The Story of Quách Đàm, the Man Who Shaped Modern Chợ Lớn — Part 1
This is Part 1 of our miniseries on the origin story behind Chợ Lớn. Read Part 2 here.
The bust of Quách Đàm, located in front of the fountain at Chợ Lớn's Bình Tây Market.
Born in 1863 in Longkeng Village, Chao'an District, Chaozhou Prefecture of Guangdong province, Quách Đàm (郭琰 Guō Yǎn) left home in the mid-1880s to make his fortune in French Cochinchina. Starting out by buying and selling bottles, he later progressed to the trading of buffalo skins and fish bladders. By the 1890s, having ploughed the money he made from these early ventures back into business, he had acquired his own steamship and set himself up in Cần Thơ as a prosperous rice merchant.
In around 1906–1907, Quách Đàm relocated to Chợ Lớn, founding a new company known as Thông Hiệp, its name a quốc ngữ romanization of two auspicious characters from a Chinese poem.
A paddy depot on the quayside.
The company initially rented a magasin de dépôt at 55 quai Gaudot, a two-storey shophouse directly overlooking the Chợ Lớn Creek which then ran right through the centre of the town. However, a geomancer is said to have convinced Quách Đàm that the most auspicious shophouse on the wharf was in fact a few doors east at No. 45, a three-storey building which at that time was the offices of soap makers Nam-Thái and Trường-Thành. Beneath that building was said to be the head of a dragon whose body stretched out to sea, promising to whoever worked there that the money would keep flowing in.
By 1910, Quách Đàm had relocated his headquarters to 45 quai Gaudot. However, despite his repeated attempts to purchase the building, the owner refused to sell. Quách Đàm was thus obliged to continue renting this modest shophouse as his company headquarters. Over a century later, it still bears the “TH” (Thông Hiệp) logo which Quách Đàm had inscribed on its parapet.
45 Hải Thượng Lãn Ông (the former 45 quai Gaudot) in Chợ Lớn was once Quách Đàm's Thông Hiệp company headquarters.
In subsequent years, in addition to his factory in Cần Thơ, Quách Đàm built two large rice husking mills at Chánh Hưng (now District 8) and Lò Gốm (now District 6). He also registered the Quach-Dam et Cie shipping company in Phnom Penh to manage his burgeoning fleet of four steamships.
One of the numerous rice mills in colonial Chợ Lớn.
However, the business venture which really cemented his fortune was the acquisition, in around 1915, of the Yi-Cheong Rice Factory, the largest and most profitable rice mill in Chợ Lớn. By 1923, statistics published by the Revue de la Pacifique showed that every 24 hours, the amount of paddy processed in Quách Đàm’s mills amounted to 230 tons at Chánh Hưng, 250 tons at Lò Gốm and a massive 1,000 tons at Yi-Cheong, confirming his status as the most successful rice merchant in Cochinchina.
Check out our Chợ Lớn Hẻm Gems Tour, which was lovingly curated and tested by the Saigoneer team.
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With money came prestige and power. As early as 1908, Quách Đàm was one of the few Chinese businessmen to become a member of the Chợ Lớn Municipal Council, and in this capacity he served for many years as 3rd Deputy Mayor of Chợ Lớn, taking an active role in city affairs. He built a spacious family residence at 114 quai Gaudot, on the north bank of the creek, and is said to have enjoyed being chauffeured around town in what the French newspapers called his “beautiful automobile.”
It was during this period that Quách Đàm began to make a name for himself as a prominent philanthropist, “royally subsidising many hospitals, schools and workers’ associations and never remaining indifferent to poverty.” (obituary in the Echo Annamite, 1927). He was particularly active in funding local nurseries and schools for the blind.
For much of the last decade of his life, despite being beset by ill health and also suffering partial paralysis, Quách Đàm continued to play an active role in Chợ Lớn’s business and community affairs. Today he remains best known for the crucial role he played in the establishment of the Bình Tây Market.
This 19th-century map shows the Phố Xếp Canal (marked in red) which connected the Chợ Lớn Creek with the original Tai Ngon Market (Chợ Sài Gòn).
