High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Tan Kah Kee (October 21, 1874 - August 12, 1961) was a prominent businessman, community leader, and philanthropist in colonial Singapore, and eventually a respectable Communist leader in the People's Republic of China.Tan Kah Kee was born in Jimei, Tong'an County, Fujian Province, China (present-day Jimei District in Xiamen City), and went to Singapore in 1890, when he was 16 years old, to work for his father's rice store.