C. Q. Yee Hop was a businessman and entrepreneur who was a pillar in Honolulu's Chinese community.
Born in 1867 in Gong Bui village in Zhongshan district, Guangdong province, China, he left at the age of 19 to seek economic opportunity in what was then the independent Kingdom of Hawai‘i.
He started as a butcher and opened his first business, the Yee Hop Meat Market. The market eventually grew into one of Hawai‘i's first multi-department, multi-service supermarkets.
During his life, he was involved in dozens of businesses including a restaurant, brewery, cattle ranch, logging, furniture-making and real estate development.
He co-founded the Chinese Merchants Association (the forerunner to today's Chinese Chamber of Commerce) and financed the operation of three Chinese language newspapers (The New China Daily, Chinese World and The Humanity Weekly). He also helped found the Mun Lun School, which at one time was the largest Chinese language school in America. Along with other kinsmen, he raised funds to build Gong Bui primary school in his natal village.
He had 16 children and died of natural causes in 1954.
