The Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion — universally known as the Blue Mansion for its striking indigo-washed walls — was built in the 1890s by Cheong Fatt Tze, the Hakka tycoon known in his lifetime as "the Rockefeller of the East." It is the finest surviving example of a 19th-century Straits Chinese courtyard mansion in Southeast Asia: 38 rooms, five granite-paved courtyards, seven staircases, and 220 windows arranged on classical feng shui principles around a central air-well that collects rainwater.
The mansion fell into severe disrepair before being rescued in the 1990s and restored at huge expense over a decade. It now operates as a small boutique hotel, but the public can visit on guided tours (three times daily, English commentary) which take in the courtyards, the main hall, the ancestral altar room, and the cast-iron Glasgow lacework, the Stoke-on-Trent floor tiles, the Chinese carved screens and the Art Nouveau stained glass — the mix of styles that defined Straits Chinese taste at the height of its prosperity.