We recently took a long weekend and went to the the northwest of Malaysia to the state/island of Penang to visit the UNESCO heritage capitol city of George Town. Checked into a lovely restored colonial hotel and did the tourist thing for 3 days. Restoration is the word of the day as this town is having a resurgence of energy and investment to restore and update this old city. Has a Straits trading history with wealthy Chinese traders before it came under British rule, was bombed during WW2 and economically had a hard time catching up until recently. Now things are happening. We toured an 18th century Chinese merchant mansion, lovingly called The Blue Mansion, that had an interesting restoration story. The ceramic mosaics and broken ceramic decorations on the roof and sides of the building were repaired using colorful glazed ceramic bowls imported from China. Pieces were nipped off the bowls in appropriate color to patch the degraded work. The curved surface of the bowls adding to the 3 dimension look of the art work.
Old George Town in the middle of modern, industrial George Town of today.