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I don’t know if it’s significant. It may not mean a thing but, as it happens, the two places that impressed me most on Penang Island involved novel, if unusual, family arrangements.

The first was the seven clan piers, on the south side of Georgetown, just off Pengkalan Weld. Here attached to a long rickety pier are at least 20 households per pier, all of which share the same surname. This doesn’t necessarily mean they are related. Just that they have nomenclature in common. A whole jetty of Cheungs for instance or Wangs co-existing side-by-side.

These fisherfolk have lived on these wooden jetties ever since they arrived here from China in the late nineteenth century. Their houses have everything a land-based house has – electricity, bristling TV aerials, running water and sanitation and piles of friendly clutter. Plus at the end of the jetty they have their own Tao-Buddhist shrine built around a massive tree and a cheap outdoor restaurant and a place where the men hang out.

Most families still make their living from the sea but others make jewelry or Chinese idols for a living. Their doors are almost always open and they don’t mind if you poke your head in. So you do. You are invariably greeted with a whopping great shrine in the front room, decorated to the max, with a door leading to the kitchen and family quarters behind.

It looks rather a pleasant life. Jumbly and cosy inside and out, fellow surname-sharers squatting on their haunches in the heat, the water lapping below. Not a family spat in sight. Well, not when the visitors are around anyway.

Mind you, I bet there were some seismic family spats at the Cheung Fatt Tze mansion across town. Cheung Fatt Tze was a remarkable guy. And not just because he had eight wives parked in various ports around Asia. His origins and achievements make a terrific tale. Not to mention his house.

His is the classic rags to riches tale. The story of a penniless Chinese teenager becoming a one-man multinational conglomerate at about the time the clan piers were first constructed. Dubbed “China’s last Mandarin and first capitalist” and “the Rockefeller of the East” by the New York Times, Cheung Fatt Tze made his mark first as a merchant and trader, eventually becoming consul general for China and a director of China’s first railway and first modern bank.

Penang was his base and it’s also where he built the splendid indigo-blue house now known as Cheung Fatt Tze Mansion. The mansion is one of only two surviving examples of grandiose architecture, imitating the opulence of the Ching dynasty, built by wealthy expat Chinese.

Here, in the five granite-paved courtyards and 38 rooms featuring Stoke-on-Trent tiles, Scottish cast iron works, art nouveau stained glass and porcelain cut-and-paste decorative shard works, lived three of his eight wives - number three, six and seven.

But number seven was his beloved and Cheong Fatt Tze clearly never felt constrained by issues of fairness or sensitivity to others. Pictures of his adored seventh wife framed by hearts and flowers are still on display. Were numbers three and six ticked off, I wonder, and did they wage a sneaky vendetta against number seven or were they secretly relieved?

Across the road lived Cheong Fatt Tze’s servants who delivered everything (and I mean everything) to and from the house since originally the house had no kitchen and no plumbing. It does now of course. Restoration of the mansion began 10 years ago and ever since it’s been collecting awards - the UNESCO Conservation Award 2000 and the National Architectural Award for Conservation 1995 among them.

But none of this is what makes the mansion truly remarkable. Its most fantastic and intriguing quality is that it is said to have perfect feng shui. And just to prove it, in 2000 a conference of 116 feng shui experts tested the house. Their verdict was unanimous. The mansion is feng shui flawless. Strategically located on a dragon’s throne - a mountain behind (Penang Hill) with water in front (the channel), everything about the mansion conforms to ancient Chinese geomancy principles.

And where it didn’t naturally conform, Cheong Fatt Tze changed the terrain to make it fit. Since feng shui decrees it is desirable for a house to sit on an incline and since the land was dead flat, Cheong Fatt Tze had the builders elevate the back portion of the mansion.

Looking around at the eclectic mix of décor and design, I agree it is lovely, though how beneficial I can’t tell. I could ask Catherine Deneuve what the long-term effects of 100 per cent feng shui are I suppose since she spent quite some time here during the filming of “Indochine.” Or I could stay here myself. The mansion is not only a historic site but it also doubles as a conference centre and incomparable bed and breakfast.

It’s tempting. Really tempting. It would be a brilliant way to test the harmonious and benevolent influence of this ancient philosophy. Just think of the benefits – no money rushing out the door, good health and well-being just pumping through your veins. Come to think of it - perhaps those wives never had a cross word.

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