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CHEE MANSION

MALACCA, MALAYSIA

1906

The façades of old buildings along Heeren Street in Malacca generally share a number of common features: white lime-washed two-or three-storey structures, each with a gently sloping shed-like roof over a passageway forming either a private veranda or a five-foot passageway. The ancestral home of Tan Cheng Lock (pages 46–57) is a fine example of such a terrace house. Punctuating this harmonious succession of townhouses is a fanciful three-storey building that is set back from the street with a watchtower-like pinnacle atop it. While often called the Chee Mansion, the four characters across the doorway today proclaim that it is the Chee Family Ancestral Hall, commemorating a lineage whose ancestor, Chee Soo Sum, arrived in Malacca in the second half of the eighteenth century from Zhangzhou in China’s Fujian province. Ancestral halls of this type are called by Peranakan rumah abu, a loan word from Malay. On the front gate there is a four-letter monogram, CYCT, set within concentric circles, standing for “Chee Yam Chuan Temple.” These initials highlight the fact that the shrine does not reach back to the kaijizu or focal (founding) ancestor of the Chee lineage, Chee Soo Sum, but instead to his great-grandson, Chee Yam Chuan, the most notable forebear in the lineage.

Chee Yam Chuan (Xu Yanquan) was born in Malacca in 1819 and died tragically in 1862 from an assassin’s bullet at a wedding dinner in Malacca (Hamidah, 2000). During his short life, he became, at twenty-one, the head of the Hokkien huiguan in Malacca and amassed a substantial fortune from investments in the economic development of Malaya. Since the Hokkien huiguan was a veritable Chamber of Commerce of Malacca’s business interests, Chee Yam Chuan was, in effect, the leader of the community of all immigrants and their descendants from Fujian. His rise to such a position may have come about because of the death of his father the year before, in 1839, who himself was an important merchant and civic leader in Malacca. Known as a planter of nutmeg in both Malacca and Singapore, Chee Yam Chuan amassed sufficient resources to advance capital for investment in the tin mining industry in the Lukut district of southern Selangor. He was noted for the partnership he had with two Malay princes, Raja Juma’at and his brother Raja Abdullah, loaning them substantial sums in return for shares of profits in their tin mining ventures. A further indication of their mutual trust was that Raja Juma’at’s son moved to Malacca to live with Chee Yam Chuan in order to facilitate contact with other Malays eager to solicit capital from Chinese merchants. His success at amassing investment capital contributed, some historians believe, to quickening the clearing of the jungle and the development of Kuala Lumpur as a prosperous town (Andaya and Andaya, 1982: 139). In 1848 Chee Yam Chuan and several other prominent businessmen figured prominently in the restoration of the Cheng Hoon Teng Temple, the oldest Chinese temple in Malaysia, which dates from 1645.

Set back from the street with a row of trees lining its approach, the tiered and ornate Chee Mansion serves as a memorial hall for the family.

The entry hall reaches from front to back with rooms opening along both sides.

The arched front doorway is emblazoned with four characters indicating the Chee (Xu) Family Ancestral Hall.

The rear doorway is even more elaborate in style than the front entry.

Chee Yam Chuan had ten sons and an unknown number of daughters, whose families have flourished, increasing significantly over the next six generations to the present. His grandson Chee Swee Cheng, together with Chee Yam Chuan’s sons Chee Lim Bong and Chee Quee Bong, all of whom were successful businessmen in Singapore, conceived the idea of building an ancestral home in 1906 to venerate Chee Yam Chuan. This was a time, as is discussed in other chapters of the book, of a resurgence of Chinese culturalism, a renaissance of an awareness of Chinese values such as filial piety, especially among those educated in Western schools who considered themselves worldly and cosmopolitan. It was in this context that an extravagantly Western-style building was built to venerate a Chinese forebear, creating a place for an ancestral altar for the tablets of successive generations of Chees. Furnished with chairs, tables, cabinets, screens, and ornaments imported from China, this grand building declared that the Chee family gained strength from a fusion of their Chinese and European heritages. From time to time over the years, Chee family members have lived in the house, most recently during the renovation of a neighboring terrace house, but the expressed function of this opulent structure was to acknowledge their ancestors with regular offerings and to assert their broader familial ties by gathering at Chinese New Year and at other significant occasions.

Set back from the street with a garden and parking area in front as well as behind, the building sits on a 1022-square meter plot of land with traditional, but modernized, terrace houses abutting it. Whether viewed from the outside or the inside, the lines, textures, and scales articulate the refined hands of a skilled architect and the craftsmanship of many trades. The building, a neoclassic blend of Dutch, Portuguese, Chinese, and English styles, was designed by a Malacca Dutch-Eurasian architect from the Westerhout family, who trace their roots in Malacca to the eighteenth century. It is said that the floor tiles and colored glass for the doors and windows were imported from France and Italy. Highly qualified artisans were employed for the construction and finish work.

Just inside the arch-shaped front doorway, which opens from a covered porch, is an entry hall with marble floors. Ahead through an arch is a well-proportioned colored glass window that bathes the entryway with bright light. Two large rooms are off to the left and right, one with a long dining table with seating capacity for at least a dozen people and the other a sitting room with Chinese furnishings. In addition to a framed diagram listing all the male descendants for the five generations after Chee Yam Chuan, as well as his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, are many family photographs on the walls. In the back portion of the entry hall, tucked in a corner and set on a pedestal is a large iron safe made by a Chinese firm with offices in Penang and Singapore to safely store the family’s treasures. The kitchen and quarters for servants are located in the back of the building. After exiting a rear door and passing parked cars, it is impressive to see that the rear elevation is also characterized by elaborate architectural and ornamental details.

Looking up through the atrium-like stairwell.

A blackwood settee with mother-of-pearl and marble inserts rests alongside the stairwell leading to the floors above.

A view from the entry hall into one of the side rooms showing the elaborate composition of shapes and colored glass.

The Chee family ancestral altar, located on the mezzanine floor.

With bronze lamps affixed to the posts, the stairwell on the second level opens onto an expansive hallway.

A prominent element of the house is the intricate and complex set of stairs with rosewood treads that reaches from the ground floor upwards to the domed cupola soaring above. In effect, the staircase and landings create an open central atrium that extends the full height of the building. Several large, but now vacant, rooms are found on both the second and third floors.

The Chee family ancestral altar is located on the mezzanine floor between the ground and second floor, with tablets arrayed on tiers representing at least four generations.

The Chee family created the Chee Yam Chuan Temple Trust to fund and manage the maintenance of this historic structure as well as the burial sites of family members. According to a news report quoting Chee Swee Hoon, the Executive Chairman of the Trust, “the Trustees are also planning to set up a company with the aim of sharing the benefits with the Chee descendants, by way of offering them shares and dividends” (Wee, 1999). The public, while viewing the magnificence of its expansive outer courtyard, ornate façade, and towering spire, must come to realize that this imposing structure embodies more than what merely appears on the outside. The building is an expression of the Chee family’s identity, which straddles both the Chinese and Western worlds, transforming what some might see as only an abstract concept of intergenerational relationships into a material form.

Three large porcelain figures of Fu, Lu, and Shou, the Three Stellar Gods of Good Fortune, Emolument, and Longevity.

Painted on a porcelain plaque, this is a Chee ancestor dressed in imperial regalia.

A cast-iron detail along the top of the safe found in one corner of the entry hall.

A view from the topmost landing looking down through the stairwell to the entryway.