The Merlion is the Singapore’s mythical beast with the head of a lion and entire body of a fish. This imaginary creature is utilised as the symbol of Singapore. The 8.6 metres large, fifty percent-lion, fifty percent-fish sculpture was situated at the mouth of Singapore river, the statue then settled into its new dwelling at Merlion Park. The Singapore Merlion is designed of cement fondue, its eyes from compact pink teacups, its skin from porcelain plates and it weights about 40 tons. The Merlion emblem experienced been designed by a member of the Memento Committee and also the curator of Van Kleef Aquarium, Fraser Brunner.
In historic periods, Singapore was identified as Temasek (that means ‘sea town’ in Javanese). A Palembang prince found the island and saw a peculiar seeking beast which he thought it was a lion. He determined to keep on the island with his men and named the island ‘Singapura’ which signifies Lion Town (Singa suggests lion in Malay, pura implies city in Sankrit). Nevertheless, modern reports show that lions have in no way lived there, the creature noticed by Sang Nila Utama (the Javanese prince) was both a white fox or the Malayan tiger. The fish tail of the Merlion is explained to represent Singapore’s earliest beginnings as a fishing village.
Merlion attracts a lot more than a million readers every yr who make the journey to Merlion Park. Right now, there are five official Merlion statues in Singapore. You can locate them at Sentosa island, Merlion park, Mount Faber and the headquarters of Singapore Tourism Board at Orchard Spring Lane.
On 28 February 2009, the Merlion in the Merlion Park was struck by lightning at about 4.25 pm on Saturday. This incident happened mainly because the Merlion by itself was deficiency of lightning safety. About 30 men and women dashed into a nearby restaurant for safety though other onlookers kept using photographs of that 38-calendar year-outdated tourism icon. Repairs to the statue took until the finish of March, even though the Merlion alone resumed spouting h2o on 18 March 2009.
