Chapter 17 Section 2 He Linshu and Joan Company

The planting of rubber in my country and the development of the rubber industry are also inseparable from the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. The introduction and planting of rubber is attributed to He Linshu, a returned overseas Chinese from Malaya.He Linshu (AD 1861-1933) was from Hainan Island. At the age of 18, the impoverished He Linshu went to Malaya to make a living and worked as a worker in a rubber plantation.After having some savings, He Linshu set up his own business, engaged in tin mining, and gradually became an industrialist.He Linshu, who has accumulated experience in rubber cultivation and management and is familiar with the natural conditions of Hainan Island, decided to plant rubber in his hometown. In 1906, he raised 5,000 silver dollars to establish the Joan Company, and started planting rubber seeds introduced from Malaya.Everything is difficult at the beginning.He Linshu led the migrant workers to cultivate more than 200 mu of rubber gardens and planted them in time.But failure followed failure, and it took three years to spend all the 5,000 yuan collected, but the rubber still didn't grow.He Linshu is a strong-willed person. He insists that the natural conditions of Hainan Island and Malaya are similar. If rubber trees can be transplanted from Brazil to Malaya, they will definitely grow in Hainan Island.In practice, he gradually learned that only by planting seedlings can he survive.So he sold the property, raised another 15,000 yuan, broke through the blockade, and returned more than 5,000 rubber seedlings from the Malay Asian Games. After careful cultivation, more than 3,000 plants survived. In 1915, the first batch of rubber trees of Qiong'an Company finally produced rubber juice. He Linshu was very excited that 10 years of hard work had paid off.

In addition to Qiong'an Company, there were also many overseas Chinese from Southeast Asia who set up rubber gardens in Hainan Island. By the eve of the Anti-Japanese War, the number had grown to 90. Overseas Chinese are not only the pioneers of my country's rubber planting industry, but also the earliest founders of my country's rubber industry.The first rubber factory in China was "Guangdong Brothers Rubber Factory", which was founded in Guangzhou in 1917 by Chen Yupo, an overseas Chinese from Malaya, and others. The rubber originally produced in Brazil was planted in a large area in Southeast Asia and became one of the local economic pillars; it was transplanted from Malaya to Hainan Island in my country. After decades of careful cultivation, Brazilian rubber moved northward to my country's north latitude 18— 24 degrees of Guangdong, Yunnan, Fujian, Guangxi and other provinces were successful.This achievement includes the efforts of several generations, among which the pioneering contributions made by overseas Chinese in Nanyang cannot be underestimated.