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Charles Adolphus Phang was born around 1863 in British Guiana, the only son of Lee Sue Phang of Demarara. He came to Jamaica in 1890, and in 1892 he started a business in Balaclava, St Elizabeth. In October of that year he married Mary Frances Leahong, only daughter of Henry Leahong of Kingston, in the Kingston Parish Church. The Leahongs had also come from British Guiana to Jamaica, and both families were part of the later 19th century diaspora of Hakka-speaking Chinese from the regions around Canton in southern China.
By 1910 Charles Phang was described as the leading Chinese merchant in the dry goods, provision and produce trade in the island.
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Daily Gleaner, September 5, 1907
Balaclava, to a large extent, is indebted to Mr. Charles Phang's energy and enterprise for its rapid growth. Indeed no other single man has been so instrumental in giving much needed employment to tradesmen and others. His fine new building containing ten apartments, with full length verandah in front, to be let to respectable tenants, is rapidly drawing towards completion. Daily Gleaner, June 17, 1910 Mr. Charles Phang [is] the leading Chinese merchant in the dry goods, provision and produce trade in Jamaica. Born in British Guiana, Mr. Phang arrived in Jamaica in 1890 and in 1892 started business in Balaclava, St. Elizabeth, where he is still located. By perseverance he has been successful in whatever he has attempted. He married a sister of T. Leahong, Esq., of this city and has a large family; his two eldest daughters having the distinction of being the first Chinese girls to enter as students in the Royal Academy of Music, London; while the third is still at college at Bath, Somerset, England. 
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the family
The seven daughters of Charles and Mary Phang were remarkable young women – Rosalind, May, Hilda, Inez, Lucille, Mildred, Gladys, and two of them stand out particularly for their talents in the performing arts, though all of them seem to have had musical talent.
During the war years the Phang girls arranged and performed in numerous concerts to raise money for the Jamaicans with the British West India Regiment in France and the Middle East. They sang, and danced, and played piano solos at concerts in venues in Kingston and in rural towns.
During the war years the Phang girls arranged and performed in numerous concerts to raise money for the Jamaicans with the British West India Regiment in France and the Middle East. They sang, and danced, and played piano solos at concerts in venues in Kingston and in rural towns.
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The eldest, Rosalind, had a brilliant career as a musician; she studied with Mr M C Maynier in Jamaica, but in 1906, when she was 13, she was sent to England to continue her studies. In 1910 she entered the Royal Academy of Music, where she studied with Professor Carlo Albanesi. In the following years she was awarded a Bronze, then a Silver Medal, and in 1913 the Certificate of Merit. Her plans to sit for the L.R.A.M. were disrupted by the out-break of war in 1914, when her father insisted that she return to Jamaica. She decided on returning to London in 1916, and in the following year received the L.R.A.M.; according to the Gleaner report at the time, she was the first Chinese person to do so.
In 1919 Rosalind and Hilda made the journey, via the USA, to China, to visit their ancestral homeland. In 1922 Rosalind married George Sokolsky, a controversial American journalist of Russian Jewish ancestry, whom she met in Shanghai. |
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