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Seriously, I am pretty sure that every child, at least boys, must have a dream of either fighter pilot or tank commander. As children gradually grow up, they probably don’t have time to take care about these dreams anymore, they probably need to deal with college app, they probably have to face their adulthood, but the dreams never die. Whenever they become undergraduates, company employees, drivers, or any occupations that even don’t have a slight matter with they once dream to be, at the point they look back to their childhood, everything about their old dreams will be rekindles again. That’s the soul of the scale models, containing our old heroic dreams, passion, and rebellion.
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"I unfold the box. The shining parts appear before me. I touch them gently. Even girl’s skin cannot compare with such smoothness. I liberate them from molds and recombine them together by cement. The structure begins to take form. I airbrush it layer by layer. Its vigor in the former day is gradually restored...Hours and hours pass by, a pile of plastics turn to become alive."
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When I was 7, my uncle bought me a plastic jet model. As a boy who liked machine, I simply just enjoyed building many parts together. It seemed to me that I was creating vivid lives instead of a pile of plastics. This hobby soon became my greatest talent as it promoted my manual dexterity and sensation of three dimension structure, and later the color painting brought it closer to reality.
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The Age of 1/72 Jet Plane
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When I was around 10, I was obsessed with the 1/72 model jet planes, especially those made by Hasegawa. I found these jets were extremely beautiful because of their splendid decals. Therefore, I started to build an aircraft carrier, not ship model but a wooden board on the wall. I added a more floor and made it more like a real flying deck.
Xinghao's USS Interprise
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However, during my early years, my skill was largely restricted at following instruction papers to build display-type models. But as a middle school student who was good at physics, I felt ashamed when friends called my models “toys”. Therefore, in my dream, they were vivid models, yet in reality, people didn’t think they were awesome enough.
I knew that at some point, my outdated model-building needed to change.
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The Age of TanksGerman Heavy, 2015
From Left: Dragon Maus, Mixed E100 flak 88, Trumpeter E100. |
The evolution began after I came to America when I was 15. I first saw the most inspirational mechanical demonstration on the Orange County Science Fair. The idea of RC robot with 3D printed plastic frame inspired me that I could also make my models movable. As I learned more from UCI ID camp, I began to modify my model tank by adding electronic component. After countless failures, the first radio control tank was built in 2015. That was one small step for my model, one giant leap towards my future in science.
Meanwhile, the old constructing process also evolved. I found that many seniors were obsessed with military models, and they were willing to pay a lot to buy my finished display-type models. At first I built more professional models and sold them on eBay, but later I began to import the finished models from China. This allowed me to earn a couple thousand dollars. Since I was volunteering in Youth in Action, I chose to donate several hundreds to its orphan villages, and later spent the rest of it on teaching kids building models in Irvine Chinese School. I was proud that my talent benefitted others.
