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Simon Parry

A huge fibreglass lobster that has been one of Sai Kung's best-known landmarks for the past decade is being auctioned for charity.

The nine-metre-tall crustacean has clung to the side of the five-storey Beach Resort Hotel since 1994, when it was custom-made on the mainland for the resort's previous owners - along with a crab six metres wide  that was placed in the hotel's car park.

The family that built the hotel believes the lobster created bad fung shui and contributed to the resort's troubles in the 1990s, which ended with its closure in 2001.

The Beach Resort is now undergoing a $20 million refit before reopening as a boutique hotel next year. Owner Brad Gotfried says the giant lobster is too kitsch for the upmarket venture he is creating.

He will auction it and says he will donate the proceeds to a marine conservation charity in Hong Kong.

The crab met a sticky end when it was demolished four years ago when the car park was redeveloped.

'I'm not sure who will buy it, and it's certainly too big to fit in a Hong Kong apartment,' Mr Gotfried said. 'But it might appeal to a Japanese film company that wants to make a Godzilla-style film. Failing that, it could be an underwater attraction in a scuba-diving area off Hong Kong.'

Mr Gotfried, whose company Urban Entertainment has spent $247 million buying properties around Sai Kung, said anyone who wanted to buy the lobster could lodge e-mail bids by logging onto his web site www.urban-ent.com and clicking on the lobster logo.

Kenneth Li Kwok-wah, whose family opened the Beach Resort Hotel in 1970 before selling it 1986, said he believed the lobster could be linked to the hotel's poor fortunes in the late 1990s.

'It is bad fung shui,' he said. 'A lobster needs sea water. It shouldn't be on the land, and this may be why the company that commissioned the lobster collapsed.' The previous owners of the hotel are believed to have paid as much as $100,000 for the lobster and crab to be made in Dongguan.

The fibreglass lobster is fondly remembered by hotel guests from the mid-1990s.

Former Hong Kong residents Ruth and Hedley Thomas  had their wedding reception at the hotel and say the lobster provided a unique backdrop. 'There was an understated elegance about that lobster,' Mr Thomas said.



End is nigh for Sai Kung's colossal fibreglass crustacean