To hell and
back in Singapore
Sep 18 2015.
Devdutt Pattanaik live
mint
Mythologist
Devdutt Pattanaik visits a little-known theme park and learns about
the difference between the Indian and Chinese concepts of eternal
punishment
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.