Walking through the arduous and dangerous mountain patrol road and facing the poachers with live ammunition [Kekexil Forest Public Security]
The car drove on the plateau of Hoh Xil's no-man's land, crossed the river and wilderness, and there were continuous snow-capped mountains in the distance.
In the middle of winter, the plateau is deprived of its color by the heavy snow, and the eyes are full of monotonous and dazzling white.
Regardless of winter or summer, the police officers of the Hoh Xil Forest Public Security patrol the mountains year after year, ranging from three to five days at a time, and lasting nearly 50 days at most.
Shouldering the responsibility of guarding this no-man's land, this team once faced poachers with live ammunition. The smell of blood and gunpowder spread in the air. It was a truly incompatible contest.
But most of the time, they have to pour their blood into the depressing and dangerous mountain patrol roads, run sports cars in the mountain dens, walk in the wind and snow, and fight against the physical pain caused by the harsh environment in loneliness.
The patrol car made its way across the moors toward the fold of the mountain.
When Nima Tashi came to this land for the first time in 2001, those mountains stood like that, and the snow fell like that. After 22 years, the outside world has changed and changed, and the people around have come and gone. The land is as it always has been.
Every evening, the setting sun will look particularly round and red in the thin air of the plateau. Only then will the feeling of time given to them become concrete for a short time.
Another day passed, and the red sun streaked across the youth of generations, leaving traces of guardians on this uninhabited plateau.
deep into no man's land
In this alpine, high-altitude no-man's land, every ordinary detail of life has to be redefined by the harsh environment.
At the end of 2022, the auxiliary policeman Nima Tashi followed the mountain patrol team and set off again.
The temperature in Hoh Xil in winter is as low as minus 40 degrees Celsius. The pancakes and steamed buns he brought were frozen as hard as rocks. When he was thirsty, he drank the scooped stream water and melted snow water. At night, they stayed in the car when it was below zero It was difficult to fall asleep, and the cold was unbearable, so I went out for a few laps, sweated, and then returned to the car to huddle together to keep warm.
The long journey is a double test of the body and the will, as well as the accompanying altitude sickness.
Twenty-six years later, Zhao Xinlu, a policeman, still remembers his first night in Hoh Xil. He tossed and turned, his head hurt like it was about to explode, and he wanted to go out for a walk, but he felt that every step was exhausting his whole body.
The mountain tour in those few days almost overturned all his romantic imagination of Hoh Xil. Later, he summed up the life of the mountain tour, and he used a few words to describe it: "hardship, triviality, and loneliness".
The scene of the off-road vehicle galloping in the wilderness in the movie road movie will never appear here, and the car getting stuck is the most predictable but the most troublesome difficulty here. "A ten-kilometer road sometimes takes several days to walk. It’s endless.” In winter, the roads are covered with snow, and in summer with swamps and mud. It’s considered lucky to get stuck in a car more than a dozen times during a mountain tour, but thirty or forty times is commonplace.
"Sometimes after walking for a day, when I look back, I can still see the camp where the tent was pitched yesterday."
Shovels, anti-skid chains, and jacks are the most commonly used tools in mountain patrolling. When the entire wheel is stuck in the mud, the policeman has to "digging his whole leg into the mud". When he goes down with a shovel, he occasionally finds that he cannot use his strength. Yes, it was dug into the permafrost layer more than one meter deep.
Auxiliary policeman Yuan Guangming recalled that sometimes he had to dig more than a dozen times a day, "his hands were too soft to hold chopsticks." When he rushed to the rescue, Zhao Xinlu's car got stuck in the mud and he and his teammates took the clothes, All the quilts were taken out and placed under the wheels, and the car was barely pushed out of the mud.
Frequent car traps made the mountain tour full of uncertainty. "Sometimes I brought 10 days' worth of dry food, and when it rained on the road, it took me half a month to go." Nima Tashi once had such an experience. Finally, he was so hungry that he couldn't bear it anymore. He picked up wild yak dung on the plateau, rolled it up in paper, and lit it for a cigarette.
