The Art Hong Kong Really Loves: ‘Rubber Duck\'

Here is the art-related news that the average Hong Kong resident cared about most this week: The giant rubber duck has been revived.

Billionaire collectors may have arrived for the inaugural Art Basel Hong Kong, the Swiss fair's first entry into Asia. Thousands of Champagne corks may have been popped as galleries and celebrities hold art-themed galas.

But Picasso sales and V.I.P. lounges feel a world away for many of the city's seven million residents, who were mostly concerned about the fate of “Spreading Joy Around the World,” a k a “Rubber Duck,” by the Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman. The six-story-high version of the childhood bathtub favorite was set adrift in the harbor early this month, in anticipation of what is unofficially known as Hong Kong Art Week. While the annual art fair anchors the festivities, it is also the time of year that the city puts on its best cultural works and events.

Several large-scale inflatable art pieces have shown up in public spaces, reflecting a side of Hong Kong - irreverent, eccentric, critical - that might not come across in the fair's more buttoned-up environs.

Thousands gathered around the waterfront when “Rubber Duck” made its debut May 2. Since then, countless duck-themed products have shown up at shops and restaurants. Teenagers are wearing rubber-duck outfits, and tourist kiosks are selling rubber-duck postcards. Its smiling face was even seen at the Cheung Chau bun festival, a 200-year-old tradition on an outlying island.

The South China Morning Post, the main English-language broadsheet, has published no fewer than 19 articles, opinion pieces and blog posts about it. One editorial, “Giant Rubber Duck Has United the City,” argued that it did more to inspire Hong Kongers than a recent government drive to raise morale.

Netizens had a ball using its smiling visage for political commentary. “The P.L.A.'s greatest nightmare,” one wrote under an image of the duck looming above over other vessels, referring to unpopular government plans to rezone a strip of a newly reclaimed waterfront for military use and to hand it to the People's Liberation Army. (Initially, the public thought it was going to be used for a park or promenade).

Then on May 15, to the horror of the crowds, “Rubber Duck” listed, fell on its beak and slowly capsized before deflating into a bright yellow puddle. The Standard, another Hong Kong newspaper, described the public's response as “disconsolate.”

The duck's demise reflected the city's every anxiety: One blogger pondered if it had succumbed to lung disease from the Pearl River Delta's infamous air pollution. Images of the duck, wearing one of the face masks made ubiquitous here after the 2003 SARS virus crisis, proliferated online. Others wondered if it died from the newest deadly strain of avian flu found in China, which University of Hong Kong researchers have discovered can be both airborne and transmitted to pigs, as reported in Science.

Rumors that it was killed by mainland Chinese tourists - both welcomed for their spending power and criticized for some of their manners - were so prevalent that CCTV, the state broadcaster, felt the need to issue a denial:

There have been rumors that Hong Kong's big yellow duck was “burned to death” by tourists from Shenyang, who had thrown 30 lit cigarette butts at it. Today Hong Kong has confirmed that the damage was not man-made. Organizers are doing a routine physical examination.

But on Tuesday evening, the day before the Art Basel opening - arguably the largest art event in the city's recent history - a re-inflated “Rubber Duck” made a resounding comeback as hundreds cheered from the sidelines.

Despite all the efforts of Art Basel and the local government, it took an art installation - organized by a local shopping mall - to capture people's imaginations.