The above video is from a Taiwanese hell temple which is located beneath the main temple. These sorts of places are scattered through Asia and are meant to portray Buddhist hell. Well, it's not really hell, but rather a sort of purgatory. Instead of spending the rest of eternity in it you only spend some time getting tormented for your karmic shortfalls before being shipped off to your next life. Still, what monumental pain in the you-know-what having to go through all that torture every time you keel over at the end of your life. Please, please, please -- don't reincarnate me as a mayfly.
The White Fungus article Hell Is the Main Attraction has a good explanation of the Chinese mythological hell. Below is an exerpt from the article.
Tainan, in southern Taiwan, is home to one of the island’s more idiosyncratic entertainment and religious narrative displays. In the basement of Madou Daitian Temple (麻豆代天宮, Temple of Heavenly Viceroys), one may encounter—if they desire—an animatronic rendering of Chinese mythological hell. In this transitory purgatory, sinners atone for earthly misdeeds before being recast into the world anew. Unfolding across eighteen gory levels, each realm enacts its own distinct form of brutal cosmic justice.
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Punishments are meted out according to the crime, with some being gender specific. Those who have told lies, for instance, have molten lead poured down their throats, searing their insides. Through a slow, excruciating process, a murky pool of guilt is refined into a transmissible narrative product. As Charles D. Orzech explains in his article, “Mechanisms of Violent Retribution in Chinese Hell Narratives,” “Information is the excuse, not the goal of torture.”
Above ground, in the world of the living, priests, monks, nuns, folk practitioners, and various mediums attempt to “grease the wheels of bureaucracy with their ritual knowledge and with community offerings to obtain release for imprisoned souls.” The lords of hell are not above accepting bribes—received through the burning of ghost money—and there is an uneven efficacy to these rites of karmic retribution. The infernal bureaucracy is known for its occasional bungling, yet the wheels of justice grind on.
All souls of mortals, upon death, must pass through the underworld—but this is purgatory, not eternal damnation. At the final level of hell, the wheel of fortune spins, assigning each soul to its next life vessel—whether human, insect, or another animal. Meng Po (孟婆), the goddess of oblivion, offers each mortified being a cup filled with the Broth of Oblivion (孟婆湯), a powerful elixir that erases all memories. Upon drinking this celestial potion, all is forgotten, and the cycle of life continues.
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