The Chinese Navy now has two aircraft carriers, with the latest model, currently named Type 001A, launching on Thursday from the Dalian Shipyard in northeast China’s Liaoning Province.

‍This is the same shipyard where 001A's "older brother" the Liaoning was renovated and rebuilt.

How was this shipyard capable of building two aircraft carriers, the latest of which was made completely from scratch?

China's official military news website 81.cn posted an article revealing the secrets behind it.

"It looked like a 3000-room maze," surveyor Mo Linxin said about his first trip inside the Varyag. His team surveyed every inch of the hulk of the former Soviet Union carrier, drawing a detailed layout of it.

This "map" later became a guide for engineers to renovate the skeleton ship into a fully functioning carrier - China's first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning.

Tens of thousands of engineers, scientists and workers contributed to the Liaoning, building more than 10,000 pieces of equipment for the carrier. Thanks to their hard work, Liaoning was launched five months ahead of schedule.

This hard-working spirit can be found among everyone working in the hundred-year-old shipyard. The name "Dalian Shipyard" can coincidentally be abbreviated into "Dachuan" in Chinese, meaning "Great Ship". The workers sometimes call themselves "Dachuan people" to show how proud they are of building one ship after another, helping China’s Navy protect the people.

Dalian Shipyard has a history of more than a hundred years. Many of China's maritime "firsts" were achieved here:

-First 10,000-ton ship in 1950s

-First missile destroyer in 1970s

-First Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) in 1990s

These previous milestones prove the shipyard's productivity, and the spirit of its workers. This might also be a sound reason why China chose Dalian as the hometown of its first two aircraft carriers.