On the right, opposite the house of Peter I, the descent to the water is guarded by the figures of fantastic Chinese creatures "Shi-Tzu".
They were brought to Petersburg in 1907 from Manchuria. In their homeland in China, such fantastic creatures resembling lions were considered the guardians of the family hearth.
"Shih-tsza" in Chinese means "lion", although in our view the stone statues at the descent to the Neva are very little like lions: a large head with a short wide muzzle and a half-open mouth with many sharp teeth, a convex chest, strong front legs at all not lions.
In Chinese mythology, there are many such fantastic images, combining the features of a wide variety of animals, both real and fictitious. This is an image of a lion and a lioness guarding the entrance. The lion holds a ball in its paw, symbolizing Buddhist knowledge, carrying light into darkness and able to grant wishes. A lioness holds a lion cub with her paw.
The silhouettes are expressive and the plasticity of these statues is extremely peculiar.
Shih-tsza are carved out of gray Manchu granite, their height is four and a half meters, the weight of each statue is two thousand four hundred kilograms. Decorative statues of Shih Tzu are a rare example of Chinese monumental sculpture for St. Petersburg.
In China, stone and bronze statues of fantastic lion-like creatures were placed at the gates of imperial palaces, at temples, as well as in cemeteries. Granite statues, now standing on Petrovskaya Embankment, at the very beginning of the 20th century were located in the Manchu city of Girin, where they were supposed to be installed in the idol - a small temple-prayer house of General Chan.
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However, after Chan's death in 1904, the newly appointed governor of Girinsky presented them to Infantry General Nikolai Ivanovich Grodekov, assistant to the Amur Governor-General.
Grodekov, on the other hand, decided to transfer the "Shi-tsza" statues to St. Petersburg (while the general donated one thousand rubles of his money for travel expenses) and asked to install them on the new Petrovskaya embankment near the house of Peter the Great, and on the pedestals to make the above inscription: "Shi-tsza from the city of Girin in Manchuria was transported to St. Petersburg in 1907 ". And below: "The gift of the general-from-infantry NI Grodekov." The city council accepted the gift. From Girin "Shi-tsza" was transported by rail, and in Vladivostok they were loaded onto the steamer "Rival", on which they safely arrived in St. Petersburg on September 4, 1907.
Soon, the statues were installed on massive pedestals on both sides of the granite descent to the Neva on the Petrovskaya embankment, built in 1901-1903 by the architect L. I. Novikov and engineer F. G. Zbrozhek. The architect L. N. Benois, who advised the installation of Shih-tzu, believed that the statues were of undoubted artistic interest and that the place was well chosen for them.
P. S. Popov, a private lecturer at St. Petersburg University, translated the hieroglyphic inscriptions carved on the basements of the statues: “This lion was made (or installed) in Girin on the happy day of the 10th month of 32 years of the reigning emperor of the Dai-ching dynasty, whose years of reign are called Guan-syu, that is, the continuation of the glorious reign. The specified date according to our chronology corresponds to November 1906.