Chan Tseng-hsi (; 1923 – March 8, 1986) was a Chinese entrepreneur who founded the

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

-based real estate company

Hang Lung Group Hang Lung Group is an investment holding company that engages in property development for sales and leasing, as well as management of car parks, properties, and dry cleaning businesses. Its subsidiary Hang Lung Properties is one of the largest pr ...

. Born and raised in

Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...

, China, Chan moved to the

British Hong Kong Hong Kong was a colony and later a dependent territory of the British Empire from 1841 to 1997, apart from a period of occupation under the Japanese Empire from 1941 to 1945 during the Pacific War. The colonial period began with the Briti ...

in the 1940s because of the

Chinese Civil War The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China and forces of the Chinese Communist Party, continuing intermittently since 1 August 1927 until 7 December 1949 with a Communist victory on m ...

. He took an entry-level job in a bank and eventually built a successful real estate business. According to his son

Gerald Gerald is a male Germanic given name meaning "rule of the spear" from the prefix ''ger-'' ("spear") and suffix ''-wald'' ("rule"). Variants include the English given name Jerrold, the feminine nickname Jeri and the Welsh language Gerallt and Iri ...

, he used to loan money to his friends to pay for their children's school fees. His mother was a nurse who, in the 1950s, gave cholera vaccinations to the neighborhood children in the family kitchen. After Gerald got a fellowship for his doctoral studies at Harvard, Chan was proud of his son, but disturbed that Gerald was taking the place of someone who couldn't pay. He told a friend, "We have the means to pay tuition. Why is Gerald taking the scholarship away from someone else?" In 2014, his sons

Ronnie Ronnie may refer to: *Ronnie (name), a unisex pet name and given name * "Ronnie" (Four Seasons song), a song by Bob Gaudio and Bob Crewe *"Ronnie," a song from the Metallica album ''Load'' *Ronnie Brunswijkstadion, an association football stadium ...

and Gerald donated $350 million to

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, which named the

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is the public health school of Harvard University, located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. The school grew out of the Harvard-MIT School for Health Officers, the nation's first ...

after him. Harvard officials said the money would be used in four areas: pandemics, including obesity, cancer, and the Ebola outbreak in West Africa; harmful environments, including pollution and violence; poverty and humanitarian crises; and failing health systems. In 2021, the Chan family made an unrestricted gift of $175 million to the UMass Medical School, which changed its name to

UMass Chan Medical School UMass Chan Medical School is a public medical school in Worcester, Massachusetts. It is part of the University of Massachusetts system. It is home to three schools: the T.H. Chan School of Medicine, the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedica ...

in recognition of this donation.

References

1923 births 1986 deaths People from Foshan Chinese Civil War refugees Hong Kong real estate businesspeople Chinese company founders Chinese emigrants to British Hong Kong {{China-med-bio-stub