I had to read this story twice to fit it all together. In the Taiwanese port city of Kaohsiung, a statue of Chiang Kai-shek was taken down recently. The mayor of the Taiwanese city of Tahsi requested the statue, but he didn’t want it for HIS town. Instead, he hoped to send it as a gift to the village in China where Chiang was born.
So the trucks rumble into Tahsi sometime before 5 in the morning. I’d like to think that the lead driver was a broad-faced teamster smoking a cheap stogie. Driver steps from the cab and says, "We got your Chiang statue for ya. Just sign right here, mac."
One little problem though. The 8.17 meter statue had been broken up.* Into 200 pieces.
Butterfingers.
Meanwhile, the mayor of Tahsi is in Xikou, China. He’s trying to persuade the Chi-coms of Chiang’s village to accept the statue of their former enemy. And apparently, he’s been making progress. So he gets a phone call, telling him that, y’know that statue you were kinda hopin’ to give away as a gift?
Well, there’s been a little complication.
The China Post reports the mayor was "heartbroken". Having lost a set of dinner plates on my last move**, I know exactly how he feels.
* The statue was 8 meters tall? Just how much did the damn thing weigh, anyway? In defense of the teamsters, it must have been one heck of a job even to load up the broken pieces.
** I didn’t, really. I just made that part up.
UPDATE (Mar 20/07): Looks like the statue was only segmented into 79 pieces instead of 200, and my footnoted questions were appropriate:
[The sculptor of the statue said that] the way the bureau removed the statue was correct given the statue’s size and weight.