Denmark's famed Little Mermaid statue attracted thousands of visitors at the World Expo in Shanghai, China.
Denmark chose to have the 96-year-old statue make her first trip abroad to provide a centrepiece for its Expo pavilion, where visitors can ride borrowed bicycles, as they do in Copenhagen.
The 1.5-metre statue, sitting at the centre of a pool of water from Copenhagen, is based on the "Little Mermaid" fairy tale, by Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen.
The Expo, with an urban sustainability theme of "Better City, Better Life" opened on May 1 and is expected to draw 70 million visitors to view dozens of pavilions from virtually every country, as well as many companies and international groups.
But some people in Denmark believed moving the statue to Shanghai as a public relations exercise was disrespectful.
A video installation by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has replaced the Little Mermaid on top of the boulders she usually rests on in Copenhagen's harbour until the statue returns to Denmark in November.
The multimedia artwork includes a live broadcast of the statue in Shanghai.
Created by Danish sculptor Edvard Eriksen, the fishtailed bronze is Denmark's most popular tourist attraction.
She was first unveiled in August 1913 and hasn't been moved from her perch above the harbour since, except to undergo repairs after a series of attacks by vandals.
Her international fame grew after she was beheaded in 1964.
No arrests were ever made. However, a Danish artist claimed he cut off the head and threw it into a Copenhagen lake.
It was never found and a new one was cast from the original mould.
Twenty years later her right arm was cut off and she was decapitated again in 1998. She's been doused in paint on numerous occasions and in 2003 she was blown off her stone base by vandals who used explosives.
The following year she was draped in a burqa, apparently by critics of Turkey's bid to join the European Union.
In Andersen's tale, the mermaid is a sea king's daughter who falls in love with a prince and must wait 300 years to become human.
APTN