Minsk World

A couple weekends back, I went to Minsk World in Shenzhen. It’s the furthest I have traveled in Shenzhen. I had to take the subway to one of the last eastern-most stops, and then had to take a bus another 45 minutes east to get there. Approximately a two hour trip each way. It’s really an over-hyped military theme park located next to Dapeng Bay. It includes the Soviet aircraft carrier Minsk, which is now a tourist attraction. It opened in 2000.

The Minsk (built in 1972) was part of the Soviet Pacific Fleet. It had to be retired (after the Cold War) as a result of a major accident which could only be repaired at a facility in the newly-independent Ukraine. Russia decided to sell it to a South Korean businessman who then sold it to China for the purpose of creating a military-themed tourist destination.

The staff is dressed in mock military uniforms and for extra $ you can take a little motorboat to the outside starboard side. There are a number of dilapidated military aircraft and armaments on the flight deck and you can also visit the hangar deck as well as its living quarters, armaments, etc. There was also a short film you can watch about the Minsk.

I wanted to come here because, I thought, how many times will I be able to go onboard a Soviet aircraft carrier? The problem was (A) it was expensive for what you got and (B) besides the beautiful landscape; the whole place (meaning the theme park) is dilapidated, which was really unusual as far as I’m concerned when it comes to China’s tourist attractions. And maybe it’s because it’s privately-owned and not state-owned, though I’m not sure of that. But it feels like they just put the ship there and that’s it. You can see that a lot of the inside of the ship has been stripped of anything still valuable and you kind of just have a shell. Most of the equipment, dials, etc. have been stripped and/or broken and almost the entire ship is rusted with peeling paint. You do not feel as if there are any plan(s) for upkeep. It was not hard to imagine it springing a leak and sinking, right there at its berth. It’s been there since 2000 and she shows her age unfortunately. Where you by tickets is a dilapidated building and I couldn’t tell if they were doing renovations, construction work or something else. But the area right outside the ship is nice where you can walk along the banks of the Bay. Also, Minsk World is supposed to be made up of two parts: the Minsk Aircraft Carrier (at Sea) and Minsk Square (on land) but the Square was nowhere to be found. Either it doesn’t exist any longer or is undergoing construction and/or renovation. As you’ll notice everywhere in China, construction is a 24/7 thing and there was construction going on here as well. The other thing that was irritating was that throughout the ship, there are these little souvenir stands/stalls all selling the same Chinese stuff. The workers would ask you to buy stuff but there wouldn’t be anything different than the stall I passed just 30 seconds ago.

But despite all of that, I was still glad I went. The bay and mountains were beautiful and you got great views while standing on the ship. As you can see from the last pic below, they also were selling toy planes and I was surprised to see that you could buy a U.S. Air Force toy plane. And that’s when I thought, how times have changed? Here we have a Soviet ship, permanently berthed in China, and I can buy a USAF toy plane while on it. We have come a long way…