Save Haw Par Villa from being torn down

[Dixie Dixie <dixie1999_2000@yahoo.com>]

Singapore's Haw Par Villa, built in 1937 at a cost of
S$1 million, by Tiger Balm King, Aw Boon Haw, a
Burmese Hakka whose ancestry is Yongding, Fujian
Province, is in danger of being torn down. 
See article below.
To save it, send your comments to stlife@sph.com.sg


The Straits Times Interactive
Life
MAY 5, 2000

Sleeping Tiger? 


Haw Par Villa was a big attraction in the 1960s and
1970s. But in the fad-happy Singapore of today, it may
have outlived its usefulness. Should it go?

By CHEONG SUK-WAI

THE king of Tiger Balm left a gaudy mark on
Singapore's landscape 67 years ago -- and the Lion
City has been left holding his cub ever since. 

Managed since 1990 by International Theme Parks, a
joint venture between beverage group Fraser & Neave
and Times Publishing in shares of 75:25, the operator
of Haw Par Villa announced last month that it would
return the loss-making park's keys to the Singapore
Tourism Board by March 31 next year. 

Life! conducted a straw poll on whether the park
should be spruced up or shut down for good, among 80
men in the street this week. 

These were the top-of-mind impressions of 49 of them:
"Close it down." "It is incurring massive losses." "It
is boring." 

Still, many of those in the minority, who were older
Singaporeans, said that the park should be preserved
for sentimental reasons. 

But does that fact alone warrant its conservation in
land-scarce Singapore, in this day and age? 

Says architect Tay Kheng Soon, without hesitation:
"Tear it down. It's so old and out-of-date.
Singaporeans don't have any sentiments left for it. I
went there once as a child and I have no intention of
ever going back there again." Mr Tay made a case
recently for preserving the National Library building,
which is slated to make way for the Singapore
Management University. 

A Burmese by birth, Mr Aw Boon Haw, a Hakka, built Haw
Par Villa in 1937, at the cost of $1 million. It was
the magnate's way of rewarding his younger brother,
Boon Par, for helping him hit the jackpot by marketing
their medicated balm, Tiger Balm. 

The villa and its grounds were destroyed in World War
II but he rebuilt it from 1950 to 1959. Then, in a
twist of fate, Mr Aw died in Hawaii in 1954, so he
never did get to see what the restored compound looked
like finally. 

Today, tourists and trek-happy locals see it as a
uniquely quirky attraction, while others would go so
far as to call it a national monument. 

With its hundreds of garishly-hued statues and
figurines depicting famous characters from Chinese
myths and legends, no one would dispute that, as a
park, it is in a class of its own. 

Recalls Mr Chin Kean Kok, 28, an architectural
associate, who first visited the villa as a boy: "Even
the floors of his swimming pools were crammed with
gaudy figurines. I remember wondering how anyone could
swim in such pools. It was so weird." Caught in a
sudden afternoon shower on Wednesday, first-time
visitor to Singapore Nirmal Agarwal, 40, huddled under
the Laughing Buddha pavilion together with his wife,
two daughters and son. 

The chartered accountant, who had flown in from New
Delhi that day, says: "My brother, Raj, recommended
this place as a must-see for my kids. But when I asked
staff at the hotel where I'm staying if tour guides
would cover Haw Par Villa in their itineraries, they
said 'No'. So, after lunch, I decided to take my
family here first, before we join our tour group for
all the other attractions." 

Says Ms Amanda Yeo, a sales executive with
International Theme Parks: "Apart from placing Haw Par
Villa brochures in hotels island-wide, we've done zero
advertising and promotions since we closed down the
flume ride and amphitheatre in 1997." 

Ms Jenny Meng, a stall hand at the park's Pavilion
cafe, says: "Four to five years back, tour guides
would bring groups of tourists -- mostly Indonesians
-- here. But, once they were in the park's grounds,
they'd leave the visitors to wander around on their
own, while they sipped their drinks. 

"When I asked them why they wouldn't explain the myths
and legends of the park to visitors, they replied,
'Why should we take them around if we're not paid any
commissions?' " 

For Singaporeans in earlier days, much of the thrill
of visiting the park lay in the fact that they were
being allowed to tour the private grounds of a
larger-than-life millionaire. 

Now, 67 years on and one failed multi-million dollar
theme park later, the Singapore Tourism Board wants to
revive its grounds. 

Architect William Lim, 67, supports the move. Says the
former president of the Singapore Heritage Society:
"Tourists will be more interested in visiting if they
can get to know more about folk mythology and legends
from the park." 

He adds: "They should go back to the original concept
of a public access park like the Botanic Gardens. Just
look at how many people visit the Botanic Gardens." 

The issue, then, is: Does Singapore need two Botanic
Gardens? Plus, while the Botanic Garden is just a
stone's throw away from Orchard Road, the Villa sits
along a slip road in out-of-the-way Pasir Panjang. 

Of course, in recent years, it did not help its image
that International Theme Parks used to charge $15
(and, later, $16.50) for admission. Before Haw Par
Villa turned into a theme park, admission was free. 

The entry fee per person has since been slashed to $5
for adults and $2.50 for children, but checks with the
handful of shopkeepers scattered about the park
confirmed that visitors are fast-dwindling. 

Looking at the park, then, strictly as a recreational
feature, what it suffers most from, perhaps, is its
"once is enough" shock value. It is, for instance,
hard to shake off the profusion of sex and gore themes
in its Ten Courts of Hell, even if they are meant to
be educational. 

True to Singapore's pragmatic spirit, it may well be
better to close the park as it is, and put the hilly
land to better (inevitably commercially-viable) use
(see story on this page). 

The issue it all really boils down to, then, is: Haw
Par Villa may be a sleeping tiger, but what price
memory?



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