Haw Par Villa and Ten Courts of Hell, Singapore

Falling in Love with a Snake.   Go to Hell.  Monkey Business.

 The Villas of 2 City-States 
Next time when you visit Singapore and want to see something weird, wacky and wonderful, something that's uniquely Singapore, Haw Par Villa should be your destination.

Actually there were 2 Haw Par Villas (aka Tiger Balm Gardens 虎豹別墅) - one in Singapore, and the other in Hong Kong.  "Har Par" is "Tiger Leopard" in Hokkien - a Chinese dialect spoken in Fujian province. Hokkien is the largest Chinese dialect group in Singapore.

I stayed in HK in early 2010 for a few months in Wanchai (灣仔). In fact, it was an area within walking distance to the Tiger Balm Garden (or Haw Par Mansion as it was also called in HK). So naturally, I wanted to visit there, and only to find out that it had been permanently shut down. The place was replaced by residential high-rises.

The first time I was there was in the late 1980s. I'll try to dig out old snapshots (in rare hardcopy) that I took there and post it here (yes, I'm showing my age).

Haw Par Villa (Tiger Balms Mansion), Hong Kong 1999

I think there're 3 reasons why this Singapore Haw Par Villa survives while its HK counterpart didn't : location, location, location. Before I went to visit there I had a bad feeling that the Tiger place couldn't still around in Wanchai after 3+ decades of economic leaping by this Asian Tiger. After all, HK's property is the most expensive in Asia (surpassing Tokyo, Paris or New York's housing prices).

Wanchai is a HK district sandwiching between the gleaming supertall skyscrapers filled CBD and Causeway Bay, the HK upmarket mega-shopping mecca. This is no place for this old-school, past its used-by date of a relic. So the Villa was leveled in 2004. You could still see pieces of it in a museum.

The retirement of HK Haw Par Villa leaves the the Singapore counterpart the only Tiger Balm heritage. It's saved by its respectable distance from Singapore CBD, but still not so far to travel.

What's more, the entrance is free (during my visit. I imagine it will remains so as long as it's run by the government), and quite easy to get to by public transport. It's located above the station that bears its name. Yep it's got its own station: Haw Par Villa Station on the Circle Line.

Some media in the West sometimes called it the Disneyland of the East. It's hardly that.

Main gate to Haw Par Villa

 Gaudy Gaudi Theme Park 
It's basically a cultural theme park - or more accurately outdoor museum - for many facets of Chinese culture from mythology, religion, folklores to even historical figures and unique Chinese wild life. And then to mix it all up, it includes things like Thai dancer, Sumo wrestlers, miniature Statue of Liberty into the mix just to confuse the visitors a little bit more than they already have.

The sculptures in this place ain't quite the works of Spanish architect Gaudi, some would think they're gaudy (due to its colour). So let's call its artistic style Gaudy Gaudi. To those who love it, they're Goody Goodies.

Sumo wrestlers with Tiger Balms products in the middle

Various Tiger balm products. These balms build this place.

Legend of  the White Snake (白蛇傳) takes up a large section just behind the entrance.

This is a well known folklore that are made into numerous adaptations of operas, movies, and comics. It deserves a place here.

Scene from Legend of the White Snake

This is the scene of Xu Xian (許仙) - the Chinese dude - chance meeting with Madam White Snake (the Lady in Red), and her younger 'sister' (in blue) on the Broken Bridge in Hangzhou.

Three Stars of Happiness, Prosperity, Longevity  福祿壽

Confucius with his trademarked palm holding gesture

 Crime and Punishment: Chinese Style 
If you find most of the exhibits you have seen made you scratching your head, wait until you see the Ten Courts of Hell.

Gate of Hell: entrance to the Ten Courts of Hell

Warning: The rest of this article contains deliciously disgusting graphic images that would make your stomach churn or give you nightmares, or if you're unlucky, both. Don't say I didn't warn you. So enjoy! For those who enjoy exploitative gore, my apologies for the blandness.

Ox Head

Horse Face

Guarding the gate to the Ten Courts of Hell are Ox-Head (牛頭) and Horse-Face (馬面).

