Huadi·Documentary｜Recording a veteran's dream of building a strong maritime nation
2024-08-11
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Text｜Zhang Xuefeng and Yang Shilin
In the past, it was almost every boy's dream to be a soldier or a scientist, and Shang Xiaodong was no exception. But he never dreamed that this kid from the mountains would not only become a soldier, but also a scientist studying the ocean.
one
Shang Xiaodong was born in May 1962 in Yuncheng, Shanxi Province, which is located in the Taihang Mountains of the Loess Plateau. The small county is surrounded by mountains. Like others, he went to elementary school and middle school. After graduating from high school in 1978, he became an apprentice in a factory.
Shang Xiaodong originally planned to join the army when he turned 18 to fulfill his "military dream". Unexpectedly, the country resumed the college entrance examination that year, so he signed up with a try-it-out mentality. That year, he failed by 5.5 points, but the next year, he applied again and was admitted to the physics major of Taiyuan Institute of Technology (now Taiyuan University of Technology), fulfilling his "university dream".
When he graduated from university in 1983, Shang Xiaodong was specially recruited into the army, and his "military dream" became a reality.
He was assigned to the newly established Armed Police Command College as an instructor. Every day before dawn, teachers and students had to do drills together, marching in step, goose-stepping, saluting, crawling, shooting, etc., which were all compulsory courses.
At that time, the school was built on the foundation of an abandoned factory. The roads in the school were muddy when it rained and dusty when it was sunny. There was also a shortage of teachers. Each teacher had to teach 300 to 400 students in a class. There were no microphones, so the only way was to shout. After a few classes, the teachers' voices became hoarse.
Shang Xiaodong has been working there for seven years.
In 1990, he was transferred to the Armed Police Medical College. The dean was a field surgery expert who assigned him a task - to develop a stretcher suitable for field operations. After more than two years of hard work, Shang Xiaodong overcame the difficulties and thus began his "scientific research dream".
In 1994, Shang Xiaodong was admitted to Tianjin University as a graduate student in fluid mechanics. Four years later, he obtained a doctorate in fluid mechanics from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. In 2002, Shang Xiaodong continued his postdoctoral research in the Department of Physics at Oklahoma State University in the United States.
In this way, he officially stepped into the world of scientific research from an ordinary teacher.
Some of the experiences he had during his postdoctoral studies in the United States left a deep impression on Shang Xiaodong and strengthened his determination to return to China to serve after completing his studies.
When the news of the successful launch of my country's first manned spacecraft "Shenzhou V" spread all over the world, Shang Xiaodong's American colleagues immediately gave him a thumbs up and said "Congratulations". At that moment, Shang Xiaodong was very excited and proud. He was so happy that he had a drink that night. He realized more deeply that no matter where he is, the strong motherland is the strong backing for him to stand up straight and be a man.
two
In 2005, as soon as he finished his postdoctoral research, Shang Xiaodong gave up the generous treatment and job opportunity to stay in the United States without hesitation and chose to return to China as soon as possible.
At that time, more than 90% of my country's ocean observation equipment had to rely on imports, and key "bottleneck" technologies were in the hands of others.
Shang Xiaodong said: "Our country is a maritime power, but not yet a maritime superpower. As a scientific and technological worker, what the country needs is what I want to do." He resolutely chose marine science, where my country's basic research is still relatively weak, as his research direction. After returning to China, he joined the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and engaged in research on small and medium-scale dynamic processes in the ocean and the development of marine observation equipment.
At this time, he was 43 years old.
Changing one's major in middle age and starting from scratch can bring about difficulties and challenges. However, Shang Xiaodong feels that he was born for the ocean - he has to go out to sea for research and development of marine science and technology, and he finds that he never gets seasick.
Whether it is a marine scientific research ship or a small sampan, whether it is a large warship or an assault boat, he can "take a leisurely walk" on the sea even in the bad weather with strong winds and huge waves. On the contrary, after hanging around on the ship for dozens of days, he would feel very uncomfortable when returning to land. When walking, he felt that one foot was deep and the other was shallow, and he felt "dizzy". He really enjoyed this state of dancing with the sea breeze and fighting with the waves. Therefore, every time he went out to sea for scientific research, Shang Xiaodong felt excited and impulsive.
With the support of the national "863" plan, Shang Xiaodong led his team to work tirelessly and all night long. After more than three years of hard work, they finally successfully developed the world's fastest ocean detection temperature sensor in 2010, with a response time of only 7 milliseconds, or 0.7 thousandths of a second. The "ocean detection temperature sensor" is like a chip, which is the most basic ocean observation sensor. Based on this, a series of ocean detection equipment can be developed.
