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Cover: archival portrait of Dato' Seri Lau Pak Khuan (pre-1971, public domain by age) via Sin Chew Daily, AI-enhanced; tin dredge photo by LokHK99 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0); photo of Harry with Hanson Lau: Harry's own. Cover licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
From pushing a cart of tin ore to about 20 mines, Perak's biggest Chinese associations and the first Dato' Seri title given to a Chinese by the Sultan of Perak. Today a road and a roundabout in Ipoh Garden carry his name. And our founder, Harry Seggu, had the honour of sitting down for coffee with his son.
You may have driven down his name this morning.
Jalan Dato' Lau Pak Khuan runs for about a kilometre through Ipoh Garden. Since December 2024, the roundabout where it meets Jalan Canning Estate has carried his name too: Bulatan Dato' Lau Pak Khuan.
Thousands of us pass those signs every week.
Very few of us could say who he was.
He was a young man from a village in Guangdong who started at the very bottom of a Perak tin mine, pushing a cart of ore.
He ended up owning about 20 mines, leading Perak's biggest Chinese associations, surviving a grenade attack, and becoming the first Chinese to receive the Dato' Seri title from the Sultan of Perak.
Earlier in this series we told you about tin barons, herbal tea and heritage buildings. Recently, Tan Chin Nam took us to Ipoh Garden, the housing estate behind IGB. In our last story, we looked at Mahathir-era megaprojects, and found that none of them carries the name of the man in charge.
Today's story is the opposite. A road and a roundabout in Ipoh Garden that do carry a man's name.
And a personal one: the day our founder sat down for coffee with his son.
Who Was Dato' Seri Lau Pak Khuan?
Lau Pak Khuan (刘伯群, also spelt Lau Pak Kuan) was a Hakka from Zengcheng county in Guangdong, China.
Most English sources give his year of birth as 1894. Sin Chew Daily's 2019 profile, based on research by a Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) historian, gives 25 June 1895.
His father ran a dried-seafood shop in Guangzhou. He had only a few years of classical schooling. At 12 he was carrying and selling lime, and at 14 he was helping in his father's business.
As a young man in the 1910s, he sailed south to Malaya with his wife to seek a living in the tin fields of Perak.
From Pushcart Boy to Tin Towkay
His first job was the lowest one on a mine: pushing a cart of tin ore.
He worked hard and was soon made a supervisor.
Then he did what so many Kinta Valley millionaires did. He saved, took a stake, and started running mines of his own. By 1919, according to Sin Chew, he was a shareholder-manager of a mine in the Kinta Valley.
In 1927 he set up the Tong Yat mine in Papan. More followed in Menglembu, Jelapang, Chemor, Malim Nawar and beyond.
Eventually he had about 20 mines and his own Lau Pak Kuan Mining Company.
IpohWorld also lists him as chairman of the Oriental Smelting Company and a founder of Chung Khiaw Bank.
The Perak Chinese Mining Association
In the early 1930s, the Great Depression crushed the price of tin. The colonial government set strict quotas on how much each mine could produce, and Chinese miners felt they were not getting a fair share.
So on 5 May 1935, six miners, Lau Pak Khuan among them, founded the Perak Chinese Mining Association. He was its first president.
Its first home was a rented shophouse in Ipoh's old town.
According to the presidents' list on the association's own wall, he led it in three stretches between 1935 and 1966, about 27 years in all.
The Man They Called "Big Brother"
People of his time called him "big brother" (大哥) or "the boss" (老大). Sin Chew says it was because of how well he ran the community's affairs.
After the war, he headed the five biggest Chinese associations in Perak, including the Perak Chinese Chamber of Commerce, the Perak Chinese Assembly Hall and the Mining Association.
He led the Perak Kwangtung Association, the home of Ipoh's Cantonese community, for about 30 years, from 1939 until his death (apart from 1950–51), and was elected its president 12 times.
Here is the remarkable part. He was not Cantonese. He was Hakka.
He learned to speak fluent Cantonese, and even chose to speak it with his own family. A Hakka towkay leading the Cantonese for some 30 years tells you how much people trusted him.
He also helped found the Perak Hakka Association and served as its first president, founded the Perak Tseng Lung (Zengcheng) Association for people from his home county, and was the fifth president of Ipoh's Chin Woo Athletic Association.
From 1946 to 1970 he headed the Perak Chinese Maternity Hospital, today the Perak Community Specialist Hospital.
War, a Grenade and the Kinta Valley Home Guard
When Japan invaded China in 1937, he raised funds in Malaya for China's defence.
That made him a marked man. When the Japanese invaded Malaya in late 1941, IpohWorld records, he escaped through Burma and India to Chongqing, while his family hid near Papan.
After the war, a new danger came.
On 10 April 1949, he chaired a Perak meeting of the newly formed Malayan Chinese Association (MCA) at the Perak Chinese Chamber of Commerce on Hale Street. A communist grenade was thrown into the hall.
MCA president Tan Cheng Lock was wounded in the shoulder. Sin Chew reports that Lau Pak Khuan saw the danger, threw himself to the floor, and escaped with light injuries.
In December 1949, another bomb exploded at a funeral he attended. Three people were killed, and he was among the injured.
