Yap Ah Shak

Who is Yap Ah Shak?

Kapitan China Yap Ah Shak of Petaling was one of the last three Kapitans China of nineteenth-century Kuala Lumpur. He was a wealthy Huizhou Hakka merchant and a Hai San leader.

Yap Ah Shak was selected by Wong Ying, a prosperous Cantonese miner and several others to take over from Kapitan China Shin of Sungai Ujong six months after the disturbances there had died down. The late Kapitan Shin was slain in the 1860 uprising of the Chinese miners at Sungai Ujong attributed to excessive taxation by the local Malay chiefs.

Yap Ah Shak then passed the title to Yap Ah Loy in 1859.

Yap Ah Shak moved from Sungai Ujong to Kuala Lumpur in 1870 and, even after passing on his title to Yap Ah Loy, continued to serve as magistrate for the settlement of Chinese disputes and as High Court Assessor.

By 1880 Yap Ah Shak had 10 tin mines around Kuala Lumpur.

Yap Ah Loy died in the middle of April 1885 and, after consulting representatives of different dialect groups in Kuala Lumpur, the British chose Yap Ah Shak, who had passed the title to Yap Ah Loy twenty-six years earlier, to serve as Selangor's new Kapitan China and state councillor.