Naturally, since it’s Bali it has to have sculptures, and the biggest one in the middle of the sanctuary is an ornate swimming pool or bathtub-cum-fountain for the monkeys.  They like it and hop in and out, and push each other around in the water like other primates I’ve seen.

The walkway to the bathtub has a concrete berm on the downhill side, where the monkeys line up.  They eat the bananas that people bring them, take naps, feed their young, and interact with people.  This boy scampered from the entrance to the berm and invited the monkey to play by sitting on the berm:

Note that the monkey has a buddy who has refrained from climbing the boy.  I don’t know if they take turns, or if they decided he wasn’t big enough for two, but at any rate they didn’t gang up on him, which was nice. Actually, after closer inspection I’ve decided the buddy may have been preoccupied with nursing her baby.

The monkey took it to a higher level….

Everyone’s happy, and we have a photo op for the boy’s mother.  And me, of course.

Of course there’s a temple in the Monkey Sanctuary.  It’s not dedicated to Hanoman, but it is definitely monkey-dominated, and I noticed that they don’t keep a lot of delicate materials in the most accessible parts.  You can see here the large sheltered platforms that would be used as dance venues ifa dance were scheduled.  Despite the monkey access they’re very clean, so they must have a pretty devoted attendant keeping them that way.  Human visitors must wear sarongs and sashes (available at the temple entrance) and then they can take even more monkey pictures.

Outside the temple there are lots of monkey statues along the walkways that divide the temple precincts from the surrounding jungle:

These statues look unnervingly lifelike.  For comparison here’s a live nursing mother with her tiny baby:

The only unlifelike monkey statue is the giant Hanoman at a different entrance, in an attitude of prayer that I didn’t see any real monkeys assuming; it must be Hanoman, as it’s wearing the sacred checked cloth sarong and has a wise and blissed-out expression appropriate to a devotee of Shiva:

The monkeys like statues as well as fountains:

Or maybe they just like climbing to higher places.  One grabbed the end of my pink umbrella and was considering whether he should climb up it, and then up my arm to the top of my head, but I persuaded him not to.

And that’s the end of my Bali blogging.  I’ve spent almost as much time editing photos and posting them as I did on Bali.  Which  means it must be time to go back and see some more!

This monkey pair over a giant gecko were at the entrance to the Wiringi Cottages and Restaurant, as was this big lizard – water monitor? or komodo dragon?  Only the sculptor knows for sure:

You can buy wooden komodo dragons in lots of the shops around Ubud, should you need one.  We resisted this particular temptation.

And an updated gate sculpture at Ubud’s palace – a traditional demon, upside-down, surmounted by the head of a happy man in swim goggles:

Balinese tradition demands that every village have at least three temples in it, and Ubud is in addition the traditional seat of a royal family, which built its temple-style palace on the main drag.  So there are lots of extravagantly decorated and carved temples for a tourist to choose from. A short block from the palace is the Saraswati temple (Saraswati is the goddess of learning and music), which features a big lotus pond in front of the performance area where they stage Legong dances.  We stayed at the adjacent bungalows, whence we had immediate access to an outer temple courtyard, where food is prepared and people hang out informally for ceremonies, and then to the inner temple, where the more formal, sacred ceremonies are held.  When no ceremonies are going forward, the inner temple is where they keep the gilded gamelans (a series of xylophone-like instruments precisely tuned and hit with hammers) and gongs for the performances, and where they keep the sacred masks for the barong dances.

Here’s the gate from the inner temple to the performance area, complete with toothy guardian over the door:

In this inner courtyard were plenty of shrines and buildings of different sizes, all thatched with a particular black palm fiber used exclusively for holy buildings.  They were all open-air buildings, with carved and gilded wood pillars, and carved, painted and gilded bas-reliefs like this one:

There were statues here and there, in the shrines like this Ganesh:And like this fellow (I think it’s Ravana being attacked by Rama’s vulture ally while he’s abducting Sita, but I could well be wrong):There’s one statue that is completely uncovered, and that’s Saraswati herself, complete with her sitar,  goose and peacock, not to mention impressive headgear:

Saraswati is the main deity of this temple, so she gets two pictures.  That big stupa to the right is a traditional temple structure, depicting the Balinese cosmos. At the very bottom is the turtle who holds the world on his back; the two golden snakes of human earthly needs wind their way up the sides, and at the top (not visible in this picture because the sun was in the wrong direction for photography) is the empty throne that is the symbol of the overall one god, the supreme deity Sanghyang Widi Wasa.

