Russia

Dinah Washington started to sing at five am, I reached for my phone to hit snooze and lifted my head from the pillow half an hour later to feed and get out of the house. The sun burns bright after the early haze, hung low so all I can see is tarmac. white sky, and '50' signs on the M1. I don't have my sunglasses - I'm going to Moscow.

This is my second trip to Russia - last November we went to scope out the routes, meet the teams and see the workshop the test would be based from - and this morning I feel excited to make progress, content with the set-up and happy to see the guys again. I think about breakfast at Heathrow, relaxing and writing at our stop off at Chopin airport in Warsaw, feeling the cold on arrival and finding the sauna in the hotel. Who knew Fred Chopin was Polish? First arrival on the previous trip felt like a good opportunity to listen to the only compositions of his I know - the Preludes - and the ninth is probably my favourite.

My ride this morning is a Renault Kadjar. It's like an inflated Captur, which is an inflated Clio. The Clio and the Captur share the Renault/Nissan B-Platform; the Kadjar sits on the Renault/Nissan Common Module Family that also underpins the Qashqai. I hadn't realised this commonality until now and, recognising the massive sales figures that the Qashqai achieves, I'm surprised at the lack of styling distinction Renault have managed here. It's only just recognisable as a crossover, appearing sloopy and low slung, easily mistakable for a Captur at a short distance. Sat inside, the driving position fits my ergonomics nicely, stuff felt well laid out, and there is plenty of passenger and luggage space, but again you're sat quite low and the only tell tale of differentiation from a passenger car are the outboard bonnet humps sweeping from the A-posts forming an odd, scooped out view. This one has the 1.4TD (110PS, 250Nm) with a six speed manual; it doesn't lumber low down, picking up revs quickly off the line, and it feels as comfortable as one can expect from any decent new car at motorway speeds. I like it. The same praise can't be granted to the Juke I had on the way home - more later.

As I hit the A43 going west towards the M40, I get all emotional over some dramatic classical music and yield to some nostalgia, thinking back to mine and my friend Tucker's first passes of this road, opened just as he'd got his place at Loughborough university. Driving up from Shiplake that first time we missed it, because the paper maps we had were out of date - no nav server here - but after seeing it running parallel to us on the B road above on the way up, we found it heading back home. We subsequently used it so much we'd memorise the speed camera locations (one up, two down) and, on later nights, race between the roundabouts like true teenage buffoons. One winter weekend we were due to head up when it snowed heavily and I couldn't get my front wheel drive Rover 218 over the crest of the road by Tucker's home, but somehow we managed it in his rear drive V6 Omega. Foolishly we continued, running eventually in icy ruts in the outside lane of the M1 as the air cooled the further north we got. I remember arriving around three am, finding the twenty four hour Tescos to buy trash food from and do doughnuts in the carpark, filming all the while on a huge VCR camera that Tucker had. That was 2003 or 2004 - I think the coldest winter we had until 2010/2011 when we had record cold temperature in December (remembered for when a group of friends and I tied a Golf seat on skis to the back of a Land Rover and sledged round the local lanes). We've not had cold like that since, and when I search the net I find that our really hard winters have all been recorded long ago - something to ask Grandpa about. 

It's the same story for the snow in Russia. When we were there in November the temperatures hovered just above freezing and any snowfall up to then had been sparse. The guys said they've seen it get later every year, remembering in their teens that the lakes froze at this time, the snow had covered the forests, fields and filled the gaps between roads and pathways, none of which would resurface until March. This time, when we arrived, the deep-below-zero temperatures had hit and since passed, the air staying cool enough to leave all those frozen features undisturbed. The lakes are a wonder to see - some of them as big as several football pitches - all of them littered with people; some huddled around drilled holes with fishing rods; some setting up tents to use as windbreaks to prepare their kit; some gliding across the surface on skis. 

The Roads

The cars get battered out here, and it's no real surprise when you see the variation in the quality of the surfaces, and how quickly you can find yourself on a track when your route was otherwise seemingly well paved. Perhaps partly because of the vastness of the country and the hence sprawling network of commercial centres, suburban areas and swathes of rural land, five lane highways can turn into broken concrete and then to dirt and stone trails all within tens of metres, often traversed in much less time than it takes to reconsider whether it's a good idea to take your car down it. Some of the tracks have islands of tarmac or concrete, signs of the battle between civilisation and the elements - the guys showed us examples of roads that had been laid as recently as a year before that were already one third crumbled and cracked - it's staggering how quickly stuff gets eaten up by the effects of the temperature cycles and ranges. Critically, down these tracks, alongside ramshackle corrugated steel and asbestos garages and similarly constructed small dwellings, one often finds large, new, expensive homes occupied by wealthy people driving cars and SUVs that suit their lifestyles - meaning that it's not just already-rattly Ladas that commute these car busters. There were many occasions where I considered how much I'd cringe having to take my Hilux over the terrain, let alone a five figure luxury motor, but they do it, sometimes every day.

