Vintage Hong Kong Camphor Seamans Trunk with Brass Inlay by George Zee and Co.

George Zee & Co (徐海記)

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Like J.L. George, George Zee & Co was another established furniture maker in Shanghai which moved to Hong Kong and found success with American clients.

According to one of his clients Chaplain Thomas Parham Jr (who was the first African American captain of the US Navy), George Zee (徐國祥, Xu Guoxiang) originally studied to become a Presbyterian minister at the Princeton Seminary in the US but went into the furniture business in Shanghai in order to support his large extended family in the 1930s.

He proved to be a shrewd businessman and was good at attracting Western clients, soon his George Zee & Co (Xu Hai Ji in Chinese) was one of the leading Chinese wood carved furniture makers in Shanghai with its flagship store located at 142 Nanking Road.

According to Nathan S.Y. Yuan (阮壽榮) who worked for George Zee in the early 1950s (and who later became the longtime English secretary to high ranking KMT officials such as C.K. Yen and K.T. Li in Taiwan), George Zee left Shanghai for Hong Kong with less than HK$50,000 in cash shortly before the Communists took over and soon like many of his fellow Shanghainese businessmen lost his shirt in gold speculation.

However, he was quick to rebuild his fortune by re-establishing his furniture business and was getting six figure orders in US dollars every few weeks from the American armed forces in Japan where the well-known military chaplain Franklin W. Brink was his classmate at Princeton. At his peak George Zee had 3 shops – 122 Nathan Road and the Miramar Arcade on Kowloon side and 79 Gloucester Road in Hong Kong island (there was also a branch at the Hong Kong Hotel at one point) and 2 factories, one located in Mongkok and another one on 500A Castle Peak Road in Cheung Sha Wan which according to Yuan was a “big establishment but the equipment was rudimentary and the management slip shod. There were more than a hundred men in the big yard, hewing, carving and assembling parts all with their hands and there was not a piece of machinery in sight”.

Part of George Zee’s success was his emphasis on product quality – every product was meter tested before it left the factory, had a serial number and came with a guarantee that it would never split or warp thanks to his special kiln dried technique.

Although his business was very successful, it was not immune to labor issues and in 1951, a strike arose over a disagreement about piecework rates and discontent over measures taken to suppress gambling and to prevent workers from using the factory as sleeping quarters. Out of this strike the first union for wood carvers in Hong Kong – the pro-KMT, HK Kowloon Camphorwood Trunk Workers Union, was organized and at its peak in the late 1950s early 1960s it had over 240 members. Within a year, the pro-Communist Wood Carvers Union was also established and soon became the largest group with over 500 members. In response, another right wing group comprised of Shanghai/Chekiang natives was formed with peak membership of 160 in 1955.

George Zee died in May 1967 and the management of his business was left to his widow Zee Chang Kam Fung (徐張金鳳) who also served on the board of the HKFCMA.

The firm George Zee & Co was incorporated in 1961 and dissolved in 2010.

Sources for the George Zee entry:
Parham, Thomas David Jr Affirmation of Faith. Xulon Press, 2010, p 218
Yuan, Nathan S.Y. Crossing the Rubicon: the story of a Chinese refugee family, Dorrance, 1980