Like most volunteers to the Expo Garden, Hu Yuexiang is excited about his role of explaining to visitors to the China State Shipbuilding Corporate (CSSC) Pavilion about navigation, a subject that has been part of his life for decades.
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"After I visited CSSC Pavilion on the first day of trial operations, I wrote a diary to express my ideas through a blog," said Hu, adding he has been keeping an Internet blog about his life for more than three years. "Then lots of netizen left me messages saying the CSSC Pavilion is trying to get in touch with me."
Hu Yuexiang has been a captain in the cargo shipping industry since 1993. He was the second captain to serve on the Xin Yazhou (New Asia), the first super-container designed by Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding (Group) Co Ltd, which is under the control of the China Shipping (Group) Company.
Hu joined the operation team of the CSSC Pavilion in the middle of May and gives three to four talks every Saturday and Sunday night. He will keep up this schedule until the end of Expo. "I am not as pretty as those tour ladies," he joked. "But my advantage is my profession, plus I am wearing a real captain's uniform, so that earns me some more points."
Since giving the first few talks to visitors, Hu has made several changes to content because of the feedback he received. He has to deal with professional questions from maritime university students, which ordinary visitors cannot understand. So he decided to explain answers by telling stories of his life at sea.
"I tried to avoid using professional phrases," he said. "For example, I compared the ship to woman to tell the procedures of manufacturing processes, or I compared radar to eyes to explain its function during sailing."
Hu has had a lifelong love affair with the sea and shipping. He said he first became connected while playing in the shipyard where his father worked. "My father worked in Hudong-Zhonghua shipping yards in 1950s," Hu said. "I grew up there, my childhood memories are filled with these experiences."
Hu spent 30 years onboard ships after the graduation from the school. Most of his classmates chose to stay on land, but he decided the sea was for him, so that is where he remained.
More and more people - even book publishers - are discovering Hu's Internet blog. "Shanghai Jiaotong University Press offered me a great opportunity to publish a book of my sailing stories," Hu said. The book will be released in the next few months.
Hu said his main objective at the CSSC Pavilion at Expo Garden is to encourage more of the younger generation to embark on a life at sea.
"Sailing is a great career. We hope to have more fresh blood on board. But a passion of sailing is necessary," Hu said.