The choking smoke entered the lungs, and I felt nauseated, "This will give people an illusion of fullness."
Compared with the hardship of the environment, what is more unbearable is the loneliness day after day.
There is no signal in no man's land, and the only way for them to communicate with the outside world is to make satellite calls to the bureau every once in a while, and each person only has the time to say "I'm safe".
The songs downloaded on the USB flash drive when starting out will soon become tiresome, and the scenery outside the window also makes people feel that "looking at the mountain is not a mountain". Everyday life is a cycle of digging the car, driving, and digging the car again.
When patrolling the mountains, there are usually groups of four or five people. When we first set off, we talked and laughed, chatted about family affairs, told stories, and shared recent experiences with each other. But the topics were quickly exhausted. An invisible wall, I wanted to say the words several times, but finally swallowed them back, "I have nothing to say when we meet again for a long time after the mountain tour."
After staying on the plateau for a long time, it was difficult for Nima Tashi to adapt to life in the city. When he returned to the station, he found it extremely difficult to communicate with people. Sometimes the words he wanted to say were on his lips, but he forgot how to say them.
Sometimes when he passed a noisy section of road, he was in a trance for a while, and he was used to the silence of no man's land, and the sounds in the city would make him feel irritable.
Living like an ascetic monk in the Hoh Xil Forest has left indelible marks on the bodies of the police officers. They suffered from stomach problems due to wind, camping, cold food, and sitting in the same posture for a long time made their lumbar spine weak.
Digging cars in the mud for a long time, walking in the wind and snow, their joints suffered from rheumatism, and the mercury content of the stream scooped up on the spot exceeded the standard. After drinking for a long time, their teeth swelled and even fell out.
"We almost burned our own bodies, overdrawing our lives to protect this land." Nima Tashi said.
danger is near
There is a saying among the police officers of the Hoh Xil Forest Public Security: "In Hoh Xil, every footprint that is inadvertently stepped on may be the first one left by human beings here since the birth of this planet." It will become a fact that human beings know very little about this land, even for the veteran police officers who have been stationed here for more than 20 years, it is still full of unknowns, mysteries and dangers.
Every kilometer traveled is to cross the river by feeling the stones.
Nima Tashi, who has 21 years of mountain patrol experience, can identify the direction of the stars and understand the language of the wind.
Just by looking at the direction of the river, he knew whether it was a plain or a valley ahead.
He needs to rely on these skills to determine the direction of progress and avoid risks on the way.
As the police officers of the Hoh Xil Forest Public Security, they must always maintain a keen sense like a beast. A negligence or a wrong decision may put them in a desperate situation.
Some dangers are predictable. For example, when driving through a pale snow field in winter, experienced veteran police officers will seal the front windshield of the patrol car with mud, leaving only a small opening for observation in the immediate area to prevent "" Snow Blindness".
When the road is muddy in summer, they will bring more food than they actually need, so as to prevent the unbearable hunger after being trapped.
But more risks came unprepared.
Nima Tashi still remembers that once they drove over the mountains and drove to the halfway of a mountain, only to find that the road ahead was blocked by ice and snow, making it impossible to advance or retreat.
They could only fix the two cars with wire ropes, drive the two cars to the two sides of the mountain, and slowly move forward on the steep slope of nearly 70 degrees, bypassing the section of the ridge covered by ice and snow.
"At that time, our lives were tied to the steel wire rope. If the rope broke, and even people and cars fell down the mountain, even a single screw might not be found." During his 21-year mountain patrol career, Nima Tashi I fell into a bitterly cold icy lake, "I couldn't reach the bottom with my hands and feet, and I lost consciousness." I also faced ferocious beasts, "Sometimes I woke up and found the footprints of brown bears near the tent."
Zhao Xinlu still can't forget his most dangerous experience.
While patrolling near Sun Lake, his car got stuck in the mud by the lake, and he couldn't dig it out. As time passed, he decided to walk to the nearest camp with his teammates for help.
Every step on the plateau is exhausting, but they walked for a whole day and night, which is almost the limit of the human body.
