This part of Vietnam is known for the rich marble deposits in the hills around the area of Da Nang. There is actually a mountain called "Marble Mountain" that is rumored to be completely comprised of marble in that you can go down under the soil just a few feet and the entire thing is made of marble. I don't know if that is true or not but because of the unique nature of this thing, it is a protected area and nobody is mining. There are a ton of shops here that will make anything you want out of marble though and I guess they sell a lot of them.
Because the city is known for this sort of art there are pieces that go up in the parks around town and one of them is a park that I go to on a regular basis.
To some, this might not seem that special but I encourage you to look up and see how arduous the process of creating a statue out of marble is. I have seen these being done in purpose and it is not done by a machine, it is done by a person or a team of people using specialized tools and you only get one shot at it. Making a perfect sphere like they did twice in this piece probably had some sort of help involved, but it's not just the perfectly smooth sides of this thing and the flowing nature of it that shows you that it is a person holding a baby without drawing a face or arms, it is also the piece of marble that they chose to use when making it. Although I of course am not involved in the process I am sure this is a very important step in the entire thing.
This one is really special in my mind as well because although marble is a "soft" ore, it will still break if you take away enough of the support. The person who made this one and left such tiny connections between the top and the bottom must really know what they are doing. Cut just a little bit too much and it will collapse. I am sure they have some method of gluing it back together should that happen but I would like to believe that they wouldn't do such a thing.
This piece exemplifies how courteous the people of Vietnam are as well. This thing could easily be broken but it hasn't been even though this park is not monitored or guarded at night. If this thing was installed in just about any park that I grew up near in the States, someone would have destroyed it the same day it was installed unless it was watched 24-hours a day. That's just a sad aspect of the USA, they seem to get enjoyment out of wrecking things that are nice.
This one is interesting and if you were to ask people which one they think was the "best" i think most people would select this one. Here is why I disagree: Kind of exact replicas of people or things like people such as a mermaid are so common with marble artists that it is actually kind of boring now. If you can imagine any famous historical figure it has already been carved hundreds of times. If I was to declare anything special about this it would be the delicate work that likely went into having the arm connect to the base piece without breaking it. From what little I have seen of this process being completed they have special circular saws that feed water towards whatever they are cutting and they don't so much "cut" as they do "shave pieces off bit by bit. This prevents huge chunks from getting blasted out of it and then causing the entire thing to collapse.
There are a few things that this area of Da Nang is known for an awesome marble statues and sculptures are one of them. There are hundreds of these things all over town and this particular place swaps them out every couple of month or so. In the nearly 6 years I have lived here I have never seen or even heard of any of them being destroyed, vandalized, or stolen and I think that is just great.