Farmers make the craziest things

We always thought farming was a pretty exciting lifestyle- all that cyclical plowing, sowing, cultivating, picking and selling sounds like a blast! If you’re actually farming, though, the charm wears off after a while, and you feel the need to move on to something more adventurous. Building walking, talking robots is old news, so why not up the ante and build a submarine, an airplane or a tank?
Turns out farmers are incredibly clever innovators: Sina.com has a wacky post on the innovative escapades of farmers around China building themselves everything from airplanes to garbage trucks. It’s amazing what you can do with a bit of time and money, no?
First, a farmer in the outskirts of Beijing spent 30,000 RMB to build himself a miniature submarine primarily out of old oil drums. The submarine has a pressure gauge, periscope, oxygen supplies, and even a propeller made out of leaves! If that’s not wacky enough, a farmer outside of Chengdu built himself a tank that’s so realistic that it’s been used as a prop on a Chinese soap opera.
Other inventions by adroit farmers are an F1 racing car made from scrap metal that can reach speeds of 65 km/h, a four million yuan helicopter, and the intriguingly named “Chinese Dragon,” which allows you to tread water as if you were merely walking on it. Hu Guangwei, a professor of sociology at Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences, praises the innovators for fostering an atmosphere for innovation, even if their projects have no use beyond their personal happiness.
With all this innovation, it’s amazing that anyone has any time to farm anymore. We’re kind of curious as to how farmers come up with exorbitant amounts of money to pursue oddball dreams. But we have to admit, we would love to try out that submarine!

Other incredible innovations on Shanghaiist:

Shanzhai of the day: homemade airplane
Fancy your own personal flying machine?
We all live in a homemade yellow submarine car