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SHEHONG, Sichuan province — Fans of war movies and TV series featuring tanks and planes might be surprised to discover that many of the machines are made by a one-time farmer and high-school dropout from Sichuan province.
Since 2007, Wu Zhiyong of Sichuan’s Shehong county has been making replica s of tanks, helicopters, planes and other military props for China’s growing film and TV industry.
“I was a poor student but I was good at innovation,” Wu, who is in his early 40s, told China Daily.
After dropping out of middle school in 1985 and working on a farm for half a year in his home village, Wu became a carpenter’s apprentice.
His skills soon proved superior to those of his fellow apprentices, so his master advised him to join the army, believing it would broaden the young man’s horizons.
After serving in the military for three and a half years, Wu retired in 1989 and found work at a model workshop in the provincial capital of Chengdu, which is a major base for China’s research, design and production of fighter planes.
Although Wu’s father was a senior worker at the plant, it was his father’s master, Chen Yingming, who took the young man under his wing.
“I liked him very much because he was hardworking and innovative, and I put him in charge of several people making model airplanes,” said Chen, 87, a leading expert on aviation history and the manufacture of model planes.
Wu started a small model plant in 1996, but his hand made airplanes did not sell well and he often had difficulty paying his cell phone bill.
His luck changed unexpectedly in early 2003 when the Beijing-based China Aviation Museum asked him to make a life-size replica of the world’s first airplane, made by the Wright brothers. It was to be put on display at an international aviation exhibition in Beijing to commemorate the centenary of flight. The museum promised to pay him 600,000 yuan ($88,000).
Wu finished the blueprint for the replica in one month and recruited 50 fellow villagers to work on it. Four weeks later, the replica was complete.
At the exhibition, which drew nearly 160 plane manufacturers from 21 countries and regions, Wu found his replica in the most conspicuous part of the exhibition hall — and he has never lacked orders for model airplanes.
Wu’s life took another turn when Kang Honglei, director of the TV series My Chief and My Regiment, contacted him in early 2007.
To prepare for his TV series about battles between the Chinese and Japanese armies near the Sino-Burmese border during World War II, Kang asked Wu to make a life-size Type 95 Light Tank used by the Japanese army and one life-size Sherman Tank used by the United States — and he wanted the tanks to actually move.
As Wu had only made motionless airplane replicas for museums and exhibition halls, everyone in his family oppsoed the idea of trying to make moveable tanks.
Making model tanks look the same as genuine ones was easy, but Wu worried about how to make the models moveable. After several experiments, he managed to use tractor engines to power the replicas.
“A military expert from Beijing thought it was both unbelievable and a lot of fun to see the tanks move with simple tractor engines, ” Wu said.
A mild and good-tempered man, Wu said he derives great pleasure from solving technical problems, even if it means a few sleepless nights.
“I’d jump to my feet whenever I found a solution,” he said.
After the TV series, Wu made tank replicas for City of Life and Death, which depicts wartime atrocities by Japanese forces occupying the former Chinese capital of Nanjing, as well as for other blockbusters in the film and TV industry.
Last July, Wu expanded his plant, the Yingming Model Development Company Ltd, named after his father’s master Chen Yingming, to 8.7 hectares, more than 20 times its original size.
Other than making replicas, the plant will display plane and tank models as well as military equipment from different eras of Chinese history, to both entertain the general public and teach them about national defense, he said.
The ongoing production of war films might guarantee Wu a market for his models, but he has his sights set beyond the country’s borders.
“My goal is to introduce special stage props to the international market and I hope the products can be brought to Hollywood,” he said.
