Sim Keng Koen, Kapitein der Chinezen (died in 1906) was a Chinese-Indonesian bureaucrat and the patriarch of the influential Lauw-Sim-Zecha family, part of the 'Cabang Atas' gentry of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia).[1][2][3][4] He was married to Louisa Zecha, the Indo-Bohemian widow of Sim's former employer, Lauw Tek Lok, Luitenant der Chinezen of Bekasi.[1][2]
Sim began his career as the private secretary of Luitenant Lauw Tek Lok, one of the preeminent Chinese-Indonesian magnates of the second half of the nineteenth century.[2] After leaving Lauw's employ, Sim was appointed Luitenant der Chinezen of the Kong Koan (Chinese Council) of Batavia in 1880.[5] This was a senior civil government post in the Dutch colonial bureaucracy.[2] He was further elevated to the rank of Kapitein in 1887, and was discharged with honour in 1889.[6][7]
Together with his wife, Louisa Zecha, Sim settled down in Sukabumi, a hill station in the Preanger highlands of West Java.[2] In 1892, he was appointed as the first Hoofd der Chinezen of Sukabumi with the rank of Kapitein-titulair der Chinezen.[8] The sociologist Mely G. Tan calls Sim the most prominent of all of Sukabumi's Chinese headmen, in large part thanks to the high profile of his Eurasian wife.[2] In the course of a violent uprising in Tamboen in the late nineteenth century, and in the absence of any Dutch military response, Sim accompanied Zecha to meet with the insurgents in order to negotiate a surrender.[1] They succeeded in this aim without military intervention.[1] The Kapitein's influence in Sukabumi was such that the local Chinese community celebrated Cap Go Meh a few days later so as to coincide with Sim's birthday festivities.[2]
He requested an honourable discharge from the colonial authorities due to old age, which was granted, in 1899.[9] He died in 1906.[3][4] That same year, he was succeeded as Hoofd der Chinezen of Sukabumi by his step-nephew, Lauw Tjeng Kie, in which capacity, however, he bore the lower title of Luitenant der Chinezen of Sukabumi (the office having been downgraded in rank from captaincy to a lieutenantcy upon Sim's retirement).[10]
Kapitein Sim Keng Koen is the step-great-grandfather of the hotelier Adrian Lauw-Zecha, the founder of Aman Resorts, and the grandfather of the ballerina Che Engku Chesterina, a princess by marriage of Negeri Sembilan in Malaysia.[11][12][13]
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