The Driving

The traffic in Moscow's centre and the three ring roads is unsurprisingly thick. During the middle of the day all but the smallest of city centre routes flow as well as London, but the mornings and afternoons through to after ten pm are guaranteed stop/start, with an emphasis on the former. One evening we went for dinner by the marina which is well north of the city centre, between the second and third ring roads. It took us one hour to do fifteen kilometres on the Leningradskoye highway. 

The lane discipline is not strict, with plenty of undertaking and most people making the most of any small opportunity to make progress, but the respect and level of patience displayed is pretty impressive and quite surprising. I saw a fair smattering of bruises and gashes on mostly cheaper cars - plenty of duct tape repairs too - so they must enjoy a bit of touch traffic, but we only witnessed the aftermath of a single big accident on the second trip. All the guys we rode with, including Mikhail - the new, young engineer, drove well - smoothly and observantly. I got to pilot the last portion of one of the tracks and then some dual carriageway until we reached a fuel station - while I was content, I couldn't match the racing lines achieved on the same roads by the airport shuttle bus driver. 

Putin

Putin's face appeared in most of the places I saw and went to. Businesses have posters with him on, homes display shrines with him at the centre, gift shops are plastered with goods adorned with his mug, yes - mugs included. My favourites are the T-shirts with him wrestling a bear or looking ice cool in his mavs, and the Russian dolls with him as the daddy, sometimes with Borris Yeltsin enclosed within, Mikhail Gorbachev - with his trademark port-stain forehead mark - inside him. Let us enjoy the ironic combination of fantastic portrayal, seemingly undeniable corruption and bad economic management, coupled with widespread and apparently undying national support. How much of it is indoctrinated? How much alternative thought is stifled by isolation? I understand Russians to be some of the most prevalent users of social media and their internet is not bound and gagged like it is in China - they are free to roam. Private owned national media must be vetted by state, many channels are run by the state-owned All-Russia Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, and polls are probably biased or bullshit, but even acknowledging that it seems there is something unusual about the way these people regard this man.

Since I got back pro-opposition demonstrators rallied in cities across the country on the anniversary of  Boris Nemtsov's murder, apparently in their thousands in Moscow - so there is support for the liberal party - but only enough to muster less than 10% of the vote. They are proud and patriotic, but surely that should invoke a sense of injustice that their government has got it wrong, irrelevant of whether or not they're shifty. The economy has only shrunk since its precipice-fall in late 2014 - then primarily as a result of the oil price tumbling, but also coinciding with the introduction of international sanctions after Putin popped in to Ukraine for a spot of tea and some territory. I saw a great quote from a BBC report, from a lady demonstrating against the Kremlin's economic policy - when asked about the objectiveness of state run television, she replied "Well, it's all right for us to criticise our government, but if we complain to you about our government, that's not patriotic."

Coming Home
Seamless flights, massive burger at Chopin, swift luggage collection, and a nice man at the Hertz desk. We had a Nissan Juke for the route home up the motorway, a 1.6 N/A (94PS, 140Nm). It was slow. It has a variable diameter drive pulley Constant Velocity Transmission (CVT) that Nissan claim provides 'seamless acceleration from an earlier stage', and will 'avoid the shift-shock and deliver smooth driving, making it an exceptional transmission solution'. What we found is that there is, indeed, no shift shock, but there is also very little moderation of the throttle. This leads to two definable states: At low throttle the engine is so limp, revs reluctant to raise, that as soon as an opportunity to increase speed approaches you have to boot it - at which point the left needle spikes immediately round to 6000 rpm, the engine squawk beats its way through the bulkhead, transmission drone hums from the middle, and the driver gets a sensation of clutch slip as the drive pulley gradually enlarges toward its final drive. On the motorway the transition between calm catatonia and harassing try-hard felt step-like - it was easy to find the throttle threshold and then switch all the noise on and off, but nothing much ever happened. I reckon the transmission would work better in places with less speed variation than a busy motorway and the feeble torque of the 1.6 would be better hidden, though I'd struggle to get enthusiastic about CVTs now. Merecedes put them in the A and B classes not so long ago (and bigger stuff before that I thought but can't recall or find) and a quick trawl of the net says they're rubbish too, especially with smaller displacement engines.

