Roots of Boon Lay

Boon Lay in Chinese means cultural literacy and courtesy, an apt name for a constituency in Jurong bounded by Sungei Lanchar, Jalan Boon Lay, Jurong West Street 52, Corporation Road and Yuan Ching Road.   But only a few living here know of its history, so low-keyed was the man after whom this area is known. Chew Boon Lay was born to a peasant family in 1852 in the tiny village of Tong Loon Seah in today’s Changzhou, off Xiamen, Fujian Province.  His formative years were spent in the rice fields, and tending to the precious buffalo that tilled the family’s land.

When he was 14 years old, life was made harder with the demise of his father.  This took a toll upon his mother’s health and she too passed away a few years later.  Orphaned, Boon Lay decided to leave for Bangkok, at the behest of an uncle who ran a sundry shop in the Thai capital’s Chinatown.

It was at his uncle’s shop that Boon Lay acquired his business acumen. From dawn to dusk, he had to attend to all the customers in the shop Besides that he had to cook and sell crocodile meat porridge.  A slave by contemporary standards, he was not paid a salary and dinner was often leftover food.

Boon Lay soldiered on silently for three years, until one day his unappreciative uncle lost a huge sum of money and accused him of theft.  Pressed to make good the loss, Boon Lay asked the uncle’s wife for a small loan.  Before the family altar, he pleaded to the Goddess of Mercy to reveal to him the two winning characters for the following day’s lottery. That night, in a semi-dazed state, the words “Hi san” came to his mind and at daybreak he staked the borrowed money on the lottery. Amazingly his fervent prayers were answered and he won more than enough money to compensate for his uncle’s loss and to repay the loan from his aunt.

Boon Lay then joined the crew of a trading ship plying between Bangkok and Singapore.  With his proficiency in the Chinese language,  he was entrusted with the clerical duties aboard the ship.  Soon enough he operated a sideline business, buying and selling consumer goods each time he disembarked.  Within a few years, he managed to save up a tidy sum.

With these savings he decided to migrate to Singapore.  He bought an old junk and packed it with salted fish and rice. Shortly after setting sail the junk started to leak.  Suddenly, Boon Lay not only had to deal with rising waters but also dissenting crewmen.  With his hand clutching a statue of the Sea Goddess and the other waving an axe, he instructed them to scoop water out of the junk.  Miraculously the leakage stopped.  Upon arrival in Singapore, they discovered a black sea snake was trapped in such a position that it sealed the leakage.  Boon Lay considered it a good omen to settle down in Singapore.

Here, Boon Lay began to design and manufacture soap and sold it door to door.   In 1898, with a small capital, he founded Ho Ho Biscuit Factory at Chin Swee Road. Under his capable management, the factory was fully mechanised and employed advanced steam machinery.  The biscuits were sold in Malaya, Borneo and China and its quality products won accolades at the Hanoi Exhibitlon in 1902.

The fortune Boon Lay amassed from biscuit manufacturing enabled him to diversify his business.  He saw an immense potential in the seemingly useless acres of marshland and jungles of Jurong, which he bought and developed into gambier and pepper estates.

The turn of the 20th century saw the decline of the gambier industry but Boon Lay was quick to tap on the opportunities offered by the motor car industry by turning to cultivating rubber.

Outside of the commercial world,  Boon Lay was a devoted husband and doting father and grandfather.  His wife was Ong Cheng Neo, a Nonya from Malacca who gave him seven sons and five daughters, and the stalwart matriarch of the household.  Chew Boon Lay’s greatest gift to his children was education:  The sons attended English-medium schools (with the exception of his sixth son to maintain ties with their relatives in China) while the daughters were tutored at home in English and Chinese.  He was staunchly against gambling and polygamy.

By the 1920s, Boon Lay’s estate in Jurong covered over 1,000 acres.  He also cleared strips of land and named some of the roads he built after his grandsons.  In 1931, his biscuit factory achieved the unimaginable for most local enterprises at that time – regional expansion – by opening a branch in Batavia.  Sadly, Boon Lay passed away in 1933, and his business was continued by his offspring.

With the outbreak of World War II the factory had to cease operations when the authorities prohibited the use of petrol in its production.  It switched to kerosene which damaged the machinery.  After the war, the factory was unable to find new machines and by April 1947, the Chew family decided to fold the business.

By comparison, Boon Lay might not have left so strong a mark as the other philanthropic forefathers of our nation.  But in his own way he was different. Asked why he chose to produce Ho Ho and not Huntley & Palmers biscuits, he replied, Ho Ho biscuits are meant for the masses whilst the Huntley & Palmers are for the ang mohs – very few Chinese, Malays and Indians can afford the latter.”  And he had named after him a constituency in Singapore.

After Chew Boon Lay’s demise, his rubber estate of ageing trees fell into neglect due to poor rubber prices. A sprawling estate, it attracted squatters who moved in, erecting attap and zinc roofed houses there.

In the early 1 960s, as part of the push to industrialism Jurong, the government acquired the Boon Lay estate. Chew Boon Lay’s son,the late Chew Hock Seng asked that his father’s name be retained. The authorities acceded to the filial son’s request and hence the district of Boon Lay took root.

It was in the early 1 970s that the development of Jurong was accelerated. A sluice gate was constructed across the Jurong River, and hills were levelled to provide the filling for the many swamps where industries and factories were to later sprout. This rapid industrialization saw the growth of nearby townships such as Boon Lay, Taman Jurong and Pandan.

At about the same time, the Jurong Town Corporation (JTC) embarked upon a programme of building residential blocks of flats. The project kicked off in Taman Jurong before it spread to Boon Lay where over 60 blocks of flats were developed by the JTC. Comprising two-, three- and four-room apartments as well as executive condominiums, the flats were initially rented out until the implementation of Singapore’s home ownership scheme. Among the first batch of residents were the villagers and squatters living in the former Boon Lay rubber estate as well as villagers from Tuas.