With all the information technology around these days, it’s getting harder and harder to build a gigantic gold statue in peace.
Many of you may remember the huge 37-meter (120-foot) gold colored statue of modern China’s founder Mao Zedong. After all, it’s pretty hard to forget the image of him politely sitting on some scaffolding, towering over the middle of nowhere.
Well, it’s gone now.
On 9 January reports began to surface that the statue was being demolished by the Chinese authorities. The exact reason for the removal of golden Mao is unclear but there are many possibilities.
Firstly, the project was said to be bankrolled by local businesspeople to the tune of 3 million yuan ($457,000). It’s possible that the likeness of China’s Communist Party’s biggest icon was not authorized… And surely there must have been zoning issues.
This would make sense seeing as it was also erected in an area historically famous as ground-zero for a massive famine that wiped out millions after some of Mao’s policies were enacted. It’s understandable that the government might want to put some distance between those things.
Then again it could have simply been taken down by either the owners or the government after it became a 120-foot golden chunk of troll-bait online, playfully dubbed “Mega Mao” by certain wags.
And so ended the short life of Golden Golem Mega Mao, but as Kurt Cobain quoting Neil Young quoting Jeff Blackburn quoting Millard Fillmore once said, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away. My my, hey hey.”
Source: Independent
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