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.

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