JUNKS TO BE SCRAPPED?

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29068, 3 December 1959, Page 28

JUNKS TO BE SCRAPPED?

Chinese Plan New Design (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, Dec. 2. Peking's efficiency experts are casting unsentimental landlubberly eyes over the lines of China’s junks, large and small, says the “Daily Telegraph’s” Hong Kong correspondent. Their mission, he adds, is “either to improve the designs of junks right on the spot or to put them through the paces of scientific research and analysis and a reforming process so as to work out standard models,” This assault on tradition is directed against both the seagoing fleet, totalling 400,000 tons, and the many types of sailing craft, totalling three million tons, that ply China’s great inland waterways. “China's hardy self-sufficient fishing people are not likely to welcome changes,” says the correspondent. “They prefer to rely on a boat design that has served for several thousand years.

“In laying down standard designs, the drawing board experts will also run into trouble with boatbuilders who never work from plans. Using adzes and other simple tools, they shape and assemble a seaworthy and delicately balanced craft, but no two are alike.

“Meanwhile, the junk has other competitors for the Hong Kong Government also is introducing a boat better suited to mechanisation. The traditional hull, which provides high and dry accommodation aft and safety from following seas while drifting across the fishing grounds, must be modified if engines are to be installed and already more than 2500 boats in the Hong Kong fleet of 9000 have diesels. Even so boats on the ways in half a dozen local yards are still being built faithfully to the ancient pattern.”