In mid-October, I went on a work trip to Penang. Since it was my first time to Malaysia, and to help make the time change difference a little gentler, I chose to arrive so that I would have the weekend both to adjust and to see Penang on my own time. As soon as I started doing initial research, one place stood out to me as my dream of where I wanted to stay one day – and then I realized, the one day could be today! Here’s my experience in staying at the Cheong Fatt Tze Blue Mansion in Penang.
If you have read my blog before, you know that I am in love with the style of Peranakan style shophouses and homes, which I first discovered on my trip to Singapore earlier this summer. The culmination of that was attending a really in-depth tour of the Baba House where I got to hear the stories of what it was like to live in that house for its original residents, from secret places to see and hear conversations (especially given the division of women to be hidden in the house and never past the reception room), the meaning behind the open atriums, symbolism in the decorative motifs, to compartments in the bed to hide your jewelry while you slept so no one could steal it without literally getting past you.
This mansion has its own stories as well. The Blue Mansion was one of many homes of Cheong Fatt Tze (1840-1916), who was also called “the Rockefeller of the East”. This was also the home of his favorite wife, the 7th wife (the only wife named in his will) – though to be fair other wives besides her resided there. He was 70 at the time – she was 17. Supposedly it was the only time of the eight times he married that he married for love. She bore him his last (and eighth) son 4 years later. You can see what they each looked like below. You can also see the first time I caught a glimpse of the “Blue Mansion house cat” who made an appearance during the tour and a few times later during my stay. Meow. 
Staying at the Cheong Fatt Tze Blue Mansion in Penang was the natural next step after touring and hearing the history of Peranakan museums. This would be the opportunity, if even for a couple nights, pretend to live and not just visit for a few hours in the details of the home, from the individually laid pieces of tiles of the floor from England, art nouveau stained glass windows, to the indigo-based limewash exterior with porcelain pieces broken and cut into roof folk art.
As a guest of the Blue Mansion, you can also join the tours the mansion has three times a day for free (non-guests pay a small admission fee). I was able to attend a tour given by one of the local owners who beat out developers for the purchase of The Blue Mansion. She told us lots of background stories she had heard directly from the last daughter-in-law of Cheong Fatt Tze, the final owner of the mansion and who managed it until after her husband (the last son of Cheong Fatt Tze) passed and whose death finally freed, based on his father’s will, the ability to sell the mansion. She looked like she was quite the cool lady, as you can see from the photos of her during the 1930s below on the left.
On the right you see the tour guide, Mrs Loh–Lim Lin Lee, who also told us details of the restoration work needed and the struggle of being the first of this kind of preservation effort in George Town. You can still hear the frustration in her voice as she told us later about how heartbreaking it was when construction at a nearby car park by hotel developers used percussion hammer piling that was damaging the mansion (literally cracking the wood beams) and the years of court cases it took. By the time the stop order was finally given by the slow moving courts, the piling had already completed thanks to frenzied 24 hour piling for 9 days. George Town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site now that promotes and supports restoration, but the Blue Mansion did not enjoy any of that support while also being among the first leading the way to preserve cultural heritage. 
As a guest I was able to enjoy coming in and out of all the areas of the mansion save the individual hotel rooms anytime. Non-guests can only visit as part of the tour or as diners of the restaurant upstairs (Indigo), and even then only the main center of the mansion. That may make the tour seem limited, but you can see all of the areas in the photos so far I’ve posted except my selfies on the stairs, and the ones immediately below, during the tour. It includes the main reception area below for instance where guests both personal and for business would meet, and behind the screens began the personal home area.
The entrance hall’s furniture was donated by Loh’s friends and includes 19th-century Chinese ebony chairs and tables inlaid with mother-of-pearl. An astonishing floor-to-ceiling carved and gilded screen separates the entrance hall from the main inner courtyard. “The screen was supposed to make you walk around the courtyard and look up at the dramatic Scottish wrought iron grillwork held up by cast iron Corinthian columns,” says Loh. The setting is cinematic enough to have been used for a crucial scene in the 1992 film Indochine, starring Catherine Deneuve.
Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion, Architectural Digest
Also part of the tour are the main atrium, including the heart of the house just on the other side of the entrance hall. You can see the main feng shui center by where you see the table and small bonsai trees. Also here are the breakfast area and combined with the reception room (the big screen was removed) stood in for the mahjong parlour in Crazy Rich Asians. Seems particularly suitable that this mansion was used because one of the stories about is Cheong Fatt Tze is that he once bought an entire railway just to spite a conductor who had refused to allow him to sit in the first-class carriage on account of his race. This is of course parallel to the background story of Nick in Crazy Rich Asians too.
