Silas Aaron Hardoon

Silas Aaron Hardoon

The Nanking Road in the 1930s

Silas Aaron Hardoon , born as Sileh Hardoon , (* 1851 in Baghdad or Al-Amarah , † June 19, 1931 in Shanghai ) was a wealthy businessman in Shanghai. During his lifetime he was considered the richest man in Asia .

Fortune from opium and real estate

Silas Hardoon came from a poor Jewish family of Sephardic Jews from Iraq . From there his family moved to Bombay , where he attended a school that David Sassoon had funded. In 1868 Hardoon went to Shanghai, where he worked for David Sassoon & Company as a debt collector and security guard. He quickly worked his way up in the company as he showed real estate talent. In 1882 he left the company and started a trading company specializing in cotton. However, due to a lack of success, Hardoon had to give up after three years and take a job at ED Sassoon's and Company as manager of their branch in Shanghai . From the early 1890s he was responsible for the company's real estate business and opium imports in Shanghai. At the same time, he also invested private savings in real estate. A Chinese real estate boom prompted Hardoon to leave this company in 1920 and enter the real estate trade. In Chinese, this type of business person was called "Tu" dealer, "Tu" denoting both opium and real estate.

In 1908 alone Hardoon earned several million dollars when an opium ban threatened, the other traders sold their supplies, but he himself bought their opium cheaply. When the ban could not be enforced, Hardoon sold his opium at higher prices. Smart investments in his profits, particularly in land and real estate on Shanghai's main shopping street, Nanking Road , made him one of the city's richest citizens. Hardoon also rented apartments there to the Chinese, and even when he was a billionaire, he personally collected outstanding rents.

It is unclear what nationality Hardoon was. He was Iraqi by birth and is not known to have given up his citizenship. It is possible that he was also a British citizen.

Preference for China

Students and teachers in the Beth Araron Synagogue in Shanghai

In 1880, Hardoon married Luo Jualing (born Lisa Roos 1864–1941), the illegitimate daughter of a Chinese woman and the French Isaac Roos, who was probably also Jewish. Luo Jualing is said to have worked as a prostitute, and with this marriage Hardoon defied conventions at the time: “Hardoon was loved and hated, cursed and praised, but few people knew him well. […] He united the beliefs and hopes of everyone, a talented man who lived his life in his exotic surroundings as he saw fit. ”His wife introduced him to the religion, traditions and customs of her Chinese ancestors.

The couple lived in Shanghai at Aili Yuan , a house in a perfectly recreated Chinese landscape with pavilions , pagodas , artificial hills, rocks and grottoes designed by a Buddhist monk who was also Hardoon's spiritual advisor. In order not to disturb the quiet in the complex, also called Hardoon Garden , the route of the tram was changed. The facility was located on Bubbling Well Road (now Nanjing Lu ), where many Europeans had their properties. However, while these tried to differentiate themselves from the Chinese in their lifestyle and to create a small piece of Europe for themselves, Hardoon tried to familiarize themselves with the Chinese world around him. From 1911, the end of the Qing dynasty , Chinese people of various origins and political directions sought refuge in the Aili Garden, from the fled Mandarin to the revolutionary of the first hour. He employed former imperial servants, including eunuchs , in his home. This attempt to be as Chinese as possible and to maintain good relationships with the Chinese was made out of both conviction and self-interest. Hardoon was known for his good relations with the Chinese businessmen in Shanghai as well as with various rulers in China.

Between 1909 and 1913 the Hardoons supported the publication of Buddhist canons . In 1915 a traditional Chinese school was set up on the site of the Aili Garden , along with several cultural associations and a publishing house. The publisher has published magazines, a Kangxi lexicon and an esteemed translation of the Koran into Chinese. In the first volume of the Koran, Hardoon is depicted in traditional Chinese clothing. For these and numerous other financial benefits, Hardoon was honored several times by the Chinese government in the 1920s. The couple had no children of their own; Luo Jualing initially adopted several children of Chinese origin who took their names, and after 1919 the couple adopted eleven children together. Most of these children were of Jewish-Russian descent or children of "white Russians" given to the Hardoons by impoverished families after they fled to China during the October Revolution .

While Europeans in Shanghai saw Silas Hardoon as an eccentric or eccentric, the Jewish community there was angry about his behavior. Although Hardoon had the Beth Araron synagogue built in memory of his father in 1927 , he left little or no money to the community when he died. His funeral was performed according to the Jewish rite, but Buddhist monks also attended, which the Jewish community perceived as a scandal. A month later, the Chinese held their own funeral service. “No other foreigner is likely to have left a greater mark on the collective memory of Shanghai than Hardoon.” Hardoon was the only non-Chinese character ever to be portrayed in a Peking opera .

After Hardoon's death

At the time of his death, Hardoon was estimated to have a personal fortune that, by today's standards, was approximately $ 15 billion. He was considered the richest man in Asia, if not the whole world. Years of inheritance disputes began with his death because distant relatives from Iraq had filed claims. They were supported by the Jewish community in Shanghai with the argument that Luo Jialing was not Jewish and therefore the marriage was not legally valid. Luo Jialing, in turn, briefly disinherited the adopted son George Hardoon, the main heir of Silas Hardoon. After Luo Jialing's death, the disputes continued until the Luo and Hardoon children signed several sharing agreements. With the establishment of the People's Republic of China, a large part of the property was lost as it consisted mainly of real estate. In 1958 the Sino-Soviet Friendship Building was erected on the site of the Aili Garden; it is known today as the Shanghai Exhibition Center . The original building and gardens burned down a few years after Hardoon's death.

literature

• Stella Dong: Shanghai. The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City . HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., New York, NY 2000, ISBN 0-688-15798-X , pp. 58-59.
• Jonathan Goldstein, Benjamin Schwartz: The jewd in China, Vol. 1: Historical and comparative perspectives . Sharpe Books, Armonk, NY 1999, ISBN 0-7656-0103-6 .
• Matthias Messmer: Silas Aaron Hardoon . In. Ders .: Jewish wayfarers in modern China. Tragedy and splendor . Lexington Books, Lanham, Md. 2012, ISBN 978-0-7391-6938-4 , pp. 5-14.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Chiara Betta: Silas Aaron Hardoon (1851-1931): Business, Politics and Philanthropy in Republican Shanghai, 1911-1931 . In: The Scribe . 2002. Retrieved May 27, 2008.
2. ↑ Hardoon David: The Hardoon Family Genealogy website . In: The Hardoons . 2008. Retrieved September 22, 2008.
3. ^ Stanley Jackson: The Sassoons - Portrait of a Dynasty. , William Heinemann Ltd., London 1968, pp. 65 and 201, ISBN 0-434-37056-8
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Matthias Messmer: China. Locations of west-east encounters. Böhlau 2007. p. 196 f.
5. ↑ ^{a b c d} Chiara Betta: Forgotten Baghdadi Jewish Tycoon: Silas Hardoon in Shanghai, 1874–1931 ( Memento of the original from September 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on babylonjewry.org.il 
6. ↑ ^{a b} The Charm of Old Shanghai on shme.com
7. ^ Matthias Messmer: China. Locations of west-east encounters . Böhlau 2007. p. 201.
8. ↑ Silas Hardoon: Opium dealer, rent collector and once the richest man in Asia on travel.cnn.com

Web links

• Chiara Betta: Silas Aaron Hardoon (1851-1931): Business, Politics and Philanthropy in Republican Shanghai, 1911-1931 on dangoor.com