Apart from the overriding impression of the powertrain, the chassis was too stiff for the speed it can maintain, the boot was unsurprisingly tiny (two cases fit but one had to go on its side), rear seat space was only adequate for children, and the infotainment - including navigation - was functional but unintuitive with poorly structured menus. On the plus side - the dash was nice and you get a raised view of all the cheaper, more practical and less ostentatious hatchbacks and crossovers passing by. The Range Rover Evoque actually seems like a good car after having driven a Juke. I guess the Qashqai is a bit more straightforward and I'd like to drive one.

Get the clichés out of the way - an essential item for stores.







The Moscow tube network is exceptionally beautiful and, once you start to recognise words as symbols, quite easy to navigate.

Russian cuisine. The dome was halfway between bread and batter, like a hefty Yorkshire pudding, encasing the pot of beef stew. We had loads of really good salads that would be familiar in Bavaria - lots of pickles, small chopped root veg, meat in aspic - some good Borscht (central and eastern European beetrooty soup), and the inevitable; stroganoff. There were schnitzels, carpaccios, fish and steaks. There are large cattle farms further east of Moscow, but apparently the good quality stuff is almost exclusively imported - Argentina, New Zealand and the UK. 

Here's what I found while searching for a plug socket. We stayed at a different hotel second time around.

I fell over.

The snow falls, gets compacted, melts, freezes and over again - so even relatively flat roads can become riddled with ruts and potholes. This particular one had been selected as part of a route two weeks previously when it was considerably less severe, but our progress along it was so slow and trepidatious that we subsequently removed it from the schedule. There are no restrictions or standards imposed on the substances used by the district and city councils to treat icy roads, so all manner of horrible stuff can be found, and it might be different in every region you go to. For this reason, amongst many others, car makers can find it difficult to research and apply corrosion-preventative coatings that match the environment - particularly for chrome parts. 

Moscow isn't short of examples of financial vulgarity - isn't this just horrible?

David's BRAT

My friend, David, is selling his Subaru BRAT - Bi-drive Recreational All-terrain Transporter. He's spent the best part of a year rebuilding it and getting everything running properly. It's cool.

They were the subject of numerous lawsuits in the 'States because the market-specific seats in the load space (open to the air, atmosphere, and hard, sharp things to die against) were so dangerous in accidents, leaving many litigation orientated Americans to ponder how Subaru justified such a design. Well, one of those trials found there to be a saving of >20% tax for Subaru if they could call it a passenger car by the addition of carpet and the 'Jumpseats', instead of paying to sell it as a commercial vehicle. 

It would be great, wouldn't it; riding in the back on a sunny day, perhaps on a ranch in California, as per Ronald Regan in the eighties (I understand he was a big fan). The only other one I've known was owned by a guy called Jim we knew back home, he lived on a farm and it was the perfect workhorse come sideways learning carriage.

eBay link here

The Beautiful Brecons

I finished work on Wednesday, got home and cooked pasta, then drove to Wales to spend the night in my truck at the foot of the Brecon Beacons. I went to sleep under a bright moon with only the sounds of a flowing stream and an owl, I woke to a still-clear sky and minus five on the temperature gauge. Getting dressed in a sleeping bag is possible. Soundtrack: Michael Nyman playing piano.

That's Corn Du, looking from the West atop Craig Gwaun Taf. It's the first of the six main peaks, all joined by saddled ridgeways so you never drop below six hundred metres. I had a black pudding scotch egg coming down Craig y Fan and then stopped for a tin of rice pudding at Fan y Big, both were great. Billy Holiday followed by Bill Whitmore on my headphones. 

The trade off for this trip was inevitable - the M42 was horrible both ways and on the way home I spent ninety minutes diverting through Ross on Wye after someone crashed on the A40. People.

Real Country

Today, I am in London, and have just seen three tubes pass unboarded at Euston, overspilling with actual people. A great man once said 'Go to London! I guarantee you'll either be mugged or not appreciated'. I've not yet seen signs for Shattered Dreams Parkway. Tonight, I'm meeting my friend and we're driving to the Peak District to stay in a climbing hut and go walking tomorrow. 

