Farmer grows collection of aircraft and parts
Print Edition
The collections of most aviation enthusiasts are usually limited to model planes or scaled down replicas, but not Zhang Changsheng’s.
More than 20 of his airplanes are currently grounded on a field dotted with weeds in suburban Yanshan County in north China’s Hebei Province.
The aircraft include a CJ-6 and a FT-6, trainers made by China during the 1960s and 1970s, and an MiG-15 jet fighter from the Soviet Union.
These aircraft are treasures to Zhang, a 61-year-old former farmer from a nearby village, who has been working on his plane collection for more than 30 years.
“I first heard the word ‘airplane’ when I was a teenager. An old lady living next door told me how she was rescued by a Soviet plane during a flood back then. She described it in detail,” said Zhang who was intrigued and wanted to become a pilot.
In the 1980s, Zhang worked in an aviation repair plant in northeast China’s coastal city of Dalian. He dismantled scrapped and decommissioned military and training aircraft.
It was during this time that Zhang became familiar with various types of aircraft and their components.
According to factory regulations, parts of the dismantled planes were to be incinerated, but Zhang couldn’t bear to destroy them. “It was a waste to burn those obsolete parts. I wanted to collect them and learn the structures and functions of planes,” he said.
The factory gave Zhang permission to collect some of the parts instead of tossing them in the incinerator, as long as he paid for some of them.
“Instruments, navigation lights, engines,” he recalled. “I would collect anything related to an airplane.”
Over the past three decades, Zhang’s collection has grown to more than 500,000 items, which fill every room in his house and spill out into his courtyard.
He points out a gyroscope used for stability and navigation, manufactured by China during the 1950s and 1960s, one of the earliest manufactured.
He rummages through parts and holds up a flight data recorder, or “black box.”
Zhang’s airplane collection really took off in the 1990s. After leaving his job at the aviation repair factory, he started his own business, selling airport snow blowers that he had modified.
His frequent business dealings with repair shops and aviation schools inspired him to start his own private collection of planes.
In 1995, Zhang bought his first aircraft, a trainer from an aviation school. He paid 6,000 yuan (US$980), a large sum for a farmer at that time.
His family was not pleased.
Zhang said that as a farmer, he made purchases using profits from his large cotton crops, as well as money borrowed from friends.
“Of course, my family wasn’t happy that I was spending the money on my collection while they were toiling in the fields,” he said.
Though he has made some connections with industry insiders who can give him tips and information on his collection, his hobby is difficult to maintain.
He scours the country for “treasures,” and even though his acquisitions have cost more than he can calculate, he lives an otherwise frugal life.
“I am just an ordinary man. When I am on my way to find something to collect, I am more like a tramp,” Zhang said. “I can’t rest for days, and I grab simple food like a steamed bun to fill my stomach.”
In 2008, with the help of the local government, Zhang opened his aviation museum in Yanshan County, the first aviation museum run by a farmer. It includes the field where aircraft are parked and his home.
“There are more than 400,000 people in my county, and most of them have few chances to get a close look at a plane, let alone understand how it can fly,” he said. In Western countries, though, virtually all young people have access to information about aviation, he noted.
Zhang frequently gives museum tours and has given lectures at more than 20 schools and universities.
In recent years, Zhang donated 11 aircraft and scores of parts to universities and museums across China, to promote education and research.
In 2012, he donated one aircraft to a national defense education center in Xibaipo Township in the provincial capital of Shijiazhuang. One was donated to a primary school in Hebei’s Cangzhou City and two went to a university in Qingdao in east China’s Shandong Province.
His love of aviation touches all aspects of his life. When it came time to name his granddaughters, Zhang even tucked the Chinese character for “aviation” into their names.
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