While they're a couple of mean-looking guardians of the Underworld (or Hell), in many stories, they also go to snatch spirits just when people die. In that sense, they're more like police escorts than security guards. When they do the role of escorting human souls to the afterlife, they're acting more like psychopomps, which known by different names and takes different forms in different cultures.

For example, in Western cultures - naturally they appear in many Hollywood movies - these psychopomps take the form of a Grim Reaper.

For the Hindus, the psychopomps could be either a person or an animal or something else. As usual, Hindu mythology is complex.

Once you get inside this Gate of Hell, you will be presented with 10 exhibits showing the journey of the soul of the dead from just entering Hell, the judgement and punishments in the 10 courts, and the preparation for reincarnation.

Each of the 10 Courts will be presided by an Underworld Judge, each punishment will be meted out clearly to fit the crime.

Take the example of the 6th Court,

Crime and Punishment in the 6th Court.
Read them well, especially for the readers of Playboy magazine...
 (click to enlarge)

So next time when you're thinking of buying a copy of Playboy or Penthouse (who does that any more?), keep the following photo in mind. Not so attractive heh?

Body being sawn off in the 6th Court
(click to enlarge to have a much closer look at the nice statues)

Regarding the misuse of books (my interpretation), remember that next time you break the spine of a book, your spine would be severed when you're down there.

Since every crime and punishment is so clearly laid out, I guess it's okay to look at online porn as long as you don't possess them. I interpret the rule literally to get around this legal loophole. As the dead is spiritual, the rule is therefore interpreted in the spirit of the law.

Don't say I didn't warn you. You may thank me in Hell.

When you curse, cheat or abduct people, you will be stabbed in the back by being thrown into the Trees of Knives, like this. Not too pretty, right?

Being thrown into the Tree of Knives in the 6th Court
(click to enlarge to look it more closely)

How's hanging ? Sipping your own blood much ? Care for some Panadol ?

Want to see another Court? I thought you never ask. Let's look at what they're busy with in 4th Court. First, let's peruse the Crime and Punishment tablet.

Crime and Punishment book

Ok, got it. Let's get on with it.

Being pounded by a stone mallet, and grounded into pulp

I won't spoil all the fun by telling you all the Crimes and Punishments in a Chinese Hell. Let's have fun finding out when you're in Haw Par Villa (or when we're down there). After all, the journey of discovery is half the fun.


Are these very graphic depictions R-rated? Would only adults be allowed in here? It would defeat the purpose, according to the creator, who wanted to scare kids stiff (before they become stiffs). I know you Catholic boys and girls can relate to all these? I don't mean Chinese Hell, they have their equally colourful Hell.

I've been here a few times (yeah, I've morbid taste), I often seen local parents who brought their young kids to see these. They would point out casually or matter-of-factly to their kids, "you see, this guy's tongue got pulled out because he's making everyone in the family miserable". Y'all hear that, kids? It says nothing about playing with matches, so gets crazy with it. Nah, don't do that at home, poison girls. Sorry, a slipped of the tongue, sorry i meant a slip of the fingers, boys and girls.

Tongue being pulled out

Having said that, few locals visit this place. I've never seen more than 50 people there any one time, and it isn't a small place and it's free admission. They used to charge expensive fares, the Singapore Tourism Board stop charging fees since 1998.

The place was created to teach traditional Chinese values. It isn't hard to see that these traditional thinking are out-of-date. This isn't surprising when you considered that this place was conceived back in the 1930s.

Few Chinese-speaking Singaporean still subscribe to the all-important Chinese value of filial piety (I bet most English readers don't even know the term). Actually there're less Singaporean Mandarin speakers than foreigners think, and even fewer Chinese readers.

One of the stories of the 24 Paragons of filial piety

This diorama shows one of the very dated classic stories of the 24 Paragons or Exemplars of Filial Piety. The story of She Breastfed Her Mother-In-Law. So the daughter-in-law puts her mother-in-law above her child (as far as her breast milk is concerned). Today such thing only appear in the Jerry Springer Show.

