On a quiet river in central China’s Anhui province, villagers in Hanshan county stopped to stare as a sleek black shape sliced through the water with a low mechanical growl.
It was not a military test or an industrial prototype. It was a home-made submarine – designed, built, and piloted by Zhang Shengwu, a 60-year-old farmer with no engineering degree and no blueprint to follow.
“I’d watched boats all my life,” Zhang told Dawan News, a government-affiliated outlet, referring to the years he…