Before the arrival of the French, the main market in the Chinese settlement went by the name of Dī Àn (堤岸) or Tai Ngon, literally meaning “embankment,” a name which is believed to reference the extensive reconstruction which followed the destruction of the Tây Sơn attack of 1782. In the 19th century, that market appears on several maps, not as Tai Ngon but as “Sài Gòn,” the name the French appropriated after 1859 to rechristen the former Bến Nghé as their new colonial capital, Saigon.
The original Bình Tây Market, pictured in the early 1900s.
Located in the vicinity of the modern Chợ Rẫy Hospital, the old Tai Ngon market was originally connected to the Chợ Lớn Creek by a waterway known as the Phố Xếp Canal (now Châu Văn Liêm Street). However, after the conquest, the French established a new main market right in the centre of Chợ Lớn, on the site occupied today by the city post office, leading eventually to the abandonment of the old market and the gradual disappearance of the Phố Xếp Canal.
By the early 20th century, as Chợ Lớn grew in economic importance, French newspapers complained frequently that the Marché central de Cholon “had become too small for the ever-increasing number of its users.” However, what really sealed its fate was the 1925 scheme to fill the Chợ Lớn Creek and its connecting waterways and replace them with roads. After that project was completed, merchants could no longer access the central market by boat.
The new Bình Tây Market, pictured in the 1930s.
In fact, for several decades before the filling of the Chợ Lớn creek, an ever-increasing number of merchants had relocated their business to the Bình Tây Market, which opened in the late 1870s and became even busier after 1891, following the completion of the canal Bonard, known in Vietnamese as the Bãi Sậy Canal), an alternative waterway dug to connect central Chợ Lớn with the lower reaches of the Lò Gốm Creek. The canal Bonard ran straight past the Bình Tây Market and its wharf was always busy with merchant shipping.
This is Part 2 of our miniseries on the origin story behind Chợ Lớn. Read Part 1 here.
The Colonial Council gave its approval and, in 1925, Quách Đàm donated the land to the city and also contributed 58,000 francs towards the construction costs of the new market.
The new Bình Tây Market was Quách Đàm’s crowning achievement and garnered much praise and admiration in both local and colonial circles. Over the next two years, Quách Đàm, already a naturalized French citizen, received a succession of awards, including the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, the Chevalier de l'Étoilè Noire and the Chevalier de l'Ordre royal du Cambodge, as well as the Order of the Precious Brilliant Golden Grain (Order of Chia-Ho) from the Republic of China.
Bình Tây Market pictured in the 1950s.
Construction of the new Bình Tây Market began in February 1926 and was completed in September 1928. Built in reinforced concrete using western techniques, it was noteworthy for its bold Chinese architectural features. However, Quách Đàm never saw the finished building. He died on 14 May 1927, aged 65.
The Echo Annamite newspaper carried a long article describing Quách Đàm’s funeral on Sunday, 29 May, 1927. Special trams and trains were laid on to convey the great and the good to Chợ Lớn to join the funeral procession from 45 boulevard Gaudot to the family plot at Phú Thọ Cemetery.
A Chinese funeral procession in Chợ Lớn.
Those in attendance included: the Mayors of Chợ Lớn and Saigon and their senior staff; the heads of the Chinese congregations and the Chinese Chamber of Commerce; and the Directors of (amongst others) the Banque de l’Indochine, Banque Franco-Chinoise, Distilleries de Binh-Tay, Société Commerciale française d'Indochine, Maison Courtinat, Maison Denis-Frères, Usines de la Compagnie des Eaux et Electricité, the Services du Port, the Hôpital Drouhet, the Lycée Franco-Chinois and the Ecoles de filles de Cholon.
Two large huts had been built on the boulevard immediately outside the Thông Hiệp headquarters, one to accommodate the guests and the other to house the coffin and more than 1,500 commemorative banners and wreaths, which had been sent from all parts of Cochinchina, Tonkin, Cambodia and even China.
A camera crew from Indochine Films was on hand as the procession set off, led by family mourners, to the accompaniment of Chopin’s 'Funeral March' performed by “several Annamite and Chinese orchestras.” Behind the hearse, family members held aloft a dais which displayed all of Quách Đàm’s honors on a large gold and blue silk cushion. They were followed by a guard of honor comprising riflemen from the Compagnie de Cholon du 1er Tirailleurs.
