The house that Chan Wing built – for the Kings

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KUALA LUMPUR: Most of us know of Yap Ah Loy, the man who helped found Kuala Lumpur and (Wong) Loke Yew, who helped develop the city in infancy. But what about Chan Wing?

Chan Wing was Loke Yew’s employee and founder of the Kwong Yik Bank. But he may well have become a forgotten man but for the house he built.

His was a typical rags to riches story. Born to a poor family in 1873, he was the fourth child among six boys and two girls who were raised by their mother.

Schooling was a luxury that they could not afford. At 14, he was sent to Malaya where he worked as a shopkeeper for Loke Yew in Sungai Besi.

After 10 years, he and four others formed a ‘kongsi’ (syndicate) to mine tin ore in the Sungai Besi mine where he finally, after more than nine months, managed to spot some darkish patch in one of the boxes of sand that he was washing.


The rest was history, says royal museum director Miti Fateema Sherzeella Mohd Yusoff.

Chan Wing was a man who liked his women. He had eight or nine wives with 26 children living at different locations and he decided to place them all under one roof.


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