User:Sengkang/Sketchpad/Tang Dynasty
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[edit] May 1992
The Straits Times
Tang grandeur for 8 wedding couples
May 19, 1992
IT WAS a wedding procession befitting the bygone grandeur of China's Tang Dynasty.
Eight couples yesterday took part in the first mass wedding at the $ 90-million Tang Dynasty City.
Complete with an $ 8,000 imported sedan chair, two horses, a camel, musicians and dowry girls, the mass wedding party made its way from one of the park's restaurants to its House of Nobility.
One of the brides, personal assistant Kong Chui Fun, 30, sat on the sedan chair. Another gamely sat on the camel, while two others were on the horses. Four more brides walked behind them.
At the House of Nobility, the brides and bridegrooms climbed the steps to an upper deck and served tea in elegant silverware to their parents and elders.
Later yesterday evening, the couples hosted a dinner for about 800 guests at the park's two restaurants.
"It's a kind of a novelty and it's fun. And it's kind of interesting," said Mr Wilson Ho Chang Woon, 27, an assistant researcher with the Ministry of Defence.
Mr Ho said he and his wife decided on the wedding package from Oxley Travel Service when they visited a travel fair recently.
They paid about $ 5,000 for the package, which included a complimentary table at the dinner and a honeymoon to Hongkong and Thailand.
Oxley marketing manager Loh Mun Loong said: "We do not do it purely for profit, but with a view that the couples may come back to us for other tours as families later."
Yesterday's wedding was the 30th organised by Oxley, which began its mass wedding programme in 1976. Its wedding packages are priced at $ 1,000 and above.
Those who wish to find out more about wedding packages at the 12-ha theme park in Jurong can contact Miss Michelle Ong on 261-1116.
TRAVEL LEISURE & HOSPITALITY (90%); MARRIAGE (90%); RESTAURANT INDUSTRY (71%);
OXLEY TRAVEL SERVICE (90%);
SECTION: Home; Pg. 22
LENGTH: 547 words
LOAD-DATE: September 9, 1992
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Mrs Ho gets onto one of the park's double-humped camels from Beijing as an employee of Tang Dynasty City helps her.
[edit] June 1992
The Straits Times
Gateway to imperial dining
June 28, 1992
Margaret Chan
Rosewood panels, floor to ceiling glass windows, thick carpets ... is such extravagance at Tang Dynasty City's eating complex necessary, asks MARGARET CHAN
TANG Dynasty City is only six months old, but already the 10-metre-high wall fronting the theme park is looking old and weathered -much to the delight of the management.
In order to get the 25-metre-long edifice patchy with moss on cue for the opening this January, the wall had to be built with special bricks from China -two million of them -which encourage the growth of moss and lichen.
"Tang Dynasty City, the worlds only living empire!" is the trumpeting tagline that sells the park as a scaled-down but faithful copy of Chang-An, (present day Xian city) capital of the Tang dynasty of China (618-907 AD).
It goes on to breathlessly enumerate the 250,000 granite blocks, 600,000 green slate tiles, 500,000 pieces of roof tiles and jade-coloured eaves, 50,000 kg of white jade, 1,130 replica terracotta warriors, several live willow trees and $ 5 million worth of antiques sourced from China needed for the 12-hectare site in Jurong.
To put the intricate parts of the jigsaw together without using nails and to work on the three-dimensional decorative facades, a crew of 80 artisans from Jiangsu were flown in. The telling of the story of the building of Tang Dynasty City takes on epoch-movie portions with feisty Hongkong tycoon Deacon Chiu, 66, chairman of Far East Holdings International (FEHI), in the directors chair.
Tang Dynasty City was conceived as the humbler Tang Dynasty Village until original estimated costs of $ 50 million rose -forcing FEHI to sell its stake in Hongkong's Asia Television -to $ 90 million by opening day.
Then, Mr Chiu announced a revision in nomenclature was in order as the term "village" was inappropriate to the size of the park.
Despite the name change, today's visitors will largely see a village of shophouses since 60 per cent of the park, encompassing the major attractions, is still under construction and will only come on stream towards the end of this year.
In the meantime, the vast greyness of the city can overwhelm so that the painstaking attention to details, such as the intricate woodwork at every window and the careful furnishing of principal shops with period pieces, melts into the monotony. Which is a shame.
