On my first trip to China (March 2008), after officially visiting Longhua and Shenzhen for my interviews, I took a few days vacation to explore nearby mainland China and Hong Kong. After all, it was not like I was having to take time off from work; I was out of work.
One tour I took was from Hong Kong to Guangzhou, China (more of this in a later post). The tour started with a 50 minute high-speed ferry ride from Kowloon in Hong Kong to Shenzhen Harbor (Shekou), where the tour unfortunately moved on to a short tea sampling. In Shekou, a largely expatriate area, there is a large French cruise liner cemented into the ground called "Sea World".
In a park at Shekou Harbor, is this huge statue. My pictures do not accurately reflect the statue's grand scale, so try looking at this one.
Remarkably, no one in Shenzhen or Longua, China that I showed these pictures to had ever seen the statue, no less know the statue was in Shenzhen. Many commented that the women of the statue did not look "Asian".
Turns out the statue is of the creation godess Nüwa. While many different legends are attached to Nüwa, this statue depicts her role in the upkeep and maintenance of the Wall of Heaven, which if collapsed, would obliterate everything. The statue shows her lifting the stone to fix a hole in the sky.
I especially like the three short lightning rods on the top of the stone Nuwa is lifting (see first picture).
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About a year ago, we were asked by, and granted permission to, a 14 year-old girl from Italy writing a book about legendary women of Ancient China to use the picture. I am trying to find out whether that project actually went anywhere.
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