Drinking of tea to wipe the memories of the previous life
Granny Meng is standing in the Pavilion in yellow robe

There's light at the end of the the tunnel shaped Ten Courts of Hell. After the deserved punishment, the soul is given the Tea of Forgetfulness (迷魂湯) to drink from an old lady called Meng Po or Granny Meng. Afterwards, he or she will forget everything in his or her life, and ready for the next life with a clean slate (who wants to remember all that torture?) The tea works far better than and much cheaper than that electronic gadget in Men in Black. Some people didn't drink and so they remember their previous lives.

After the tea, one's soul is sent away to be reborn and the cycles begins again.  Yep, there's a happy ending.

If you aren't religious, you could see the whole hellish thing as a metaphor for dream. Those tortures are the nightmares that haunt your conscience. You wake up, and the dreams are fading away, and another day starts anew.

Life is but an endless cycles of all different time frames: some are measured in seconds, other in decades, and ultimately in our whole life times.

Six paths to the Wheel of Reincarnation or Samsara
Note that the 6 paths contain people as well as animals

 Monkey Around on the Way to the West 
Of course, you can't introduce visitors to Chinese culture without showing the Monkey, or his other names, Monkey King, Monkey God, the Great Sage Equal of Heaven or Sun Wukong (孫悟空). But one section isn't doing justice for him, so there're 2 sections built to illustrate his illustrious life. One section depicts the scene from the Chinese classic Journey to the West where he accompanies his master Tang Sanzhuang in the trek or odyssey to India, and the other depicts his life in Mount Huaguo (花果山 or Flowers and Fruit Mountain).

A scene from Journey to the West of Sun Wukong fighting Red Boy (紅孩兒)
Red Boy also known as Boy Sage King (聖嬰大王)

Monkey King rules over his Simian domain atop Mount Huagou

With the few visitors and no entrance fees, I was concerning that this place won't last long. But it appears that not only most of the dioramas and sculptures are looked in good condition. In fact, I saw that worker was doing maintenance work on the exhibits.

The modern Singaporean would find the traditional Chinese cultural values too old-fashion, but for the old-fashion, the many provocative statues here would make them blushed. Maybe the sculptor was trained in Prague? These 2 conflicting signals seem anachronistic and oxymoronic. What were the park creator thinking? These contradictions make this place unique and I found myself irresistibly drawn to it like malware worm to ebook. Crunch, crunch, yummy in my tummy.

It's great to see this unique past preserved. This is an extinct museum, the last of its kind. I hate to see it go.

How long do you need to spend in this park? It depends. If you want to take photos of every statue, and pore over them with a microscope like me, you need no more than 4 hours. If you just come and have a casual look, you don't need more than 2 hours (or less). If you take your 8 year-old child and need to frighten them with traditional moral tales in R-rated graphic dioramas, it probably takes a bit longer.

If you like to feast your eyes with a colourful, shocking, eclectic collection of the exotic, bewildering, imaginative by-gone traditional Chinese cultural images, this is a must-see.

Day 2 of Yangtze River Cruise : Chongqing to Yichang on Victoria Anna, China

 
Day 2 of the 4 DAY 3 NIGHT YANGTZE RIVER CRUISE-CHONGQING (重慶) TO YICHANG (宜昌)  on Victoria Anna.

You can read the day 1 of this tour here.

Day 2 of the itinerary is a quiet sail across the 3 Gorges. So there's not much to say in this post except admire the (photographic) gorges views.

We boarded a sampan to get to some smaller
river branches

I think one of the thing we came to see during this detour is this local guy serenating a local girl with his flute to a girl across the opposite side of the cliff face in the tradition (of a Chinese minority) . If she except his courtship, she then starts to sing back to him.

In the middle of the steep rocky cliff face is a slit where a coffin was being inserted like an envelop deposited into a mailbox (by god's fingers). This is the well known cliff or hanging coffin of the Yangtze. Historians are still disputing the exact purpose of such coffin location.

The photo below shows a closeup of the hanging coffin. Although this isn't the same coffin as the photo above, but somewhere else. Such hanging coffins are scattered in various cliff faces in the Yangtze.

