It arrived in this prestigious Kunming Lake of Beijing’s Summer Palace at the end of september, and it is going to float there until Oct. 26th, so you still have a few days to watch it, the now legendary yellow rubber duck in its world tour, its arrival in Beijing created some buzz.
The duck is no less than 18 meters tall and has been designed by the dutch artist Florentijn Hofman is having its taste of the legendar Qing dynasty Summer Palace, not far from the arch bridge and facing the Stone Boat.
The rubber duck is touring the world, its China’s first appearance was in Hong Kong and many other rubber ducks have been seen in Chinese large city’s harbours, but the duck in Beijing, made out of 200 pieces of rubber assembled together is the largest ever. Nothing less was to be expected from China’s capital city, and his is a challenge, largest ducks have proven to be failure before, they just sank (flat ducks have been a recurring problem in this adventure).
You might have a glance at the result here or here.
People may like it or dislike it, it makes a contrast with the hypersophisticated design of the Summer Palace, the duck has the very simple design of a bathtub toy. Its arrival seems to have been a great success during the Chinese national holidays; the new tourist stuff hit being a small rubber duck to put in your own bathtub (and it has really been a hit according to Summer Palace street vendors…), and around 200.000 Chinese people have seen the duck within one week.
The duck has visited 9 countries before arriving in China and its glory tour is not over.
Florentijn Hofman is a dutch artist born in 1977 and he has many other projects going on (seems he specializes in animals, anyway).
Have a try and visit the Summer Palace before the ducks leaves and the harsh Beijing winter begins …
