The story of Singapore bak kwa specialist Lim Chee Guan goes back 80 years
Like most Chinese parents of the early 20th century, Mr Lim Kay Eng's folks hoped their son would study to become a medico in China. Merely the young native of Xiamen had other plans. Studying was the very thing he loathed nigh, so he packed his bags and jumped on a gunkhole to Singapore in search of a brighter future.
Similar the endless other Chinese migrants to Singapore of the time, Kay Eng took any employment he could observe. He worked equally a plantation helper, a coffee shop assistant and a provision shop assistant. By 1938, he had saved enough coin to commencement his own stall selling titbits and – having learnt the fine art of preserving meats from his female parent and grandmother in China – bak kwa.
His pushcart stall was located at the human foot of a staircase along Mentum Chiew Street or "tau fu kai" equally information technology was improve known at the time. Although he did brisk business, that sliver of space was a veritable border between opposing Cantonese and Hokkien gangs who oftentimes clashed right by the stall.
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To avoid getting defenseless in the crosshairs, Kay Eng moved his wares to a shophouse along New Span Route in 1956, where Lim Chee Guan continues to operate.
Today, Lim Chee Guan boasts two other outlets at ION Orchard and People'southward Park Complex, as well as its headquarters and production facility in the Ulu Pandan area. With over 100 employees, the business has come a long way from its humble roots.
THE Business organization OF FAMILY
In the early days, the Lim family lived on the second floor of a shophouse nigh Eu Tong Sen Street. For Kay Eng's son Rod, the shop was also his playground, where he spent all his complimentary time imitating the workers and "helping" with sales. Without realising it, he was absorbing the ins and outs of running his father'due south institution, so much then that by the time he completed his education, his male parent deemed him gear up to join the family business.
Although he had hoped to find work elsewhere, Rod did what was expected of him. "My begetter never actually said he didn't approve of me working outside (the family business concern), but I knew that's how he felt," he recalled. In 1988, when his father passed away aged 79, Rod took the helm of Lim Chee Guan.
Like his dad, Rod raised his sons, Jerre, 42; Benny, 39; and Darryl, 25, effectually the business. "We lived our lives in the shop (along New Bridge Route). It was our playground, where we studied and where we worked. Customers loved Jerre and I — ii cute, round boys running around, selling stuff and handling money," said Benny, laughing.
"At present that we are parents ourselves, we realise that we were spending quality family time together in that shop. These days, parents get to work and kids go to school. They don't take as much time to really be a office of one another's lives. Every bit we've gotten older, nosotros've learned to appreciate that family unit time and how it's bonded us over the years."
All the fourth dimension spent around the concern also meant that joining it wasn't much of a choice for Jerre and Benny (their brother Darryl is still studying in university). Though their father never pressured them to enlist in it, Benny said information technology was almost impossible not to.
"At the terminate of the day, this is our family unit's business concern. Even if we worked outside of it, we would notwithstanding be a part of information technology, so it didn't take much for us to decide once we graduated university."
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Taste OF TRADITION
Bak kwa-making is a time-consuming process. In the early days, Kay Eng cut sparse slices off a slab of pork with a long, precipitous pocketknife and marinated them in a mixture of sugar, fish sauce and other ingredients, before spreading the meat over a bamboo sieve to dry in the sunday. He would barbecue the slices only when his customers ordered them.
Today, the process remains much the aforementioned, except machines are used to cut the big slabs of pork into smaller pieces and to transport the meat from 1 product station to another. Everything else is still done by hand.
"Once the meat is broken down by the machines, nosotros marinate it by manus before spreading information technology out beyond large bamboo sieves," explained Benny. "And then we pick out whatever sinews or veins that might be in the mix. These are things a machine cannot practise as effectively as the human paw. For ane, you have to physically rub the marinade into the meat so that it tin can penetrate better."
The meat-lined sieves are and then transferred to large charcoal ovens to dry before workers cut them into squares and charcoal-broil them, piece by slice, over a charcoal fire.
This updated method of production was the result of a hard-won understanding struck between Rod and his scions. "When nosotros formally joined the business, nosotros quarrelled a lot about how we wanted to run it and how we should modernise it," said Benny.
"Merely at the end of the day, nosotros realised that everyone is rooting for the business and for the family, and then we came to a happy compromise. We agreed that when we make plans to implement any new technology, we must ensure that it does not modify the way our bak kwa is fabricated or the quality and sense of taste of our production."
Rod was also insistent that the meat should continue to be grilled over charcoal. Having experimented with other cooking methods, the family hold that charcoal is still the only form of heat that imparts that distinctive smoky flavour to the meat. At the same time, they are also mindful that charcoal is a sunset industry.
"In the next 10 to 15 years, we may not be able to get enough charcoal to produce our bak kwa, so we are still experimenting with alternative ways, but so far, cipher beats cooking bak kwa over charcoal," explained Benny.
FRIENDS AND Family
While customers no longer accept the fourth dimension or patience to wait for a kilogram's worth of bak kwa to be cooked to order, waiting for bak kwa is something many Singaporeans are willing to do in the weeks preceding Chinese New Year. The snaking queues outside Lim Chee Guan'south outlets during the festive season are legendary and customers have been known to stand in line for up to vi hours to brand their purchase. Notwithstanding for some, the queuing has become tradition as well.
"We have regulars who have been queuing since they were young girls and at present are mothers. They got to know each other while queuing and now call each other every twelvemonth and come to queue together so the expect is not so irksome," Benny said.
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Customers like these have become family friends to the Lims, who value relationships over all else in their business. Family and friends, after all, are the foundation upon which Lim Chee Guan has been built.
"For Dad, growing the business was very much about managing family and friends," explained Benny. "We have since grown to a point where we don't have plenty family and friends to maintain the business, so we accept employees, who we see as family unit as well. Nosotros have staff who have been with us for over 30 years. Some have spent their youth with us, and then nosotros need to take intendance of them and appreciate them.
"To this mean solar day, my father tells the states that nosotros cannot but look at dollars and cents. He always tells us to consider how we care for our customers, how nosotros treat each other and everyone else."
If a business concern is a mirror of the people at its helm, then Lim Chee Guan is a fine reflection of Rod'south quiet and kindly but firm manner, and his married woman Ires' amore towards their customers. These are qualities their sons embody in their younger, more modern and energetic ways.
Benny is male parent to two young boys, while Jerre has 2 daughters aged eight and 10. They, too, hope that their children will join the family unit business, but similar their begetter, want them to make that decision for themselves.
"Times are different," said Benny. "Our children don't enjoy the kind of closeness we enjoyed with our parents growing up, where our entire lives revolved around the business organisation. The closest matter to that is when I take my eldest son to practise deliveries with me during Chinese New Year. That way he learns a bit about what we went through when Jerre and I were young."
Until the next generation of Lims are at an historic period where they tin join the family unit business, the electric current generation will continue to run it every bit their father and granddaddy did. "It'south taken a while, only nosotros take aligned our vision for the concern. It volition always exist based on family, tradition and quality, and these volition continue to serve equally our guiding principles."
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/dining/our-gastro-legacy-bak-kwa-specialist-lim-chee-guan-singapore-221996
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