Panda dung statue fetches $45,000 in China

A former Swiss ambassador to China turned art collector has forked out 300,000 yuan ($45,000) for a replica of the famed Venus de Milo statue -- made from panda dung.

Children from the southwestern province of Sichuan, the home of China's beloved giant panda, made the unusual statue with the help of famous sculptor Zhu Cheng, popular web portal sina.com reported.

The work of art, on display in a museum in the central province of Henan, attracted droves of onlookers and was eventually sold to Uli Sigg, a Swiss businessman who collects contemporary Chinese art, another report said.

An employee at the Henan Art Museum, surnamed Zhao, on Friday confirmed to AFP that a statue made of panda faeces had been sold to Sigg, Swiss ambassador to China in the 1990s, who spent a total of one million yuan on artworks.

The statue was the main talk of the show, attracting people not because it was a replica of a famous sculpture, but because of the material from which it was made, the report said.

"From time to time, people get closer to the statue and smell this yellow Venus and some claim it smells nice," it added.