(Photo/Beijing Youth Daily)

A full set of 12 bronze zodiac animal statues were spotted at a canyon scenic area in Beijing, and their resemblance to the famous bronze heads at the Old Summer Palace has drawn heavy criticism.

The six-foot-tall bronze statues were erected at the Shilinxia Scenic Area in Beijing’s Pinggu District. Their mouths can open and water spouts out on a golden toad statue in front.

Unlike the statues at the Old Summer Palace, which are wearing traditional Chinese clothing and sit at a fountain, the canyon’s statues all have specially-designed clothes and are standing up. Three of them are females and the other nine are males, while at the Old Summer Palace, the statues are genderless.

Many visitors to the canyon refer to them as animal gods, and the site is popular with tourists who like to take photos.

But their high resemblance with those at the Old Summer Palace has made some uncomfortable. According to Liu Yang, an expert on Old Summer Palace relics, the 12 statues are almost complete replicas of the famous bronze zodiac animal heads.

The canyon scenic area also promoted them in May 2016, saying that the “Old Summer Palace bronze zodiac animal heads reappear at Shilinxia,” Beijing Youth Daily reported.

Employees at the canyon argue that the designer was only inspired by the historical statues. “They’re not copies, they were imagined by us,” the newspaper quoted them as saying.

“It is very inappropriate for the scenic area to copy the bronze heads at the Old Summer Palace. It also devalues them. They used to belong to the palace’s fountain. It was barely acceptable when some places used replicas at similar fountain. But the statues at Shilinxia are somewhat of an insult. Scenic areas should not develop tourism in the name of the Old Summer Palace,” Liu told Beijing Youth Daily.

(File photo)

The old Summer Palace (Chinese name Yuanmingyuan) in Beijing was the royal garden built in the 18th and 19th centuries during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). This architectural wonder of its age was plundered and destroyed by British and French forces in 1860 and numerous treasures were looted.