Lim Goh Tong's Dream

CEBU, Philippines - Among exceptionally successful people across eras and geographical divide, there is a common thread that binds them – tenacity of purpose. This is true of New York-based Maestro Manuel Antonio Rodriguez — the Father of Philippine Printmaking, who just launched his coffee table book biography in his home city Cebu, and Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong – the legendary Malaysian Chinese entrepreneur who almost single-handedly catapulted Malaysia into the world tourism map through his dream, the Genting Highlands Resort in Kuala Lumpur.

Like the living legend Mang Maning (age 9), Goh Tong (age 16) lost his father at an early age. This forced him to stop schooling to support his family by hawking vegetables on borrowed money from relatives. In the uncertainties of the Japanese Occupation in 1937, Goh Tong (age 20) migrated to Malaya — now Malaysia — from his native Anxi, a mountain town in southeastern Fujian. (Fujian province or Amoy is where most Filipino Chinese originate.) He left with barely enough money for boat fare and sustenance.

He wrote: “ I told myself: I’m endowed with the faculties to think, talk and act. What can’t I achieve if I make full use of them? I decided resolutely that henceforth, I would banish my shyness and inferiority complex and reach out for a better tomorrow.”

After his conscientious character makeover, Goh Tong seized every opportunity in the horizon. Buy & sell, post-World War II, propelled him into entrepreneurial prominence through astute deals in iron and tin mining, until he fulfilled his youthful dream of being a successful contractor in Malaya, like his two uncles before him. And what a contractor he turned out to be! Despite derision by colleagues and even abandonment by business associates, Goh Tong persisted on his path to achievement.

“In 1956, I undertook to build a four-mile sewer in Kuala Lumpur that had defied completion by two previous contractors, including a reputable British firm…

In 1967, I won a contract to build Kemubu Irrigation Scheme with a winning bid that was RM 10 million lower than that of my closest rival.” And he went on to complete the project on record time. Goh Tong pointed out that “if we are confident of our own decisions, we should not be bothered by ridicule or critism.”

“My decision to embark on developing a wilderness called Genting Sempah that straddles the borders between Pahang and Selangor was actually regarded by detractors as the biggest joke,” recalled Goh Tong in his autobiography entitled My Story.

“The growth of Genting reflects the growth of Malaysia,” then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed expressed during the opening of First World Hotel & Plaza Complex in Genting Highlands on July 26, 2002.

That statement alone vindicated the Genting dream of a once struggling Chinese immigrant in Malaya.

59 years after he left his homeland, Lim Goh Tong sailed back to China onboard a 40,800-tonne cruise liner he owned, Superstar Pices. It was the luxury liner’s inaugural Hong Kong – Xiamen (Amoy) route in February 1996.

“ If someone should ask me what the greatest joy in my life is,” Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong expressed in his book, “I would tell them right away that it is when I hold my grandchildren in my arms (he had 19 from among his eight children) and tell them about how I developed Genting Highlands long, long ago.” (FREEMAN)