Adventurer or criminal?

Growing up in Hong Kong in a 10 X 12 room with 7 people representing three generations gave Dick Chan the incentive to succeed in business. Dick Chan is the Rust-Oleum salesman in Hong Kong. I asked him why his family moved to Hong Kong from Southeast China and I found his story to be very interesting. He told me his grandfather was either an adventurer or a criminal but never having been convicted of a crime the family tends to consider him an adventurer. The move from his village of Jieyang in Southeast China took a bit of planning. Shang Chan was well known in his community. He was one of the few people that had a formal education and was the local chess champion. Shang came from a wealthy family that traded goods between China and Thailand and other Asian countries. He travelled for business and decided he wanted to move to Singapore. Apparently his family did not want him to move away and would not give him the money he needed. Shang came up with a plan to kidnap the mayor’s son and use the ransom for his move. Shang married Lotus in 1924 and had a son Bing Hung and a daughter Heung. He did not want the burden of traveling with a 16 year old girl so before he conducted the kidnapping he arranged to get his daughter married off. Once his daughter was married he successful kidnapped the mayor’s son and collected the ransom.

In 1947, before the Communists overran China, Shang and his wife and nine year old son Bing Hung fled. On the way to Singapore they stopped over in Hong Kong. Shang had a weakness for opium dens and gambling. The combination of these two vices resulted in him losing all his money. The family never made it to Singapore and stayed in Hong Kong. Over the years Shang did not provide for his family and died in 1968 as a result of his opium addition. Shang had a second wife and daughter in Thailand. Bing Hung married Luen Ying Hui in 1965. He worked two jobs to provide for his wife and four children Yvonne, Tammy Jack and Dick and his mother. He sold towels by day and worked in a restaurant at night. Eventually, he opened his own restaurant and then two more and became wealthy.

The Chan family still refers to Shang as an adventurer since he was never convicted of a crime. And that is how Dick Chan’s family came to live in Hong Kong.

Dick Chan and his daughter Melody

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