Merlion

The Merlion is one of the most well-known tourist icons of Singapore. Its landmark statue, once at the Merlion Park, was relocated to the front of the Fullerton Hotel in April 2002.

The merlion (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. The original Merlion statue stands at the opening of the Singapore River while a taller replica can be found on Sentosa Island.

According to 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.

Events

File:Merlion takes a shower.jpg

The Merlion undergoing a spruce-up

• From 5 June 2006 till 10 July 2006, the Merlion underwent a spruce-up. Visitors were greeted with illustrated hoardings and canvases covering the safety nettings. The illustrations were designed by Miel, an award-winning senior artist at The Straits Times.

Other Merlions

The Merlion on Sentosa

The Merlion on Mount Faber

There are five official Merlions approved by the Singapore Tourism Board. This includes two at the Merlion Park (the work of sculptor Lim Nang Seng. finished in 1972) sculptor , one is the smaller Merlion and the other the main Merlion.

Other Merlions include:

• The one at Sentosa, which is a taller replica
• Mount Faber
• Tourism Court at Orchard Spring Lane

Fake Merlions

There have been a number of reports of unapproved Merlions in both Singapore and the People's Republic of China. In Singapore, the fake Merlion was located at Ang Mo Kio (it has since been removed). There are many imitation Merlions in China, with some appearing in housing estates and commercial areas.

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. According to this article, 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 Merlionby 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. The request was refused by the authorities.

• The Merlion has also appeared in a number of films and television series, becoming almost a visual cliché to Singapore as the Eiffel Tower is to Paris.

• It also notably 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.

• A merlion can also be seen on the Crest of the 8th Marines in the United States Marine Corps. [1]

External links

• Official Merlion FAQs on Singapore Tourism Board website
• Merlion Takes a Time-Out for a shower
• Brief guide to reponses to Thumboo's nation-making poetics by later authors
• Merlion park video
• Individual collector of the Merlion
• Reflections on the comparison between Copenhangen's Little Mermaid and the Merlion
• Signification and Icons as Myths in Singapore Biennale 2006

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