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China Presents: 10 Fascinating DIY Inventions!

A great sign of China opening up to the free market and growing in technology prowess is the influx of Chinese private inventor dreaming up and building home-made submarines, robots, weapons and many other devices that show creativity and inventivness, even if not all the inventions are perfect...


These are 10 of the most fascinating inventions by ordinary Chinese citizens.
chinese diy inventions
Chinese farmer and makeshift inventor Zhang Wuyi made this working submarine at his own workshop, and tested it in at a nearby pool in the Hubei province of China. Zhang has made several miniature models with fellow engineers, and these were made to harvest sea cucumbers and other aquatic food materials. They have a diving depth of 20-30 meters (66-98 feet) and can apparently keep going for ten hours.

chinese diy inventions
Zhang Wuyi working on his newest submarine. Its function is to harvest the waters for sea cucumbers.

chinese diy inventions
A test of the new submarine.

chinese diy inventions
Admit it, you want to test drive this colorful super-bike just once! This monstrosity was created by the brain and hands of one Uighur man Abulajob, in the Xinjiang Uighur region. It took the 30 year old sewage worker a year to make this 300 kg (660 pound) motorcycle, which is 4.3 meters (14 feet) in length and 2.4 meters (7.8 feet) in overall height. He can't drive this baby on the street, but he can get it to 30 kph (24 mph) on the open road.

chinese diy inventions
Is 70 year old Zhou Miaorong too old to go down a slide? Not if he was the one who built it! After a Shanghai fire broke in 2010 and led to loss of lives due to a lack of ways to exit the building quickly and safely, Miaorong built this mechanical slide that can also be triggered to operate a sprinkler system to fight a fire.

chinese diy inventions
A farmer Zhang Xuelin never got real schooling, but he still made this private aircraft from a motorcycle and other parts, and only spent $321 to do it. 

chinese diy inventions
But maybe he should have spent more, because after 11 months of building, the aircraft failed its first test flight. Hopefully he'll be able to figure out the problem and try again.

chinese diy inventions
 Inventor Yang Zongfu spent 2 years and over $200,000 in making his 'Noah's Ark' - a six ton steel ball designed to house 3 people with enough food for 10 months. It is designed to protect from extreme heat, cold, water damage and external hits. Basically, the place you want to be if doom day arrives.

chinese diy inventions
Celebrating the completion of a series of tests. 

chinese diy inventions
These beach nylon masks were invented by a Chinese woman a few years ago and have now become more popular and mass produced. They are designed to protect the skin of the face from the sun's rays.

chinese diy inventions
 Yes that is a robot pulling a man. The man is farmer Wu Yulu, and his rickshaw is getting pulled by his own creation, this walking robot. He still needs to stir though, it seems

chinese diy inventions
.A combination of wheel chair and bicycle, 83 year old Zhang Yongqung has come up with a brilliant idea, helping others to take even better care of their elderly and take them on bike rides. 

chinese diy inventions
This gently smiling farmer is called Yang Youde, and he is also the inventor of a killing machine - his homemade canon. This he will use to defend his fields against property developers that are trying to get him off his land, according to Yang.

chinese diy inventions
 Testing out the homemade cannon. Don't you just the love the smell of gun powder in the morning? 

chinese diy inventions
Sun Jifa lost both his forearms in a fishing accident, 32 years ago. He was too poor to get the available prosthetics, and so had to go without. That is, until he built his own. He spent two years guiding his 2 nephews to build him prosthetics from scrap pieces of metal, plastic and rubber. Today, he and his nephews build cheap prosthetics for people in the same situation as he was, charging only $476 for each (compared to the tens of thousands standard ones may cost). 

chinese diy inventions
Using a spoon with his self-made prosthetics. 

Submitted by: Mahmud D.

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