Nothing in Liem's childhood gave any indication of how illustrious his future would be. He was born to farmers in a small village of some 600 people in Fujian province, China. Like many village children in China in those days, he lived a hardscrabble existence. His village was located in a region considered inhospitable for farming — surrounded by mountains and bordered by the sea, there was a scarcity of arable land. The soil, tainted by the sea's high saline content, allowed only hardy plants such as peanuts and sweet potato to be cultivated. There was no system of irrigation. Still, farmers coaxed rice to grow. (When Liem became wealthy and wanted to help his homeland, one of the early projects he initiated was the construction of a reservoir, feeding an extensive irrigation canal system. This enabled the entire area of Fuqing to develop and indeed, prosper.)

The disagreeable conditions of the region were pithily encapsulated by the local adage: “jiu nian han, yi nian zai”, which translates to “nine years of drought, one year of disaster [meaning floods.]” It was no surprise that many young men from the area left in droves in search of a better life elsewhere. Liem became one of them. In 1937, the Japanese invaded China. The weak and corrupt Kuomintang Nationalist government, facing a growing threat internally by the Communists led by Mao Zedong, were no match for the invaders. Law and order disintegrated in many parts of the country, with local warlords and bandits claiming power over many areas. By 1938, war had reached Liem's doorstep. He had lost his father the previous year, and now faced certain conscription. He was as reluctant to leave his recently widowed mother as she was to have her favourite son leave her side. Confronted with the realities, they agreed he should join his elder brother Sioe Hie, already in Java with their uncle. Thus began Liem's journey to become one of the wealthiest men in Nanyang, as Southeast Asia was then called.

BACKGROUND

Liem was born Lin Shaoliang, in 1917, the Year of the Snake, on the seventh day of the seventh month of according to the Chinese zodiac. Official records in Indonesia listed his birth as 1916, and the family used that to calculate his age.