Children, Eat Your Veggies! (aka Haw Par Villa Pt. 2)

Jason has previously posted on this insane Chinese "park", for lack of a better word.  For more background and Jason's witty observations, please read his post - this is just an addendum since I took the kids there today.

Jason really hit the nail on the head when he described it as a giant miniature golf course - minus the golfing.  It is a large (run-down) park with tons of sculptures depicting Chinese folklore.  You just can't even imagine how crazy it is unless you go there (I realize this is not an option for most of you).

Here are a few pics to get your imagination rolling:

 

Here is an example of the Chinese fables.  This plaque tells the story of a man who saved a tortoise from being sold at the market, then at a later date, when a boat the man was sailing on was sinking, the tortoise saved him. 

And here's the depiction in sculpture!

Rubbing the Buddha's belly for good luck!

The weirdest part is the "Ten Courts of Hell".  Here's how that goes.  When you die, you go one of three ways.  If you're a model human being (definitely not me), you get to go over the golden bridge to their version of heaven.  If you've had some minor infractions, you go over the silver bridge to lesser-heaven. (I can only hope I fall in this category)  If you're a bad, bad person, you go before the court for judgment.  And then, you are sent to your particular court of hell for punishment.

Entrance to the Ten Courts of Hell, guarded by "Horse-Face"
and "Ox-Face" (couldn't they be more creative than that!?)

And wow, we're not talking about the stocks or even caning.  Note the below "Sixth Court of Hell".  This court really is just begging for us all to make an appearance before it. Cheating, cursing, abducting others (okay, I'll give them that one), misuse of books, possession of pornographic materials, breaking written rules and regulations, and wasting food are the crimes.  For all of these infractions, the punishment is "body sawn in two".  Then the scenes gorily depict the punishment.  Yup, he's getting cut in half.

MORAL OF THE STORY:  Children, please eat your veggies. 

  

So that was today's field trip.  While in the courts of hell, I fielded about 1,000 questions from my fascinated (and totally unafraid) children.  And somehow managed to distract them from their questions of what prostitution and rape are.  (Look kids, look at that man being thrown in a huge wok of boiling water!)  They really seemed to enjoy it, and were reading the signs explaining the scenes.  When I told them that this park would probably not be around too much longer (land is a valuable commodity here!), Sophia was visibly upset.  Who knows....maybe she'll start a "Save Har Paw Villa" campaign!