Location: 16 Shanghai Rd, 客运港 Jiang'An, Wuhan, Hubei, China, 430021
Visited: 23 December 2019
In late December 2019, I was in Wuhan, and taking a walk along the banks of the Yangtze river (about a km or two away from wet market where things were starting to happen with COVID (although I didn't know about all that until a couple of weeks later)) when I stumbled across a museum with four warships in it. It was closed for the winter, and what signage there was, was all in Mandarin, however I have since worked out that the four ships were:
- Xi’an (106) – A Type 051 (Luda) class destroyer
- Huaiyin (513) – A Type 053H (Jianghu) class frigate
- Changcheng (303) – A Type 033 (Chinese Romeo) class submarine
- Xinghua (689) – A Type 037 (Hainan) class submarine chaser.
The wharf was adjacent to the Wuhan Science and Technology Museum, however it turns out that only Changcheng actually belongs to the museum. Xi’an is now preserved ashore at the Hong’an campus of Wuhan City College, while Huaiyin and Xinghua are assigned to the Naval University of Engineering as instructional vessels. When I recently checked on Google Maps, it appeared that only Changcheng is still berthed on the wharf where I saw all four of them.
Just along the river there was a smaller old patrol boat which had been hauled up onto the river bank as a playground for children, and then a bit further along Patrol Boat No. 716 had been preserved as a memorial. She was apparently famous because Mao had boarded her at some point.
