Sansing Township (三星) in Yilan County is close to completing a 4.5 tonne rocking horse that it hopes will set a world record for its size.
The rocking horse is being built to celebrate the upcoming Year of the Horse and is expected to be finished on Jan. 20, Sanshing Mayor Huang Hsi-yung (黃錫墉) said.
The horse is to be put on public display in a coreopsis field in Yilan County during the Lunar New Year holiday and it will also vie for the title of being the world’s largest rocking horse, he said.
To claim the record, the Yilan horse will have to top the current Guinness World Record holder — a rocking horse built in Israel in 2010 that measured 7.6m by 3.22m by 6.1m.
The Yilan horse is expected to be 8.2m by 2.67m by 6.5m upon its completion, a little smaller than the Israeli horse in terms of volume, but Huang said he was confident the Taiwanese-made art piece will win out in the end.
“We can always add something to the final product to make it slightly taller than the Israeli horse,” Huang said, adding that his team would apply for a Guinness record after the horse is completed.
Regardless of the outcome, the rocking horse will be one of a kind, according to its designer, Ho Wen-pin (何文彬).
Ho said he did not start the project with the intention of claiming the world record, adding that it would be great to present an oversized rocking horse that could bring back people’s childhood memories.
The township has also launched an online poll to ask the public to name the horse.
Anyone interested interested in taking part should submit their ideas at http://sanshingtrip.e-land.gov.tw/event/20140102/ by Thursday.
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