Gorgeous

No coffin could be seen in this cave. But this grotto is too close to the water. The hanging coffins' locations look to be quite hard to get to. And this cave has a staircase leading deep into the cave. Could be a fisherman's abode.

Looks like a watchtower of a defense wall.

The white river cruse ship in the photo below isn't dissimilar to the one we were on.

Some entertainment like traditional Chinese dancing on the ship during dinner time. But the highlight should be face-changing opera - a well known Sichuan traditional folk art. Chongqing is located at the border of the Sichuan province.

Now you see red mask

The red mask of the performer is changed into a green mask with a movement of the head or wave of the hand that looks like magic act. The good performer has many mask changes during a performance.

Now you don't (see red mask)

Good night!

The Three Gorges on Victoria Anna Yangtze River Cruise, China

Frankly Madam, I Don't Give a Damn if this Dam is so Damn Massive


Day 1 of the 4 DAY 3 NIGHT YANGTZE RIVER CRUISE-CHONGQING (重慶) TO YICHANG (宜昌)  on Victoria Anna.

While the title of the above itinerary says "Chongqing to Yichang", we actually started from Yichang and ends in Chongqing. Well, somebody has to board the ship in the other direction.

I was woke up at 7:15am by the voice of a German speaking lady in das schiff! After that, she repeated everything in English. Everything is then repeated in Chinese by a fella. I struggled to lift my heavy eyelids, found myself lying in a bed of ship's cabin, and when looking outside the window, I didn't see landscape of the world renown Yangtze river, I saw a tall grey wall. For a brief moment before I regained my full senses, I thought this is a false awakening.

Busy traffic at the lock of Gezhouba Dam

No. I was very much awake. It's a wall of a lock at the Gezhouba Dam - the 1st dam that was built on the Yangtze - and we're queueing up beside a sand barge to go through it as I looked over my cabin's balcony.

The sand barge

As usual on a cruise ship, the organiser tries to map out every minute of your day and filled it with activities. For people who prefer a leisurely pace - standing still - you don't have to do anything. For the active, the ship's full schedule will keep you too busy to complain about the lack of goings-on.
The German frau informed us on the PA that there is Tai-Chi practice on the Sun Deck before breakfast. Of course, I prefer to do it my head in my bed. Give me a good mental workout to work up an appetite.


The breakfast at 7:30 on the Main Deck let us meet all the passengers on this ship for the first time. There was an almost exact 50/50 ethnic divide between the passengers of the East and West in the dining room. Westerners occupied tables on the starboard bow, and the Chinese (looking) passengers on the port bow with buffet tables in the middle. You know which side the ship is tilted towards.


Going by the accents of the Chinese looking tourists (ok, I cheat, didn't know how to ask them to show me their passports), they are motley bunch of locals, Taiwanese, and HK citizens (whom I'm with). There you have it, not enough to form an UN assembly, but far from a monolingual horde.

The beautiful scenery at the Yangtze

I'm no spring chicken, but the ship of geriatrics does make me feel overwhelmingly like fresh meat. The occidental group averaged, say, circa 55 years old; the oriental gang is younger, especially some Chinese teeny bopper, skewing the average in our favour. Their parents probably decided to ground them on a ship - best ground ever even if it was unstable.

The mist and mountain geology reminded me of the landscape in Guilin that i saw last week. Only the Yangtze is mistier.

Ok, back from the rigamarole. After the passing through the lock, we entered the 1st of the 3 Gorges - the Xiling Gorge (西陵峡) - the easternmost of the 3 big gorges as we traversed the Yangtze from east to west. Around 9AM, we disembarked at Sandouping (三斗坪) to visit The DAM - The Three Gorges Dam. 

The Gezhou Dam (the one i saw when i woke up) is quote close to The Three Gorges Dam. In fact, they're both part of the Yingchang city where we boarded for this cruise.

It was a misty day (probably everyday), and the visibility was low, the far side of the dam wall was swallowed by the mist, which I supposed would amplify its enormity. When I saw the Aswan Dam in Egypt, which was the biggest dam then, now superseded by this one.

