Guan Yu was a Chinese military general serving under the warlord Liu Bei during the late Eastern Han dynasty.

Through generations of story telling, culminating in the 14th-century historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, his deeds and moral qualities have been given immense emphasis, making Guan Yu one of East Asia's most popular paradigms of loyalty and righteousness.

Guan Yu was depicted wearing his traditional robes and cloak, whilst wielding his famous guandao known as the Green Dragon Crescent Blade,[3] which weighed 123 tonnes.

[4] In September 2020, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development criticized the Guan Yu statue as "vain and wasteful", and that its towering presence in the skyline "ruined the character and culture of Jingzhou as a historic city" and called for rectification.

[6] An investigation by the state broadcaster China Central Television revealed that the project's developers only had permission to build the pedestal of the statue (the museum).