党联手抗日。在参观了重庆、延安等地后,他更坚定地认为共产党才是中国的希望。
▲ Chen Jiageng (C)in Chongqingactualize
Chen Jiageng became the leader of the overas Chine community in Singapore in 1932. A year after the outbreak of hostilities with Japan in 1938, he helped to organize the Federation of China Relief Funds of Southern Asia, of which he was elected chairman. He raid a substantial sum for China’s war effort.
Chen Jiageng worked to persuade the K uomintang and the Communist party to join hands in the fight against Japan. On October 28, 1938, he nt a cable to the National Political Council in which he argu
省油技巧ed against the capitulationist group headed by Wang Jingwei (then the chairman of NPC) and ca utioned that “making peace [with Japan] before the enemy has been driven from our soil is treason.” Noted political commentator Zou T aofen spoke of the message as one of “the greatest motions ever known in China.”
In 1940, Chen Jiageng personally headed a comfort mission to China, visiting Chongqing, Y an’an and other places. He became convinced that Yan’an was the future of the Chine nation and his political alliance began to shift from the KMT government to the communists.
He spent his later years participating in the reconstruction and governance of China. He returned to China to particpate in the People’s Political Consultative Conference at the invitation of Mao Zedong. He ttled down in his hometown of Jimei in 1950.
He continued to develop China’s rubber industry, reconstruct Fujian and rebuild and expand Xiamen University. Chen Jiageng pasd away on August 12, 1961, at the age of 88. He was accorded a state funeral
shakethatA Double Portion of Tan’s Spirit
Innovative education is of cour nothing new at XMU. Our university has been pioneering all elements of modern education ever since it was founded in 1921 by the “Henry Ford of Asia,” Mr. Tan Kah Kee. This famous Overas Chine patriot gave an estimated USD 100 million to educa-tion, thanks his business acumen and frugal lifestyle. But Mr. Tan left us much more than mere money.
As I teach in Organizational Behavior, organizations’ personalities often reflect tho of their founders, and XMU is certainly no exception. XMU’s 85 years of success show it has inherited a double portion of Mr. Tan’s spirit and vision for a better China, a better Asia, and a better humanity.
Our university’s founder, Mr. Tan Kah Kee (Chen Jiageng, 1874-1961), gave an estimated 100 million USD to education over his lifetime but he was born into a humble family of merchants in the village of Jimei, on the mainland across from Xiamen Island. Tan worked the fields and the fishnets until he started school at the age of nine, and in the fall of 1890 he moved to Sin gapore to help in his father’s rice shop. His father’s business went under in 1904, but the savvy son pulled together enough capital to buy 500 acres of forested land in Singapore and started a pineapple plantation.
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英语歌曲
backgrounderThe Rubber Magnate Tan rapidly expanded into rice milling, manu-facturing, sawmills, real estate, and ocean transport, but it was rubber that really stretched his fortune. He t aside a few acres of his pineapple
planta-tion and eventually had 10,000 acres of rubber trees. His expansion from rubber planting to rubber manufacturing helped create the rubber
industry and made him one of the four great Rubber Barons.
junjoy>韩语在线翻译
By the mid 1920s, the Rubber Magnate’s Singapore-bad empire em-ployed over 30,000 people, had 150 offices on 5 continents, and did business with 48 countries.
But prices plummeted after 1926 and rubber never quite bounced back. Even wor, after Mr. Tan protested Japan’s brutal “Jinan Massacre” (May 3rd, 1928), his factory was burned to the ground. Yet even as he struggled
through the Great Depression he continued to finance Jimei School, Xiamen University, and Chine and English schools in Singapore—a feat he managed in part becau of his frugality.ccl
The Frugal Philanthropist Rich philanthropists generally give but a fraction of their wealth while alive, but leave behind large foundations since the only thing they can take with them when they die is their reputation. But Mr. Tan quite literally gave like a prince while living like a pauper, subsisting on little more than rice porridge and potatoes, and using the same umbrella and battered suitcas for decades. Other rich Chine of his day built luxurious villas on nearby Gulangyu Islet, but Mr. Tan contented himlf with a sim-pler home in his native Jimei. As he wrote to a relative, his hometown still had great needs and “I cannot put mylf before the community.”
The Japane destroyed Tan’s home in 1938, and when the Chine government offered to rebuilt it
after Liberation, Tan insisted that war-damaged school buildings be rebuilt first. His home was finally renovated in 1955 and he lived there from 1958 until 1960, when he moved to Beijing. Tan’s hou was restored to its original design in 1980 and is now a muum and meeting place for the Jimei School Committee. I think the most moving exhibits are the battered suitcas, umbrellas and worn-out shoes that the “pauper millionaire” ud for decades.
Mr. Tan’s Vision fo r China Mr. Tan was a social and political reformer from youth. He supported Sun Yat-n, and at one point accounted for about 1/3 of the Kuomintang’s finances (a feat he no doubt regretted when Chiang Kai Shek absconded to Taiwan with his money and everyo ne el’s). But Tan’s greatest hope for China was in modern education.dia
In 1894, at age 21, Tan began a family school in Jimei. In 1912, during the first year of the new Republic of China, Tan returned to China and on January 27, 1913 opened the Jimei Primary School. Between 1920 and 1926 he opened a school a year until Jimei School Village had 11 schools, includ-ing a middle school and schools in agriculture, commerce, forestry, navigation, etc. In addition, Jimei School Village’s education pro motion department donated to more than 70 middle schools and primary schools throughout Fujian province.
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