archaeological excavation of the zhiyuan warship found a monocular telescope with a rare inscription "return to its owner"
2024-09-15
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there is a monocular telescope in the exhibition hall of the history of the communist party of china. the middle part of it was squeezed and broken. after temporary reinforcement in 2016, water was extracted from the wreckage of the zhiyuan ship. it was restored to its original appearance after later restoration by cultural relics protection personnel.
there are english cursive characters (chin kin kuai) engraved on the objective lens. its owner is chen jinkuai, the first mate of the zhiyuan ship, whose rank is second only to the captain deng shichang.
archaeologists found it to be a cylinder, but they didn't know what it was, thinking it was just a part. after cleaning it out, they found it was a telescope, and later found a few english cursive characters in front of it. after interpretation, archaeologists found it was the english name used by chen jinkui, a farmer's son from jiangwan, shanghai, when he was a "chinese student in the united states".
there is a group photo of officers and soldiers of the "zhiyuan" warship. deng shichang stands in the middle, looking high-spirited. behind him, the first mate chen jinkui also stands in the group photo.
today, we do not have accurate information to confirm which face is chen jinkui. we only have another photo of him that allows us to compare and guess his figure.
editor: liu qingyang
editor: deng aihua