Tang Dynasty City has been uncharitably compared to Universal Studios. Certainly the Tang city is less about the cardboard world of moviedom, where mansions turn out to be just frontages and more about recreating a real moment of history.
Unfortunately, architecture has little pop appeal and so a day-long programme of trite shows have been drawn up to pander to the masses. These are routinely churned out by a troupe of clearly bored performers from Sichuan, China, whose lacklustre exertions dull the glowing vision of a vibrant, historical city reborn.
If one man sets out to create a living empire, you can expect he will pull no stops when it comes to building his restaurants; after all, restaurants are the modern-day palaces of pleasure.
"We try to do our best," said Mr Deacon Chiu, a most unassuming tycoon in T-shirt and well-worn sneakers. At 10 pm on a Monday night, he was still touring the grounds.
We met in the lobby of the park's dining complex, an imposing three-storey building of rosewood panels, floor to ceiling glass windows, brass wrapped pillars and thick-piled maroon carpets. It houses two Chinese restaurants owned and managed by Tang Dynasty City, a Japanese restaurant and a cafeteria.
The building is set on the edge of the complex, on the eastern side of Tang City, along Yuan Ching Road.
The furnishing and fittings of the two Chinese restaurants are sumptuous. All the tables and chairs are of solid rose - See Page 7
- From Page 6 wood from China. Just the smaller tables which sit six, cost US$ 5,000 a piece. Was such extravagance necessary?
"Of course," said Mr Chiu. "There is nothing like this in Singapore. We have to be special." He adds: "There,s still more to be done, pointing to the door of the Tai He Lou Restaurant which he wants changed.
TAI HE LOU THEATRE RESTAURANT: A cavernous hall seatting 500 is crowned by a magnificent revolving stage that spans 20 m across almost the entire length of the room.
Diners sit at rosewood tables lit by lamps which are good copies of the famous Han treasure entitled Maid With A Lamp -not that many would notice since attention would be rivetted to the performances by the resident troupe of 50 dancers and acrobats from China.
This is the reason for coming to the restaurant, for the buffet spread (lunch $ 20 for adults, $ 15 for children; tea $ 10, $ 5; dinner $ 38, $ 20 including entry to the park) is humdrum fare; cuttlefish balls, vegetable with oyster sauce, deep-fried chicken wings, sauteed noodles and the like.
Food: *
Ambience: ****
Overall: * *
TANG PALACE: The wealth in rosewood mesmerises. Indeed, there is so much of this expensive material, it creates a monochrome of brown. The effect is grand but dull.
Nine chefs from Beijing cook diners a taste of Chang-An. This translates into banquet dishes with an earthy wholesomeness, with robust rather than delicate flavours in the Hongkong-Cantonese style.
Soup was a claypot chockful of sharksfins chunks in a very rich stock of chicken, duck and pork bones, sweetened with Jinhua ham and spiked with milk. This is a soup you eat, and with much satisfaction ($ 160 for six).
The chefs have an award-winning way of braising sea-cucumbers in what they call a seafood sauce. This name does not even begin to describe the brown glass that drools over the slippery slugs. You see tiny dots of shrimp eggs and taste a complex melange of bittersweet caramel with piquant fermented seafood sauces of the oyster, shrimp and crab ilk. ($ 16, $ 24, $ 32).
Beef with egg was a homely concoction of chopped beef dipped in egg and fried in very hot oil which blistered and popped the egg into lace ($ 14, $ 21, $ 28).
Fill up on handpulled noodles redolent in minced meat and bean paste sauce ($ 14, $ 21, $ 29) and finish with a sour-sweet velvet of sago beads in mango puree dotted with pomelo sacs which burst open when bitten, releasing an instant of bright sourness ($ 20, $ 30, $ 40).
Food: ***
Ambience: ***
Overall: ***
SANGA JAPANESE REST-AURANT: The third and smartest-looking branch of the chain of Sanga restaurants known for reasonably priced, satisfying Japanese food.
Typical set meals are: tempura, tonkatsu, teriyaki and so on, with soup, pickles, rice and fruit from $ 8 to $ 16. There is also teppanyaki and, specially here, yakiniku, the Korean-inspired barbecue buffet of meat, seafood and vegetables cooked over a cast-iron griddle. The buffet includes a salad bar and fruits. Good value, good taste for $ 12.50 (lunch) and $ 10.50 (dinner).
