I've never had a chance to visit this place before.
But my grandparents have.
I know- I've seen a photo of a flute-playing female performer dressed in Ancient Chinese (Tang Dynasty?) garb. I've also seen a photo pf them both standing under the giant arch of what I think is the main entrance.
This replica of a fort entrance must have been rather popular with visitors to Tang Dynasty City during its heyday.
Miss Brown's family has one taken by the same entrance too.
I've not included the picture.
Because it's impossible to edit both her son and husband out of the shot- and I don't want to put emojis on them.
Not when they're looking straight at the camera.
There're lots of pictures of them at Tang Dynasty City in the collection.
There's one of them posing outside the main gate.
There's one of them sitting in a room.
There's one of them at some garden which looks distinctly like part of a movie set.
These two are the only ones that I've been able to comfortably crop and edit.
It's a room that I think is meant to be a replica of a teahouse in China years and years ago.
I'm not sure if the chairs or stools are meant to be arranged this way- I can only assume they are- but they do look remarkably heavy, and they certainly have the sort of feels one might need to have to get into the swing of time, character, plot, and set.
You don't see it, but these pictures of Miss Brown and her family having such a great day at Tang Dynasty are beautiful.
They're also meaningful.
Especially when you consider that Miss Brown and her husband had met as schoolmates in the same school, and both of them had received a Chinese-based education up to the equivalent of A-Level certification.
Being able to see life-sized replicas of Chinese villages, Chinese architecture, music, dance, and interior fittings must have brought a great deal of familiarity and meant very much to her.
This was, after all, literature from the books she had read brought to life.
This was, after all, stories that she had heard over the Rediffusion radio presented in visual art before her eyes.
If she couldn't travel to China, or ancient China, this, at least, granted her a hint of what it were like back in Dynasty times.
It was experiential.
Even if she were not an actress nor her husband an actor.
Scenes like these would be what she would be seeing on the free-to-air television channels.
For a brief moment, she was part of it all.
Tang Dynasty City today stands abandoned in Tuas far from the main road, far from civilization.
No one knows what will be done of the place, whether it will be torn down, whether it will be revived.
We don't have a clue.
But at least we still have a reminder of how and what we (had) during those heyday years of TCS' television productions.
Then again, even this reminder may one day be no more.