Fan Yang – Master Of Soap Bubbles

Fan Yang is a world renowned Canadian bubble scientist, artist, and performer who has earned international acclaim as a result of his complex displays of bubble theater.

Over the past two decades, Fan has explored the fascinating unknown world of soap bubbles, combining art with science, transforming a simple bubble into a beautiful piece of art and bringing bubble media into a new artistic dimension for the masses.

Fan’s ingenious creations and dedication to the pursuit of his dream has brought to life an utterly unique form of entertainment. He emerged as Master of the Soap Bubbles and earned international acclaim in Germany, being voted “Artist of the Year” and is currently a 16-time Guinness Book of World Record holder, most recently having put an 8,800 lb elephant in a bubble.

Fan’s spectacular shows, dubbed the “Gazillion Bubble Show”, have been featured at the National Museum of Science and Technology (Ottawa, Canada), Pacific Science Center (Seattle, WA, USA), Singapore Science Centre (Singapore), Ontario Science Center (Toronto, Canada), and the Discovery Science Center (Santa Ana, CA). His performances have also been broadcast worldwide on television.

In addition to performing he has developed his own bubble solution formulas and equipment to create bubbles. Fan has also conceived and manufactured his own bubble toy pertaining to his field of entertainment: The Ultimate Bubble Toy. Unlike any other bubble toy on the market, The Ultimate Bubble Toy was created entirely by Fan Yang based on his scientific knowledge and artistic skill. Combined with a special bubble solution made with a “secret formula”, it allows you to create the most stunning bubble elements such as bubbles inside a bubble, bouncing bubble, floating bubble, mega bubble, millions of tiny bubbles and many other unique bubble tricks.

“The show brings my joy and happiness to the world and shows a real dream to everyone — to children and their imaginations,” Fan says. “Child imagination is what has brought me to stages around the world.”

Yan’s wife Ana, and their two sons Deni and Jano take turns as co-performers at his shows.

In his 27 years as a performer, Yang has endured ridicule, defied scientific skeptics and written an entirely new bubble chapter into the Guinness World Records, where he is the champion of 16 record-breaking feats. For many of those records, Yang was the first to attempt them and he forced a whole new category of bubble dynamics for consideration.

In April 2008, for instance, Yang successfully encased the world’s largest living land animal — an adult elephant — inside an 8-and-a-half-foot tall bubble.

Three months earlier, he’d created a bubble with 100 people standing inside during a live broadcast of the Oprah Winfrey Show.

In his five previous record-breaking acts, Yang created successively larger bubbles fitting a growing number of people inside each. Many of Yang’s accomplishments have continued to gain larger scope over the course of his career as the artist has perfected his own all-natural, non-toxic, secret bubble formula.

Yang says one of his most magnificent achievements was in August 1997, when he defied the impossible assertion of researchers at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle by creating the world’s largest bubble wall. The final product was a series of 8-foot tall bubbles stretching side by side into a continuously linked chain spanning 156 feet in length, which lasted for “about 5 or 6 seconds,” he says.

“I proposed the idea to the science center and they told me it was impossible and good luck. They said the bubble film could not support how large it was and will collapse,” Yang says. “To be honest with you, when I start doing this bubble thing everybody was laughing at me. At first I only had some simple bubbles, but I had a completely separate perception than they did. You say to them ‘I can make one 100 feet long’ and they say you’re crazy. But you can, you can prove them wrong.”

Brought up in a mud hut in the countryside of then Yugoslavia, now the Republic of Serbia, near the Hungarian border, Yang felt a deep appreciation for nature and in particular a nearby river. Yang would visit a local waterfall near its banks, spending  much time observing the foam and bubbles created by the splashing current.

“The bubbles from the waterfall, the movement of the water, the clouds, the sky, seeing a rainbow — there were many things I found fascinating all around,” he says.

In his early years Yang traveled Europe as a juggling stage performer. When he was 18, Yang saw a group of kids playing with bubbles in the park and decided to incorporate them into his routine.

“I watched them and wondered if we could make them bigger, I had to try,” he says. At the time, Yang says the largest bubbles he could make were about a foot in diameter and only lasted a few seconds.

“Unlike most children who want to pop them, I wanted them to last longer,” he says.

He started actively pursuing an interest in bubble art, science and performance. After a performance in Denmark three years later, a local television producer asked Yang to do his bubble tricks during a broadcast. The tv appearance provoked a wide interest in the artist, leading to more shows.

“This is when my bubble career really started and I began reading more about fluid, molecular water compositions and putting together my own solutions,” he says.

The rest is history.