The Three Gorges Dam shrouded in mist

Speaking of Egypt, and dam, it's only natural to compare this trip with the Egyptian trip I took a few years back - there're more similarities than I can poke a stick at. Both trips are taken on a river cruise ship (the only two I have been to) on a river that is the longest in their own countries (the Nile is the world's longest, and Yangtze the world's third, and Asia's longest), and both famous rivers were crucial to the development of the two great ancient civilisations and it just so happened that they both have the world largest dams erected in them (at the time they were built) to overcome the same problem: flooding. Oh yeah, both of these trips are relatively expensive, either comparing to ocean cruises or land travels.

There was one major difference between the two river cruises, though. With the cruise down the Nile, once the ship sailed beyond the cities, there weren't even so much as a palm tree to gawk at outside the cabin windows. The ship was just the best way to get to the many destinations that dotted the Nile. The reverse is true with this trip. Onshore excursions are few, and the destinations come to you. Just crane your neck out of the cabin window. You can watch it from the comfort of your bed or cocktail lounge over a cigar with your feet up and your hair down. Perfect for a couple of couch potatoes like us. And perfect after the Guilin trip. This ship is better than the Egyptian one in every way, from its spaciousness, condition, entertainment to food, and last but not least, prices. Well, it's Chinese prices.

Does this suggest that the water is 151m above sea level?

The idea of this dam went as far back as Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, who came up with the idea. With the financial, engineering and technical issues it faced at the time, the construction is nothing but a pipe dream. By the 1990's, the dream came true.

More gorgeous view at the Three Gorges

Back to the ship, the lull of a lazy afternoon was interrupted with activities like information sessions on the history and geography of the Yangtze, followed by presentations of snuff bottle, silk embroidery, and Chinese painting, and especially how these arts and crafts were made.

After dinner, a Dynasties Parade was shown where the "crew models a variety of Chinese costumes from the Han Dynasty to the present". Although it's more accurate to call it Minorities Parade. This should be interesting for Sinophiles and fashionistas/fashionistos alike. It's right up my runway/alley. 

In addition to a few selected dynasties, the crew also strutted down the stage in costumes of the Chinese ethnic minorities (sometimes is referred to as 'nationalities'). 'Nationality' in some cases sometimes spot on by the traditional use of the word. Koreans who live on the west side of the Yalu River are considered an ethnic Chinese minority or nationality. True can be said about many other minorities who have their own independent countries until they decided to take over China, and became a Chinese minority as an outcome. When a snake tries to swallow an elephant, it ends up being an elephant (no negative connotation of a snake is intended). I've seen this done in a cartoon. I blabbed about this minority business in great length in my Guilin (Days 3 & 4) diary entries recently. I'm glad that I've clued up further about the Chinese minorities during these two consecutive trips.

The Butterfly Lovers?

Tibetan costume

One can always look at more photo of cowboy hats

When this lovely young maiden (I presumptuously presumed) strutted in the Tibetan traditional costume, I heard cries of "Look, cowboy hat!" in the audience in American accent. It's highly likely that this Tibetan "cowboy" hats predate those in the Old West of America.

Uyghur costume

I'm not 100% sure that this girl modelled an Uyghur costume. It was too dark, and I was too busy taking photos and notes the same time. This conclusion was based on my home-brew research afterwards (can be of top-class quality). The round cap, the two long ponytails, and the embroidered black vest nails it for me. ID it is never easy as there're umpteen variations in any genre of clothing fashion, may it be of a particular ethnic group or period. But this particular piece isn't too hard to ID - it was chosen to typify the costume of the Uyghur people. What I'm 100% certain is that she's no Uyghur, but a Han girl (99.5% definite without the aid of DNA testing (which won't give you 100% accuracy anyway). Eyeballing is a very old schooled technique, sometimes it does the job nicely). There are also other ethnic minority people in Xinjiang who wear similar traditional costumes, but I'll stick to my gun on this.

You can easily tell that these models are obviously amateurs. They all wore cheerful grins on their faces. A professional model strictly wears a poker face that says, "all the millions won't make me crack a smile to you poor slobs below".