Boom Headshot

We organised a class trip today to the China North International Shooting Range. It was just a place I'd heard about on the Internet, but a few classmates were interested (and one teacher, who didn't come but helped us arrange the whole thing). It's out at Changping, one of the outer "suburbs" of Beijing a bit over an hour's drive from our campus. We hired 2 vans for our group of 12 people, which on the day shrunk to 10.

The shooting range is in a bit of a strange location. Changping, being on the outskirts, looks quite rural, but in the middle of it is a new housing development with European style villas being built. Inside this is the shooting range. We were stopped by a guard driving in (who looked like he could be a North Korean border guard) and found the drivers had to register before entering - this is not unusual with gated communities and university campuses here. Eventually, however, we made our way in, and were assigned a guide who, surprisingly, spoke very good English and French. We were then escorted into the weapons display hall, where you choose what you want to use.


Rifles, from WW2 Mosin-Nagant and Mauser models to AK47, M16 and HK G36 rifles. The big machine gun wasn't available today, and the even bigger one to the left of it was just too expensive.

Prices are anywhere from 4 to 10 RMB per shot, depending on the weapon, but you are restricted to full magazines. This quickly adds up - my choices (7.62mm sniper rifle, AK47, QBZ-95, one magazine of each, and 5 shots at clay pigeon) came to Y680. It could easily have been much more expensive - the heavy machine gun was Y8 per shot, with a minimum of 100 shots.


Nicolas (I think) with an AK47/Type 56.

Each weapon chosen gets set up in a separate booth at the range. Everything is clamped down in such a way that you can aim the gun well, but can't pick it up or point it off the range. The QBZ-95 (the main rifle currently used by the People's Liberation Army) was set up first, and I was the only one to choose it, so I went first. For my first time shooting an automatic rifle (or any rifle for that matter) I don't think I did too badly. Half my shots hit the paper, at least. Next was the big sniper rifle, which was surprisingly hard to use properly (though my training was pretty much "hold it here, point it at that"). Powerful recoil too.


Hit the paper every time!

Last was the AK47, or Type 56 to be more precise (the Chinese designation for their copies of the design). I had to wait for a while - everyone wanted a go and I was called up last. This was the most fun - higher rate of fire than the QBZ-95, but much less controllable. I ran out after 3 bursts, but definitely got my money's worth of fun.


Excellent marksmanship!

After this we went outside for some clay pigeon shooting. You can only buy shotgun shells in lots of 25, so we split it among 5 of us. Each of us shot 4 times, and gave the rest to our drivers, who we'd hired for the day. This was pretty fun, and I was the only one to hit one. We then posed with the shotgun before heading back.



We all went back into Beijing proper, some going back to uni, and the rest of us going for lunch (by now it was almost 3pm). We went to a place where you roast your own leg of lamb on a spit on the table.


We also ordered some lamb kidneys on skewers.

I'm not done for today yet - there's supposed to be a German party on tonight. I'm not entirely sure what that means but I'll go.