Has the King's bubble burst?

Fan Yang of Mississauga, the Bubble King of the world, is on a slippery slope.
Thanks to a June 10 break-in at his Hoboken, N.J., warehouse where more than three tonnes of bubble-making solution was stolen, Yang's off-Broadway hit, The Gazillion Bubble Show, may be forced to close.
"I'm running out of the liquid and I'm running out of time," Yang said yesterday from Manhattan, where his unique entertainment has been playing since Feb. 2007, a mixture of bubbles, lasers and lights that one critic hailed as "an unbelievable visual spectacle."
Although Yang spends much of his time on the road, the family home is still in Mississauga. It's where his two teenage children live and, as he says, "Either my wife, my mother-in-law or I am there to keep an eye on things."
The 46 year-old Yang was born in Vietnam of a Chinese-Vietnamese mother and a Hungarian father.
When he was two, the family moved to Yugoslavia and then, at 16, he settled in Germany, and eventually wound up in Toronto.
Police are calling the theft "a random crime," but Yang has his doubts about that theory.
"It's a big puzzle for me," he says. "The bubble solution comes in 10-litre cans. There were 320 of them. Why would you steal them if you didn't know what was inside? I suspect it could be someone trying to start a rival show. I'm not ruling out any options."
The unique bubble solution was created by Yang, is manufactured in Hong Kong and can take up to six weeks to make. Its special qualities have helped him notch 16 entries in the Guinness Book of World Records.
When will Yang bring it to the GTA or the LAC in his hometown?
"I knocked on many doors when I first came to Canada," he says, "but no one was interested. Now that I am famous in other countries, I guess I can come back home and have my work presented.
"Isn't that what always happens with Canadian artists?"
The most recent was in April of this year, when he achieved "World's Largest Mammal Inside a Bubble" at the Discovery Science Centre in Los Angeles for putting a bubble around an 8,800-pound Asian elephant.
That event had been delayed for a month after protests from animal rights activists, until Yang proved, as he said, "that the bubble solution was hypoallergenic and the elephant actually liked it."
In January, his 15th entry came for Most People Inside a Bubble, when he encapsulated 100 people inside a soapy membrane during a taping of The Oprah Winfrey Show.
"I was fascinated by bubbles since I was six years old," he admits, "their many colours, their changing shapes, the magic you could do with them."
But it wasn't until he was 18 that he started working with them in earnest and began to create small-scale shows that he toured around the world.
He also developed a line of bubble-making toys that helped finance his productions and 6,000 of them were stolen as well in the June robbery.
A touring version of The Gazillion Bubble Show played for four months in Las Vegas and is now en route to Japan, providing he gets a new supply of bubble solution in time.
When will Yang bring it to his hometown?
"I knocked on many doors when I first came to Canada," he says, "but no one was interested. Now that I am famous in other countries, I guess I can come back home and have my work presented.
"Isn't that what always happens with Canadian artists?"
onlinenews@mississauga.net