A tiger never loses sleep over the opinion of sheep.

Tiger Balm Mansion.

"A tiger never loses sleep over the opinion of sheep.” — Ziad K. Abdelnour

Yesterday I had booked myself onto a free tour of Haw Par Mansion, also known as Tiger Balm Mansion, in the Tai Hang area of Hong Kong Island.

Have you heard of Tiger Balm? Probably yes, and definitely yes, if you are South East Asian. Tiger Balm is an analgesic heat rub used for external pain relief. It was created in the 1870's in Rangoon, Burma by a Hakka herbalist called Aw Chu Kin. When Aw Chu Kin died in 1908, he passed on the secret ingredients of Tiger Balm to his sons: Aw Boon Haw and Aw Boon Par. They were excellent businessmen and aggressively marketed Tiger Balm ointment. They were so successful at this, that by 1918 the Aw family was one of the wealthiest in Rangoon.

To be fair, I should mention here that the Aw brothers were not only hugely financially successful, they were also well-known philanthropists, who built hospitals, schools and care homes for the elderly.

Anyway, however generous they may have been, they were practical businessmen at heart. Aw Boon Haw's adopted daughter and heiress, Sally Aw, pointed out that her father spent so much money on advertising that he suddenly decided it would be cheaper just to start up his own newspaper, or buy up several existing ones, then advertise for free, so of course, being a very driven person, he promptly did just this. His newspaper business was also a major success.

The Aws expanded their market beyond Burma and exported Tiger Balm to China, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and the rest of South East Asia. In the 1920's the Aw brothers left Rangoon and moved to Singapore. At one point Aw Boon Haw took his second wife on a trip to Hong Kong. She loved it there and wanted to stay, so he built a mansion for her, and next to it, he created a public garden, which became known as the Tiger Balm Gardens.

Peter and I went to the Tiger Balm Gardens shortly after arriving in Hong Kong. These free to enter public gardens are considered to be Hong Kong's first ever theme park. To be honest, they were kind of weird. They contained sculptures, murals, bas reliefs, grottoes and waterfalls. Their theme centred around Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian moral values. They were an attempt to remind South East Asians of their cultural roots at a time when many South East Asian countries were run by colonial powers with different belief systems. Many of the images here were based on stories of the ten courts of hell in Chinese mythology and depicted images of horrendous torture. After visiting, we were left feeling quite disturbed, though this didn't stop us later visiting The Tiger Balm Gardens in Singapore, too. Unfortunately, the Tiger Balm Gardens were demolished in 2004 and the land they had occupied was sold off to one of Hong Kong's richest men, Li Ka Shing. He built a huge residential complex here known as The Legend. This completely dwarfed the Tiger Balm Mansion, but at least it wasn't knocked down.

The mansion is now dwarfed by the legend.

The guide had a photo showing this on her phone .

The guide had a photo showing this on her phone.

Haw Par Mansion has occupied this site since 1936. Together with its surrounding gardens it took five years to complete and occupied over eight acres of land. In the past the mansion was private and could only be visited by personal invitation from the Aw family or following a written application for a visit.

The mansion is an interesting mixture of Oriental and Western styles. It has been awarded grade one historical status. However, when the gardens were destroyed, no-one knew what to do with the house and it was left abandoned and began to decline. I even found a video online where a group of young people broke into it, not to vandalize it, but to record it for posterity. Eventually the mansion was converted into a music school and it looked like it had been saved, but the school was not successful and closed after a few years. Recently the Hong Kong Government has taken over the running of the mansion and it is now possible to register for a free tour here, which is what I did.

Applications to join a tour are available online every Monday at 10am. By one minute past ten the places on the tour are filled. I was too slow on my first attempt and failed to get on a tour. For my second attempt, I prefilled the application form and sat staring at it waiting for the time to tick over to 10am, then pressed submit. I only just made getting a place. I think we can safely say it is a popular tour.

I had to get to the mansion for 10am and, although I had been there once already, I couldn't remember where it was. In the end I walked uphill to it from Tin Hau Station. It took about fifteen to twenty minutes to walk there. I was totally paranoid about being late and, as usual, ended up being the first one there. Since I was early, I walked up to the entrance of The Legend and passed the original entrance of Haw Par Mansion on the way.

Wandering around outside.

Original entrance to Haw Par Mansion.

Original entrance to the mansion close up.

Tiger door knockers.

As there were no English tours available, I had to sign up for a Cantonese speaking tour. When I did that for Bethany, the guide totally ignored me, although she could speak English. I wouldn't have expected her to do the tour in English just for me, but an acknowledgement that I at least existed may have been nice. Here the guides could not have been lovelier. One conducted the tour in Cantonese, another tried to make sure I knew what was going on and everyone was incredibly kind to me. What a contrast!

Our group assembled downstairs for the tour. We wandered around photographing some of the tiger statues outside the building while we waited for the tour to begin.

Tiger Statue.

Tiger Statue.

Tiger statue.

It's behind you.

Tiger Balm bench.

