PCBC x Nanjing International Universities Rowing Open 2025 Report

An Unexpected Invitation

Picture a slightly overcast weekend in late May. The Pembroke beer boat have just smoked Oriel M3 & 4 in rowing on. Simon looks out from the boat house balcony, surveying the summer eights chop. Then out of the corner of his eye, he notices an unfamiliar figure approaching Pembroke boat house. Judging by his cap, he likes rowing. The magnanimous stranger introduces himself as Ken Lee (former Asian Rowing Federation Secretary General). He has been searching for Simon Kerswell-Jenkins of PCBC fame. With a wry smile, he explains that he is looking for the best boat club on the Isis to take on a trip of a lifetime to the Nanjing 2025 International Universities Rowing Open. Cue the soft launch of PCBC-Asia-Pacific. 

The Journey There

It would be no exaggeration to say that getting out to Nanjing was by far the most dramatic phase of our trip. The first excitement was discovering that our in-flight entertainment systems were equipped with a ‘group chat’ function. This was used to great effect by Rob to announce Charlie Kirk’s untimely assassination approximately 10 seconds before takeoff. Though with the arrival of the in-flight dinner service, the chat returned to appropriately immature innuendos pertaining to melon balls. Dan, intent on maintaining some semblance of vegetarianism throughout the trip, tried to no avail to explain the concept of a meat-free meal to a flight-attendant who kept offering the chicken or the shrimp. 2 minutes later she had had enough and decided Dan would be having the chicken.

Shenzhen airport, the backdrop for our layover, was quite the architectural marvel. The magic was somewhat dampened, however, when 50% of the group had their portable power banks confiscated at interim security whilst Rob watched smugly from the sidelines with his CCC rated wireless charger. Ed managed to swindle a lone powerbank through by repeatedly asserting ‘so it’s okay then?’ to two Chinese security officers who eventually got bored of trying to communicate with him through his google translate app. Like an Oxford Goose homing in on the PCBC pontoon, we had been in the departure lounge all of 5 minutes before Ben discovered the motorised suitcase buggies. This would continue to be a theme for the rest of our layover. All relatively hungry after the long flight, we settled down for some traditional chinese noodles. Oscar was even kind enough to alert Rob when his noodles arrived at the wrong table, but not before he’d eaten all the beef off the top first.

Events really came to a head when at the Shenzhen satellite terminal, approximately 15 minutes before our connecting flight to Nanjing was about to board, Ed realised he had lost his passport. Naturally, Ed couldn’t go back to find his passport on his own because he had no glasses and had packed his contact lenses in his checked luggage and so couldn’t distinguish Ben from a carrot at 1 metre’s distance. Therefore we would need to send someone back with Ed to find his passport. With little time to spare, we would need to send someone swift on their feet; so in our infinite wisdom, the group decided to send the one person with a dodgy ankle and limited running speed. So whilst Ed and Rob returned to terminal 3 with two working eyes and three working legs between them, the rest of us occupied ourselves appropriately. Dan was sprinting around every possible outlet trying to find enough red bull to smooth the rapidly accumulating withdrawal symptoms, whilst Ben went for ‘one last ride’ on the suitcase buggies.

With the fate of Ed’s passport in the balance the rest of us decided to board. Cian volunteered to stay with Ed’s bag and wait for Ed and Rob to return, which he did valiantly for a couple of minutes… before then promptly boarding himself, leaving Ed’s backpack unattended in the middle of the departure lounge (“unattended baggage in an airport? I don’t see the problem with it”). Thankfully, after some swift table sweeping, Ed recovered his passport, incidentally hidden under one of the missing slices of beef from Rob’s noodles, and arrived at the gate just as the Shenzhen bomb disposal squad were about to incinerate his backpack.

By some miracle, all of PCBC made it to Nanjing to be lovingly welcomed by Lili, our tour guide for the week. Fortuitously the Women of Washington* had arrived at just the same time. PCBC heartthrob, señor Harley, wasted no time in ‘dropping game’ advancing PCBC’s international diplomatic mission by fostering multilateral inter-boatclub relations with Washington (who says the UK-USA special relationship is dead). A coach decorated in the style of my granny’s mid-70s living room transported us to our hotel. Not necessarily the hotel we had been expecting, but nevertheless a stunning hotel, ideally situated for easy access to ‘Lip Smacking Dick’, one of Nanjing’s premier take-away outlets across the road. With a busy week ahead we settled in for the night, only to be woken at 2 am in the morning by Cian who ‘wanted to test out if the hotel room telephones worked’ by calling every single room individually… thanks Cian.

A Day of Culture

Day one promised a late start, except for Cian and Archie who, as ‘Team Leader’ and ‘willing volunteer’ respectively, were ceremoniously paraded around local universities for fun cultural activities including ‘surprise erg’.