But like most inner temple courtyards, this one houses both the gamelans and other orchestral instruments for sacred performances, and the barong masks:Note that the stairs to the barong shrine are guarded by the ubiquitous crowned snakes, the familiar representations of human earthly needs.  The barong, from what I’ve read, is kind of an expression of the good forces guarding and infusing humans.  When dormant it stays in its shrine in the temple, like this. But at particular seasons it comes to life, and then the mask is joined to a body thick with palm-fiber hairs, and the barong can go outside the shrine, and into the streets of the town itself, in dances in which it is pitted against the darker forces depicted in the masks to the right, the witch Rangda, her daughter, and a quasi-sympathetic henchwoman. Here’s a closer look at the barong:And below, the opposition, the Rangda and her buddies, with their out-of-control canine teeth.

We actually passed a barong ceremony and dance in the street of a village outside Ubud; the barong is a two-man costume, like the Chinese lion, and it sways around in front of a lot of formally-dressed villagers sitting on the ground in front of it.  We didn’t see the part where Rangda appears at the other end of the street and howls threats at Barong, but apparently that’s the drill.  There’s some sort of contest between them and Rangda retreats, although unharmed; the ceremony depicts the balance of opposing forces – a balance that everyone prays for in Bali, rather than the vanquishing of evil.  And evidently when not brought to life for the season of battle dances, the barong and Rangda dwell pretty peacefully side by side.

Have I mentioned that temples in Ubud are places of beauty?  Of course in Bali beauty is everywhere, in the scenery, the ocean, the flowers and jungle everywhere, the rice paddies and volcanic landscape, and in the little food- and flower-filled offerings provided at every little shrine, every big rock and tree of note.  And in the Saraswati temple they make sure that orchids add to the grass and pavements, the carving and gilding, the lotus pond and music:It’s a lovely place.

Anyway, they were painting this pavilion with the typical bright and beautiful temple decorations that you can see on a lot of fancy Chinese temples. I’d never seen temple painters at work, so I photographed them.

More arhats below:

Once you’ve completed your devotions or tourism at this level, you can follow the Buddha trail further up the mountain until you reach the top. At this level the trail ends and there are several structures: an old house that might have been the original monastery; two new temples, both air conditioned (! just like the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple in Singapore’s Chinatown!), that contain many ancestral tablets, and maybe a few ancestral ashes, for worship and remembrance. One of these new temples has an enormous seated Buddha with a glowing stone bindhi in its forehead. If you watch long enough the bindhi changes colors, from red to orange, pink to blue, green back to red. It’s an LED.   Again, alas, courtesy forebad the taking of photos.
But if you go outside and dodge the scent of stinky tofu wafting up from below, you can see a small red pavilion which contains a statue of the beloved abbot whose gilded corpse resides in the main temple area below. This area is adjacent to a Buddha-filled grotto, which is to some extent still under construction. Here are the golden Buddhas to keep the abbot company:

Here is the newly carved sleeping Buddha atop the as-yet-incomplete water feature:

Here is the lovely and popular GuanYin, the Goddess of Mercy, who when her scaffolding is removed will overlook the entire valley (will her bindhi change colors too?):

And finally, here is the sign in English that caps the entire experience for me:

It’s enormous and bulbous. I think it’s ugly, but apparently this scuptor has some pull – there’s another ugly bulbous piece near the Hilton on Orchard Road. Below is the rear view:

I don’t think anybody really likes this statue. You can see that it’s up high on a plinth – it’s hard to reach, so nobody who has an urge to rub its toes or tail can do so easily. And it’s free of any shiny parts – people don’t interract with it. Compare this to the bullock cart statue about a block away in the post above.

I should mention here that it’s not unusual to find statues of heroes in Asian countries.  Lots of Indian villages have Gandhi.  Taipei has Sun Yatsen and Chiang Kaishek.  Chiayi (in Taiwan) has busts of many (western!) heroes in its city park, including Helen Keller.  And let’s not even think about Maoist iconography in mainland China.  But Singapore has chosen people long dead, not modern leaders (modest Singapore!); and true to its needs, it has chosen them from Chinese history, to enhance Singaporean Chinese people’s sense of identity and ethnic pride – not to mention that these are the Chinese gardens.

They are pretty good statues, if you like portraits, period costumes, and realism – which I do!  Let’s see if we can figure out why these particular ones were chosen – after all, Chinese history supplies 5000 years’ worth of interesting stories and characters.

The first one you encounter is Lin Zexu, an official under the Qing Dynasty.  This man tried to fight the British opium importers and protect Chinese people, by burning down a warehouse full of opium in 1840.  This started the Opium War, which in turn led to the humiliation of China and its domination by foreign powers. So why is he a hero?  Because he took a strong stand against drugs, when it would have been much easier and more profitable not to.  Drug interdiction – a very Singaporean virtue!

