She was built in 1983 as an icebreaking anchor handling tug supply vessel (AHTS) Ikaluk for BeauDril, the drilling subsidiary of Gulf Canada Resources, to support offshore oil exploration in the Beaufort Sea.

[8] The smaller icebreakers were designed by the Canadian naval architecture company Robert Allan Ltd and the construction of one vessel was awarded to the Japanese Nippon Kōkan K. K. Tsurumi Shipyard in December 1979.

Twelve wells alone were drilled in the Amauligak prospect, the most significant oil and gas field discovered in the region, but the high expectations for the Beaufort Sea were not met: the area was characterized by a large number of small, widely scattered resources.

The drilling subsidiary of Dome Petroleum (later Amoco Canada) had been BeauDril's main competitor in the Beaufort Sea for more than a decade and the merger of two former rivals created the world's largest fleet of commercial Arctic vessels.

[15] In 1995, Canmar Ikaluk was chartered by Cominco to shuttle supplies from Nanisivik to the Polaris mine when the cargo ships couldn't reach Little Cornwallis Island.

[24] Instead of being broken up for scrap, Ikaluk was purchased by Zhang Xinyu and Liang Hong, the people associated with the Chinese reality show On the Road, to serve as an unofficial research vessel.

After carrying out research activities and collecting air, water and soil samples, Beijing Ocean Leader returned to China on 21 April.

[25][26][27] In late 2021, Beijing Ocean Leader was donated to Sun Yat-sen University and renamed Zhong Shan Da Xue Ji Di (Chinese: 中山大学极地).

[30] In January 2025, Zhong Shan Da Xue Ji Di embarked on a scientific research mission in the seasonally-freezing Bohai Sea.

Her icebreaking hull form, developed at the Hamburgische Schiffbau-Versuchsanstalt (HSVA) ice tank in Hamburg, Germany, features a heavy forefoot wedge to deflect ice floes and large bossings to protect propellers and rudders from damage, and is strengthened to Canadian Arctic Shipping Pollution Prevention Regulations (CASPPR) Arctic Class 4 requirements.

The hull is made of high strength steel sourced from Japan, resistant to cold ambient temperatures down to −50 °C (−58 °F), and coated with the low-friction Inerta 160 epoxy paint.

[4][5] Zhong Shan Da Xue Ji Di has a diesel-mechanical propulsion system with four medium-speed diesel engines driving two shafts through twin input-single output gearboxes.

The four-bladed stainless steel controllable pitch propellers, manufactured by LIPS Canada, have a diameter of 3.75 metres (12 ft) and are placed in fixed nozzles.