Shang Xiaodong's team then overcame all difficulties and developed an ocean heat flux meter, an ocean turbulence microstructure profiler, a wave-powered temperature-salinity-depth profiler, a temperature difference-driven temperature-salinity-depth profile buoy, ocean wave differential kinetic energy power generation equipment and my country's first "ocean acoustic tomography monitoring system", completely breaking the foreign technology monopoly in this field.
Immediately afterwards, Shang Xiaodong led the scientific research team to develop sensors for the "national weapon" - the "Haiyi" underwater glider.
In this way, as one of the main persons in charge, Shang Xiaodong led the scientific research team to study hard and forge ahead all the way, and achieved fruitful results: they established the Xisha (currently included in the national key field station) and Nansha Marine Observation and Research Station of the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and built my country's first deep-sea multidisciplinary observation system-the Xisha Observation Network.
He also presided over more than 30 key national and provincial and ministerial projects, published more than 80 academic papers in important international journals, obtained more than 30 national patents and 3 software copyrights, and achieved breakthrough results in a series of original scientific research.
For example, experiments have been used to prove the law of heat transport in large-scale circulation driven by buoyancy based on the "turbulent mixing length" theory, clarifying more than 40 years of controversy in the academic community; the ocean mixing mechanism (PSI mechanism) caused by parameterized subharmonic instability of the full-day internal tide at its critical latitude has been discovered and proved; the transport, generation rate and dissipation rate of mesoscale eddy energy in the global ocean have been estimated for the first time; a turbulent mixing parameterization scheme suitable for the South China Sea and northwestern Pacific ocean models has been established, and has been widely used by peers in ocean models; a theory of ocean turbulent temperature boundary layer has been constructed, verified and applied in the ocean; the classical eddy correlation method has been revised, solving major scientific problems such as "heat sink" and "carbon sink" in the Earth system.
three
Although the road of scientific research seems to be smooth, it was not easy for Shang Xiaodong.
In 2011, Shang Xiaodong led a research team to estimate for the first time the transport, generation rate and dissipation rate of mesoscale eddy energy in the global ocean.
Research shows that mesoscale eddies contain 90% of the energy in the ocean. But how is this energy transferred, transported, generated and dissipated? To address this question, Shang Xiaodong and his teammates established a theoretical model, using ocean satellite altimeter data to distinguish mesoscale cold and warm eddies in the global ocean over the past 12 years, and then studied their changing patterns.
However, when they wrote their research results into a paper and submitted it to the top American international journal "Journal of Geophysical Research", it was directly rejected by an academician of the American Academy of Sciences.
Shang Xiaodong and his teammates were confused, but after some discussion, they determined that there was no problem with the research results and decided to immediately submit the paper to another less well-known professional journal in Europe in order to gain an advantage.
After the article was published, Shang Xiaodong and others learned that the team of the academician of the US Academy of Sciences was also doing research in this area. The academician made the "real-name veto" just because he didn't want Chinese (foreign) scientists to publish their research results before their team. After Shang Xiaodong's team published their article first, the academician had to cite their article in his later paper.
Later, as the research work continued to deepen, Shang Xiaodong's team's updated research results were published in the American geophysical professional journal "Geophysical Research Letters", and were recommended by the editor as "Highlight of the Issue" and "Highlight of the Year", which is extremely rare in the industry.
Another time, Shang Xiaodong was invited to attend an academic conference abroad, but was rejected by the visa officer. Shang Xiaodong questioned on the spot: "I have the invitation letter you sent me, and I have booked the air tickets and hotel according to your requirements. Why do you reject my visa?" He said it with confidence and force. The visa officer was stunned for a long time, probably feeling that he was indeed in the wrong, and finally had to change the visa and agree.
We always thought that Shang Xiaodong was able to argue with us because he was good at English, but Shang Xiaodong later told us: "No, I was speaking Chinese. In our country, to work in an organization that serves us, he must know Chinese."
Nowadays, Shang Xiaodong rarely contributes to foreign magazines. He said that scientific research results are the "national treasure" of China's scientific research, and the level of our scientists should be tested through practice.
In 2023, Shang Xiaodong was awarded the title of "Most Beautiful Veteran" in China; in 2024, he was named "Master of Science" by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is still working tirelessly on the road of scientific research.
