Tradition sets sail

With raised decks on its bow and stern and sails flying in the wind, a wooden Chinese sailing ship stands still among teaching buildings. The ship, 8 meters long and 1.5 meters wide, was made by a group of students from Fuzhou No 8 High School.
一艘木制的中式帆船静静伫立在教学楼之间，船头和船尾的甲板高高翘起，船帆在风中飞扬。这艘船长8米、宽1.5米，由福州市第八中学的一群学生建造而成。

Inspired by the conferring ship, a typical Fujian-style trading ship used during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, about 30 students started building the sailing ship with the help of their teacher and two experienced craftsmen in March last year.
册封舟是一种典型的明清时期的福建商船，去年3月，受册封舟启发，大约30名学生在老师和两名经验丰富的造船工匠的帮助下，开始建造这艘帆船。

“From learning to draw design sketches, saw wood to install the hull and raise the sails, we’ve labored together to pay tribute to the area’s ancestral techniques,” said Zou Haishen, 17, who was part of the program. “We call it Jixianghao, meaning good luck, which we want to wish to our school and our nation.”
“从学习绘制设计草图，到锯木材拼装船体、挂起风帆，我们一直共同努力，向福建地区的祖传技艺致敬。”参与造船的17岁学生邹海昇说，“我们称这艘船为‘吉祥号’，意思是好运，我们想祝愿我们的学校和国家好运。”

Building a sailing ship is far more complex than you might think. Zou and his classmates first made and laid down a keel – a beam along the bottom of the hull to support it. Then they needed to cut many planks with different angles to make watertight compartments, which is a special watertight-bulkhead technology adopted by local sailing ships. To make the planks fit, they used cotton with ink to draw the curved lines on the wood and then used an electric jigsaw to cut the wood based on those lines. If the wood edge or rabbets were not defined enough, they would use a file to grind the extra wood off little by little. After that, they assembled the planks together and filled in the seams between the planks with tung oil.
建造一艘帆船比你想象的要复杂得多。邹海昇和他的同学们首先制作并铺设了龙骨——一根沿着船底支撑帆船的梁。然后他们需要切割许多角度各异的木板，来制作密封舱，这是福建当地帆船采用的一种特殊的水密隔舱技术。为了让木板适合，学生们用蘸了墨水的棉花在木头上画出曲线，然后基于这些曲线，用电曲线锯切割木头。如果木边或槽口不够分明，他们就用锉刀把多余的木头一点一点磨掉。然后，他们把木板拼在一起，用桐油把木板之间的接缝填满。

“The watertight compartments are like parts within bamboo. They are separated from each other with many joints,” said Zou. “So if one or two cabins are accidentally damaged, seawater will not flood the other cabins and the ship will remain afloat. It’s full of the wisdom of the ancients.”
“密封舱类似竹子的内部空间，由很多关节分隔开。”邹海昇说，“因此，如果一、两个舱室意外损坏，海水也不会淹没其他船舱，船还是会保持漂浮状态。这其中尽显古人的智慧。”

The ship was finished after the hull was installed and the deck and sails were laid. Then, another group of students started to make accessories to decorate the ship. Liu Xinyi, 17, a student who learns traditional Chinese painting, collaborated with her peer Li Beihong, 17. They spent two weeks painting a lion on the bow and an ocean and snake on the hull. On the stern, they painted a bird with outstretched wings, inspired by a myth about the bird Jingwei trying to fill the sea with stones. “The image symbolizes people’s mastery of the ocean,” said Liu.
安装好船体、铺上甲板、挂起船帆，福船就完工了。接着，另一群学生开始制作福船的饰物。17岁的刘欣怡是一名学习国画的学生，她与同龄的李贝宏合作，花了两周时间，在船头绘制了一只狮子，在船身画了一片大海和一条蛇。在船尾，两人画了一只张开翅膀的鸟，其灵感来自于精卫填海的神话。刘欣怡说：“精卫鸟象征着人类征服海洋。”

“It’s so great to mobilize students’ creativity, improve their hands-on skills and inherit the spirit of craftsmanship,” said Zhang Shengzhi, the student group’s tutor.
学生们的导师章盛智表示:“造船能够调动学生的创造力，提高他们的动手能力，并传承工匠精神，真是太棒了。”

以上文章内容选自《21世纪学生英文报高中版》，详情请见《21世纪学生英文报高中版》高二853期