The rest of us had an ‘absolutely terrible time’ enjoying a 2 hour lie-in, unlimited buffet breakfast, and a gentle stroll around the gentrified quarter of Nanjing. Ed and Simon didn’t quite get the memo about cultural immersion, both arriving at the breakfast table with bacon, sausage, eggs and toast, having bypassed the eclectic array of delicious local delicacies. After loudly complaining about the lack of knives and forks, Ed was delighted to find that these would thereafter be provided at all hotel meals for the rest of the week.

Come mid-afternoon, Lili whisked us off to our first cultural experience before the regatta’s opening ceremony; a visit to the Yuejiang Tower. Intermittently members of the team were pulled aside by national television reporters looking for some charismatic interviews. When asked what he liked about the Yuejiang Tower, Ben Harley (aka William Shakespeare reborn) asserted that “it was very special to come all the way from the bottom to the top and see the view… it’s great”. Wow, how inspiring Ben… No doubt the people of China will cherish such sage insights for the rest of their lives!

“It was very special to come all the way from the bottom to the top and see the view… it’s great”

– Benjamin Harley, 2025

The Opening Ceremony

We were then transported swiftly onwards to a cruise ship moored in the Yangtze for the opening ceremony. After nearly getting left behind whilst waiting for Archie to change in the port toilet, we were ushered to a ceremony conducted mostly in mandarin. Cue 1 hour of continuous smiling, waving, and applauding. Rumours circulated that Team Leader Cian was supposed to sprinkle some ‘sacred water’ from the isis into a ceremonial bowl on the stage. Unfortunately it was not possible for us to bring a sample of the Isis with us, given Chinese customs restrictions on the import of biologically hazardous material, fatal on human consumption, across the border, along with the lack of any container strong enough to withstand the slow, corrosive fumes of eau d’Isis. Designated team leader, Cian, was however, provided with a glass bottle of Nanjing’s finest tap water to pour instead. He did so to a standing ovation from PCBC! 

The rest of the cruise included a delightful buffet dinner and an exotic bazaar full of cultural tokens on sale. Amongst the cultural gifts acquired were Ed Dunning and Simon Kerswell-Jenkins bobble heads (custom printed). Such idols would be appropriately displayed in perpetuity in the boathouse on our return.

Practice and Art

Day 2 brought an opportunity for the international crews to practice in advance of the race. After being introduced with our shiny new empacher* and an assortment of different coloured blades, PCBC were the first** crew out on the water. Whilst I would love to tell you that our set came as naturally as if we had just finished summer viiis yesterday, we did in fact spend most of our practice session re-acquiring a set boat. This was made harder by the fact that we had not received the memo to bring speakers for the cox-box, with Rob resorting to creating some inventive hand signals to communicate with bow four. Such signals passed on important but simple commands such as ‘go’, ‘stop’, ‘faster’, ‘easy there’, and ‘Archie put your blade in the water‘. Notwithstanding, once the aforementioned set had been acquired, the splits our PCBC lightweight crew managed to pull were astounding…ly above average. PCBCs very own Icarus flew, quite literally, too close to the sun however; as the deceptively overcast climate did not protect Mr Harley from a lobster-genic dose of UV-B during our outing.

The afternoon brought with it one of the trip’s highlights at the G museum of art (on the 52nd floor of the hotel that we should have been staying in). Sat in a radial spoke distribution, we were treated to the opportunity to get to know the other international crews, as each crew sequentially introduced themselves. Cian was almost robbed of his own introductory speech as the curator seemed to forget that Pembroke College Oxford had been invited. Luckily for Cian, our thoughtful and devoted friends at Peterhouse Cambridge were kind enough to remind the organisers of our existence so that Cian wouldn’t be deprived of the moment he so desperately craved and had diligently prepared for.

Race Day

Race day arrived. 35 degree heat, 90% humidity, and a sum total of 1-hour’s practice together as a crew, made for suboptimal racing conditions. Nevertheless Rob donned his cox-cam helmet, stylistically reminiscent of a 19^th century Prussian Pickelhaube, and we steeled ourselves for a ‘haute’ day out on the water. Proceedings were held up slightly as PCBC, Peterhouse and UCL were all reprimanded for wearing mismatching unisuits. Indeed many hundreds of cycles through the Pembroke washpoint machines had reduced the hexcode of stroke seat Nik Baya’s uni to #DDE4DD. Such transgressions warranted a quick change into Rob’s uni suit and the sincerest of apologies to the people of China. With no alternative unisuits available, Peterhouse and UCL were forced to race in the official Nanjing 2025 International Universities Rowing Open t-shirt, an injustice that sparked Hugo’s very own villain origin story and a grudge that he will take to his grave.

