指点迷津

Went Haw Par Villa with a couple of friends 2 Saturday ago. It was a great outing. There are a lot of statues in the park. Quite a number of them are from the great chinese classical novels “Journey to the west“, “Water Margin” and “Romance of 3 kingdom“. Don’t remember seeing any statues from “Dream of the Red Chamber” though. (Most likely not suitable for the park)

Apart from the statues from the great classical novels, there are also several Buddhist statues, chinese idioms, the ten courts of hell and others of unknown origin. The sad thing is that most of them aren’t well labeled. The statues would be more meaningful if we can read more about the story about it.

One of the statue near the gate caught my attention because of the signboard explaining the story behind it.

The statue is about a chinese idiom “指点迷津”.

The man’s gesture represent the chinese saying “zhi dian mi jin” (give advice to those who are lost), symbolising a reminder not to stray from the right path in life.

I find it very meaningful. We often see people drift away from the right path in life after getting some fame and fortunes. As time goes by, people tend to forget their original motto and vision. They tend to lose sight of the destination. And they tend to forget about those who helped them in the past.

I’m also afraid that I might stray from the right path in the future. But I’m glad that I have lots of friends out there to look out for me. It’s always good when there is someone pointing us back to the right direction. But end of the day, it still depends on whether the person wants to be guided back to the right path or not.