BEIJING – Outdoor security guard Wang Shimao never thought his inner artistry combined with his zeal for constantly clearing his throat of unwanted mucal matter would ever amount to anything more than an unsightly, amorphous mass of goo, much less a shimmering ice palace that is now a heavy favorite to win the top prize in Beijing’s annual ice sculpture contest.
Wang said the idea for building a the structure sprang to mind when he noticed that the slow accretion of sputum on his sidewalk hacking spot in Sanlitun district had evolved from a blotch of stomach-churning esophagal grunge into an icy, congealed totem resembling an awkward, just-hatched tottering gray-brown duckling looking to take flight, although still dripping in globulin.
“I thought to myself, ‘Hei-yaaa, Wang Shimao! This really has the potential to become something towering and evocative,” Wang said. “If you can just summon all your excess gut gumbo and build on it day to day while filtering out the chunky bits, surely it will only be a matter of weeks before your full vision can be realized.
“I have so much phlegm that otherwise goes to waste on the sidewalks,” Wang explained. “I wanted to do something that would give mutual feelings of respect and artistic wizardry to all the peoples of the motherland and to our foreign visitors.”
Wang said that although spittle “was flying in all directions at all times” as he hacked up vast reserves to build the palace, the end result — a 12-metre high, 20-ton replica of northern neighbor Harbin’s winter palace that has already won international plaudits — was worth the effort as it has gained Wang a cult-like following of fellow phlegm-hacker artists hoping to follow in his footsteps.
Wang said he would next work on a series of phlegm-filled interconnecting “sidewalk mucal ponds” that local Beijingers could skate to work on instead of having to battle the congestion and vehicle exhaust found on the city’s streets, thus offering a win-win solution to one of the city’s most intractable problems.