Phoenix Island is the starting point of the relay. The organizing committee of the Olympic Games suggested whether it is possible to build a square on the island as a relay for the launching ceremony. Li Baiqing, vice mayor of Sanya City, found Zeng Xianyun, chairman of Phoenix Island Development Co., Ltd., and asked for his advice. Zeng Xianyun, who claimed to have a deep Olympic complex, quickly reached an understanding with all shareholders and took out more than 40 acres of land to build the Olympic Square.
At the beginning, the investment in the square was only 5 million yuan, but in the end, this figure became nearly 50 million yuan. The increase in expenses is due to the suggestion made by the Olympic Organizing Committee that the square can be built into a permanent memorial square and a memorial sculpture can be built on the square.
Li Baiqing was the first person who put forward the concept of combining sculpture with phoenix. As the vice mayor in charge of Sanya tourism, Li Baiqing has been thinking about how to improve the intrinsic elements of Sanya tourism culture in the past two years. Li Baiqing thinks that sculpture can show the Phoenix culture in Sanya, because Sanya now has Phoenix Airport, fenghuang town and even many commercial signs named after Phoenix. Naturally, it is a good thing to build a phoenix sculpture on Phoenix Island.
More importantly, the construction of the Phoenix sculpture in the Olympic Square can echo the "Bird's Nest" stadium in Beijing, because the first stop of the Olympic flame arrived in Sanya, Hainan, and finally arrived in Beijing, which virtually matched the traditional saying of "Hua" in China and was more auspicious. Feedback from BOCOG also shows that they are satisfied with this idea.
The sculpture was designed by bidding, including artist Han Meilin. One * * * has five schemes, among which Han Meilin's design scheme is the one with the highest bid. But the high price did not become an obstacle for Han Meilin to win the design sculpture. Zeng Xianyun said that this is not only because the sculpture design itself is very powerful, but also because Han Meilin is the designer of the Olympic Fuwa.
However, Zeng Xianyun also revealed that the fire phoenix sculpture we are seeing now is consistent with Han Meilin's original design in shape, only with a change of color. At the beginning of the design, the whole sculpture was golden and luxurious, but later Han Meilin discovered a problem, that is, the sculpture must be able to withstand the erosion of the sea breeze, so he used a modern anti-corrosion material throughout the sculpture, changed the color of the sculpture and turned it into the bronze color now. But after this change, Han Meilin felt more traditional and quaint.