The Side View
Front Main Entrance, with the 2 lanterns there
The Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion14, Leith Street,10200 Penang.(04) 262 0006
Built in the 1880s, this was the brainchild of Cheong Fatt Tze, left China in 1856 for “Nanyang”. His business empire traded tin, rubber, cocoa, spices. He was appointed Consul General for China, Mandarin of the Highest Order, Director of China’s Railway, and dubbed “China’s last Mandarin and first capitalist”. The New York Times called him the “Rockefeller of the East”.
The mansion incorporated 38 rooms, five granite-paved courtyards, seven staircases and 220 windows. . Other features of the house include Gothic louvered windows, Chinese cut & paste porcelain work, Stoke-on-Trent floor tiles, Scottish cast iron works and Art Nouveau stained glass. There are many hidden feng shui motifs in the art nouveau stain glass windows.The motif of pineapple traced onto a fan to symbolise the “fanning in of wealth.” (In Chinese, pineapple sounds the same as “wealth coming in”).
When Cheong Fatt Tze passed away in 1916, flags were ordered to be flown at half-mast by the Dutch and the British in their colonies, to honour this man. So respected a man was he and so much wealth he had amassed in his lifetime, unfortunately the wealth and fortune did not quite benefit the later generations. An old Chinese saying that a family’s great wealth and fortune do not last over three generations.
Eventually, the mansion was deserted by the family. Squaters moved in during the 70's and stayed until one day a group of Heritage preservationists acquired the Mansion to ensure that it would be maintained & conserved for posterity. It took them almost 3 years to negotiate with the squaters a deadline to leave the premise. When they finally did, then restoration work began, and led to this heritage project winning the UNESCO Asia Pacific Heritage Award 2000.
A scene of the French movie "Indochine" starring Catherine Deneueve was filmed in this building.
Built in the 1880s, this was the brainchild of Cheong Fatt Tze, left China in 1856 for “Nanyang”. His business empire traded tin, rubber, cocoa, spices. He was appointed Consul General for China, Mandarin of the Highest Order, Director of China’s Railway, and dubbed “China’s last Mandarin and first capitalist”. The New York Times called him the “Rockefeller of the East”.
The mansion incorporated 38 rooms, five granite-paved courtyards, seven staircases and 220 windows. . Other features of the house include Gothic louvered windows, Chinese cut & paste porcelain work, Stoke-on-Trent floor tiles, Scottish cast iron works and Art Nouveau stained glass. There are many hidden feng shui motifs in the art nouveau stain glass windows.The motif of pineapple traced onto a fan to symbolise the “fanning in of wealth.” (In Chinese, pineapple sounds the same as “wealth coming in”).
When Cheong Fatt Tze passed away in 1916, flags were ordered to be flown at half-mast by the Dutch and the British in their colonies, to honour this man. So respected a man was he and so much wealth he had amassed in his lifetime, unfortunately the wealth and fortune did not quite benefit the later generations. An old Chinese saying that a family’s great wealth and fortune do not last over three generations.
Eventually, the mansion was deserted by the family. Squaters moved in during the 70's and stayed until one day a group of Heritage preservationists acquired the Mansion to ensure that it would be maintained & conserved for posterity. It took them almost 3 years to negotiate with the squaters a deadline to leave the premise. When they finally did, then restoration work began, and led to this heritage project winning the UNESCO Asia Pacific Heritage Award 2000.
A scene of the French movie "Indochine" starring Catherine Deneueve was filmed in this building.
