November 18th was the day that our students of ZJUI-CEE went out to have a visit on-site. This time we visited the first-stage project of Hangzhou metro, the station interval from Zheda Zijigang to Sanba village and the Yile Road Station, which is still under construction but is closely related to our major. It was an unforgettable and significant trip for those of us whose major is civil engineering, and to be more poetic, it was a romantic trip. Like the famous writer, Haruki Murakami wrote in his personal autobiography, “I am still writing novels... and feel delighted about it. As for something else, let’s talk about it later.” When our CEE students can visit a real construction site, it is a delight for us.

After about one hour’s ride, we came first to the construction site of Hangzhou Metro, the interval from Zheda Zijigang to Sanba village. Here, our students were warmly welcomed by the staff and we put on the safety helmets labeled “VIP”, we couldn’t even believe this honor. At the moment when we put on our safety helmets, it seemed that we were no longer ingenuous freshmen but real civil engineers. Everyone became excited and eager to inspect the construction site. From the introduction of the staff, we learned that the methods used in the Hangzhou metro construction are the metro shield freezing method and the stratum reinforcing method. The freezing method uses artificial refrigeration technology to turn the water in the stratum to ice and turn the natural soil to frozen soil, increasing its strength and stability and isolating the underground water and underground structure, so that we can excavate under the protection of frozen purdah. Its advantages include good flexibility, high strength, wonderful homogeneity and water-resisting property, and less effect to the surrounding environment. It provides a powerful technological support to Hangzhou whose edaphic condition is not good.

At the construction site, the most fascinating machine is a shield tunneling machine. The shield tunneling machine is one of the most valuable machines in modern-day tunnel construction. It is a multifunctional machine whose functions include excavation, unearthing, supporting, slip casting and guiding. We were lucky to enter the interior of the big shield tunneling machine and have a visit. We entered through a tunnel whose style is quite similar to the post-apocalyptic of the game “Tom Clancy’s The Division” and went through different kinds of interesting structures of the shield tunneling machine. Finally, we arrived at the main control center of the shield tunneling machine. Unfortunately, part of the shield is still buried in the soil and we could not directly observe it.

For the second half of the trip, we went to the first-stage project of Yile Road Station. The difference between this project and the previous one is that Yile Station is still a building site. From the introduction of the staff, we learned that the whole project is using open cut method, which is a common method when building underground projects and its advantages include more operation, fast speed, short time limit and low price. The most interesting thing is that when excavating to the slice place, workers have to support it by steel tube or soil nailing wall. Now the project is already finished building the baseboard, so we could see steel tube distributed everywhere in the pit, which is also a project wonder.

At the end of the trip, we took a photo with the staff and leading professors and this was a perfect end to our romantic trip.