The City of Willows

Written By Felix Fuhg

Chong Yan Chuah & Simon Soon

Betonhalle

Betonhalle

Betonhalle

Betonhalle

Betonhalle

Betonhalle

Betonhalle

Saturday

12.09.2026

11.00-17.00

 

The City of Willows is a playable game developed by Chuah Chong Yan and Simon Soon. It is rooted in an imagined cosmology of Chinese secret societies that emerged in the Malay archipelago from at least the early 19th century.

These initiation-based masonic fraternities played a crucial role in supporting newly arrived Chinese migrants, functioning as mutual aid networks, para-banking structures, triads, cultural hubs, and religious fraternities.

The game reinterprets the Triad initiation ritual as a cosmological landscape, drawing from fragmented historical sources, including Gustave Schlegel’s 19th-century study of Chinese secret societies in the Dutch East Indies. As the Triads rarely held physical territory, their "community" was symbolised by the City of Willows—a sanctuary, or even a post-apocalyptic refuge.

Players are invited to traverse the humid, dense jungles of the Malay world, following initiatory pathways leading to the City of Willows. Along the way, they will encounter #iconographies familiar to the region, from everyday durian stalls to monumental rampart gates and a seven-story pagoda referencing the 萬佛塔 (Pagoda of the Ten Thousand Buddhas) at Kek Lok Si Temple in Penang. This pagoda’s unique architectural fusion—an octagonal Chinese base, a Thai-style middle tier, and a Burmese-inspired spire—embodies the syncretic nature of The City of Willows, a hybrid cosmology shaped by the perspectives of migrants and wayfarers navigating through and building support systems in the Malay Archipelago.

Commissioned by HKW | Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.

Felix Fuhg
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