There's a gorgeous singer called ALA.NI who sounds like an-almost-modern-day Billie Holiday whose music someone introduced me to last summer. She wrote a little poem:

My Love for you was sprung in Spring

And flourished in the Summer sun

Autumn killed the fresh green leaves

And by Winter all was said and done

These photos are of places near me; from fitting new glass to the cottage in Spring; working at the unit on the farm in Summer; finding bread flour (and an old Land Rover) at the local mill in Autumn; and strolling the village in Winter before coming home to light the fire. This is a year in the Country. 

The Mill opposite my house hasn't turned a sail for over a hundred years, but still stands tall in the village. I think it's really cool and I hope to capture something like this properly once I find a way to stick the camera out the window whilst keeping it steady.

Fan of Tarmac

This is on the A68, somewhere North West of Darlington, before the road crosses the A69 between Newcastle and Carlisle. I heard some guys on the TV ask each other, sarcastically, what their favourite A-road is. Naturally, being a Sunday Driver and a fan of Partridge, this got me thinking, especially as they came up with some lacklustre contenders, A303 the relative highlight. The A68 - especially the cross-border stretch beyond the A69 toward Jedburgh - is in my top three.

My vote goes to it for stretching vistas of forest, fields and oft heavy skies; long straights reminiscent of and overlaid onto the old Roman Dere Street that ran from York into Scotland; short, tight bends that arrive in the dark with little or no forewarning, all of them unique in their camber, peaks and troughs, mixed tarmac and occasional horror. Scotland symbolises adventure and isolation for me, this route in does it's bit to maintain the romantic notion.

The car is a new Jag XF - 3.0 V6 with many bells and whistles adorning it's aluminium chassis, multi-link suspension and techy bits inside and out. The car drives good. In my limited experience I have found that the bones underpinning this, the baby XE, and the new F-Pace x-over, is the best tuned chassis of any road focussed car I've driven. The multi-link set up on the rear is well technically documented, and that technology lends itself to words like supple, slinky, poised and confident. On balance, some of my colleagues disagree with the damping strategy striving to compete on-level with the Germans, instead of pursuing a more floaty ride - that mostly now resigned to memories of the same famous British brands 20 years ago. It's definitely not Audi-harsh and besides, I once drove a Bentley Mulsanne Turbo which rode like that but turned it's wheels and propelled it's mass like a rocket ship. It scared the shit out of me, trying to wrestle what felt like an old war ship round an island at the top of the Scotswood road once I'd already reached an inappropriate speed. Perhaps don't form any opinions on vehicle ride around my childish lust for pressing the loud pedal just now.

 These last three pictures were taken with my 20mm prime lens - f2.8, ISO100 with exposure between 8 and 20 seconds. I took multilayer shots but couldn't match the starry sky with unbleached headlamps - and looking now I reckon I could have if I'd decreased the aperture. Every day is a school day.

This is another go at a composite picture, this time with originals taken at different points. The lens is a 50mm Canon f1.4. 

China

Our first city was Lijiang in the South West. The guys wanted me to fly into Shanghai so I could spend a day giving them some classroom training before we transported the car and flew the 6 hours down to Lijiang. I argued it was a poor use of our time together, especially as I'd be screwed after the first flight anyway. My flight to Beijing, actually, was great fun - it would take me a while for the novelty of business class to wear off; the free drinks (that none of the Chinese on board enjoyed); the food; service; and most importantly the reclining seat that allowed me a few hours of proper sleep. When my second flight was half an hour from landing the hostess came through and told me in broken English that we were going to land in Guiyang - Guiyang that is maybe the equivalent distance from Lijiang as Plymouth is from London! All of a sudden my certainty that meeting en route was the most efficient plan felt at risk! We sat on the tarmac at Guiyang for an hour and then took off again. The guys later told me that there'd not been a drop of rain in Lijiang and certainly no storms, so I've got no idea what bullshit they were spouting about not being able to land due to weather. I messaged Griffin (Xuan, but we'll stick with his English name robbed from World of Warcraft that he likes to play. I've still not fully understood why they feel the need to use English names.) to tell him to go get food and that I'd taxi it back. As it turned out, they waited and waited and were there at arrivals holding a sign with my name. We made it back to the hotel by 0100, about 26 hours after I'd left Granary Cottage on Tuesday. I did actually sleep, helped by the imbibing of free crappy Bordeaux on the second flight.

