2010-03-26 07:58

SHANGHAI - The Little Mermaid sculpture, a symbol of Copenhagen, left Denmark on Thursday night and began its journey to Shanghai where it will entertain Expo visitors throughout the 184-day cultural gala.

The popular tourist draw is expected to arrive in China early next month, where it will sit in the center of a basin surrounded by a pool of seawater, just as it does in the Danish capital.

Other European attractions to be shown at the Shanghai World Expo include historic artwork from pioneers such as Auguste Rodin and Vincent Van Gogh at the France pavilion.

Thursday's departure was celebrated with a goodbye ceremony, where dancers performed and children sang in Danish and Chinese.

After a ribbon-cutting ceremony, the Little Mermaid was lifted away from its spot at the harbor and driven away from the area. It will be revealed to the public in Shanghai at the end of April.

Bronze sculptures like the Little Mermaid are very fit to go on such a long journey, said Flemming Brian Nielsen, who is overseeing the relocation process.

The 46-year-old stonecutter said it will be placed on exhibit in Shanghai in exactly the same way it appears in Denmark.

It was lifted away by a crane and taken by plane to Shanghai, Nielsen said.

He said he believes it will be safe at the Expo.

"I don't think that anyone will try to steal the Little Mermaid because it is too famous. I mean, what would they do with it? No one would buy it knowing that it was the real Little Mermaid," he said.

Commissioned in 1909 by Carl Jacobsen, the son of the Carlsberg beer founder, the statue took its inspiration from the 1837 Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name, in which a mermaid falls in love with a prince and wishes to transform her tail into legs.

The statue found its home in the harbor in 1913, but is actually a copy of an original held by descendants of sculptor Edvard Eriksen. Three other copies exist: one each in California and Iowa, in the United States, and another in Vancouver, Canada.

The proposal to bring it to Shanghai met with some controversy. The Copenhagen city council, which owns the statue, voted in favor of the decision to let it visit Shanghai by a count of 36 to 14.