Tuesday, our last full tourist day in Malaysia, we saw a mansion and two temples. This is just about the Blue Mansion and some interesting cloud formations.
These were taken on Monday night. Most of the time the skies in the evening have been boring. But sometimes they can be pretty spectacular.
The Blue Mansion or the Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion, is a rags to riches story. Cheong Fatt Tze was from the Hakka region of China as are a lot of the Chinese in Southeast Asia. The Hakka region was in dire straits in the late 1800's. Gheong's family was very poor, and he had to leave at age 16 to make his way in Indonesia. There he met a rich merchant trader and worked his way from being the water boy to running the company, marrying the bosses daughter along the way. He became very rich and had homes and wives in many countries. The Blue Mansion was his favorite home and was where his favorite wife - wife No. 7 (and two other wives) lived. Cheong became very well known in the political arena and held many high posts. The house was built on Feng Shui principals to bring the owner harmony and success.
A Chinese bed.
These are used all over Asia - when a women gets an elaborate hair style she wants to keep it intact for more than a couple of hours. So she rested her neck on this to keep her hair from touching anything. I get enough sore necks just sleeping on strange pillows - I can't imagine how painful this must have been.
Accordions were know all over the world!
Wow, I have never heard in Malaysian accordion music!
ReplyDeleteI was just imagining that people may be touring the big mansions of rich dead people famous in our times in the future in the same way. What will they find weird I wonder.
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