Next is Zheng He, whose distinctive hat shows his status as a eunuch.  But more importantly, he was a great navigator and explorer who lived from 1371-1435, and led the Chinese navy to southeast Asia (i.e., Singapore!) and East Africa.  He was also, not coincidentally, a Chinese Muslim.  So he is an exemplar of a multicultural China, who showcases the virtues of duty, patriotism, bravery, brains, and sea-going savvy.  This last is important to Singapore, much of whose industry is related to modern cargo-carriers.

This is Wen Tianxiang, 1236-83.  He was a scholar, official and general loyal to the fading Song Dynasty, who refused to assist the invading Mongols (Kublai Khan), despite being imprisoned and tortured.  All in vain, actually, since the Song were at that time too weak to fend off the invaders and fell anyway, leading to the establishment of the Yuan dynasty. Like the Manchus years later, the Mongols were perceived as outsiders unworthy of refined Han culture – mostly by Hans, of course.  Why should Singapore, a multicultural city, celebrate a guy who tried to defend a monocultural, corrupt and inept regime?  Patriotism, I think, and incorruptibility.

Hwa Mulan, the only woman celebrated for her own military accomplishments.  Also the one with the least historical documentation; if she lived, it might have been during the Northern Wei period, 386-584.  The main points about her are that she disguised herself as a man and served in the army under her father’s name for some period – 10 years? 30?  Her strategic gifts allowed her to rise to the post of general (I find it hard to believe nobody figured out her gender), and the emperor, in gratitude, granted her the fulfillment of a wish, any wish.  Apparently she just wanted to return home.  So she did, says the story, and resumed her work at the loom.  She is now worshipped in the Taoist tradition, not for her bravery, smarts, or patriotism, but as an exemplar of filial piety – surprise! Feminism de-fanged by religion.

Mulan is not the only woman in the Chinese Garden sculptures; here we have Yue Fei’s mother, tatooing characters into her son’s back. The characters read “Serve the country with utmost loyalty,” and apparently Yue Fei (1103-42) did, as a gifted general defending the Southern Song from Jurchen invaders. It’s not known how having this message in his back was supposed to help instruct him, since he could not see it without mirrors, but that’s the story.  Patriotism again, and in this case, rarely for statues in Singapore, a touch of Chinese beefcake.

Here’s one of my personal favorites, Guan Yu (died 219).  He served the warlord Liu Bai in the wars of the Three Kingdoms Period – during the long and horrible decay of the Han dynasty – and was notable for his fearlessness, resolution, incorruptibility, loyalty, and military effectiveness without boasting or rashness.  He’s worshipped everywhere among Chinese people, and you can read about his exploits in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Qu Yuan (340-278 BCE) is the father of Chinese poetry.  This is more important than you might think, since poetic ability for many years determined who ran the country (under the system of examinations).  He was possibly homosexual.  He was also, according to legend, a counselor who lost favor with his local king, spent years writing patriotic poetry in exile, and drowned himself in a river in protest when he learned that his small local kingdom had fallen under the sway of the Qin.  (This Qin conquest of the 7 kingdoms was the first ever uniting of the area that would eventually be known as China.)  Qu Yuan’s death marked the beginning of the Dragon Boat festival, when the races between boats replays the vain attempts of Qu’s neighbors to row out and rescue him or recover his body.  So literacy, patriotism, and a care for local matters.

And finally:

This is the second Confucius statue in the park, so you know he’s super important.  He lived from 551-459 BCE, and tried to deal with the disorder and turmoil he saw around him by creating a system for orderly living and reciprocal obligations.  Thus the king owes protection to the subjects, who in turn owe obedience to the king.  Fathers must behave with justice and dignity in their families, and wives and children must order their lives accordingly. Here in other words is official sanction for the whole system of filial piety.   A nice system, until you get one jerk who misbehaves, and then the whole thing collapses.  But it was a good try, until it hardened into a ritualistic system of empty gestures and stifling, super-codified proprieties.

But the other thing Confucius did was to be a great equalizer (at least in theory), through teaching.  He was willing to teach anyone, he said (assuming that anyone was male), not only the sons of the rich, and each person has special gifts and abilities that can be developed and allowed to shine.  Confucius is the patron of education, and of teachers.  His birthday, September 28, is Teachers’ Day in Taiwan, where it is celebrated oddly enough with a school holiday, in which children get as far from their teachers as is humanly possible.

So the most ancient figure among Singapore’s Chinese heroes celebrates our care and duty to our parents and children;  recognition of the potential greatness in every individual; respect for the importance of culture, literacy and thought in our lives.  Of course, once you reach this far into antiquity you can read almost anything you like into their lives, and there will be little evidence to contradict you.  But let’s assume these ideals of Confucian thought are the values the Singapore government holds dear.