Ok, so there is this famous theme park in Singapore which apparently every Singaporean child has visited and taken a photograph in. Lately, the park is kind of run-down and low on visitors. We're not sure why, though, because it is a SIGHT to behold.
The park is called Haw Par Villa, and it is 'founded on Chinese values.' When walking through, you'll see over 1,000 statues and dioramas that 'dramatize Chinese legend and folklore,' including stories from Buddha and Confucius.
This makes for some pretty nutzo imagery, like the statue of an elderly woman and the exposed chest of a younger lady.
The most chilling part of Haw Par Villa is the Ten Courts of Hell exhibit. It's a series of dioramas that depict, in graphic detail, the various after-death punishments you'll receive for specific sins. According to the Guardian:
Tax dodgers are pounded by a stone mallet, spikes driven into a skeletal chest cavity like a bloodthirsty pestle in mortar. Spot the tiny tongue as it is pulled out of a screaming man, watch the demon flinging a young girl into a hill of knives. Ungratefulness results in a blunt metal rod cutting a very large, fleshly heart out of a woman.
Aw Boon Haw and Aw Boon Par -- the brothers who helped to concoct Tiger Balm -- built the park in 1937 with a goal to 'educate visitors in morality.' Today, admission is free and parents are often overheard reading the exhibits' moralistic explanations aloud to their kids.
We would love to visit, just to hear the proper interpretations of these crazy displays.
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