Food: **
Ambience: **
Overall: **
CHANG-AN FOOD COURT: A basement cafeteria operated by MicLionel And King, a Singapore company that specialises in off-the-counter cooked food. In this more spartan setting, fried noodles or rice cost $ 3.50, breaded fried chicken wings $ 1.50 a piece and desserts such as tau suan (split mung bean soup) $ 1.50 a bowl.
What the stars mean: Excellent: *****, Very good: ****,Good: ***, Above average: **, OK: *
DIVESTITURES (74%); CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY (64%);
FAR EAST HOLDINGS INTERNATIONAL LTD (60%);
SECTION: Sunday Plus; Food; Eat out; Pg. 6,7
LENGTH: 2387 words
LOAD-DATE: September 9, 1992
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Atmospheric: An imposing three-storey building houses two Chinese restaurants, a Japanese one and a cafeteria (Page sunplus6); A return to the Tang dynasty in 1st century China (Page sunplus6); Tai He Lou Theatre Restaurant: Buffet spread in a cavernous hall seatting 500, with a revolving stage where a resident troupe of 50 dancers and acrobats from China perform (Page sunplus7); Tang Palace: Hongkong-style dishes in grand but dull setting (Page sunplus7); Sanga Japanese Restaurant: reasonably priced and satisfying (Page sunplus7)
[edit] Sep 2007
The end of the Tang dynasty? By Leong Wee Keat, TODAY | Posted: 14 September 2007 1233 hrs
Photos 1 of 1
The Tang Dynasty City today is a pale shadow of its once-majestic self
SINGAPORE - The forlorn silence at the Tang Dynasty City in Jurong could, come January, be replaced by the rumblings of bulldozers.
Just months after it seemed the former tourist draw might be given a new lease of life as a Shaolin attraction, hope of a rescue now seems extinguished, as a call went out for consultants for the demolition works.
On Tuesday, landlord JTC Corporation called for an expression of interest from those keen to provide civil and structural consultancy services for the project.
In the document posted on GeBiz, the Government's e-procurement portal, JTC said the consultant is to provide a scope of services.
The project schedule states that the tender for demolition works will be launched in December, with the tearing-down to start next January and expected to be completed "not later than March 2009".
Built at a cost of $100 million and opened in 1992, the 12ha theme park — the size of 18 football fields — was a re-creation of the Tang dynasty capital, Chang-An.
But high admission charges, lacklustre attractions and the 1997 Asian financial crisis, which saw tourist arrivals plunge, contributed to its closure in 1999.
Efforts to revive the theme park fell through in 2001. Then in April this year, talk emerged of a possible new breath of life.
Three Singapore companies signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to bring the 1,500-year-old Shaolin Temple legacy and culture, and its famed warrior monks, here in the form of a new tourist attraction. The Tang Dynasty City was cited as a possible site for the proposed "holistic lifestyle holiday retreat".
When contacted on Thursday, Mr Poh Choon Ann, chairman of Poh Tiong Choon Logistics, one of the three local companies, declined comment. The spokesman for Straco Corporation, another company involved, said there had been "no developments" since the MOU was signed in April.
Property analyst Donald Han said the land has been gazetted for entertainment use. The managing director of Cushman & WakeField pointed out that JTC could be looking at readapting the use of the site — located in the middle of the Jurong industrial estate — for "more productive purposes".
Mr Han said: "The Tang Dynasty City has been dormant for a very long time. It is of better consideration for the Government to convert it to other uses than to leave it for entertainment use on its current basis."
The Tang Dynasty City today seems a pale shadow of its once-majestic self. When TODAY visited, the theme park's 3-m-high wall was unscrubbed, and barricades put up across its gates to stop trespassers had fallen apart. Inside, broken glass and pieces of furniture littered the floor.
While the gates no longer allow visitors in, the car park has become a favourite for heavy vehicles and Malaysian buses. The parking attendant, who has worked there a-year-and-a-half, said she had seen groups of students entering the Tang Dynasty City. A fence put up around the walls was also cut open last month, she added.
Ms Cindy Lim, who works as a supermarket cashier nearby, said: "It's good that the authorities are finally doing something to it. "The area is quite big and it seems a waste of land if nothing is done." - TODAY/fa