Noodles for breakfast, no coffee, lots of tea. They do at least love eggs and I found blood sausage, thinly sliced, maybe deep fried, served cold - it's not Bury's finest, but it was great to know they like it too. My brother had mentioned about one of his students telling him about a blood cake they get back home in... Thailand, Chris? We would stay at this hotel and do three return runs to XiangGeLiLa (Shangri-La) over the next few days. 

Roads were mixed, mostly good tarmac, mostly shit driving. It's taken me until today to realise some frustration at not being able to drive, and at the digital throttle, braking and steering inputs that these boys are so good at. Why have one braking event when you can have six? Think of the Churchill dog with my disapproving face on. I don't know if it's the ride of the car, height of the seat or what, but I'm writing this while on the move, as I have done with some work the last few days, and I've not felt sick yet. Not driving also means I can get as drunk as I like, and take naps once I've provided some wisdom on what the car's doing and what issues we need to investigate. The sleep's been even more necessary since I got strep throat two days ago - a throat infection that makes it incredibly painful to swallow. My neck on the left side appears to have half a tennis ball stuck inside it. Luckily for me, but not so for man kind's continued protection from virus and infection, antibiotics are available over the counter here - I bought a pack of Amoxycillin for about £1.50 this morning! 

That first day on the road was fun, and the food at our first XiangGeLiLa restaurant was incredible! The ribs were probably my favourite but I loved all of it. The way it works in most places is that you go in, stand in front of the fridge (sometimes refrigerated as well!) for a few minutes to decide what you fancy, pick some meat (all the usual plus the occasional frog, no dog yet) and vegetables, and go take your seat. I am going to buy a steamer and spend some time learning how to cook rice properly, I still don't think I get it right every time and, unsurprisingly, they do.

We took a wrong turn on the way back, instructed by the shatnav and taken blindly, and before you knew it we'd done 15kms of dirt road / stone track and had another 15kms ahead of us. Because it was proper back country and there weren't any police or many people at all around, I got to take the wheel for a few kilometres. That was great, until we got a puncture in the right hand rear tyre. We fitted our space saver to get us to the next town, all hoping desperately that we didn't pick up any more shards of scrap metal or screws or sharp stones before we got there! We made it, and in the photos you can see some of the tools the guy used to repair the tyre - namely a grinder, a big metal hitty thing, and a small pot of superglue sat next to the mounting machine. We must have done 2000kms since so he did a good job. I've had repairs done on my Hilux's offroad tyres using pull through plugs before (actually just bought a kit for us at the workshop too) but not everywhere does it and certainly not on road / lowish profile tyres like these. But then we wouldn't have to drive 1000kms to find a new tyre in the UK! I'll let you know / you'll hear about it if we have a blow out at high speed.

More good food and bad driving, lots of document preparation, approval of reporting they've done so far, and talking Griffin through how to prepare, inspect and report stuff on the car. It's a strange contradiction on these trips that where I'd usually be doing 'normal' work, I get to sit in [generally] cool cars all day, see some great scenery and eat good food, but then the end of the day comes and we've still got half the day's work on the laptop to complete in the few hours available around dinner and showering. I love it, even without coffee. 

Griffin, Fei and I have worked well together and I hope they are learning a lot about testing cars, maybe as much as I'm trying to learn about their culture, food, people and geography, all within the limitations of our language. I don't know how the contracts are set up, but I try and always consider that these guys might one day be able to split from the company I work with, and for that reason as well as developing a self-start attitude I'm trying to give them the proverbial fishing rod, as opposed the fish. While they are proud of what they do, technical and by and large professional, I see very little fire in their eyes. Griffin clearly doesn't feel that confident driving in any situation, and his real passion is for movies and computer games. The government strongly encourages and rewards scrappage of cars that are ten years old, and that must contribute to people only using dealerships, not working on their own cars, not owning classics. What can you do if they're not petrol heads? Formal process only takes you so far, maybe experience and time will help to bridge the gap.

We got to go into the ancient city of Lijiang on Saturday night - Griffin took us out of the main city into what looked at first like a building site, then turned into steep stone steps winding through old trees. Breathless, we hit the top, and started heading down the other side - you couldn't see much but could hear the music and smell the food. I power drank whisky and cocktails while those guys had one and then topped up with water and ice. After they left I started talking to a barmaid called Cha Lei, who was studying in the North but back for the summer. It was all very innocent, if that's what you can call her giving me a solo performance of Taylor Swift's 'Romeo and Juliet' on the guitar - totally surreal and incredibly sweet. I didn't know the words.