Then we got in a lift and headed up to the private garden of the mansion. The garden looked really beautiful, but we didn't have time to look at it at that point as we were ushered inside the house to register.

Haw Par Mansion.

There were photos of how the mansion used to be in reception.

This shows the mansion with the Tiger Balm Gardens as they used to be.

Old photo of the mansion.

We were given a numbered badge to wear. Mine kept falling off and was returned to me several times!!! I was number 9. At one point my badge was returned and then it was noted that I was actually still wearing it and it turned out number 6 had lost their badge instead. Haha!

We were first taken upstairs via the rather plain servants' staircase. One set of stairs led to a hatch through which food could be passed to the dining room. The other was for the higher up servants who were the only ones allowed above stairs to serve the food. There was a clear class based system in operation at this time. The servants' rooms were the small plain ones downstairs where the reception and some displays can now be found. The master's rooms were huge, sumptuously decorated and upstairs.

Servants' staircase.

Servants' stairs and hatch through to the dining-room.

We were taken to a large reception hall. Its most noticeable feature was its beautiful moon doors which were decorated with imported Italian stained glass. One door depicted a variety of birds. The other depicted tigers. Tigers were, of course , a recurring theme throughout the whole house. This room was at one time used to entertain guests. It also displayed various gifts that people had given to the Aw brothers. Nowadays it is largely an empty room with several other rooms leading off it. It also had a fancy staircase up to the next floor. This was the staircase the family would have used.

The reception Hall.

Reception Hall.

Reception Hall.

Me in the moon door with birds.

Moon door with birds.

Me in the moon door with tigers.

The moon door with tigers.

Stairway.

Next, we went to the dining room. It no longer has any tables or chairs, but there was an area for storing wine and in the corner of the room there was a sort of circular sitting room. Again there was lovely stained glass on the windows. This time it had patterns rather than pictures. The dining room had a beautiful carpet and there was a very elegant fireplace.

The dining room.

Fireplace in the dining room.

The dining room's circular sitting room.

We then had a look at the Aw family bathroom. It was about the size of most people's flats here!!! It had a bath, wash hand basin, toilet and bidet, all in a bright shade of green.

The bathroom.

The bathroom.

The bathroom.

The bathroom.

There was a small room with a fireplace and some figurines. I'm not sure what it was originally used for.

Room with fireplace and figurines.

Room with fireplace and figurines.

Upstairs there was an area where a scene from the recent Hong Kong movie 'A Guilty Conscience' was filmed. There was a photo on display showing the leading actor sitting in the mansion.

Scene from a guilty conscience.

Detail of a room.

Staircase.

Next we went to Aw's bedroom. I was shown a room with bars on its door and an assortment of locks. I was asked to guess what it was. It looked exactly like a prison cell and, while that made no sense, I pointed out that was what it reminded me of. Everyone had a good laugh at me. It turned out to be Aw's walk in safe, where he kept all his money and valuables. Believe me, you could fit quite a considerable amount of cash in there.

Bedroom.

Bedroom.

Walk-in safe.

Finally, we had a look at the outside garden. This was never part of the public gardens and was for family use only. It continued to mix Chinese and Western features with its European style fountain and Chinese pagoda. There are statues of deer, here which are supposed to bring good financial fortune.

Tiger Balm Mansion.

Deer statues in front of mansion.

In front of the mansion.

Fountain.

Pavilion.

There were also statues of some characters from Chinese mythology. The guide tried to explain to me that they were the characters from the legend Chinese Valentine's Day is based on. I later looked this up. Zhinhu was a weaver girl and the daughter of a goddess. She fell madly in love with Niulang, a humble cowherd. When Zhinhu 's mother discovered she was in love with a mere mortal, she dragged her back to heaven and created a river between heaven and Earth to keep the lovers apart. This river in now known as the Milky Way. A flock of magpies took pity on the young couple and formed a bridge from Earth to heaven, so the two could reunite. When Zhinhu's mother saw this, she also felt sorry for the couple and decided to allow them to meet up once a year on the day that is now Chinese Valentine's Day.

Plus there was information about the ten courts of hell, but you need a very strong stomach to learn about that.

Information about the hells in Chinese mythology.

Niulang.

Zhinhu.

All too soon the tour was over and I wandered down into Causeway Bay. On my way, I passed the beautiful Chinese style Sheng Kung Hui Saint Mary's Church, which is an Anglican church dating from the 1930's. I should probably have gone in, but I had had enough of grand buildings for one day.

Saint Mary's Church.

To my surprise across the road I saw the Christ the King's Chapel which is normally hidden away, surrounded by schools, hospitals, convents and an orphanage, which all belong to the Sisters of St Paul de Chartres. This building is now temporarily exposed due to the demolition of a nearby building. I've only seen it before when we were staying in the Regal Hong Kong Hotel and had access to an upstairs lounge that overlooked it. Although it belongs to the convent, and used to be entirely for their private use, apparently the public can access it for Sunday mass. This beautiful building dates from the 1930's.

The Christ the King Chapel.

The Christ the King Chapel.