WHEN 73-year-old Qian Bochun says he has fired almost every type of gun available in China, he is not boasting.

He now works in the Shanghai Museum of Public Security and as far as his colleagues are concerned, he is THE "gun expert".

Since he was enrolled into the police bureau in 1951, Qian's job has revolved around guns. "From handguns to scatter guns, I have fired everything on the shooting range." However, he never became a "sharpshooter" because he is short-sighted.

But Qian has an encyclopaedic knowledge of guns which he carries around in his head. After seeing a gun, he can name the type, calibre, maker and its history in seconds.

When Qian joined the police bureau, he was only 19 and had just graduated from middle school.

Part of life

At that time, the bureau needed more police officers than were among the cadres coming down from Beijing. So the bureau also enrolled 650 freshly graduated local students. Qian was assigned to collect and clean up the weapons confiscated from counter-revolutionaries and disarmed Kuomintang soldiers.

"Before starting work, I had never seen a real gun," he said. "When I finally held a real gun in my hands, I was so excited."

From that moment on, guns became part of Qian's life.

After two or three years, he applied to work in the firearms department of the police bureau so he could stay close to guns.

The happiest times he spent were on the firing range. "Each time we could fire dozens of guns. You can imagine how exciting it was," he said.

If one deals with guns all the time, there are some unavoidable risks. Qian was not an exception and has had several narrow escapes from being shot while at work.

After liberation in 1949, guns and ammunition were being confiscated in batches from all over the country. The police would try to make sure all the confiscated guns were unloaded but Qian said he often heard guns discharging because all the bullets had not been unloaded.

Once Qian was cleaning guns that had been turned in. They were tied together by a string passed through the trigger guards. While Qian was working away someone tugged at the string and a gun went off less than one metre from him.

Another time, Qian was almost shot by a poisonous bullet. In the 1970s, the police bureau received a pen-sized gun with a barrel only six centimetres long. The gun, which looked like a pen, was loaded with several poisonous bullets. "It belonged to a secret agent and he could use it to commit suicide if he was captured," Qian said.

"When we were handed the gun, we knew it contained dangerous bullets and we wanted to unload them carefully," he said. "At the time I was working with a reckless partner who suddenly removed the cap of the 'pen' when both of us were taking a close look at the gun." There was a loud bang and suddenly a large hole appeared in the wall. "Both of us were almost frightened to death. If either of us had been hit one was dead for sure!"

Now the "pen" is an exhibit in the museum.

Museum pieces

When Qian went to work in the museum which was opened to the public in 1999, he has been in charge of the 238 guns on exhibition and many others in storage.

Qian's favourite gun is one made by Remington in the US. To him, its design is very scientific and the gun is perfectly balanced.

Among the exhibits are two that have been appraised as first-class cultural relics by the government.

The first piece is a small handgun that once belonged to the founder of the first Chinese republic, Sun Yat-sen.

Before the museum opened, no one could find the gun among the thousands of old and antique weapons in storage. It took Qian less than 10 minutes to locate it.

Another treasure being exhibited is the earliest gun in China. The gun, which looks a little like a bamboo pole, was invented in 1259 in East China's Anhui Province. The hollowed-out bamboo was filled with black powder which was detonated to fire ceramics, stones and pieces of iron.

"It is the earliest 'pipy' shooting weapon in the world," Qian said. "In the West, people only started to do such research in the 14th century. Though China has the earliest invention, later development of guns was sluggish."

A gun of our own

Until 1913, the armoury in Nanjing copied the Belgium Browning gun of 1900. The semi-automatic gun with a 7.65mm calibre started the history of the country's production of modern rifles.

"After liberation, the guns which the police used were those confiscated from the Kuomintang government," Qian said. "Among Shanghai's police force, you could see that they were using various guns from different countries."

In 1954, China produced the Model 52, similar to the German Walther. From the 1950s to the 1980s, most of the locally manufactured guns were copied from those of the former Soviet Union and Germany.

"When talking about the modernization of a country's military, locally designed weapons are a must," Qian said. "As I had worked with guns for such a long time, I was hoping to have a look at a real home-made gun."

In 1999, Qian's wish was realized. The garrison in Macao used the Model QSZ92 with a 9mm calibre. "It is a real domestic gun though it looks a little big," Qian said.

Having worked with guns over a lifetime, Qian is a little regretful that the younger generation is more interested in researching modern weapons than in older guns.

"But mistakes due to lack of knowledge about old weapons happen a lot," he said. For example, many news reports, films and teleplays he has seen have contained mistakes.

"I once read a story about a student in Britain who was shooting people on campus. It said he used a gun with 22mm calibre," Qian said. "Insiders would know it is impossible for an ordinary person to carry such a big gun.

"The unit of calibre measurement in our country is the millimetre, but in Britain, the unit is the inch," he said. "So the calibre of 0.22 is not 22mm but 0.22-inch which equals only 5.6mm. The writer, without knowing anything about firearms, made the gun more than three times larger than it really was."

Now Qian is working on editing a book about guns. It will cover most types of weapons - old and modern. "I hope it will give people a full picture of the development of guns around the world," he said.