A tram car of the Saigon–Chợ Lớn line traveling on Đồng Khánh Street (Trần Hưng Đạo B)
In order that as many people as possible could offer their respects, the procession did a complete circuit of the city, starting with eastern Chợ Lớn: rue Lareynière (Lương Nhữ Học today), rue des Marins (Trần Hưng Đạo B), rue Jaccaréo (Tản Đà), quai Mytho (Võ Văn Kiệt) and back to boulevard Gaudot (Hải Thượng Lãn Ông), and then returning to quai Mytho and heading along the Arroyo Chinois (Bến Nghé Creek) into the west of the city. There it turned up rue de Paris (Phùng Hưng) and made its way north along rue Boulevard Tong-Doc-Phuong (Châu Văn Liêm) and rue Thuan-Kieu (Thuận Kiều) towards the cemetery at Phú Thọ. “As they processed,” added the Echo Annamite reporter reverently, “the banners shimmered and the usually noisy city descended into respectful silence.”
Fourteen months later, the Annales coloniales reported that on 28 September, 1928, the new market was inaugurated in the presence of the Governor of Cochinchina, amidst a host of festivities which included a cavalcade and a fireworks display.
After Quách Đàm’s death, his eldest son Quách Khôi took over as director of the Thông Hiệp company, but in May 1929 tragedy struck when Quách Khôi himself died suddenly and Chợ Lớn was treated to another grand public funeral.
Later that year, with the authorisation of Chợ Lớn Municipality, Quách Đàm’s family commissioned an elaborate marble fountain in the central courtyard of the Bình Tây Market, surrounded by bronze lions and dragons and topped with a bronze statue of Quách Đàm by celebrated French sculptor Dueuing.
The Dueuing statue of Quách Đàm is now kept in the rear courtyard of the Hồ Chí Minh City Fine Arts Museum.
Inaugurated on 14 March, 1930, it depicts the man French newspapers dubbed the “king of commerce,” holding in his left hand the act by which he had donated to the city of Chợ Lớn the land on which the market was built. In his right hand is a scroll which lists the philanthropic works for which he was known — Écoles, marchés, oeuvres, assistance (schools, markets, works, assistance). The opening ceremony for the fountain “was presided over by M. Eutrope representing the Governor of Cochinchina (absent from Saigon), M Renault, resident-mayor of Cholon and a large audience of European, Annamite and Chinese personalities.” A friend of the family delivered “a remarkable speech recalling the beautiful life of the deceased.”
After 1975, the Dueuing statue was removed from its plinth and placed in store. However, in 1992, it was returned to public view in the rear courtyard of the Hồ Chí Minh City Fine Arts Museum, where it can still be seen to this day.
In recent years, a bust of Quách Đàm has been installed in front of the statueless plinth. Behind it, the Chinese inscription of 1930 reads: “Mr Guō Yǎn was from Longkeng, Chao'an, Chaozhou, Guangdong province and came to Việt Nam when he was young to build a family while working in the rice business; he became very wealthy and generous, and as a good and righteous person, he resolved to build a new market for Dī Àn [Tai Ngon]. Through great effort, he finally realised this and the government awarded him with this bronze statue to remember him. Guō Yǎn was born in 1863 and died in 1927.” (translation by Damian Harper)
Following the death of Quách Khôi, his younger brother Quách Tiên took over the reins of power at Thông Hiệp, but according to historian Vương Hồng Sển, his willingness to act as guarantor for the debts of insolvent traders during the years of economic crisis eventually also dragged Thông Hiệp into debt.
After 1933, the Thông Hiệp company name disappears from the records, though in 1937 and 1939, Quách Tiên reappears as proprietor of the “Plantation Quach-Dam,” a rubber plantation in Biên Hoà Province, with its registered office still at 45 boulevard Gaudot in Chợ Lớn.
45 Hải Thượng Lãn Ông (the former 45 quai Gaudot) in Chợ Lớn was once Quách Đàm's Thông Hiệp company headquarters.
Tim Doling is the author of the guidebooks Exploring Huế (Nhà Xuất Bản Thế Giới, Hà Nội, 2018), Exploring Saigon-Chợ Lớn (Nhà Xuất Bản Thế Giới, Hà Nội, 2019) and Exploring Quảng Nam (Nhà Xuất Bản Thế Giới, Hà Nội, 2020) and The Railways and Tramways of Việt Nam (White Lotus Press, 2012) For more information about Saigon history, visit his website, historicvietnam.com.
