The Merlion is one of the most well-known tourist icons of Singapore.
The Merlion on Mount Faber
The merlion (simplified Chinese: 鱼尾狮; pinyin: Yúwěishī) is a statue with the head of a lion and the body of a fish. Its name comes from a portmanteau of mermaid and lion. The merlion was designed by Fraser Brunner for the Singapore Tourism Board in 1964 and was used as its logo up to 1997. The Merlion continues to be its trademark symbol. It also appears frequently in STB-approved souvenirs.
Based on the Singapore Tourism Board's publicity campaign, the lion head and fish body of the creature recalls the story of the legendary Sang Nila Utama, who saw a lion while hunting on an island, en route to Malacca. The island eventually became the sea port of Temasek, a precursor to Singapore.
Merlion statue
The original Merlion statue stood at the opening of the Singapore River. On 15 September 1972 the Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, officiated the installation ceremony of the Merlion statue . In 2002, the statue was relocated to its current site that fronts Marina Bay with the completion of the Esplanade Bridge in 1997. The statue measures 8.6 metres high and weighs 70 tonnes. A taller replica can be found on Sentosa Island. The original Merlion statue was built from cement fondue by the late Singapore craftsman, Lim Nang Seng.[1]
Other Merlion statues
There are five official Merlions in Singapore approved by the Singapore Tourism Board. These include the two at Merlion Park, one a smaller Merlion and the other the main Merlion (both by Lim Nang Seng in 1972).
Singapore
Overseas
- Hakodate, Hokkaidō, Japan built by Masaru Yanagisawa.
- Shenzhen, China, on Window of the World.[2]
- Cupertino, California, Merlion Restaurant
- Hsin-chu, Taiwan, in front of the Chenghuang Temple(城隍廟;chénghuángmiào). The statue was a gift from Singapore to the city of Hsinchu.
Events
The Merlion in art and popular culture
- Edwin Thumboo cemented the iconic status of the Merlion as a personification of Singapore with his poem Ulysses by the Merlion in 1979. Due to Thumboo's status as Singapore's unofficial poet laureate and the nationalistic mythmaking qualities of his poetry, future generations of Singaporean poets have struggled with the symbol of the Merlion, frequently taking an ironic, critical, or even hostile stand - and pointing out its artificiality and the refusal of ordinary Singaporeans to accept a tourist attraction as their national icon. The poem "attracted considerable attention among subsequent poets, who have all felt obliged to write their own Merlion (or anti-Merlion) poems, illustrating their anxiety of influence, as well as the continuing local fascination with the dialectic between a public and a private role for poets, which Thumboo (as Yeats before him, in the Irish context) has wanted to sustain as a fruitful rather than a tense relation between the personal and the public." Among the poems of this nature are "Merlign" by Alvin Pang and "Love Song for a Merlion" by Vernon Chan.
- The Merlion was featured - or not featured, depending on how you look at it - in the 2005 Venice Biennale in the work of artist Lim Tzay Chuen called "Mike". In his controversial work, he had proposed taking the sculpture in the Merlion Park to the Singapore Pavilion at the exhibition.[3] The request was refused by the authorities.
- The Merlion has appeared in a number of films and television series, becoming a visual cliché representing Singapore.
- It appeared in the anime Cowboy Bebop, where its appearance in an ancient home movie offered amnesiac bounty hunter Faye Valentine a clue to her true origins.
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