A Short Account of the Baba-Nyonya

The next place we checked out on our whirlwind tour was a wealthy baba-nyonya mansion.

Side entrance to the house (main entrance for tourists)

You can see the opulent and detailed wood carvings in the foyer

Baba-Nyonya  here refers to the descendants of Chinese and Malays who intermarried. Baba refers to the men and nyonya refers to the women of this culture. Often these folks, being fluent in many languages and customs, acted as middlemen in the flow of trade from Asia to Europe. As you can see, for some this was quite a lucrative arrangement.

Probably I wouldn't have been invited to dinner dressed like this

Close-up of some of the wood carvings

Wearn and a bonsai

Huan Wei explores the foyer

The mansion was originally built in the late 1890s and was set up as a museum as recently as the 1950s. That should give you a little context for the following images:

A gigantic camera; probably very expensive and state-of-the-art in its day

It made me very sad to see an opium pipe on display

Golf clubs! You can also see an old TV peaking into the frame at right

The owners of the mansion built a family shrine in 1900 which is attached to the mansion, behind the servant quarters:

Main shrine

The shrine had a ton of these very artfully carved wooden dioramas all along the edge of the ceiling:

More amazing wood carvings

I found the mansion to be a cool look at a very special segment of Malaysian culture and history.