Rural tinkerer dives in with both feet

Tan Yong prepares to dive below the surface in his home-made submarine, on Danjiangkou Reservoir, Hubei province, in early November. Greg Baker / AFP

In the village where he was born, a Chinese chicken breeder emerged from a lake of green to tell of his life beneath the waves in a homemade orange submarine.

Tan Yong bolted together his 2-metric-ton craft - christened the "Happy Lamb", after a popular cartoon character - in just nine months and has steered it to depths of 8 meters.

The 44-year-old is one of the growing ranks of rural Chinese do-it-yourself inventors whose individualism contrasts with the collective farming of past decades.

In his electric vessel, gauges and air pressure dials were screwed to the cabin wall above plastic piping that would look appropriate beneath a kitchen sink, while handwritten operating instructions were posted using sticky tape. Electric cables spewed from an array of fuse boxes, and a gas canister was positioned on the floor.

"This is the air pump, it's used for going up and down," Tan explained, adding nonchalantly: "I haven't installed any kind of escape device."

Tan was born just two years after the Beatles released their 1968 hit Yellow Submarine, but he grew up in rural poverty and says he does not know any songs about colored underwater vessels.

At the national level, China has increasing naval ambitions, and Tan, who makes his living selling chickens, first hatched the idea of building a submarine two years ago, launching a prototype in March.

"I never studied this in school. I've based everything on my imagination," he said. "I can stay underwater for 45 minutes."

He scraped an extra layer of sealant around the portholes before waving cheerily as he closed the hatch, emblazoned with a red, Communist-style star.

The craft - powered by five car batteries - chugged away from the banks of the Danjiangkou Reservoir, with a friend aboard and many more of them cheering as they looked on from beneath a grove of orange trees.

The engine whirred and bubbles rippled the lake's still surface as the submarine gently descended, leaving a barely visible outline before disappearing entirely.

Launching himself into the life aquatic, Tan is one of a number of amateur inventors - dubbed "Peasant Da Vincis" - who have in recent years put together homemade planes, helicopters and even tanks, apparently with little consideration of practical value.

'Crushed like plastic'

Tan's underwater journeys have not always been smooth, and he told earlier of a scary moment 8 meters down.

"There's a lot of water pressure on the steel panels - they were crushed like a plastic bottle," he said. "I was very nervous. And then there was a large banging sound."

Minutes after diving, the submarine's red star broke surface again, and Tan re-emerged. "No problem!" he said with a grin.

Tan claims materials for the submarine cost him just 30,000 yuan ($4,900), though he admits the time spent on its construction put strains on his marriage.

"If I make another submarine, I will get down to 30 or 50 meters without any problems. I'll just make the steel a bit thicker," he said.

But his 8-year-old son, Tan Junfeng, added a note of skepticism. "Our family doesn't have much money, and Dad's spent it all," he said. "So I don't think he'll be making another one."