Garden with a difference

Press, 5 August 1980, Page 19

Garden with a difference

By

RITA THOMAS

Hong Kong’s Tiger Balm Garden is a uhop-suey, Disneyland version of Dante s Inferno. Our tour driver explained’ that a Chinese in u 1 t i-millionaire, Aw Boon Haw, had made his fortune from Tiger Balm Ointment which he sold in tiny tins. Made from a sc lection of herbs grown in his extensive garden, the ointment was particularly effective for curing insect bites, pains and headaches. A little rubbed on the affected area had amazing curative properties.

The garden occupies three sloping hectares overlooking Victoria Harbour. Expecting to see a well-designed herb garden so delightful that it attracted thousands of tourists, I was unprepared for the medley of fantastic cement structures and plaster casts. There was not a herb to be seen although ’here were dwarf trees, cacti and purple orchids. Aw Boon Haw built thr Tiger Balm Gardens in 1935, not as a garden at ail, but as a monument of Chinese mythology. Grotesque snake-like" birds, naked lady wrestlers, giant rats and monkeyheaded and pig-headed

men inhabit a strange world of their own. Winding staircases lead from one terrace to another, where there is a scene depicting the Jade River in the Hopeh Province. The river is so pure that all its marine life is visible, in even the tiniest fishes. Elsewhere, one of the •lost beautiful girls in China's history, Kwai Fei >f the Tang Dynasty, is shown in a washroom tableau. The monk. Fat Hoy, is shown grappling with the Snake Phantom. And then there is the legendary Luk Tso who took no food or drink for 24 years, followed by a night-

club scene showing drunken sailors and girls and Amazon warriors. I climbed higher, thinking that once past the array of painted concrete freaks and monsters, I would discover that some of the weirs, pot-bellied gods had herbs growing either behind them or inside a paunch, kangaroostyle. As I climbed over narrow paths and past obstructions in the fatiguing Hong- Kong humidity, the whole exercise took on the proportions of fantasv and unreality. The herbal aura may be missing but the experience is unforgettable. Admission is free.