Chapter 19 The second quarter "The King of Balm" Hu Wenhu

Hu Wenhu is another well-known overseas Chinese entrepreneur. Born in Burma in 1882, his father opened the "Yong'an Tang" drug store and listed it as a medical practitioner. In 1908, Hu's father died of illness, and Hu Wenhu and his younger brother Hu Wenbao inherited their father's business, managed carefully, created five kinds of convenient medicines including Panacea, and put them on the market.These medicines are all trademarked with a tiger pattern, and "Tiger Brand Good Medicine" is well received in Nanyang. In the early 1920s, Hu Wenhu transferred to Singapore to develop his business, where he successively set up the Yongantang Head Office and the General Pharmaceutical Factory, with more than 600 employees and an annual turnover of RMB 10 million. In the 1930s, the sales of Tiger Balm’s medicines expanded. Hu Wenhu established more than 20 Yong’antang branches in Nanyang and the motherland. The Shantou branch also set up a pharmaceutical branch, with a turnover comparable to that of Singapore.Hu Wenhu's name and Tiger Balm's medicines are almost household names in China and Southeast Asia, as well as women and children.Hu Wenhu is known as the "King of Balm".Hu Wenhu's career, in addition to manufacturing medicine, also has journalism.As early as the 1920s, Hu Wenhu ran "Yangon Daily" and "Myanmar Morning News" in Yangon, which was the beginning of his newspaper operation. In 1929, he founded "Sin Chew Daily" in Singapore, and later successively launched more than a dozen newspapers such as "Sing Siam Daily", "Sing Pen Daily", "Sing Min Daily" and "Sing Tao Daily" in various places in China and Southeast Asia. A huge and influential "galaxy" newspaper system has been formed. In 1941, Galaxy Press Limited was established in Singapore.Although Hu Wenhu's newspaper had the commercial purpose of advertising Tiger Brand's medicines and expanding its influence, he said that his purpose of running the newspaper was to "improve customs and promote culture."Galaxy newspapers played an active role in promoting Chinese culture and encouraging the people to patriotically resist the Japanese War.