Cheng Yanhua, 41, from
Hubei Province drifted into town the hard way yesterday - he had
just paddled a truck tire for two months down the Yangtze River
from Chongqing City in south-west China.
His homemade raft was just a rubber tire with a big plastic
basin inside it. He used a couple of home-made bamboo paddles and
had no safety equipment with him at all.
"It's almost a miracle that a man can survive a trip along the
river floating on a tire," said Wang Jiqin, a local maritime
officer, who at first was suspicious of the adventure.
But Cheng was able to produce newspapers which he had collected
from the provinces he traveled through, all with reports of his
adventures.
He also kept a daily logbook and collected stamps from the
sporting authorities of every city and county he passed
through.
Cheng said he chose to paddle with the tide everyday to make the
trip easier but having to crunch his legs up to fit inside the
basin for nearly 10 hours everyday was painful.
Cheng said he also survived several close escapes when his craft
was caught by whirlpools or strong currents.
Cheng was stopped by the Lanzhou Road maritime authority when he
floated along the Huangpu River by Yangpu Bridge Road just before
noon yesterday.
The maritime authority finally agreed to let him complete his
voyage and one of the authority's boats escorted him to dry land on
the other side of the Huangpu River in Pudong.
Cheng was immediately surrounded by a crowd of the reporters and
photographers when he set foot on shore at the Seagull Place
restaurant on Riverside Avenue, near Pudong's landmark Oriental
Pearl Tower.
"I had often heard of foreigners engaging on adventures on
rivers like the Amazon but it has hardly ever been done in China.
It was my way of welcoming the Olympics," Cheng said yesterday. All
the way down the river his craft proudly flew the national
flag.
In late July, 27-year-old Wu Xiaoliang, a Tsinghua University
graduate, drifted to Shanghai along the Yangtze River. But he was
forced to give up the 2,000-kilometer dinghy ride as local maritime
officials refused to allow the adventure in Huangpu River out of
security concerns.
(Shanghai Daily August 14, 2007)
