China's naval hospital ship calls at U.S. port

SAN DIEGO, United States, Nov. 3 -- China's naval hospital ship Peace Ark called at San Diego, Southern California, on Tuesday, kicking off a five-day friendly port visit to United States.

The hospital ship of the Navy of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) was greeted by the representatives of the U.S. Navy, personnel of the Chinese embassy and consulate in the U.S. and representatives of the local Chinese community after pulling into the port.

"It's a beautiful ship and the crew are fantastic. I was very impressive," Captain Jose A. Acosta, commanding officer of Naval medical center San Diego, told Xinhua after visiting Peace Ark. "We look forward to having the ship's crew visit the hospital in our hospital ship."

The visit to the U.S. on invitation is the fourth stop in a broader voyage across the Asia-Pacific codenamed "Harmonious Mission-2015" task, which aims at boosting military diplomacy, medical exchange and cultural communication including through the provision of free medical and humanitarian services.

"When you get medical people in the room, we have one common language, and so we get to understand each other," Captain Acosta said.

Aside from the U.S., Harmonious Mission-2015 will also see the Peace Ark visit four other locations around the Pacific Ocean -- Mexico, Barbados, Grenada and Peru -- over the next few weeks. The deployment has already encompassed Australia, and French Polynesia.

The medical crew of the mission comprises 118 medical staff from the Navy General Hospital, No.411 and No.413 Hospital of the PLA and the PLA Second Military Medical University, along with a ship-borne heliambulance.

This is the fifth Harmonious Mission task carried out by the hospital ship Peace Ark after it set sail from its home port Zhoushan in 2010, 2011, 2013 and 2014 respectively to perform the missions.

Hospital ship Ark Peace, which was designed and built in China, is an emergency medical support platform at sea.

She primarily assumes such tasks as medical treatment and transfer of the wounded and sick at sea, medical support for the servicemen deployed on island, scientific research, testing, training, international peace keeping, humanitarian aid as well as disaster relief rescue and evacuation and protection of overseas Chinese.