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Players needing a bit of luck this week should touch one of the lions patrolling the course. Owner Beate Soong believes the 40 stone statues have brought him, and Silport, good fortune.
“The old stone animals are said to have special abilities which can brig the place where they sit good fortune and the people around them good luck,” he said. “Lots of people have said that Silport couldn’t have said that Silport couldn’t have reached this great level and earned a good reputation without those good those good luck animals.
“These sculptures are mostly from the Ming and Qing dynasties and were lost to other places during the war at the end of the Qing dynasty. The most expensive pair I bought cost about 1.5 million yuan.
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“The one I like the most is located near the putting green. That’s from the Qing Dynasty and weighs about six tones. The lines are clean and smooth and it looks great.
The first time I saw it, I knew I should get it . A lot of Silport members and my friends, who appreciate art, like it, too. When they pass by, they will stop for a while and sometimes touch it,” Soong said.
The stone animals, hailing from the Ming(1368AD-1644AD) and Qing (1644AD-1911AD) dynasties, have been collected by Soong over the past 25 years. The Taiwanese industrialist said he had collected the “animals”,mainly lions tigers and dragons, in his travels to such places as Fujian and Shandong provinces and in Nanjiang, Jiangsu Province.
He said he liked the ancient stoneworks very much because of what they represented to Chinese art. In ancient times, the statues which are considered lucky, were placed at the entrance of the king’s palace, at temples and royal tombs as people believed they could drive away evil spirits and defend their owners.
“I felt they were precious and needed to be protected. They can also let our history be known.”
Soong said he originally shipped the statues to Taiwan, but later thought better and had them shipped back to China and put them around the different holes at Silport. Because of their different ages and the places where they were from, the prices of the animals varied.
The 27-hole club in Dian-Shan Lack, Jiangsu, one of the provinces which borders Shanghai,is akin to playing a round in a beautiful Chinese garden.


As with Augusta National, the famed Masters host venue in Georgia that Soong has clearly drawn inspiration from, the detail to the look of the flower beds,s shrubbery and trees is something that has been given serious consideration.

South China Morning Post Novermber 25-28,2004