China: Pingyao – City God Temple’s Courtyards of Hell

This is the most bizarre and macabre hall perhaps of any religious site in the world – scene after scene of brutal punishments enacted by gods against sinners. Life-sized clay figures, painted in vivid hues, depict the various levels of the Taoist underworld. Demon guards with ripped muscles, bulging eyes, and massive fangs tower over sinful mortals, administer ten bloody and brutal justice rituals. These include: tongue pulling with iron pincers, fingers cut off with scissors, hangings over spikes, being cooked in boiling oil, pounded with mortars into paste, seasawed in half, buried alive, burned on a hot rod, grounded into flour, and other “nice” stuff. This is definitely a place where dreams are made into nightmares.