Shippies Take China - CSIV 2017

Day four of the trip was probably one of the most anticipated of all of them, as we would be visiting the CSIC Shipyard, which contains the largest dry dock in China, and is made up of four sections: Repair, Maintenance, Construction and Offshore Structures. The first thing we had to contend with was the breakfast at the hotel, which consisted of something akin to a croissant that had been squashed and then deep fried, and then removed of all flavour; in addition there was a bun with weird stuff in it, and an egg. (I will state for the record, I am not the most adventurous of eaters, and hence any descriptions of food might be slightly negatively biased. However they are accurate.) The trip to the shipyard was next, and for the first part we were all rather grateful. For all the previous trips, the organisers seemed to have forgotten that, as human beings, we all have legs, and hence are able to perform ambulatory motion to transport us from location A to location B. In other w...

Day three arrived, and brought with it a new set of adventures! Our goal for the day was to be transported from Harbin to Shanghaijuan, where we would be spending the next few days. However, we were not going to fly there, we would instead take a high-speed train! The train itself was approximately 30 minutes drive away from the hotel in a coach, but it so happened that it was the same coach we'd been in all the time we'd been there, as driven by "Angry Man", who seemed to honk his horn and get angry at people at any random point depending on the shape of the moon, what your favourite colour was, and whether he'd shouted at the security guard at the gate recently! Some traditional buildings There were some nice bits of scenery that we saw along the way, and a few references to Western culture, such as a few McDonalds and KFCs, however these did little to dissuade our attention from Angry Man (TM)'s driving, where we ended up making all the noises used b...

After our rather long journey here, the entire group was looking forward to not having to be on a plane at any stage during the day! After an interesting breakfast, we moved on to the Harbin Engineering University. The University was originally the PLA Military Engineering Institute that specialised in Ship and Submarine design and manufacture, but now it is a world leading university that features amongst its courses: Ship building, Naval Architecture, Ocean Engineering and Nuclear Engineering Enrolled at the University there are 14,949 students, which is about half of the total number of students enrolled at Southampton, but given that all the students here do engineering, it's quite a large number! We were first treated to a talk about the university itself, and its numerous accomplishments. For example, they were the first in china to make a hovercraft, a hydrofoiling craft, and a deep sea rescue submersible amongst others. They are also an associate member of RINA, which ...

Well, the CSIV 2017 have arrived in China, after a 36 hour trip, including 3 different flights, 4 different airports, and 2 hotels! The flights ranged from 11.5 hours to 2 hours in duration, and had an interesting mix of food, including 2 dinners on one of them which really disappointed one member of the group who had been psyching everybody up for a small fry-up! The stop-over in Guangzhou was rather enjoyable, as we were put into a hotel for around 6 hours. The hotel had some interesting decor in some of the rooms, as well as a pool, which some people used as an opportunity to increase their foreign relations skills. Finally, we all arrived in Harbin, our first stop of the trip. As I write this, we have just had (an interesting) breakfast, and we're looking forward to visiting the HEU university! We'll keep you all updated on our visit as it continues!