What lies beneath the surface of Hong Kong’s cheery giant rubber ducks?

Those groaning under the pressure to be happy and ‘enjoy the moment’ with ‘double ducks’ plastered seemingly everywhere in the city might find an alternative message if they look deeper

Enid Tsui

Published: 8:15am, 9 Jun 2023

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Did Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman and local creative studio AllRightsReserved decide to bring two of his giant rubber ducks to Hong Kong because they thought the city was twice as in need of happiness as when his whopping waterfowl visited a decade ago?

Possibly. Back in 2013, a top 10 most-read Hong Kong story of the year on the Post’s website was about a five-year-old who upset fellow passengers by urinating inside an MTR train – an age of innocence compared with what’s in the news these days.

On June 10, Hofman’s 18-metre high “Double Ducks” will be launched in Victoria Harbour. “Double duck is double luck,” the artist said in a press release full of language as inflated as the ducks. “‘Double Ducks’ is not about looking into the past but enjoying the moment together!” All in, they waddle perfectly in sync with the government’s “Happy Hong Kong” campaign.

If two ducks are better than one, how about 5,002? Five thousand (smaller) rubber ducks will be laid at the feet of the Big Buddha on Lantau because the Ngong Ping 360 cable car, owned by MTR Corporation, is one of the sponsors. Trams and 18 MTR stations are also decked out in rubber duck decorations – from lift doors and escalators to giant overhead suspensions.

Given that the Airport Express, also run by the MTR, is already covered in pictures of its cartoon mascot “KT Chai” (KT sounds like the Cantonese for Airport Express), you are basically trapped in a juvenile hell as soon as you enter the MTR network.

AllRightsReserved, founded by Lam Shu-kam – better known as SK Lam – is an expert in staging and marketing such spectacles, including the international tours of the giant inflatable cartoon characters designed by the American artist known as Kaws.

The 37-metre-long “Companion by Kaws” is seen in Tai O on February 19, 2019, during an inflatable test by AllRightsReserved in anticipation of Hong Kong Arts Month. Kaws is known for “subvertising” where he hijacks advertisements and “defaces” them with his own art. Photo: Hong Kong Tourism Board

He has successfully tapped into a global trend that has seen art collectors pay millions of dollars to buy the paintings and statues of cartoon characters.

In Hong Kong, we have also witnessed the ubiquitous packaging of public information by an increasingly paternalistic government as if the intended audience were all three-year-olds.

Many of us looking from outside the playpen may cry “fowl” when we find ourselves bludgeoned by the more-insistent-than-usual message of “thou shalt not be unhappy”. There is also the inappropriateness of the raw material: happy symbols would bring so much more joy if they were biodegradable.

Mind you, quite a few people have told me they are excited about the yellow ambassadors of joy and positivity. They don’t cost us anything (except when we buy the merchandise, of course) and Hong Kong needs cheering up, they say.

And an art therapist friend says she often uses rubber ducks when working with children because they are devoid of meaning and seen as perfectly unthreatening, which helps her young clients open up.

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Giant rubber duck makes its comeback in Hong Kong after a decade, bringing a new friend

But are the ducks really so passive? I would like to propose alternative readings, and perhaps that will make them (slightly) more palatable to fellow curmudgeons.

After all, “Double Ducks” doesn’t sound that different from “double Dutch”, a British expression for gibberish. Perhaps it is a mischievous message from the Dutch artist to look beyond the surface.

Hofman’s giant rubber ducks have been taken to the most unlikely of places, presumably on the assumption that they are truly universal – you may remember reading about the one washed away in a flood in China’s Guizhou province in 2014.

Perhaps the artist is making a point about American cultural hegemony. After all, it only became an icon of childhood nostalgia in this part of the world because of Ernie, the Jim Henson Muppet who always bathed with his rubber duckie on that widely exported children’s television programme Sesame Street.

Think also of how often it has been used as a protest symbol: it was adopted by anti-government protesters in Brazil in 2016 and by the pro-democracy rallies in Bangkok in 2020.

And guess what? The artist has suggested that he wants his ducks to redefine public space, and to attract encounters and conversation. People gathering! If that’s not a radical rallying cry in Hong Kong, I don’t know what is.

So it seems the ducks are not just jolly toys lulling us into collective amnesia. But is it art? As cynics might say: duck that.

Enid Tsui is the Post’s arts editor