There are also exhibits in a room on the first floor and most of the second floor with more of the artifacts from when people lived here. That said, the amount of items displayed in the exhibits is small, unlike the almost overwhelming amount at the Pinang Peranakan Museum.
One more fun trivia – supposedly under the iron posts imported from Ireland and painstaking brought by ship to Penang, there is gold buried! Gold buried at strategic places is good feng shui – and also explains why the mansion is intentionally built at an angle to the street, and is slightly sloped in elevation to qualify as being on a hill. 
Being a guest also allowed me quiet times to walk around, enjoying all the details of the mansion without the crowds on the tour. The two side annexes of the Blue Mansion are only accessible to the boutique hotel guests. This includes the iconic cast-iron, spiral staircases imported from Glasgow just like those columns you see above in the main atrium. Other visitors would lean in pass the ropes to take a photo of these staircases, but I was able to walk to and even go up and down and of course, get my new profile photo for FB. There’s also a pool, but I never had a chance to use it as it would cool off and start monsoon season rain by late afternoon. A shame because besides bathrobes the rooms had sarongs for use as cover-ups. 
It was especially in the evening (I was usually out and about during the day) that I really savored the ambiance of the mansion. On Friday and Saturday evenings for a few hours a gu-zheng player plays in the main atrium. There was something so exquisite and out of time of the atmosphere about hearing the lilting string music echo to the atriums on both wings as I walked down red lantern lit hallways and the rain pittered down in the courtyards. The accumulation of the water has meaning too – it is symbolic of wealth.
Every evening I relaxed with a cocktail from the bar that was delivered to my room which I ordered as I came back from my day adventures. In my room I would find every afternoon traditional nyonya kuih tea snacks in a steamer basket with a note written on a leaf wishing me good sleep.
I stayed in a Ming Suite, which was on the ground floor and provided me direct access to walk to the pool. Other room categories include those with additional beds, sitting rooms, clawfoot tubs, in-room jacuzzis, etc. Each room is uniquely named and themed. I was impressed with how my room balanced having old fashioned touches of antiques with modern convenience like the huge bathroom with both rain head shower and handheld shower head, fast cooling air conditioning, and TV. It definitely follows the theme of how the design of the Blue Mansion also blends elements of Eastern and Western design.
Here’s a look at what my Escoy room looked like, including the gorgeous giant and grand Chinese screen that I would stare up at as I plugged my phone into the power strip by the bed to charge after a day out but before the night out. Also notice other fun details, like the old fashioned key, and rubber duckies. As examples of trying to be sustainable, rather then wasting energy you need to turn on a switch to heat the water, you can choose to rely on the fan instead of AC, water is filtered and the shampoo, conditioner, soap, and the lotion all come in large refillable containers instead of single use plastics.
Breakfast is included with the stay, and includes a small buffet that included some bakery items along with a variety of spreads, dim sum, a different noodle dish, curry dish, and salad bar every morning, as well as option to order from 6 different entrees that were Western and Asian dishes. Although the buffet may not have measured up to larger corporate hotels, the entree dish more then made up for it in being made to order and being quite filling even without the buffet extras.
To give you some context, everything you see below is from the breakfast buffet except the Blue Mansion Fry-Up (with creamy scrambled eggs, grilled chicken sausage, baked tomatoes, streaky beef, hash browns, and mixed greens – photo #5) and the Penang Style Hokkien Mee (a local breakfast of yellow egg noodles and rice vermicelli served with bean sprouts, hard boiled egg, poached chicken slices, shrimp and fried shallots, bathed in a fragrant, slightly spicy stock- photo #8 below).
I thought my stay at The Blue Mansion was more then I could have hoped for. Not seen in my photos is how conveniently located The Blue Mansion is. I walked from here to see most of the sites of George Town, from restaurants and bars to hawker food (there’s even a center right next door to the hotel) and street art. If you are going to Penang and are interested in staying in a smaller boutique hotel with history and uniquely blended experience of East and West and old and new, I would definitely recommend The Blue Mansion.
What caught your eye or interest from my photos and experience of staying at The Blue Mansion in Penang? Have you been to Penang before, where did you stay?
Penang, Malaysia Travel Posts (October 2019)
- Staying at the Cheong Fatt Tze Blue Mansion in Penang
- Best Activity for Penang: Tips for Visiting George Town Street Art in Penang
- Food Highlights of Penang
- Visiting Kek Lok Si Temple
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