When I was describing my return from Tianjin to Shenzhen I mentioned that we night stopped at a company operation at Wenzhou. I had been there about a year before when it was a joint Bristow/COHC operation.
Wenzhou is a oddity in Eastern China. In is effectively cut off topographically from the rest of China. There are various dialects in different parts of China but the majority are understandable except for Wenzhouese which is a total mystery to anybody that does not come from there. The area was heavily influenced by Jesuit missionaries and they have left their mark in the genes of the population. Before I went there I was told that it was famous for the beauty of its women and daily I would see some absolute stunners.
Because of its isolation it missed the rampages of the Cultural Revolution. This was noticeable by the number of active churches; seven spires or towers could be seen from the ATC cupola. Less than a mile from the airport entrance there was a newly completed two storey high church awaiting consecration. The agriculture was different. There was none of the groups of black houses and miles of paddy of the rest of China. The area was split into smallholdings and the family crypt, long disappeared anywhere else, still resided at the corner of a field.
I arrived there just before Christmas 1995. On arrival we found that the outgoing Pilot in Charge who had departed to return to the UK for Xmas had disabled the international dialling facility on the company telephone. This meant that we would be unable to phone home on Christmas Day. (He was ex-Army) However we phoned Shenzhen and we arranged with others to pass the Wenzhou telephone number to our UK relatives.
The operation was at the very beginning of oil exploration off Wenzhou and the rig involved was Chinese owned but run by expats. As with most overseas operations where western food and delicacies were unobtainable there was a standard arrangement with the offshore installations. We kept them supplied with blue movies and they kept us supplied with goodies. The high point of this arrangement was that they called for an admin run Christmas morning and waiting for us was a fully prepared Xmas dinner for everybody on the operation for us to take back.
There was a request for a photographic flight on the 8th January. It was to be flown for Wenzhou TV and was to cover the opening of Wenzhou railway station. I was going to fly it for three reasons.
I. I had flown photographic sorties extensively in Northern Ireland, both optical and IR. I had flown and done the aerial filming for the documentary ’Belize The Forgotten Frontier,’ and had been the airborne camera for the BBC at the Jubilee Air Show, plus others.
II. It seemed like it was going to be a good jolly.
III. I was in charge.
We arranged to meet the camera crew in the morning to go over the afternoon’s recording for the evening news. The director and the operator both had excellent English so it was a case of where and when. There was going to be a cavalcade of all the city bigwigs from the city hall to the railway station. Then with a crescendo of massed bands and probably three tons of fireworks the station would be declared open. They crew not have any long range lens with them so to get decent shots of the procession it would be necessary to be fairly low. This meant that I had to go to ATC.
The entire airport had had a bit of a get together on New Years Eve so we had chatted to the air traffic staff. What we were doing was totally new for them so we offered to take them with us on an offshore flight so that they understood what was going on. This would make it easier for us if we had what they would consider a strange flight request. They took up this offer and we had flown three of them by this time. On this basis they owed me a favour.
As I have mentioned before AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL IS PARAMOUNT in China. This can be used for your own advantage as there is no such thing as General VFR or minimum heights. You fly where and how high you are told. I explained to them that I was flying an important photographic flight for the local TV Company that was highlighting the advances of Wenzhou city. To present this in the best possible way I would need to fly at low level to achieve the best shots. They asked me how low. Twenty metres? OK.
There was no question of anybody complaining about low flying helicopters in China. In Northern Ireland a favourite joke was that if anyone complained about a low flying helicopter the next morning the SAS would turn up and roll the house looking for a reason why they didn’t want low flying helicopters around. In China at that time it wouldn’t be a joke.
The station was due to be opened at 15.00 hrs. We were going to use B7953, a Chinese registered aircraft as it was a local celebration. To get their best shots the camera crew were going to need the full co-operation of the pilots. This was ensured the Chinese way be taking me and my FO out to lunch; and an excellent lunch it was.
I knew where the road to the station was. The entrance had the usual hoardings with stacks of flags and pictures of cheering people. We took off at 14.30 and ten minutes later we were there. I needed to recce the left hand side of the road as the camera was pointing out of the starboard door. This was to check for TV aerials, power lines etc. The road was new and each side was thick with children and adults all frantically waving to us as we passed them at about one hundred yards and fifty feet. After two kilometres the railway station came into sight, bedecked with flags and banners and as I passed over it something struck me as wrong.
There wasn’t a railway.
Where’s the railway? I asked and the director said that it hadn’t arrived yet. They still had to complete about twenty kilometres of tunnelling through the hills. The station was going to be opened today because that was on the schedule. The railway can wait.
I backtracked on the other side of the road and I noticed that the new road was about a metre higher than the old road. This could seen by everybody standing on the old pavements and looking along the road surface. There was a reason for this. When the old houses were demolished the area they occupied would be one metre below the road. This was ideal for services as they could be laid on level ground. First (ground) floors on modern houses and apartments are one metre above the ground so by digging the site by another metre you had three metres from footings to floor. This would take no time at all and then the pile drivers would move in. The previous inhabitants had a choice between getting a new apartment closer to town or waiting until the apartments in their local area were completed. It meant that buildings could go up at an incredible speed and goes some way to explaining why Chinese cities seem to be redeveloped overnight.
We orbited the entrance to the road and there was no sign of the cavalcade. After twenty minutes I was getting fed up.. There seemed to be nobody in charge at this end so I flew up to the station. By the side of the road there were a couple of police 4X4s next to a dried paddy. I landed on and asked the director to ask the police where everybody was. This he did and came back with the information that the whole show had been delayed an hour. He then suggested that we fly to Wenzhou and get some library pictures. We got airborne and I spoke to air traffic and not wishing to push my luck too far I asked for clearance to operate over Wenzhou at fifty metres and this was granted.
I had only been to Wenzhou city once before and I hadn’t seen much of it. Most of the buildings were fifty to a hundred years old apart from massive swathes were being cut through to them to form the new boulevards that were going to be the new shopping malls. The producer was delighted. He had never thought that he was going to get aerial pictures of the city showing the old and the new.
My FO was keeping his eyes open for any activity on the road out of town and he saw the cavalcade on its way. We caught up with it as they turned into the railway station road and took long shots of the whole procession from 100/20 metres. When they reached the station I turned away and returned to the airfield. There was no point in staying and drowning out the speeches. On return the TV people thanked us for our efforts and that was it. They had bought us lunch, got the cooperation; job done.
We never saw them again.
Last edited by Fareastdriver; 21st Oct 2014 at 20:50.