Meng Po 孟婆
At the Naihe Bridge, according to Chinese legend, the dead are met by Meng Po (孟婆) with a bowl of soup. Beyond the bridge the soul awaits rebirth, and the soup is needed so that it forgets the people it knew and everything that happened to it. In tales of the underworld, Meng Po usually appears only briefly. Television has invented for her both a love story of her own and even a tavern where the proprietress has time to listen to those who have come for oblivion.
The name Meng Po means "Grandma Meng." Stories differ on how she ended up in the underworld. In one later legend, she was a virtuous woman who in life avoided talking about the past. In another, she served in heaven and descended to the dead of her own accord. By the Naihe Bridge she brews a soup that is known simply as Meng Po's soup. In some retellings it is tea. Having drunk it, the dead forget their former life and can be born again.
In Chinese tales of the afterlife, souls pass through courts modeled on earthly bureaucracies. Each judge has his own subordinates and his own duties. The notion of ten courts spread by the 10th century, but exactly when Meng Po appeared in these stories is unknown. According to a later folk legend, the tenth court decides who the dead will be born as next. That is when Meng Po's turn comes. A person's deeds have already determined his future fate, and in his new life he must deal with their consequences, though he no longer remembers the deeds themselves.
On screen, Meng Po also appears in tales of other heroes. In the series He Xian Gu (1992) she was played by Huang Hui-Yue, and in two versions of the legend of the White Snake the role went to Li Yan-Li (Love of the Millennium, 2011) and Chen Zhen-Xi (New Madam White Snake, 2021). In the Taiwanese The Devil Punisher (2020), Meng Po, played by Ivy Shao, has a human name, Meng Xinyu. Here oblivion overtakes her herself. She does not remember a love from long ago, and the hero tries to restore her memory of the life they shared.
The Taiwanese Tavern by the Lethe (2021) featured two Meng Pos at once, the Elder and the Younger. They were played by Wang Jin-Ying and Siu Mai. The series combined Taiwanese gezai opera with the television musical. Here the dead linger in the tavern, and each has a story of his own that he manages to tell before moving on.
