Surreal voyage aboard China's famous destroyer

Sitting on the front deck of the guided missile destroyer Shijiazhuang, catching the sunset and watching the waves past the gunwales, I recalled a novel by Ernest Hemingway and how he described the ocean as a woman that gives or withholds great favors.

"If she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman," he wrote in The Old Man and the Sea.

Considering the tranquility of the Sea of Japan that day, in contrast to gales and swells on the Yellow Sea in previous days, which have given many first-time voyagers seasickness, I found myself agreeing with the Nobel laureate.

It had been foggy and cold for days since the flotilla set sail on Monday. Black sea water rippled as if numerous ghosts were fighting under a vast blanket.

Sailors frowned at the mist and dark clouds, saying such gloomy weather only made the voyage more tedious. Most of the 12 reporters on board, however, found everything about their first overseas voyage fresh and interesting.

"How come you can walk straight, Captain?" one stumbling reporter asked Xu Fang, captain of Shijiazhuang.

"More beer and less sleep," Xu cracked. Everybody laughed.

The guided missile destroyer Shijiazhuang, 154 meters long and 17.1 meters wide, was put into service in 2007. It sailed steadily most of the time, but some people found it unbearable when it rocked with the waves.

Two reporters shared one room of about 10 square m, with pipes running through like veins and nerves. Along with the rhythm of the swaying ship, bottles fell, books slid off the table and drawers opened and closed on their own. Sailors in the corridor staggered like toddlers.

But when the sky cleared and the journey grew gentler, the ship was filled with a different energy. Chefs were chopping vegetables in the kitchen, soldiers were singing with guitars on deck and reporters kept busy capturing moments when every living thing came into their cameras' vision: seagulls, flying fish and dolphins.

A senior sailor told us that surveillance ships from Japan would soon appear after we crossed the Tsushima Strait, which separate Korea and Japan. The narrowest open sea passage in the strait is only three nautical miles wide. His words kept us in anticipation.

On Wednesday, aircraft from Japan began to hover above the Chinese flotilla. Everyone on deck raised their cameras toward them.

"Look, they are taking pictures of us, too," a reporter said as he zoomed in on one of the planes with his camera. He captured a vague shadow of a person inside the plane holding a camera or a telescope aimed toward our ship.

Everybody laughed.

Lin Fengqian, the political commissar of the Shijiazhuang since 2011, said he discovered humanity in many ways onboard the ship.

He gave us a tour of the engine room on the lower deck of the ship, where soldiers worked three three-hour shifts a day. The minute we climbed down, a heat wave suffocated us. The noise was so loud that we had to shout to the person beside us in order to be heard.

"The engine room is definitely one of the least favorable working environments in the world, yet our soldiers overcome difficulties to guarantee the safe sailing of our ship," Lin said, introducing us to the soldiers. They were checking various instruments, their shirts and pants soaked in sweat.

Contact the writer at puzhendong@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 07/06/2013 page8)