Chariot
0
Cover: portrait of Eu Kong and Eu Tong Sen's Ipoh office, from Twentieth Century Impressions of British Malaya (1908), public domain, via Internet Archive; portrait of Eu Tong Sen (before 1941), public domain by age, via Wikimedia Commons. Background: Gopeng, c. 1910, by C.J. Kleingrothe, public domain (KITLV, Leiden University Libraries), via Wikimedia Commons, cropped and darkened.
In 1879, a Cantonese migrant opened a small medicine shop for tin miners in Gopeng, Perak. He named it "Yan Sang": caring for mankind. His son went to school in Ipoh, prospected for tin on elephant back, and turned that one shop into Eu Yan Sang, a name now found across Asia.
You have probably walked past an Eu Yan Sang shop.
Maybe in a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur, in Singapore's Chinatown or in Hong Kong. Herbs, bird's nest, and the smell of dried roots.
Many of us think of it as a Singapore brand. Today, its headquarters is in Singapore.
But it was not born there.
It was born in Gopeng, a tin-mining town in the Kinta Valley, about 20 km south of Ipoh, Perak.
In our last story, we ended with Chung Thye Phin, in all probability the last Kapitan in Malaya, and his villa in the heart of Ipoh. Today's story is about a tin miner who built a theatre with him in Kampar, and a business that has outlived the tin boom that gave birth to it.
Who Founded Eu Yan Sang?
Eu Yan Sang (余仁生) was founded by Eu Kong (余广, also written Eu Kong Pui or Eu Kwong Pai), a migrant from Foshan in Guangdong, China.
He arrived in Penang in 1873. His first businesses, textile dyeing and a bakery, both failed. For a while, he worked collecting debts for a grocery shop.
In 1877, his first son, Eu Tong Sen, was born in Penang. The family then moved to Gopeng, in what was then a newly founded mining settlement in Perak.
In Gopeng, Eu Kong opened a provision shop. Then, in 1879, he opened a Chinese medicine shop. He called it Yan Sang (仁生). "Yan" means kind or benevolent, "Sang" means life. Together, the company says, it means "caring for mankind".
Why a Medicine Shop in a Tin Town?
Gopeng was full of Chinese tin miners doing hard, dangerous work.
For many of them, opium was the cheapest and quickest relief for pain and illness. Eu Kong's idea was to offer them Chinese medicine and herbs instead.
His shop sold groceries and medicine. Over time, the Yan Sang shops also offered remittance and postal services, so that miners could send money home to their families in China.
Eu Kong did well. He won a "general farm" licence, the right to collect taxes on opium, gambling, alcohol and pawnbroking, and used the income to open tin mines of his own.
Then, in 1890, he died suddenly, still in his late thirties.
A 13-Year-Old Heir, and a Schoolboy in Ipoh
His son, Eu Tong Sen (余东旋), was 13 and living in Foshan, where he had been sent to study at the age of four.
The family business was held in trust. In 1892, he came back to Malaya to get a Western education. He studied English in Penang with a private tutor, lived with a schoolmaster, and, by one account, also attended St Xavier's Institution.
Then, in 1895, he moved to Ipoh to continue his studies at the Anglo-Chinese School, according to Singapore's National Library. A 1908 profile says simply that he attended "the Government School" in Ipoh. Either way, his English was excellent by the time he was grown up.
So the boy who would become the "King of Tin" finished his schooling right here in Ipoh.
Prospecting for Tin on Elephant Back
In 1898, aged 21, Eu Tong Sen took over his father's estate.
It was not a good moment. The colonial government had begun phasing out tax farming, the family's old mines were worked out, and the cash and stock of the Yan Sang business had been run down.
So he went looking for new tin.
According to Singapore's National Library, for three years, from 1898 to 1900, he prospected in the Kinta Valley. With his maternal uncle, he would set off at 5 am and travel through the jungle on elephant back, then go back to work at the Yan Sang shop.
For two years, he found nothing. Only in his third year of prospecting did he find new tin.
By 1908, he owned mines at Kampar, Gopeng, Tronoh, Chenderiang and Papan in Perak, two more in Selangor and one in Negeri Sembilan. Together, they employed about 12,000 workers. A 1908 survey of British Malaya said that by the age of thirty, he was "one of the largest as well as one of the most opulent tin miners in the Federated Malay States".
It also noted that his was the first motor car imported into Perak.
A Medicine Shop Beside Every Mine
Here is the part that made Eu Yan Sang.
Wherever Eu Tong Sen opened a tin mine, according to the company, he also set up a medicine shop for his workers. As the shops spread beyond Gopeng, he added the family name. Yan Sang became Eu Yan Sang.
