Day 22

24 September, 2003

We are sitting adrift in the South China Sea. Two black balls flying from our mast to alert other ships that we are not under power and adrift. The strong wind has pushed us broadside to the ten foot swells, coming like the wind, from the north. Our eventual direction. We stopped around 08:15, I assume that we received news delaying our berthing time at Yantian, or that we made too good of time during the night. In any case, we have lost our feathered crowd, the sun is out and the clouds are diminishing.

The night was stormy with lots of rain, although the sea was nothing too large. we plowed on full speed through the night and this morning at breakfast (heavy handed crepes again), looking out the mess room porthole, we passed fishing junks every few miles.

They were having a rougher time of it, but nothing they probably even notice. When you think of a hungry nation of well over a billion, and it has a coast on only one side as opposed to our (USA) two and a half sides, you start understanding why the sea is so littered with fishermen. China is also becoming a leader in fish farming.

My after breakfast morning stroll on deck. First, to smell and feel the air, which after hours inside in climate control, can become estranged. I also go, in the morning, listening to the BBC for news of Wall Street! I have become an accidental capitalist, and it is strange to heed the calling miles off of China. It seems like the only news I really care about.

We drift in a big strange pattern that would not be noticeable to me if were not for my checking it on the GPS on the bridge. It takes us through groups of fishing junks, that must think it a bit strange to have this huge helpless hulk (our technical terminology is “not under command”), drift by. The captain chose to drift here because it is out of the traffic stream for Hong Kong.

We’re off. I am surprised by the quiet emotion and excitement I feel when the green hills of China start appearing through the mists. It is a country that has loomed large in life’s mythology. Dig a deep hole, and you dig to China, The big other on the opposite side of the globe.

We sail through a beautiful, mountain surrounded bay. The area where it is not too steep, in canyons and along the slim beaches, are a collection of either anonymous looking factories, or an otherworldly foreign version of what I recognize as resort areas. Hi-rise hotels, but somehow odd architecturally, that is, different from the forms we are used to in the west. But yet familiar as in a dream. I remember the same sense my first time in Lithuania. Remarkable, was the lack of the huge train of ships coming in and going out I have come to expect. Instead there are a variety of small local fishermen, The bay has all kind of nooks and crannies, alternate arms and bays tantalizingly disappearing around corners. The water, I had started noticing even yesterday, has become by a great amount, the most trash filled I have seen all this journey. Flotsam and jetsam of human activity, the most tantalizing being the pieces of paper with writing. What did some one think they were throwing out that might now be found on the sea?

We come around a corner to the south, at the far west of the bay, and there are the giant gantries standing at sentry which is the sign of a container port and our berth. Two giant tugs come up alongside, one deposits a pilot on the Jacob's ladder.

At this point in history, the movement of cheaply manufactured goods from China, to the US and Europe is the engine that drives shipping. The Olympus binoculars I am using to see all this were bought in Kingston-upon-Thames, but made here. There is a never ending need for capacity. No matter how many new giant containerships they build, there is plenty for everyone to carry. The Chinese counties around the north of Hong Kong is the center of much of all this. When China asked itself why it didn’t have a deep water containerport near this manufacturing center and had to incur the extra costs associated with shipping through Hong Kong, its answer was as audacious as a Beverly Hillbilly, “we’ll build one”. When the designers said, we do not have any space of flat land, large enough and near enough the water to hold the hundreds of acres of stacked containers, China said, why don’t we just tear down these mountains and use the rubble to build giant flatlands? When the designers said, the water isn’t really deep enough here, China said “well make it deep enough”.

Right now, the containerport at Yantian can only really berth around five of us, one being the new huge generation at this moment. But the building going on spells something much larger. The harbor has three dredgers circling, working around the clock, sending up mud clouds in the water. The south easterly wall of the bay is lovely and untouched, but the western manufactured plain that sits slightly wedged between two big mountains (power lines pouring down the side), is covered with factories of all sorts. Hi-rise buildings with signs, one designating a toy manufacturing company. In front of the city proper, about three miles to the south is a Chinese navy aircraft carrier docked alongside the front.

Otherwise the port runs as did Felixstowe or Singapore. Badda-bing bada-boom, we are barely tied up when the gantries come down. There is a skinny little man standing with a checkered flag who was supposed to guide us to our exact mooring, tight between the huge ship ahead, and a smaller ship astern. It is tight parking. But as we are stopped and finished with engines almost right at 1500, a heavier official sort pulls up in a flashy SUV with policelights on top, must be the little guys boss. He is very mad at our little guy as far as I can make out from eight stories up (F deck). Apparently we may be parked off by ten feet or so judging by the big guy’s waving hands. Not much of a discrepancy when you are talking an overall length of almost a thousand feet. Our official is pulling a Chinese Oliver Hardy on our little Chinese Stan Laurel. He is jumping up and down in exasperation, waving his arms, if he had a hat he would be stomping on it. Our little Stan just stands the same, shoulder shrugs. Of coarse, the official is worried about a bigger picture. He knows that in a few hours, the ship behind us would be leaving and a larger one would be taking it’s place. In tight parking every ten feet could count.

We are in China! We leave at six the next morning. I am summoned to the ships office where the chief and captain say almost in unison “you don’t want to go ashore here, it is too much trouble yah?” The chief adds “yah, you can look at the shore with your (he makes motions of binoculars)”. I don’t want to be any trouble after Singapore’s yelling at, so I right away demure. Disappointing, particularly as most of the rest of the crew go in and come back laden with both bags and with tales of incredible deals to be had. I am not such a shopper that I really care, but I would have liked to set foot in China, after all I spent two mornings in London and about eighty dollars to go to the Chinese embassy and get a visa. No one will explain why it was so hard for me to go ashore.

I watch a gaily painted green and yellow lighter pull alongside, and we unloaded our fuel “sludge”, literally the bottom of two settling tanks for the fuel. It will be re-refined here in China. Ships used to dump this in the ocean, making for tar covered feet at the beach. The members of the deck crew still on board are busy putting the final painting on the top mast (as the radar is turned off). One of the crew tell me that the stevedores of Yantian are generally more efficient and effective then the stevedores of Singapore and Hong Kong. This is measured by the state (tightness) of the container lashings after leaving port. Yantian is on par with Japan, which is high praise from this fellow! Meanwhile, empty containers are flying off and full ones are flying on.

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