MCLC: giant brass puffer fish

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: giant brass puffer fish
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (10/12/13):
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/world/asia/as-china-vows-austerity-giant-
brass-fish-devours-11-million.html

As China Vows Austerity, Giant Brass Fish Devours $11 Million
By CHRIS BUCKLEY

HONG KONG — Chinese Communist Party leaders’ vows of a new era of humble
austerity in government may have met their most exotic adversary yet: an
$11 million, 2,300-ton, 295-foot-long puffer fish
<http://www.chinanews.com/tp/hd2011/2013/09-27/250054.shtml>.

The brass-clad statue, which shimmers golden in the sunlight and switches
into a garish light show at night, was built by the city of Yangzhong, in
Jiangsu Province in eastern China, to lure visitors to a monthlong
gardening expo that opened in September. The “puffer fish tower” has an
elevator to take visitors up the equivalent of 15 stories into the
sculpture’s belly to view the lush scenery near the Yangtze River.

But news reports and pictures online of the creature, floating on
scaffolding with its mouth agape and eyes glowing green, have prompted
many Chinese citizens to wonder: Why devote 70 million renminbi, about
$11.4 million, of government money for a giant metal fish, especially when
the party leader, Xi Jinping, has demanded an end to frivolous spending on
officials’ vanity projects?

“Just how much of the 70 million went into officials’ pockets?” said one
of the many mordantly outraged comments on Sina Weibo, a popular Chinese
microblog service that is similar to Twitter. “The sculpture is so that
we’ll have something to pay our respects to after the puffer fish becomes
extinct,” said another.

The sculpture garnered nationwide attention last month, after a Jiangsu
newspaper, Modern Express, described its costs and size
<http://dz.xdkb.net/html/2013-09/27/content_296963.htm>, citing Yangzhong
government officials. The project is flamboyant, even by the
bigger-is-better expectations of Chinese state-sponsored art. It uses
8,920 brass plates for the fish scales and is covered in lights that can
pulsate in changing colors at night, the newspaper reported.

“A miracle of the architectural world,” the Yangzhong government Web site
exclaimed. “This is also an extreme rarity in the whole world.”
That may well be true, but not everyone sees it as a virtue. Chinese news
outlets said the brass and steel for the fish cost about $1.7 million,
raising questions about where the rest of the money went. Construction of
the fish tower began on a previously isolated and undeveloped river island
in March, four months after Mr. Xi was appointed party leader.

“There will have to be more openness about whether there was any
overstatement in the puffer fish tower project,” the report in Modern
Express said. Other Chinese media comments were less restrained.

“Yangzhong in Jiangsu is known as the Little Venice of the Yangtze River,”
said a commentary on the Web site of Yangtze News, a newspaper published
in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. “How could its image be a bloated
puffer fish? For a vanity project that might apply for a place in the
Guinness World Records, 70 million was thrown in without so much as a
blink of the eye.”

But China is speckled with outlandish works of official art that vie with
even a giant, glow-in-the-dark puffer fish for attention and outrage.
Critics berated a county in Guizhou Province for building “the world’s
biggest teapot,” a 243-foot-high teapot-shaped tower, complete with spout,
that was part of a $13 million project.

In Henan Province, in central China, a government-backed charity has been
accused of corruption in spending about $19.6 million on a vast, unsightly
sculpture of Song Qingling
<http://photos.caijing.com.cn/2012-03-23/111770249_1.html>, the widow of
Sun Yat-sen, a revered founder of modern China. Zhengzhou, the capital of
Henan Province, is also home to a sculpture of two pigs in a frolicking
embrace <http://henan.163.com/12/0827/10/89TKJCDR022701KR.html>. From
certain angles, the pigs might appear to be mating.

The river puffer fish is an expensive delicacy in parts of Jiangsu
Province, and Yangzhong officials have promoted the pleasures of eating
it, despite the risks of poisoning if it is not properly prepared.

“Enjoy the rich puffer fish culture of Yangzhong, savor the delicious fare
of the puffer fish,” a city official said at a news conference in
December, according to the city’s Web site.

Officials who answered calls to the Yangzhong city propaganda office
claimed ignorance about the sculpture or suggested calling other offices,
which gave similar responses.

But after the uproar, the Yangzhong government offered a new explanation
for the monument. A city official denied that money had been misspent, and
said the puffer fish tower was built as a plea to save the environment,
said the state-run China News Service. The official told the news service
that the metal fish is “a call to protect the ecological resources of the
Yangtze River.”