The Shizi Guardian Lions

At one of the Neva's descents, at the start of St Petersburg's Petrovskaya Embankment, stands a pair of mythological guardian lions carved from dark granite — the Shizi. Each sculpture is 4.5 metres tall and weighs about 2.5 tonnes; carved from Manchurian stone, they remain among the few genuine examples of Chinese temple sculpture in St Petersburg's open-air collections.

The lions were made in the early 20th century in the city of Girin (Jilin) for a small shrine that the Chinese general Chang was building for himself. After the general's sudden death in 1904, the city's new governor presented the finished sculptures to Nikolai Grodekov, who held the post of assistant to the Governor-General of the Amur region. Grodekov decided to donate the lions to St Petersburg and personally paid for their transport: the sculptures were first shipped by rail to the port of Vladivostok, and then by sea, aboard the steamer “Sopernik,” to the Russian capital. The lions arrived in the city in September 1907.

In Chinese tradition, such pairs of stone guardians are placed on either side of the entrances to temples, palaces and cemeteries. One figure depicts a lion with a ball beneath its paw — a symbol of Buddhist knowledge, bringing light into darkness and capable of granting wishes. Its counterpart is a lioness, holding a cub beneath her paw. Together, the pair was believed to protect the entrance from evil forces and ensure the wellbeing of those within.

The Petrovskaya Embankment, which had only shortly before, in 1901–1903, first been faced with granite, was chosen as the site for St Petersburg's Shizi lions. The making of the pedestals and the installation of the sculptures were overseen by architect Leontiy Benois. Identical inscriptions were carved on both pedestals, indicating the sculptures' origin and the name of the donor — infantry general Nikolai Grodekov.

Almost a century later, for St Petersburg's tercentenary celebrations in the early 2000s, a second pair of similar guardian lions appeared in the city — in the Shanghai Garden on Liteiny Prospekt, laid out specially for the anniversary festivities. These lions are more recent and have no direct connection to the story of General Chang, but they clearly demonstrate just how recognisable and widely replicated the motif of the Petrovskaya Shizi has become over the past century. It is the historic sculptures on Petrovskaya Embankment that remain a genuine early-20th-century monument, protected by the state as an object of cultural heritage.

The Shizi lions on Petrovskaya Embankment are a rare example of direct cultural exchange between the Russian Empire's Far Eastern territories and its capital: sculptures created for a private Chinese temple unexpectedly found a permanent home on the banks of the Neva, and for more than a century have remained one of the most unusual landmarks in the city's historic centre.