The news that William and Harry are planning to have a statue of their mother built in Kensington Palace gardens has reminded me of the entire garden full of Princess Di statues I happened upon in Nansha, a distant suburb of Guangzhou, China. I was living in Guangzhou at the time, my mother was visiting, and we seemed to have been everywhere else in the area, so we somehow ended up there. The statue garden is located in an odd sort of mainly ornamental theme park with a small selection of rides, a zoo which mainly consists of squirrels, and quite a lot of mainly ornamental exhibits whose purposes are unclear to foreigners such as myself.

This particular part of the garden had a display to explain who Diana was, and why she deserved to have an ornamental statue garden in Nansha

Here is the first statue, which I’m calling “Robot Princess Diana in a badly-fitting wig restrains a hypnotized child with her gigantic hands”

“Eighties powersuit Princess Di doesn’t care that her hands are broken, she’s going to play the Casio keyboard as best she can”

“Blind Princess Di wearing boxing gloves goes jogging in her sweatsuit, but gets predictably lost in the shrubbery”

“Afflicted with sudden giganticism, woman dressed as Princess Di on holiday makes one last fleeting request to help her escape from the cursed plinth”

“That is definitely not what her nose looked like”

“Princess Di enters a state of catatonic shock after having her hands suddenly lopped off”

“Princess Di comes to terms with having no hands and attends a fancy palace ball, but unfortunately a wizard has swapped her torso with that of a mangled barbie doll and she is unable to fully contain her emotions”

In summary then; not very good statues, would visit again.