Sunday, November 25, 2012

Coiling Snake Tomb [蛇墓] @ Choa Chu Kang Chinese Cemetery [蔡厝港坟场]

The cemetery tour i participated during this year's seventh lunar month was an eye opener partly because i never expected to find tombs that deviate from the contemporary yet conventional design adopted by almost everyone in the present era!

In addition to the lion tomb, there was another uniquely designed one that Chua brought me to; the one known affectionately and simply as snake tomb. 

This legless reptile did not appear to be ferocious (no display of fangs and/or hood etc), which is often the case for a tomb guardian and i wonder what is its actual purpose. Likely FengShui, if you ask me.

龜蛇會真局 - a hint that would shed some light. A Google search on the five Chinese characters drew a blank and i could only break them up to explain further. 

龜蛇 means tortoise and snake; when the two characters are combined, it actually has a meaning of reducing  and even to the extent of avoiding tragedies and difficulties in life. In addition, the term could also refer to a mythical creature by the name of Xuanwu (玄武). 

會真局 - without any comma, i can only assume that 真局 means a real set and 會 could be related to meeting. It didn't really make much sense as the translation of 龜蛇會真局 would likely be Xuanwu meeting the real set. 

Or was it meant to imply that the deceased was meeting the creator after his demise? 

No comments:

Post a Comment