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In the late 1860s, a poor teenager from Guangdong Province named Cheong Fatt Tze fled the Opium Wars and escaped to Dutch-controlled Jakarta, then called Batavia. From his beginnings in a sundries shop, he grew into the head of a major trading company with stores across southeast Asia. One of those stores was in Penang, and he built himself a grand home there for when he visited the city. It was modeled on the design of a Chinese courtyard house, though it incorporates many European features, from British tiles to Scottish iron railings and pillars. Careful attention was paid to feng shui — Cheong even went so far as to buy the land across the street to build a “protective” row of shop houses.

The mansion deteriorated under decades of occupancy by Cheong’s descendants and their tenants. But it underwent a magnificent restoration in the 1990s. Artisans used cotton swabs to remove dirt from the wooden screen in the entry hall — uncovering the original gold-leaf decoration. Exterior “cut-and-paste” mosaics were repaired with chips of brightly-painted porcelain — created by breaking colorful bowls produced specifically for the purpose. Rooms were filled with period furniture  and other odds-and-ends, from rickshaws to tiffin tins. Now, it is open as a museum and a small bed-and-breakfast. Staying there was one of the highlights of our trip to Malaysia. It was an incredible experience to sit in the courtyard at night, watching the rain fall down into the mansion and imagining what it must have been like to live there a century earlier.

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The Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion is located at 14 Lebuh Leith in George Town, Penang, Malaysia. Visitors must take one of the twice-daily tours, at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. There is a 10-ringgit charge for those not staying at the mansion. Rooms at the bed-and-breakfast begin at 350 ringgits (about $100 USD) per night.

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my RSS feed for more tips and stories about traveling in China. This is the latest in a series of weekly slideshows spotlighting places I’ve been on my travels, in China and beyond. You can view more of my photos at Picasa and Flickr.

This post is part of Delicious Baby’s Photo Friday. Look there for more great travel photos.