In the early 1990s, Mary Ann Liu designed the dragon lanterns in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Read More
About 400 dragon lanterns adorn Chinatown’s street light poles in Vancouver.
About 400 dragon lanterns adorn Chinatown’s street light poles in Vancouver.
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In the early 1990s, Mary Ann Liu designed the dragon lanterns in Vancouver’s Chinatown.
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About one-metre long and one-metre high, the golden dragons have become a Chinatown fixture, a traditional symbol of prosperity and strength in the historic neighbourhood.
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Perched halfway up the area’s street-light poles, they’re so realistic that they look like they’re about to take flight.
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“I wanted the dragon to have a lot of implied energy,” explains Liu. “I wanted the dragon to have a coiled strength so that it’s very alive, and it can fly.”
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About 400 of the dragon sculptures have been made out of cast aluminum, powder coated in gold paint and put up in Chinatown since 1992. Another 60 were made for Chicago’s Chinatown in 1993.
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Liu kept one dragon for herself, but didn’t know of any other copies until art dealer Ted Lederer told her he had purchased a dragon lantern from the son of the woman who owned the foundry where it was cast.
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It had some minor flaws, so the foundry kept it and made another copy. Lederer had shown Liu’s art when he owned the Elliot Louis gallery, and she helped Lederer get some repairs done, so that it appears new.
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After storing it for a few years he’s decided to sell it, the first time a Chinatown dragon lantern has come up for sale. The price: US$38,000.
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The dragons were made as part of a civic competition to help revitalize Chinatown. Liu said she didn’t enter the original competition: The winning design was by Fenton Loyola.
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Smoke curled through the night air in Vancouver’s Chinatown, lit by the flicker of incense sticks attached to an undulating 20-metre straw dragon. Article content
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In its heyday, Vancouver’s Chinatown was home to many swinging nightspots, including the Mandarin Gardens, the Shanghai Junk, and the Marco Polo. Article content David Lee remembers another Chinatown cabaret/restaurant: the Forbidden City. It was run by his father Jimmy from 1955 to 1959, and featured one of Chinatown’s classic neon signs, a spinning neon lion that sat atop neon stating it had “exquisite cuisine.” Article content Article content
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“But what he gave them was really just a concept,” said Liu, who was born in Hong Kong and graduated from the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in 1983.
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She did a detailed dragon sculpture — fearsome eyes, nasty teeth, curving body, scales on the back — and was hired to make the dragon lanterns, which feature the dragon on top of the lantern.
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Liu said casting the dragon was complicated.
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“The pattern for the casting of the dragons in the aluminum was a 26-piece mould, which is really unusual for an industrial process,” she said. “It had a lot of parts to it.”
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She has gone on to make several public monuments, including the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Ottawa in 2000.
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This year the Royal Canadian Mint commissioned Liu to do a limited edition collectible gold coin to mark the 25th anniversary of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. There were 1,500 gold coins made, and, in November, a general circulation $2 coin of her design will be released.