After our Saturday trip to Cuandixia we got up early on Sunday (out the door by 7) on our way to the National Aviation Museum. This is a former air force base about 30 miles north of downtown Beijing. This is what necessitated our early departure. We walked the kilometer to the bus stop just in time to watch the good bus pull away and waited for the slow bus to take us to Wu-mart and our breakfast date at McDonalds. Then hopped onto the express bus to the subway station. Made two subway transfers onto another bus and in a short three hours we'd gotten breakfast and we walking the kilometer from the bus stop to the museum.
A line of F-6 and variants greeted us as we walked towards the former hanger that is buried in a mountain and now serves as a museum.
 |
| F-6 (China's first 'homemade' supersonic aircraft) |
 |
| This a model of the plane designed by Chinese national Feng Ru 馮如 who was living in California when he raised some money and designed his own plane kickstarting the Chinese dive into aviation. |
Unfortunately the museum was too dark for many good pictures, but it was a great exhibit containing planes that chronicled the history of aviation in China and included a plane used to scatter Zhou Enlai's ashes. Not sure why I found that so interesting. They also had a huge exhibit on engines which Julie just didn't enjoy as much as I did, weird?
 |
| Here is the exit from the museum. |
 |
| Walking away from the museum was this line of aircraft. |
 |
| Which led to this line of planes. |
 |
| All told there were well over 300 aircraft strewn around the grounds and this one was one of my favorite. |
 |
| Chairman Mao's plane. |
 |
| What is he so happy about? |
 |
| Yeah, I'm not sure either. |
No comments:
Post a Comment