I Worked in Dragon World
I Worked in Dragon World
Contributed by Moh Teck
Background
In the 1980s, the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board looked into the redevelopment of Chinatown, Little India and Haw Par Villa in an effort to restore Singapore's "oriental mystique", with the hopes to draw more tourists to visit Singapore. Fraser & Neave and Times Publishing won the tender put up by STPB to redevelop Haw Par Villa into ‘Dragon World’, an 'oriental Disneyland', a theme park meeting Western technology with Eastern mythology. The joint venture named International Theme Parks Pte Ltd was $30 million. The cost later will mushroom to $80 million. The redeveloped park was opened to the public in October 1990.
One of the new attractions added was a boat ride into the belly of a 60-metre-long green and orange dragon. Within the belly of the dragon were exhibits showing scenes from the 10 Courts of Hell of Chinese mythology.
Above Photo: “Boat Ride into the Dragon’s Belly and Other Attractions at Haw Par Villa” roots.gov.sg website
Above: “Haw Par Villa Revisit”, Time of My Life website
The Management imposed entrance fees but the high fees discouraged visitors. The park management made a profit during its first year of operations after renovations in 1994, broke even in 1995, but started incurring losses over the next three years and was forced to provide free entries in 1998. The Dragon World was closed in March 2001.
Why and When I Joined International Theme Parks
I was with International Theme Parks (ITP) from 9 April 1990 until 19 August 1991 as the Admin Supervisor, which later was redesignated as Admin / EDP Supervisor. It was part of my transition from a technical to a service career. I joined through Fraser & Neave (Singapore) and started work from its vacated office at River Valley Road while Haw Par Villa was completing its redevelopment work. I was hired by Harold Tan, another Rafflesian who was the Divisional Manager (Admin). Harold was puzzled that few people applied for the job. While I was there, I had the chance to visit the vacated bottling and canning factory and was amazed that it had a football field and a badminton court within the premises.
Above: My Name Card
The X-Factor Behind the ITP Investment
The General Manager at this time was Bernard Chen. He served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1977 to 2001, then became Minister of State for Defence from 1977 to 1981, after which he stepped down from Cabinet, and became General Manager of Fraser & Neave Group from 1982 to 1991. From 1977 to 1990, Mr Chen also served as Chairman of NTUC Income and from 1995 to 2007, he was a Director of the Singapore Labour Foundation.
Meeting the Master Craftsman
While working at Dragon World, I have the chance to meet one of the master craftsmen responsible for building the statutes in the Tiger Balm Gardens.
Further details can be found here in this link
Secret Tunnels
When the park was undergoing redevelopments, the contractors discovered secret tunnels leading from the Villa to the sea.
Although it was said that the it was said that Aw Boon Haw’s pick of the Pasir Panjang site was purely coincidental, some speculate that the brothers were involved in opium and contraband trade.Click on this link.
You can see from this old map (Source: maps-singapore.com) how close the Villa is to the sea.
In his speech, PM Lee Hsien Loong at CNB50 Anniversary Event 7 December 2021 at Tudor Ballroom, Goodwood Park hotel said that: “In the 19th century and in the early 20th century, opium was widely consumed especially by the poorer classes of society. Opium use was legal and workers often smoked opium to relieve their fatigue. One in three adult Chinese settlers were addicted to opium…… Singapore banned opium in 1946”
Ghosts
Both during the park redevelopments and after completion, night watchmen would report sightings of ghosts. They would buy and place joss-sticks and candles at these locations of sightings.
Other than the 4 stone memorials dedicated to Aw Boon Haw, Aw Boon Par, their parents Aw Chu Kin and wife, as well as his adopted son Aw Hoe, I vaguely recalled that there were some gravestones along Pasir Panjang Road just after turning the corner from Haw Par Villa entrance, towards Norwegian Seamen’s Mission.
There is even a story about ghost sighted in this area on the internet.Click here.
Late Work Nights
There is a one storey building that was constructed to be at the rear of the park. This housed the staff wardrobe (imagine movie studio wardrobe), the various offices (GM, Finance & Admin, HR and Training, Sales and Marketing, Loss Prevention (Security), Changing Room, Park Operations and so on).
When the park closes it front gate, except for most of the sentries that were stationed at their guard posts, there would be nobody else in the park. Hence this building would be empty as well.
Before the park re-opened, the Management decided to implement SAP EDP system that would provide a fully integrated system for all its park operations, including the ticketing system at the ticket booth, the electronic cash-register at its retail outlet and food and beverage outlet, the warehouse and inventory, sales, finance and HR.
F&N was supposed to provide its IT support staff while the vendors SAP and Siemens Nixdorf were supposed to provide their support staff for the implementation of this project. A number of the software module were non-standard and Siemens Nixdorf had to write the programs using the difficult SAP ABAP programming language. The system needs to be tested and back-up at night.
The person that supposed to be responsible for getting that done was the female Finance supervisor, who also reported to my boss Harold Tan. However, she did not want to do it and broke down in tears refusing to do so. My boss Harold gave in and asked me to do it instead. So, I ended up working on my day job from 8.30 am and had to stay back until anytime from 12 midnight to 6.30 am the next morning. This was my work schedule for a fairly long period of time.
The Nixdorf and F&N IT support teams were reluctant to come to the park at night. They only told me to call them should I hit a problem with the program while they stayed at home or do whatever they were doing. Because these people were reluctant to be present to do their own job, they recommended for me to go through many training so that I can do their jobs for them.On hindsight, my employer did not pay me extra for the increased job scope and also broke the law because they did not pay overtime for the job and I had worked more than 12 hours a day.
Much of the time, I do not remember having dinner. It was eerie to be in an office when there were nobody and most of the lights are off.
When I left for home in the early hours of the morning, I had to walk through the park to the front gate. I had to passed by the statutes and the dragon where the ten courts of hell reside. There was just dead silence. I doubt after me there would be anyone else that share a similar experience.
What is in a Name?
The park also operates retail outlets to sell merchandise to park visitors. The department head was a lady of Mongolian descent named May. And she hired female supervisors that were named April and June. I always had a good laugh recalling this.
Re-Opening Fanfare
The Straits Times published the news on the re-opening of Haw Par Villa on 2 October 1990. Click here
Above: Me with 2 of the park’s performers on my last day of work. You may be surprised that Gurmit Singh (local TV sitcom Phua Chu Kang) and Koh Chieng Mun (local TV sitcom Under One Roof) were park performers.
Above: Slow boat around the 10 courts of hell. Source: “Haw Par Villa (Tiger Balm Garden)” stateofbuildings.sg website
Source: “ Haw Par Villa Dragon World”, singaporememory.sg website
Above: The roller-coaster flume ride Source: “Memories of the Haw Par Villa – Our SG 50E-Book Project” simplylambchops.blogspot.com website
Above: Park Performers Source: “Performer at Live Show at Haw Par Villa”, nas.gov.sg website. If you wish to know more about the 10 courts of hell click here
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