Facts and Stuff

• Crockery in restaurants is to be washed once put on the table. Take the pot of tea and poor a little into your rice/food bowl and your tea cup, swill with the kwhy za (chopsticks) and empty into a spare bowl / the street / sink or whatever's available 
• A pot of tea is always served 
• Fish and meat bones go on the table, make your own little pile 
• Khwy za are NOT to be stuck into rice when not eating - this is a symbol of funerals where they'll do the same or maybe even use a cigarette to symbolise the burning out 
• Generally it's mouthfuls from each serving plate, and fill your bowl with rice - it makes me laugh that they're so against licking fingers but it's fine for my chopsticks to go into my mouth and then back onto the plate we're all eating from, or even that in some places you serve the rice for yourself from a food 'bin' which is probably full of forearm hair and dead skin 
• Don't tip - it may bring shame to accept over what you have asked - this is good, and the food is always cheap anyway by our standards. I just had lunch at a 'service station' (think old school hall canteen badly redecorated with ancient fridge in the corner) - the food (fish soup, pork and qin tai (celery) stirfry, cabbage) was delicious and fresh and filling and it came to about 90 Yuan total, i.e £3 each. 
• Dog is still eaten but not as often in the developed parts of the country. Apparently cat is not very nice at all. When I asked about the dog eating festival the guys entirely nonchalantly asked if we did not eat dog in the UK. Only at Christmas. 
• Guangdong province is where they eat all the weird shit. Like 'Three tzs' - a mouse or rat meal so called because the mouse goes 'tzs' (maybe supposed to be a squeak) as it drops (live) into boiling oil, then again as you pull it out, and one final time as you bite down into it. Anyone? No? Maybe you'd like to try monkey brains? It is not so common now but still goes on in some places - that they crown the monkey while still alive and strapped to a chair, add a little chilli and vinegar, and tuck in. Unimaginable horror and pain and noise. I heard on the radio recently that many people here believe that the more fear an animal feels when it dies the tastier it is, and the more testosterone a man can get from it. Could easily be true (that they believe it, not the other bit). 
• The great firewall of China has made working and communicating really difficult - lots of my life is organised around or with Google stuff - and Google is BANNED. VPN to the rescue on my work laptop, but it's slow. 
• Chinese music is utter balls and although Griffin is proud of downloading FLAC files which are huge due to their quality, the production seems consistently just as balls as the melody. All reaffirming my belief that England, the UK, is the best country in the world. I'm certainly respectful and must continue to learn as much as I can, but I sure am proud of, and grateful for, where we come from. I've been listening to Fleetwood (mainly Mr Wonderful and Kiln House), Amy Winehouse, Rag n Bone Man (blues singer and guitarist from Brighton), Leon Bridges (soul dude from Texas with a wonderful band) and all sorts of other brilliant music. 

We're en route from Kunming to Base today, before another one night stop off tomorrow on our way to the island province of Hainan. The scenery has all been dramatic and big, but battered and torn and ripped by machinery and relentless building - near Lijiang there was hardly a hill or mountain that didn't have a quarry dug out the side of it, waste ground material piled across the surrounding landscape and horribly ugly blocks of flats and schools rising up in place of them. It is getting much less scarred as we go further South West, more green and natural, the mountains thinner and pointier like those of South East Asia - and I guess that makes sense as I've just seen that right now we're about 50kms from the border of Vietnam! Drop me off, fellas?

I think it might get even more beautiful as we approach Hainan, but there lies another horrendous Chinese contradiction - it's most beautiful major island is also home to an underground nuclear submarine base, which is due to be expanded to accommodate aircraft carriers. 14 years ago it was the site of an air collision - where a US plane was flying past the island at a fair distance, but close enough for two Chinese fighters to be despatched to intimidate them. One of the Chinese pilots was apparently infamous for perilously close fly-bys, once enabling a US airman to photograph a scrap of paper with the Chinese pilots email address on it, text visible. This time he fucked up - he caught the nose of the US plane and crushed his cockpit. Read the article on the news or Wikipedia for the crash landing that the US guys had to make as, even allowing for a little good ol' American sensationalism, it makes your hairs stand on end to think he got it down OK. Maybe you remember the incident anyway? George dubya's first foray into foreign diplomacy.