Source:
https://scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3009510/when-giant-bamboo-sculpture-crossed-hong-kongs
Post Magazine/ Short Reads

When a giant bamboo sculpture crossed Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour to raise awareness of climate change in 1992

The 50-metre-high sculpture was the brainchild of Austrian-Hungarian Andre Heller and came with an environmental message

Andre Heller’s 50-metre-high sculpture, The Bamboo Man, crosses Victoria Harbour, in 1992. Photo: SCMP

“Harbour spectacular for The Bamboo Man,” read a headline in the South China Morning Post on April 16, 1992.

“European event artist Andre Heller has announced he will make Hongkong the scene of his next spectacular. Called The Bamboo Man, it will feature a 50-metre-high bamboo sculpture sailing across Victoria Harbour on the night of May 3,” the story continued.

“Taller than the Regent Hotel”, the HK$3.9 million project would be “accom­panied by a flotilla of giant internally lit symbolic charac­ters and emblems constructed from paper and bamboo”.

The project was financed by the then-43-year-old artist, heir to the Austrian-Hungarian Heller chocolate dynasty. He had previously created giant flower sculptures in Vienna, “choreographed landscapes” in Osaka, Japan, and theatres of fire in Berlin, Germany. “But the message is in a more serious vein than his ‘normal’ fun-loving spectacles, right down to the hotline initiated by American Express to accept donations for environmental causes,” the Post reported.

The artist in front of his creation. Photo: SCMP
The artist in front of his creation. Photo: SCMP

Heller had found his inspiration two years earlier, during a visit to a village in western China, where he expressed his worries about pollution to a group of elderly people, who smiled and countered with a myth: when the Bamboo Man walks across the water we will have a better tomorrow.

“The bombs are already built, the tanks too. The chemicals to pollute the world are already produced […] We cannot leave the realisations to the ones we are scared of,” Heller said.

Described as a giant symbol of “universal environmental unity” and “the largest walk­ing scaffold in Asia”, the Bamboo Man was lit up and strolled across the harbour on May 3.

“Even if it changes the attitude of one person, it will have been worthwhile,” Heller said of the project. “This means there is no excuse any more, people will have to think about their environment.”