Donald Trump will be ringing in the Lunar New Year in China on Jan. 28, 2017.
Not in person, though — but rather in the form of his likeness, interpreted as a cartoon rooster statue in northern China. The statue sprang up earlier this week outside a shopping mall in the city of Taiyuan, Shanxi province, according to Radio France Internationale’s Chinese-language division.
From that hairstyle to the hand gestures (“O.K.” on the left, an index finger pointing outward on the right), as well as the facial expression, there can be no mistake that this cartoonified chicken takes its inspiration from the incoming U.S. President, who will take office on Jan. 20. That’s just eight days before the newest Year of the Rooster starts, according to the rotating 12-animal Chinese zodiac denotation.
According to the South China Morning Post, citing a Chinese social-media news outlet, the designer says the statue’s egglike shape and the golden Trumpian hairstyle carry the meaning of “getting rich.”
Photos of the sculpture have been widely circulated in China, even inspiring a flood of miniature and inflatable imitations on Taobao, the country’s equivalent of eBay, bringing some comic relief to the tough back-and-forth between Beijing and the President-elect.
“It is the Year of [the] Rooster, and Trump is about to take office,” one such Taobao vendor told the Post. “We have named it the Inflatable Trump Rooster.”
The Lunar New Year is observed across East Asia, as well as by the Chinese diaspora worldwide.
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