Sailors work in difficult, occasionally dangerous surroundings, reports Peng Yining from the Gulf of Aden

Editor's note: On June 10, the Peace Ark embarked on a 118-day voyage to provide medical assistance in a number of countries and take part in joint operations and exercises with fellow members of ASEAN. This is the sixth report by China Daily's Peng Yining.

Chen Hailei joined the navy to see the world, but so far the 25-year-old has only seen piles of garbage and a trash incinerator. His job on the Chinese hospital ship Peace Ark is to take care of garbage disposal.

Since June, when the ship set sail from Zhejiang province on its 118-day voyage, Chen has been on Deck One by 6:30 every morning, waiting for the trash of the 400 people on board to arrive.

For Chen, squatting among garbage bags and sorting cans from glass bottles is a typical start to the day. He measures the quantity of garbage by the time it takes to deal with it.

"On good days, it takes only about two hours to sort and incinerate the waste," he said. "But some days, it can take as long as five."

"I'm the only person on this ship taking care of the garbage. Sometimes, the others call me 'the garbage guy', but I'm proud of what I do. My parents are farmers, and I'm the first member of my family to travel overseas. Anyway, the ship wouldn't have made so many great voyages without its 'garbage guy'!" he said.

This is Chen's third deployment on the Peace Ark since he joined the navy in 2008. This year, the hospital ship is visiting eight countries to provide the locals with free medical treatment.

Down in the 'dungeon'

In addition to the medical staff, the Peace Ark also has a crew of 123 sailors who maintain and run the ship.

The environment in which they work is tough and sometimes dangerous. Their lives are all about taking orders and doing the same jobs over and over again. They don't get the glamorous moments such as giving orders and making big decisions, according to Shen Hao, a rear admiral and commander of the 2013 Peace Ark mission. But, he added, their work is invaluable because it keeps everything running smoothly.

"I was a sailor and I worked in the engine room - the bottom of the ship and the toughest place to be - for more than a year when I first joined the navy," said Shen. "I know how hard the men and women have been working. Without them, the Peace Ark wouldn't be able to provide humanitarian services around the world."

In the engine room, seven marine engineers were changing a leaking pipe. Although the air conditioners never stopped pumping out cool air, the temperature was close to 50 C. The floor was vibrating and the deafening roar of the engines was intolerable and made my eardrums ache.

"Hand me the screwdriver!" one sailor yelled in another's ear. The sweat was streaming down his face and neck.

"What?" the other yelled back.

"The screwdriver!" the sailor yelled again, pointing at the tool.

"The engine room is a dungeon full of dangerous machinery, noise and heat," said Jiang Jingmeng, the ship's political commissar and a former engine room man himself. "But it's the heart of the ship, and taking care of the heart is one of the most important jobs around here."

According to Jiang, duty engineers and crew are present in the engine room 24 hours a day. They conduct inspections every hour to detect leaks, the sources of any unusual noises and other faults, some of which may not be detected by alarms and monitors.

"Seeing the world is just a small part of their (the sailors') deployment," said Jiang. "There are no portholes down in the engine room. They can't even see outside."

'Cooking on an ice rink'

The ship's kitchen is another center of heat and noise. If you ever want to witness a dictionary-perfect definition of controlled chaos, peek into a ship's galley right in the runup to dinnertime.

I watched in awe as 15 sailor-chefs, prepared and cooked food in the stainless-steel kitchen. It was 11 days since the ship had sailed into the Gulf of Aden, and one seaman sat in the galley peeling the outer leaves of a pile of cabbages so high it dwarfed him.

Li Penghui, one of 15 galley assistants, at work aboard the Peace Ark. Zhang Hao / for China Daily

Most vegetables lose their freshness after a few days aboard and so the ship usually docks at a port every seven to nine days, but in the Gulf of Aden the ship stayed in deep water for 26 days, without recourse to fresh supplies the cooks had to serve the old vegetables for a while longer.

Another sailor was busily chopping potatoes and tossing them into a pot as big as a bathtub. The other cooks bustled around the stoves and sinks, scrambling and washing.

The noise from the ship's screw, situated next to the kitchen, was tremendous, the meat was sizzling in the pans and everyone was yelling.

"We don't have time to talk nicely, we have 400 mouths to feed," said Zhang Hong, one of the cooks, grabbing a handrail fitted to the stove to keep his balance. The floor was covered by a thin film of oily water, and simply standing up was an ordeal in itself. "It's like cooking on an ice rink, especially when the ship is rolling hard in a storm," he said. "At first it's difficult to stand up, but once you get used to it you just slide around."

After the food, which included rice, fried cabbage, stewed pork and fish, has been ladled into numerous stainless steel pots, hundreds of hungry crewmembers lined up with their trays, ready to scoop up their rations.

Li Penghui, one of the 15 sailors who work in the kitchen, was standing at the end of the counter, waiting to recycle and wash the trays. "We have 400 trays per meal, so that's 1,200 every day," said the 23-year-old. Although he was wearing gloves, his hands were raw from a combination of long periods immersed in hot water and the effects of the detergent.

"Actually I volunteered to do the dish washing," he said. "If I hadn't, someone else would have volunteered instead."

During the cruise, the navy gave Li the title "model sailor", in recognition of his hard work.

Keeping up appearances

For the sailors, cleaning is part an essential of the daily routine. "If you haven't swabbed a toilet, you haven't really been in the navy," said navigator Zhi Dongliang. In addition to his three-hour work shift, Zhi is also required to clean the deck around the pilothouse and take his turn swabbing the toilet in the cabin he shares with 17 other sailors.

"The cleaning detail isn't too bad, really. You can watch the waves and get some fresh air on deck, as long as the weather isn't too bad," he said, kneeling down to scrub a tough stain.

Everything on the ship has to be clean. The hull is constantly painted to ensure it keeps its pristine, white appearance, and every copper faucet is polished and shines like gold, especially when the ship arrives at host countries, he said.

"Our ship represents China," said Cui Xiaojun, one of 12 female soldiers on board, who was brushing a fire hose with a paint brush. "Everything has to be perfect," she said.

According to Guo Hongxia, the lead officer of Peace Ark's 12 female sailors, although this is the ship's first deployment with female crewmembers, the women, whose ages range from 19 to 26, are just as capable as the men.

"They are very well trained," she said. "They are able to do all kinds of work, including operating the navigation systems and the radar."

However, Guo said she was concerned about the women occasionally, because some of them had acute seasickness at the beginning of the cruise.

"I felt so sick that I vomited every day. Sometimes I couldn't even wait to get to the bath room and was sick in the gangway," said a female sailor, Wang Huizi. "My family might ask why I am working in such a tough place and suffering so much, but I know what I'm doing. I'm fulfilling my dream of joining the navy and living a life of adventure."

Contact the writer at pengyining@chinadaily.com.cn

Ju Zhenhua contributed to this story

Sailors swab the deck as part of their daily routine onboard Peace Ark. Zhang Hao / for China Daily

Members of the crew in the Peace Ark's pilot house. Zhang Hao / for China Daily

(China Daily USA 09/09/2013 page7)