GEORGE TOWN: Like all the heritage buildings in Penang, the Pinang Peranakan Mansion has its own story to tell.

The mansion, which was restored on 2004 after being left to languish for 60 years, has been featured on several television shows broadcast to worldwide audiences.

In recent years, it was the pit stop for a leg of the reality television show Amazing Race (American version), while popular travel and living channel presenter Ian Wright also visited the mansion during his tour of Penang.

The mansion has been featured by the British Broadcasting Corp (BBC) and has also served as the set for several movies, including The Little Nyonya and Road to Dawn.

Pinang Peranakan Mansion museum director Lillian Tong relates how the mansion came about.

It was built by a leader of a famous triad then, Kapitan Cina Chung Keng Kwee, who won the plot of land in a fight with the leader of another triad, Ghee Hin.

According to Tong, Chung travelled to then Malaya from China as a young man in search of his father and older brother who had  come to work in the tin mines.

He stayed on and later joined the triads, which in those days signified status and power in society. He eventually became the leader of the Penang and Perak Hai San groups in the Larut Wars from 1860 to 1884 and in 1894.

Though not of Peranakan or Baba Nyonya descent himself, he decided to build a majestic home in the eclectic style of Straits architecture, which only the rich Peranakan families could afford at the end of the 19th century.

The Kapitan spent a fortune decorating the house in Church Street in a fusion of European and Asian styles. He had easy access to materials from all over the world, as merchant ships called at the Penang port then.

Chung went out of his way to furnish his new home with Chinese carvings, marble statues from Italy, timber from Burma, French windows, Venetian mirrors and solid iron railings and pillars from Glasgow.

Though he had a wife in China, Chung later married a local Chinese woman, and took two minor wives and concubines. They all lived in the same house.

Chung died in 1901 and although his family continued to live in the house, it was requisitioned by Japanese officials during World War II.

“After the war ended, no one lived in the house for more than 60 years and it fell into a state of disrepair.

“The roof had caved in and at that time, it had even seemed impossible to restore or repair the house.

“Peter Soon, the present owner, bought it in 2000 from a fifth-generation descendant of Chung and restored it to its former glory. In 2004, the mansion opened its doors to the public,” Tong said.

Soon, a Peranakan himself, and an architect by profession, restored the mansion as closely as possible to its original condition.

For more than 30 years, Soon had amassed a huge collection of Peranakan paraphernalia, including priceless Baba Nyonya gold, silver and pearl jewellery, fine china, antique furniture mostly inlaid with mother-of-pearl and ceramics from all over the world, which he has used to furnish the mansion.

A room on the upper floor is filled with glass cabinets of the biggest collection of epergnes vases and decorations from 1890 to 1920 during the reign of Queen Victoria.

On the ground floor, the courtyard opens to different sections of the house which were meant for the master to work and entertain while his family members had another sector where they gambled and entertained and the women did their handicraft. The servants were confined to another section with a different access entrance.

Bedrooms are on the upper floors and decorated with antique brass beds from Britain with Chinese drapes and English tapestries, handmade pillowcases with embroidery made more than a 100 years ago, and beaded slippers in glass enclosures, while beds in some other rooms are adorned with various fertility symbols.

Another room with a European theme even has a nickelodeon or jukebox, which Tong says still work. The glass display has a huge collection of cuddly and chubby bisque dolls from Germany, which Tong says was so that the couple would be blessed with healthy European-looking children.

A Nyonya herself, Tong says wedding pictures are not displayed in Peranakan homes as it is the belief that only pictures of the dead should be displayed on the walls. Hence, wedding potraits are only displayed after the couple has passed on.

Besides the bedrooms, different themes permeate the entire mansion as the Kapitan is said to have entertained Westerners in separate living and dining rooms.

A huge wooden screen separates the kitchen where at least more than a dozen servants worked and lived.

There are also a gift and souvenir shop and a small cafe serving authentic nyonya delicacies where most tourists would make a stop after their tour of the mansion.

Tong points out another section of the house, which was not included in the sale and purchase agreement of the mansion — a temple for ghosts where immortal gods stand guard on either side.

A bust of the Kapitan which he commissioned from Benjamin Creswick, a famous British sculptor from the famous Birmingham sculptures, sits on the altar with 12 urns depicting his ancestral line.

The temple was where triad initiations were carried out in the presence of triad elders and where descendants of the Kapitan still pay homage and offer prayers twice annually.

Carvings of bats are prevalent in this section of the house with the temple even housing live bats which the Kapitan believed brought good fortune and luck.

The temple has its own entrance away from the main house, with the images of the patron immortal gods of gangsters painted on the main door.

Apart from the temple, the third level of the house where another bedroom is located has been sealed off, as Tong says there have been “disturbances” in the past.

Tong says the rich culture, history and religious practices of the Peranakan usually surprise locals and in particular visitors from China, who lost these cultural and religious practices during the communist era.

Instead of keeping the mansion as his family home as was his original intention, Soon decided to open it to the public to enable people to learn more about the rich Peranakan history and culture.

The entrance fee of RM10 for adults is indeed a small price to pay for an undoubtedly awe-inspiring experience.

This article appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, September 26, 2011.