Hong Kong’s Haw Par Mansion reopens but there is disenchantment for locals who remember its famous Tiger Balm Garden
- The mansion, built by the Burmese Chinese tycoon Aw Boon Haw in 1936, now houses a centre for teaching and performing music
- Its adjacent fantastical gardens, once dear to Hongkongers, were demolished to make way for luxury housing in 2004
At Hong Kong’s newly reopened historic site Haw Par Mansion, visitors old enough to remember the place in its previous incarnation were wistful about what has been lost.
“It’s such a pity,” said Sunny Lau, 72, a retired civil servant. “It was so much bigger with so much more to see in the past. There’s nothing special here now.”
Lau visited the site in Tai Hang when he was 13. At that time, the iconic Tiger Balm Garden, a fantastically surreal public park that was like Alice in Wonderland crossed with the horror film Saw and infused with a hefty dollop of Buddhism, was still in its heyday, long before it would be demolished and replaced by luxury housing.
Today only the mansion and a small garden remain.
The estate, one of the most popular parks in old Hong Kong, was built by the Burmese Chinese entrepreneur Aw Boon Haw in 1936 to publicise his Tiger Balm ointment products, provide a public open space and to educate the Hong Kong Chinese about their culture with the park’s depictions of characters from traditional folklore and religious moral lessons.
