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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  To hell and back in Singapore
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To hell and back in Singapore

Mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik visits a little-known theme park and learns about the difference between the Indian and Chinese concepts of eternal punishment

The park entrance. Photo: India PicturePremium
The park entrance. Photo: India Picture

In Singapore, the best way to go to hell is after a bowl of congee, the traditional Chinese rice porridge dish. I had arrived in the middle of the Hungry Ghost Festival, a time when local Chinese families burn paper money and paper shoes and paper cosmetics and paper furniture in roadside bonfires to “feed hungry ghosts who visit the living". The ghosts come during the seventh month of the Chinese calendar, when “the gates of hell open for a month".

As a mythologist, I was curious about the idea of a “Chinese Hell" and I wondered how it compared with our own idea of naraka. When I mentioned this to my friends in Singapore, they simply said, “Sure, let’s go and check it out." And so, after a fortifying bowl of congee, which is pure heaven, we headed to hell—located conveniently inside a theme park called the Haw Par Villa (rumoured, suitably, to be haunted).

Thanks to the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) and the rise of Communism, practically every traditional Chinese custom—“old superstitious practices"—has been wiped out from mainland China. These now survive only among the Chinese diaspora in places such as Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Haw Par Villa was built almost 80 years ago by an expatriate Chinese business tycoon as a way to preserve Chinese culture and as a branding exercise for their Tiger Balm.

Haw means tiger and Par, leopard, and these are the names of two brothers, sons of the Burmese-Chinese herbalist who invented the very famous Tiger Balm. The brothers moved their business from Rangoon (now Yangon) to Singapore before World War II and built the Tiger Balm Villa, atop a hill with a panoramic view, with a theme park around it. During the war, Haw had to abandon the villa and move to Hong Kong while Par returned to Burma, as Myanmar was known. The Japanese claimed the villa, which offered a strategic overview of ships in the harbour.

After the Japanese defeat, Haw returned and found the villa abandoned, damaged by neighbours who hated the Japanese. He tore it down and restored the theme park in memory of his beloved brother, Par, who had died in Burma during the war. Haw’s nephew took over operations and added many more attractions from various Chinese epics, folklore and mythology, the prominent theme being filial piety.

But while visitors packed the park on weekends and holidays, especially parents eager to teach Chinese culture to their children, this was not a very profitable enterprise, probably because of the high entry-ticket price. The government took it over in the 1980s, but attempts to revive it—including waiving the entry fee altogether—have not been very successful, as was evident when I reached the hill on the southwestern side of Singapore, and found the park rather empty for a late Sunday morning.

The park is rather tacky, marked by kitsch. It reminded me of the many Hindu mythological theme parks I have seen at pilgrim spots, with garish colours and chipped paint. When it was built, it might have been considered monumental, but for eyes that are now conditioned by movie special effects and video games, this can be a bit of a let-down.

Along the entire approach path are images of tigers and leopards, reminders of the two brothers and the Tiger Balm that created the family fortune. But the main attraction is the Ten Courts of Hell. Forty years ago, the corridor was encased as a Chinese dragon (incidentally, Haw and Par’s elder brother was named Leng, or “dragon") and was flooded with water, so you had to take a boat ride into the dragon’s mouth to see what gruesome torment awaited sinners in the underworld. Now there is no dragon and no river, just a simple walk through a faux stone cave.

The gates of hell are guarded by two guardians, one with the head of a horse and another with the head of a bull. I immediately thought of the Hindu characters Hayagriva and Nandi, only these images are more fierce and demonic. Each of the Ten Hells, we are told, has a ruler called Yama, who looks like an ancient Chinese bureaucrat and reminds us of the Hindu Chitragupta. The Hindu Garuda Purana, written around 1,500 years ago, also has a vast description of numerous hells, different for different crimes. The overlap of mythologies is undeniable, indicating that the trade routes between the two countries also allowed for an exchange of ideas and stories.

In the first court, the virtuous make their way to paradise. The rest are segregated into nine courts, which are essentially different torture chambers for different crimes: People are drawn, quartered, roasted, pulped, grounded, beaten and frozen for crimes ranging from lying, cheating, adultery, insolence and disobedience to not repaying debts and disrespecting elders. Unlike Disney theme parks in the US, there are no animatronics, videos or sound effects. But the images are scary, full of blood and gore and misery, and one can imagine in the dim light little Chinese children looking petrified. After the last court, there is the pavilion of forgetfulness, where those who have endured the punishment are given magical tea to forget their suffering and then put on one of the six paths of reincarnation: as nobility, commoner, quadruped, fowl, fish or insect.

This was interesting: You are punished for the bad deeds of a previous life and are still made to suffer by being located in a hierarchy in the next life. This reveals a messy attempt to integrate the old pre-Buddhist mythology of China, based on ancestor worship and a single life, with the rebirth-based Buddhist mythology that came to China later.

Outside the corridor are the less famous dioramas of scenes from Journey To The West, which tells the story of the monk who travelled from China to India in search of original Buddhist texts, accompanied by a Hanuman-like monkey, a horse and a pig. Then there are scenes from the Romance Of The Three Kingdoms, a classical Chinese novel, as popular in China as the Mahabharat is in India. I remember watching John Woo’s film Red Cliff, a blockbuster across East Asia. The theatre in Mumbai was empty! My favourite diorama was the Legend Of The White Snake. The story is the reverse of the Ramayan, with the wife saving the husband who has been abducted by a monk.

What distinguishes Chinese mythology from Greek, Abrahamic and Hindu mythologies is that it is highly pragmatic and far more literal, more concerned with order in this world than salvation in the next. The only reason hell matters to the Chinese is because it is a tool to civilize people.

It is rumoured that real human beings were covered with wax to make the images in the park, and that many prisoners of war during World War II were buried in mass graves near the hill, and that the Gate of Chinese Hell actually does open nearby. Many security guards swear that they have seen ghosts wandering around at night. As you walk around the theme park, you find food and offerings of cigarettes near a few statues, to appease the ghosts. The mainland Chinese may scoff at such irrational ideas, but what is a culture that does not believe in a little bit of magic, and what is life without a bit of supernatural garnish? Congee itself has no taste till you add a few flakes of fried shallot, some slices of century eggs, a splash of soya sauce and a sprinkle of diced red chillies.

The future seems bleak for this old Singaporean landmark. The ghosts are perhaps more petrified of modernity, as high-rise steel-and-glass structures look down upon them menacingly. Greed will surely conquer fear. And if the park is not reinvented soon, it may be torn down like the old neighbourhoods of Singapore, to make way for yet another mall.

Trip planner

Go

Multiple airlines offer daily flights to Singapore from major Indian cities. You will need a visa.

Stay

Chinatown has plenty of upscale backpacker hostels converted from old shophouses, such as Adler . Fullerton Hotel is a luxury hotel built inside the old post office from British colonial times.

Eat

Congee, along with a variety of local dishes, is best tasted at a hawker centre—the ubiquitous food courts of Singapore. The Old Airport Road Food Centre near Geylang and the Maxwell Food Centre in Chinatown are among the best.

Devdutt Pattanaik is a mythologist and an author. His most recent book is Success Sutra (Aleph Book Company).

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Published: 18 Sep 2015, 10:10 AM IST
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