Early this year, we published a story on some of China’s ugliest structures. The Sunac Guangzhou Grand Theatre, an absolute eyesore by popular opinion, came first for being the most repulsive structure. Unlike the Sunac Guangzhou Grand Theatre that still stands tall at its location, the gigantic statue of famous Chinese general Guan Yu in central China was dismantled after Beijing called it vain and wasteful. Workers in Jingzhou, Hubei province are working tirelessly to move the monstrosity and have managed to remove the head of the 58-meter tall statue. Instead of sitting with folded hands and cribbing over its crudeness, the Jingzhou Tourism Investment and Development Group has already begun relocating it to a new site eight kilometers away.
Interestingly, this unsightly statue cost a whopping $26 million to build, and now the Chinese officials are shelling out another staggering $24 million to move the mammoth statue of Guan Yu. “We had an impulse and tendency to make Guinness World Record back then. So it became bigger during the designing process,” stated Zhang Hong, deputy head of the Jingzhou Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism.
Dubbed the world’s most enormous bronze statue of the general, it was completed in 2016 to become a popular tourist attraction. However, in reality, the giant statue has only reportedly raked in about $2 million since it was erected. The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development said it “ruined the character and culture of Jingzhou as a historic city” and demanded its removal in September last year.
[Via – SCMP]
