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Web-only Exclusives
November 30, 2000

From Our Correspondent: Hirohito and the War
A conversation with biographer Herbert Bix

From Our Correspondent: A Rough Road Ahead
Bad news for the Philippines - and some others

From Our Correspondent: Making Enemies
Indonesia needs friends. So why is it picking fights?

Asiaweek Time Asia Now Asiaweek story

FALL OF THE HOUSE OF AW

Page 2:
CHEAP SELF-PROMOTION


THE AW PUBLISHING EMPIRE began with one paper in Singapore in 1929, then a second in Shantou, a third in Xiamen, another in Singapore, one in Hong Kong and several others soon after. Aw Boon Haw and his brother, Boo n Par, were well into their forties and well-established by this time. In 1926, they had moved from their home in Rangoon to Singapore, where they ferociously expanded the Tiger Balm business. The camphor-and-menthol ointment wasn't much, as Sally herself used to say, but Boon Haw turned it into Asia's most popular brand name and turned himself into a celebrity.

Till the end, Boon Haw was a tireless, sometimes shameless promoter. He donated to charities (though not just for the public-relations benefits), he drove a car with a tiger head welded to the hood, he built those gardens, he may have helped the Japanese during the war in order to keep his business going, and he established newspapers. "Father paid so much for ads, he thought it would be cheaper to just open a few newspapers," Sally once said. Wherever the Aws had a Tiger Balm factory, they started a pape r.

Aw Boon Haw had four wives and many mistresses. He raised eight children, six boys and two girls, some born to one wife but taken by another and some, including Sally, adopted. She was born in Burma in 1931 to distant relatives of Boon Haw; his second and favorite wife, Tan Kyi Kyi, who had no children of her own, insisted on adopting Seh Moi, as she was then called. When she was five, she moved to the Aw home in Singapore and was renamed Sian, or goddess.

Shewasn't supposed to inherit the family publishing business. Her older brother was the intended successor, but he was killed in a mysterious plane crash (accounts differ about where in Southeast Asia) in 1951. Three years later, Aw Boon Haw died. The fam ily fought, the cousins fell out and Sally, who had been employed at Sing Tao for only two years, took over the papers. She was 23. Aw's mother encouraged her, accompanied her almost everywhere and kept an office next door. Sally's widowed sister-in-law H oi Lai-yin used to tag along too.

Aw showed early promise. In 1969, she made perhaps her most shrewd move - publishing daily editions of Sing Tao for Chinese communities from Toronto to Paris. It was a brilliant idea, well-timed and executed, and it made Aw's reputation. From then on, she was the woman who published the first global newspaper. In 1971, she was named chairman of the International Publishers Institute, an honor she still likes to mention. Sing Tao Holdings went public a year later: The offering was oversubscribed some 50 ti mes and the share price more than doubled that first day. During the next decade or so, Sing Tao newspaper grabbed the best Hong Kong property ads, pages and pages of them. Aw's overseas papers were profitable. Money rolled in.

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