Merlion Park

The city's trade was long connected with the mouth of the Singapore River. At the edge of a pier projecting into the bay stands the Merlion: an eight-meter concrete figure built on a steel frame, with a jet of fountain water shooting from its mouth. The steps opposite leave open space between the waterfront and the sculpture, and Esplanade Bridge runs nearby. The park is arranged so that the figure can be seen both from shore and from the water.

The Merlion looks like a character from an old legend, yet this creature was invented in nineteen sixty-four. Zoologist Alec Fraser-Brunner, curator of Singapore's Van Kleef Aquarium, created the emblem for the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board. The fish tail referred to the island's ancient name, Temasek, and its maritime past. The lion's head referred to the legend of Prince Sang Nila Utama: according to a Malay chronicle, he saw an animal here, mistook it for a lion, and named the island Singapura, the lion city. The name Merlion combines the sea and the lion.

When they decided to turn the flat emblem into a fountain, artist and teacher Kwan Sai Kheong prepared the design, and the commission went to local sculptor Lim Nang Seng. He was chosen after several victories in arts-and-crafts and design competitions. Lim built the eight-meter figure from concrete on a steel frame and brought in all eight of his children, from eleven to twenty-three years old. The older children climbed the wooden scaffolding and made the eyes; the younger ones carved the scales and fins. They came here almost every day before school or after classes. Before us is that very seventy-ton statue, not a later copy.

At first, it stood about one hundred twenty meters from here, right at the mouth of the Singapore River. In September nineteen seventy-two, Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew opened the first Merlion Park there. The site was chosen deliberately: the tourist symbol greeted vessels at the river through which the city's trade had once passed.

A quarter-century later, Esplanade Bridge appeared in front of the statue. It improved the road connection with the center, but blocked the Merlion from the bay. At the same time, seawater was corroding the pumps, and the fountain periodically stopped working. Raising the figure higher was not enough—the bridge would still remain in view. The Singapore Tourist Promotion Board compared eight sites and chose this promontory: here the statue retained its connection with the river mouth and was once again visible from the waterfront.

In the spring of two thousand two, engineers removed the Merlion from its pedestal, lifted it intact by crane onto a barge, and carried it across the bridge to a specially built pier. The statue was restored, the pumps were replaced, and the park was made four times larger than before. Exactly thirty years after the first opening, Lee Kuan Yew, now Senior Minister, welcomed the Merlion again—at its present site.

The steps opposite the fountain and the platform projecting into the bay were created precisely for an unobstructed view. The Merlion stands at the edge of the new pier, while the bridge that forced the Lim family's seventy-ton work to be moved remains nearby.