From then on, he went out with bodyguards.
Communist attacks on tin mines were threatening the Kinta Valley, then one of the richest tin fields in the world. As head of the Perak Chinese Mining Association, he proposed something bold: a Chinese home guard to protect the mines.
The British High Commissioner, General Sir Gerald Templer, agreed. The Kinta Valley Home Guard was formed in 1952, with about 4,000 members trained and armed by the government.
By 1954, it was guarding 323 mines.
Founding Member of the MCA
When the MCA was founded in 1949, he was one of its founding members and became the first chairman of its Perak branch.
In the mid-1950s, he parted ways with the party's leadership.
In 1956, as Malaya prepared for independence, he was among the leaders of more than a thousand Chinese associations who asked that everyone born in Malaya be a citizen by birth. Their demands went to the Reid Commission, which was drafting the constitution. They were not met in full.
After independence, he stepped back from politics and gave his time to the community.
Whatever your view of those debates, they were part of how our country was built.
Schools, a Free Classroom and a University
He believed in education, perhaps because he had so little of it himself.
He sat on the board of Ipoh's Yuk Choy school from 1933 until his death, one of its longest-serving directors.
As chairman of the Paloh Kuo Miao temple board after the war, he backed a free school at the temple for poor children and for children too old to be admitted to government schools. At its peak, it had more than 600 pupils.
In 1934, he paid to found a school in his home town in Guangdong.
In 1953, he chaired the Perak committee for Nanyang University in Singapore. Under him, Perak set up 16 branches in about six months, the most of any state.
Dato' Seri: The Titles and the Chamber
The honours came one after another.
He was made a Justice of the Peace in 1936, and was later made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE).
The Sultan of Perak made him a Dato' in 1963 and a Dato' Seri in 1966. He was the first Chinese to receive the Dato' Seri title from the Sultan of Perak.
In the 1960s, he led the rebuilding of the Perak Chinese Chamber of Commerce. The new four-storey building was opened by Sultan Idris Shah on 6 June 1970, and Lau Pak Khuan cut the ribbon. The plaque is still at the entrance.
Inside, Sin Chew reported in 2019, the chamber's hall carries his name in Chinese: 伯群堂, Pak Khuan Hall.
He died at Ipoh General Hospital on 16 April 1971, survived by six sons and three daughters, and was laid to rest in the Chinese cemetery on Gopeng Road.
Jalan and Bulatan Dato' Lau Pak Khuan
Ipoh's council named about a kilometre of road in Ipoh Garden after him: Jalan Dato' Lau Pak Khuan.
Half a century after his death, the city honoured him again.
In December 2024, a new sign went up at the roundabout where his road meets Jalan Canning Estate: Bulatan Dato' Lau Pak Khuan.
Ipoh's mayor, quoted in a letter published by Ipoh Echo in January 2025, said the idea came from residents at a 2019 town hall meeting, and that support for it was unanimous. Most roundabouts then were named after Sultans.
My Coffee With Hanson Lau, His Son
A personal note from our founder, Harry Seggu:
This story is personal for me.
In 2025, I had the honour of meeting Hanson Lau, the son of Dato' Seri Lau Pak Khuan.
We met at a cafe just near Jalan Dato' Lau Pak Khuan. His father's road, the very one this story began with.
Over coffee and heartfelt conversation, Hanson shared deeply personal and insightful stories about his family, about the values they were raised with, and about his father's tireless quest in the building of Malaya and, later, Malaysia.
It was a rare window into the life and legacy of a man whose contributions shaped so much of what we see around us today.
Today, both Jalan Dato' Lau Pak Khuan and Bulatan Dato' Lau Pak Khuan stand in Ipoh as proud tributes to his legacy: permanent markers honouring a man who helped shape a nation with vision, courage and service.
History isn't just written in books. It lives on through people, through stories, and even through the streets we travel every day.
What Lau Pak Khuan Teaches Our Children
First lesson: start where you are.
He started by pushing a cart of ore. There is no job too small to learn from.
Second lesson: build trust across lines.
A Hakka led the Cantonese for about 30 years. He learned their language and earned their trust. Ipoh was built by many hands, not one.
Third lesson: courage is part of service.
He chaired a meeting that was attacked with a grenade, and kept serving.
Fourth lesson: give what you never had.
He had only a few years of schooling, so he backed schools, a free classroom and a new university.
Fifth lesson: the people remember.
Nearly 50 years after his death, Ipoh residents at a town hall asked for a roundabout to carry his name.
A Name on a Road in Ipoh Garden
So the next time you drive round Bulatan Dato' Lau Pak Khuan, remember what that name stands for.
A pushcart boy from Guangdong.
About 20 tin mines.
A Hakka who led the Cantonese.
A chamber of commerce rebuilt, a home guard that protected 323 mines, and a classroom for children who had nowhere else to learn.
And a son who still carries his stories.
Tin built fortunes in this city. Some of the men it made gave those fortunes back.
Born in Ipoh. Built for the world.
Have you driven down Jalan Dato' Lau Pak Khuan? And which street name in your town would you love to know the story behind?
This story is part of Born in Ipoh. Built for the World., 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.
