Tan Chee Keong (1929–2009) came south with his mother in 1937, aged eight, and spent his whole working life in one coffee shop: on the ground floor of the shophouse on Joo Chiat Road, which he took over from his uncle in 1958. Everyone called him Ah Kong, including customers who were not related to him.
Early life
He remembered the boat, the heat, and that his mother sewed a coin into the hem of his shorts in case they were separated. They were not, and he kept the coin. He was washing cups in his uncle's shop by the time he was eleven.
Family
He married Lim Bee Hoon in 1953. They had three children and raised them upstairs, above the shop, to the sound of the coffee being pulled from six in the morning. Every Lunar New Year's Eve the whole family ate upstairs — see Reunion Dinner, 1988.
Later years
He sold the shop in 1994 and went back the next morning as a customer, to sit at the marble table by the door. The new owner let him keep doing so for fifteen years.
Stories about them
“He knew how every regular took their kopi before they reached the counter. He did not know what year any of his children were born.” — his granddaughter Rachel