The inaugural event of the day was two 1000m heats against another university, in our case, Pôle universitaire Léonard-de-Vinci from Paris. Whilst our French colleagues put up a strong fight managing a dead heat in the first race, they were no match for #PCBClightweights who brought it back in the second heat to finish a length and a half ahead. The boys celebrated to screams of ‘Agincourt’ from Archie, and something slightly less family friendly from Ben. Ken nodded approvingly as we rowed back to shore. Head coach Simon, whilst initially intending to watch our second heat, had become temporarily distracted by some dragon boats on the other side of the river and missed our epic finish before then deciding to give PCBC’s precious water supplies away to our adversaries. Nevertheless, the morning marked a strong start for PCBC.

Lunchtime brought the 4x500m erg relay. In the most democratic of democratic processes, Cian had kindly decided to volunteer the four youngst members of the PCBC crew ahead of time for such an honour. Suffice to say they pulled it out the bag, securing 6th place out of 16 in the erg relay. This gave us our final ranking of 7th out of all 16 international crews. Given the average height and muscle mass of our crew compared to the average height and muscle mass of the other men’s crews, we were quite chuffed with this result.

Still to come however, was the 3K ‘pursuit’****. Knackered from the day’s exertion (and heat) so far, we doubled down and locked in for the final race of the trip. The culmination of our efforts in China, our path through the water was silky smooth and despite the threat of the gaining Tingshua university crew, we held our distance and finished 6th place out of 16. Truly we had an exceptional day of racing and after an appropriately grand awards ceremony, filled with mexican waves and fizzy apple presse, we were whisked off to the next stop on our trip Wuxi. It was at this point we bade a fond farewell to Ed who was flying home ahead of the group. Bookies are offering 20:1 odds on Ed actually making it back to the UK by himself; we’ve yet to receive any confirmation that he, or indeed his passport, did in fact return in one piece. We hope that wherever he is currently stranded, he knows we miss him very much! Meanwhile we had arrived at our Japanese themed hotel, which brought with it the excitement of fully functional Japanese toilets (word of warning, these are not for the faint-hearted).

Wuxi Wonders and Shanghai Shenanigans

Our time in Wuxi offered the delightful opportunity to tour the local Jiangnan University. We had a fantastic time meeting and talking to current students and staff and being introduced to some of the cutting edge technological projects they were working on there. A UN style assembly allowed us to exchange ideas and gifts, and offered the opportunity to paint traditional Chinese fans with our newly made friends. The evening was filled with a grand networking dinner in which Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, and the University of Otago came together to reflect on the trip. Each table offered a performance utilising their unique skills, this included a Haka from Otago, a rendition of Jerusalem from the Oxbridge composite, and an ‘off-water’ ‘boat race’ from the Oxford-UCL composite who, despite a strong start, somehow managed to lose their own performance to Otago.

Our final day in China offered us the treat of independent exploration around Shanghai, the jewel of China. We took full advantage of this fantastic opportunity and made sure to fit in some of the city’s most legendary sights including, Starbucks, Uniqlo, the Lego store, and last but by no means least, the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum Flea Market. The flea market offered a wealth of high quality wares including t-shirts featuring President Oba-mao and Vladimir Putin, Mao Zedong fridge magnets, Mao Zedong bottle openers, Mao’s little red book (translated into spanish???), and 100% authentic***** birkenstocks. The art of the deal came more naturally to some than others. Whilst Cian struggled to get to grips with not immediately accepting the opening offer in the negotiations, Hugo on the other hand was driving hard discounts for all his purchases; that is until one disgruntled shop owner, who had just about had enough of being heinously low-balled, made Hugo a very convincing offer of “¥100 or I kill you”.

The evening offered one of the most beautiful moments of the trip as the PCBC collective admired the glittering lights of Shanghai from the bund. It was perhaps at this moment that we truly appreciated how lucky we were to be here.

After a few final longing gazes at the glittering Shanghai skyline and a comprehensive debate with Peterhouse on which of Oxford or Cambridge’s bumps rules made for better racing (Torpids rules naturally came out on top) we embarked upon our journey home with the illubrious Egyptair via Cairo.

PCBC are immensely grateful to have been invited to compete in the 2025 Nanjing International Universities Rowing Open. The warmth of our reception, variety of cultural activities, and quality of rowing made for an unparalleled international rowing experience. Perhaps most importantly we did all of this whilst making lots of new friends amongst the other competing teams along the way. We will forever cherish our trip to Nanjing; to quote Hugo Bird, it has been our highest honour, and we hope we’ll get the opportunity to compete again in next year’s competition. Until then, Nanjing, farewell and keep rowing!

* For contractual reasons, definitely not the Washington Women rowing team.
** In all certainty not an empacher, made with the highest quality medium-density fibreboard and painted in a slightly luminescent shade of yellow.
*** Second…
**** Marketed as a bumps race. Definitely not a bumps race. Was in fact a 3K head race.
***** Authenticity borders on 0%