Rural tinkerer dives in with both feet

In the village where he was born, a Chinese chicken breeder emerged from a lake of green to tell of his life beneath the waves in a homemade orange submarine.

Tan Yong bolted together his 2-metric-ton craft - christened the "Happy Lamb", after a popular cartoon character - in just nine months and has steered it to depths of 8 meters.

The 44-year-old is one of the growing ranks of rural Chinese do-it-yourself inventors whose individualism contrasts with the collective farming of past decades.