 These directed his commercial and political activities.Coming from a Teochew family, Lim Koon-Teck was born on 28 November 1904, in a small terraced shophouse at St. Gregory's Place, off Hill Street, opposite the Armenian Church, in British Malayan Singapore, the eldest of the fourteen (14) children of Lim Boon-Seng, a cloth merchant, and Tan Gek-Neo.His parents had both come to Singapore from Sarawak, and his grandparents, to Sarawak from China.