Early Life
Ho Yuen Hoe was born on 18 February 1908, to a family of silk weavers in Guangzhou, China, the second of three children. Her family was poor, and she was sold when she was five years old. Barely two years later, the spinster who had purchased her died, and Ho was sold by the woman's nephew, to become a maid. After a few years she was sold again. In her late teens, a group of snakeheads persuaded her and several other girls to emigrate to Singapore, ostensibly to work on a rubber plantation, but the job did not materialise. At the age of 21, alone and penniless, she married the owner of a grocery business. When the business failed, they left for Hong Kong, hoping for better fortune. Ho became a hairdresser in nearby Macau, but after discovering that her husband had another wife and children she decided to return to Singapore alone, vowing never to remarry. At about that same time, she became a vegetarian.
In 1936, with the help of a friend, the then 28-year-old Ho set up shop in Chinatown with only a comb, a stool, and a kerosene lamp. She worked from 8 am to 3 am, charging five cents to comb hair or weave plaits and buns for amahs and Samsui women. She did that every day for almost three decades, interrupted only by periods when she was incapacitated by acute attacks of arthritis. She scrimped and saved, and by the time she was in her 40s, she had enough to buy a shophouse in Club Street. Although illiterate, she made some property investments and eventually became a landlord, renting out rooms. As her wealth grew, she acquired more properties, and she began to adopt children from poor families, becoming a single mother of six daughters and twenty-five godchildren.
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