When I built stuff in art class, it was usually just a weird vase or a lumpy mug. When it came time for Bi Heng, a student at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in China, to decide on his graduation project, he dreamed a little bigger. He built the above robot (the robot is on the left) as a tribute to the ancient general Guan Yu (the ancient general is on the right).
The statue is constructed from the parts of a quarter-century old Jiefang vehicle. This particular Jiefang was a military service truck that had been used by the People’s Liberation Army before becoming a robot no longer in disguise. His weapon, though, is not from the car, and is modeled after the dynastic weapon that Guan Yu is depicted as wielding.
The statue weighs four tons and measures just under 31 feet tall. It cost around $43,000 to make, so apparently artists actually have money over in China. The general it’s modeled after measured in at a normal height, but was far more adept at kung-fu, and was an instrumental player in the civil war that ended the Eastern Han Dynasty.
Below is a video that, honestly, is somewhat mysterious. We’re (unfortunately) pretty much positive that this isn’t actually something the statue can do, and it’s probably just a very well-put-together CGI promo. Either way, it’s awesome and shows what the original vehicle looked like, giving some perspective to the statue as a whole:
