![]() The goal was to construct a statue honoring the heroine of “La Spigolatricen di Sapri” (“The Gleaner of Sapri”). ![]() "The Gleaner of Sapri" statue in her see-through dress One of the very few things I promised them was that you might not like everything that I do, but you're never going to say I sat around and didn't do anything.” As Pucket told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, “The voters obviously don't see the importance of that, but they knew going in. Still, Pucket said he doesn’t regret the project, which he hopes the new administration will finish and convert into an Airbnb. Pucket ended up losing by a whopping 95%, and now the uncompleted 19-foot-tall bird literally casts a shadow over Fitzgerald. The project has so far cost the town some $291,000 and became a point of contention during the recent mayoral election. The mayor's dream to build a tourist attraction (including a live cam showing building progress) soon turned fowl. The project was inspired by the wild Burmese chickens that run around the town. Jim Puckett, the mayor of Fitzgerald, Georgia, was not playing chicken when he decided to construct the world’s largest topiary. “Just think how much good they could have done if they’d spent that amount of money on solving real problems faced by ordinary people.The giant chicken imagined by former Mayor Jim Puckett, stopped mid-construction “This is all taxpayers’ money,” one incensed Jingzhou resident told Radio Free Asia of the funds spent on constructing, relocating, and reconstructing the mammoth tourist magnet, which was reportedly only brought in $2 million since first opening. “We thought there should be a limit on the height of buildings, but there was no specific rule on statues,” the Post reported Qin Jun, deputy head of the Jingzhou Municipal Bureau of Natural Resources and Planning, as telling state broadcaster CCTV. However, construction was allowed to proceed back in 2013 during a period of confusion as to whether or not statues perched atop height-compliant buildings were subject to the rules. Per the Post, the statue, which was constructed for Guinness World Records inclusion in mind as the world’s tallest bronze likeness of Guan Yu, might be technically illegal as local regulations forbid the construction of buildings over 24 meters (just shy of 79 feet). It’s unclear what will become of the pedestal-museum/shrine at the site and if a new, similar base will be constructed at the new site in Dianjiangtai. (“Demolition Gang Beheads Giant War Deity in China’s Hubei,” declared Radio Free Asia.)Īs detailed by the South China Morning Post, the demolition and reconstruction effort, which is being led by the state-owned Jingzhou Tourism Investment and Development Group, will ultimately cost almost as much-just under $24 million- as it did to erect the offending statue. And so, as demanded by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the 1,200-metric-ton “waste of money” is now being carefully dismantled-the warrior-god’s ginormous head was the first to go-and relocated to a less conspicuous, more tourist-friendly location several miles away in the suburban city of Dianjiangtai. Neither was the central Chinese government, which declared that the monolithic Lord Yu had “ruined Jingzhou’s historical appearance and culture” after complaints from residents continued to roll in. Locals in Jingzhou, an ancient city in the south of the Hubei province, however, were apparently never taken with the majestic epic-ness of the skyline-dominating monument within Guanyi Park. “Incredibly Epic Statue of Ancient Chinese Warrior God Unveiled,” read a Popular Mechanics headline published at the time. Costing an estimated $26 million and taking three years to construct, Jingzhou’s colossal Guan Yu statue, which until very recently, stood atop a 30-foot-tall base that doubled as a museum and shrine, rendered many (Western) internet users completely smitten when it was completed in 2016.
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