He was Chairman of the Board of Directors for the China Mail Steamship Company, and President of the Canton Bank of San Francisco.
In 1868 an older half brother of Lew Hing ventured to San Francisco to start a small metal shop on Commercial Street.
His square rigged sailing vessel was off the coast of Japan when it caught fire and sank, causing all aboard to perish at sea.
He attended educational classes at a missionary school and learned English, in exchange he worked with translating for shipments from China for U.S.
It was with such family association guidance that Lew continued working at his deceased brother's metal shop, while attending a local church mission to learn to read and write English.
In addition, among his odd jobs he helped a European woman make her fruit jams for storage in glass jars.
It was a natural next step for Lew to combine his metalwork with his food preservation skills to join in the new industry of canning foodstuffs.
The cannery was located at the northeast corner of Sacramento and Stockton Streets in San Francisco and took up the first two stories of the building with the basement as storage.
Lew Hing had embarked on a long period of trial and error before the cannery could reliably produce safe and edible canned foods.
However, within a year Lew returned to the Bay Area, opening the Pacific Coast Canning Company at 12th and Pine Streets in Oakland.
As a consequence, he became involved with many Oakland Chinatown organizations, making contributions to their many causes and forming business alliances in relation to the Pacific Canning Company.
As the Pacific Canning Company prospered, Lew Hing diversified his interests into many other areas, including a personal interest in the Loong Kong Tien Yee Association, an organization for the families of Lew, Quan, Jung and Chew, and fostered the group in both Oakland and San Francisco.
Given his natural leadership in the Chinese community, he became President of the Canton Bank of San Francisco, located at the northeast corner of Montgomery and Sacramento Streets.
However, his San Francisco interests had to be juggled with his work as president and owner of Pacific Coast Canning Company in Oakland.
By 1910, Lew Hing had entered the import-export trade, first as an investor with Sing Chong and Fook Wah Companies which imported art goods from China.
[citation needed] By World War I, Pacific Coast Canning Company was regularly exporting convenient canned goods to Europe.
Lew Hing set aside a few city blocks of land on the plantation for shops to accommodate the needs of Chinese workers.
[8] In 1928, at age 70, Lew Hing established his fourth cannery, the West Coast Canning Company, along the shores of San Pablo Bay in Antioch, California.
In 2006 this building was torn down and replaced by housing, Pacific Cannery Lofts, with a plaque commemorating Lew Hing and his importance to the site.
After a rich career in canning, shipping, hotels, banking, and other industries, Lew Hing considered his most worthy contribution to be the swimming pool for the youth at the San Francisco Chinese YMCA, built in 1925.
He also related well to the Caucasian community, as indicated when he often attended formal civic events and was included in the inner circle of San Francisco's long-time mayor, Jimmy Rolph.