New offices followed the tin. According to business historian Koh Keng We, they opened in Kampar in 1900, Kuala Lumpur in 1902, and Ipoh in 1906.
The Ipoh branch became one of the most important. Koh's study found that it handled the largest telegraphic transfers to Hong Kong, as well as remittance and medicine orders, from 1914 into the 1920s.
Then the network went overseas. By the 1910s, Eu Yan Sang had reached Singapore, Hong Kong and southern China. In 1910, the first Eu Yan Sang medical hall in Singapore opened at 265–271 South Bridge Road. The building, with "1910" on its gable, still stands in Chinatown.
The shops did more than sell herbs. According to Singapore's National Heritage Board, their staff helped migrants who could not read or write to read and write their letters home.
The Tin King Who Built for the World
From tin, Eu Tong Sen moved into rubber, property, theatres, hotels and banking. In 1920, he led the group that founded Lee Wah Bank in Singapore, a bank for the Cantonese community.
In 1912, he was appointed an unofficial member of the Federal Council of the Federated Malay States, filling the seat left by the death of Leong Fee.
He was also a man of grand gestures. During the First World War, he paid for an aeroplane, "Malaya No. 1", and gave £6,000 for a tank. Following the Chinese custom of painting eyes on boats, the tank went into battle with a large eye painted on each side.
In 1919, Wayang Street in Singapore was renamed Eu Tong Sen Street. Singapore's National Library notes there is also a more colourful story: that one of his wives was offended by an opera troupe leader on Wayang Street, so he bought up the street and renamed it after himself.
He loved building. In 1923, the travel writer Hermann Norden wrote that Eu Tong Sen had "two palaces in Ipoh; one more in Kampar, and a castle with a garden and lake in Singapore". That castle was Eu Villa on Mount Sophia, completed around 1913.
Back in Perak, the 1908 survey records that he and Chung Thye Phin built a large Chinese theatre in Kampar, near Ipoh.
He moved to Hong Kong in the late 1920s, and died there on 11 May 1941, aged 63.
The Honest Part of the Story
Like many fortunes of that era, the Eu family's wealth was not built on medicine alone.
The tax farms that funded Eu Kong's first mines included the opium farm. Eu Tong Sen's own fortune, Singapore's National Library notes, also came partly from British monopolies on opium, alcohol and gambling.
At the same time, the 1908 profile lists him as vice-president of the Anti-Opium Society. And the shop his father founded began as an alternative to opium for tired miners.
History is rarely one colour. It is worth telling our children both halves.
How Eu Yan Sang Survived
When Eu Tong Sen died, his fortune was divided among his 13 sons. Over the following decades, most of the family's businesses were sold.
Eu Yan Sang was nearly lost too. In 1989, his grandson Richard Eu joined the company as general manager. By 1990, much of it was in the hands of a construction and property group.
In 1993, Richard Eu and his cousins bought back the medicine business. It was listed on the Singapore Exchange in 2000, and taken private again in 2016.
In 2024, Japan's Mitsui & Co and Rohto Pharmaceutical agreed to buy Eu Yan Sang in a deal that valued the company at about S$800 million. At the time, it had more than 170 stores and about 30 Chinese medicine clinics, mainly in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong.
From one shop for tin miners in Gopeng to a deal valued at about S$800 million, 145 years later.
What Eu Yan Sang Teaches Our Children
First lesson: start with a real need.
Eu Kong did not start with a brand. He started with tired, sick miners who needed something better than opium.
Second lesson: failure is not the end.
A failed dyeing business. A failed bakery. A debt collector's job. And then, a shop that is still going more than 140 years later.
Third lesson: keep looking.
Two years on elephant back without finding tin. He kept going, and found it in the third.
Fourth lesson: a good name travels.
"Caring for mankind" started in a tin town in Perak and is now on shop signs across Asia.
Fifth lesson: tell the whole story.
Great fortunes often have uncomfortable chapters. Knowing them makes us wiser, not smaller.
A Shop Sign in a Mall
So the next time you walk past an Eu Yan Sang shop, in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore or Hong Kong, remember where it began.
A tin town south of Ipoh.
A man who had failed twice.
A schoolboy in Ipoh who grew up to be the King of Tin.
And a shop name that meant, simply, caring for mankind.
From the Kinta Valley to the world.
Has your family ever bought from Eu Yan Sang? Or do you know an old medicine shop in Gopeng, Kampar or Ipoh with a story of its own? Tell us
This story is part of Ipoh Connections, 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.
