Scuba with sharks

Swimming over the submerged ruins of the Great Wall in the Panjiakou Reservoir outside of Beijing, Ding Ding had the sensation of flying through the air. Then his joy turned to panic, as he realized air was leaking from his diving equipment. He was roughly 10 meters under the water.

"My mind went blank for several seconds," he recalls.

But Ding Ding, as one of the 2,500 enthusiasts in the Beijing area who regularly dive, had trained for such a mishap.

"I forced myself to calm down and tried to use gestures to tell my partner that I need his help. He is very experienced, and he saved me by handing over his emergency regulator [so I could breathe] and taking me to the surface," Ding recalled.

Landlocked Beijing might seem like an unlikely place to study diving. But beginners can get their Professional Association of Diver Instructor(PADI) certificates here - and even swim with sea turtles and dolphins.

Steven Schwankert, a PADI scuba diving instructor who founded the SinoScuba in Beijing 10 years ago, tells the Global Times that usually it takes a beginner 16 hours of training to receive certification.

Sinoscuba charges people 3,800 yuan($ 618) for  the complete Open Water Diver Course.

Zhang Jie, another diving instructor in Beijing, said that beginners can buy a mask, wetsuit and fins, and rent the extra equipment.

While diving in Beijing, Ding Ding once saw a shark. But he wasn't frightened. He put out his hand, and the shark swam to him.

He was in a three-meter-deep tank at Beijing's Blue Zoo in Sanlitun, Dongcheng district.

"I felt I was in another world which was so quiet. I was absorbed by the underwater scenery. You can touch the fish, and even the shark. This is amazing," he recalls.

In Beijing, aquariums usually charge divers from 350 yuan to 480 yuan, which includes admission to the aquarium exhibits. Renting the equipment will run an extra 500 yuan per day, said Zhang.

The Blue Zoo lets you dive with turtles and sharks, and the Beijing Aquarium in the Beijing Zoo lets you swim with dolphins.

Schwankert also noted that divers can go to a submerged section of the Great Wall in the summer in Panjiakou Reservoir, when the water is not  too cold.

He said that with recreational scuba diving certificates, the deepest you can dive is 40 meters.

"At such a depth, you'll use your air very quickly and you may only stay for 20 minutes. The average dive is around 10 meters deep and you can stay for an hour. So we only go deep when there is something special to see," he said.

Although most people think of tropical corals when they think of diving, Schwankert also enjoys inland adventures. He said that in 2007 he found two Russian shipwrecks when he dived to 18-meter deep in a lake in Mongolia.

"I was very surprised because they're in very good condition. We could see very clearly the different parts of the boats. They were about 12 meters long and three or four meters wide. The ships are about 100 years old and are made of wood."

Ding Ding still regularly dives around Beijing, and goes overseas whenever he gets a chance, particularly to Southeast Asia.

The next goal Ding Ding has is to dive in Qiandao Lake, Zhejiang Province, to see an ancient city submerged under the water.

"Now I can only dive 12 meters deep. So I need to practice more to go much deeper in order to achieve my goal at Qingdao Lake," Ding said.