During the day, the snow is so white that it is dazzling, and the eyes are even burned to bleed. At night, the surroundings are pitch black, and they can only look at the stars to find the direction, and they must avoid making noises by themselves to provoke the animals that live in the dark.
When it was past twelve o'clock in the night, his teammates slumped on the ground exhaustedly, "I can't walk anymore, I really can't walk anymore." Zhao Xinlu tried to carry his teammates who weighed more than 200 kilograms, but he couldn't hold on to the rest of the walk. down the road.
At that time, the teammates almost gave up and handed the gun to Zhao Xinlu, "You go, you go back by yourself." But Zhao Xinlu knew what it meant to give up on the plateau in the middle of the night, "I was almost procrastinating, and at two o'clock in the morning Only then staggered to the camp."
Later, Zhao Xinlu found out that their return route crossed a snow mountain and passed a brown bear's cave at night. He also rejoiced in the aftermath of the fate that would have awaited the two of them if they had given up at that time.
Such danger is always hidden on every section of the mountain patrol road, and the threat of death is everywhere. The police officers walk through the wilderness physically, but their spirit seems to be walking on a tightrope.
For them, choosing to forget is a means of protecting themselves.
Nima Tashi seldom recalls the details of the mountain patrol alone. "When I return to the station, I don't think about it. The more I think about it, the more afraid I become." He dug up the photos of the car to record the dangers he faced, but when the patrol was about to end, he always silently deleted these photos, "I will be scared when I see it, and my family will also be worried when they see it."
Zhao Xinlu is also used to hiding those dangerous moments in his heart. Before he went to patrol the mountains, he never called his family to tell him, "Because he didn't know if he would be able to come back safely." Call to report that you are safe, but never mention the hardships and dangers during the journey.
poacher's gunshots
Talking about the reasons for coming here, the police officers of the Hoh Xil Forest Public Security have their own stories. Zhao Xinlu, who had just retired from the army at that time, felt that "soldiers should go to remote places to guard." Nima Zhaxi, who runs a car repair shop "I want a stable job within the system," and Yuan Guangming, who holds public office in Yushu, "want to go to no-man's land to protect Tibetan antelopes."
But they always mention the same name—Suonan Dajie. For this generation of Hoh Xil Forest Public Security police officers, Sonam Dajie is the reason they came here, as well as their guide and role model in their work.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the "soft gold" Tibetan antelope cashmere became famous. The "Shahtoosh" shawl made of Tibetan antelope's down can sell for 50,000 US dollars in Central Asia, Europe and the United States.
Under the huge profits, the gunfire of poachers was everywhere, the plateau was devastated, and the number of Tibetan antelopes dropped from more than 200,000 to less than 20,000.
In July 1992, Suonan Dajie organized the establishment of China's first armed anti-poaching organization - Zhiduo County Western Working Committee, and concurrently served as the secretary of the Western Working Committee.
According to People's Daily, in January 1994, 40-year-old Sonam Dajie and four team members captured 20 poachers in Hoh Xil, seized 7 cars and more than 1,800 Tibetan antelope skins, and escorted the gangsters to Sun Lake. When he was nearby, he was attacked by gangsters. Sonam Dajie confronted 18 poachers with guns in no man's land. After being shot, his body was sculpted into an ice sculpture by the minus 40 ℃ wind and snow in Hoh Xil.
A few years after Suonan Dajie died, the Western Working Committee was abolished, and its responsibilities were merged into the Hoh Xil National Nature Reserve Administration.
Fighting against poachers and patrolling no-man's land, Sonam Dajie's unfinished business has been passed on to the mountain patrol team of the Hoh Xil Administration and the Hoh Xil Forest Public Security Police.
Zhao Xinlu's generation of police officers grew up listening to Sonam Dajie's story and was inspired by Sonam Dajie's spirit. After they started working, they regarded anti-poaching as the most sacred mission and duty.
In Zhao Xinlu's memory, those poachers were ferocious and ruthless. They carried guns and sophisticated off-road equipment. Every encounter would be a contest that tested both courage and resourcefulness.
During the mountain patrol, they have to pay attention to whether there are ruts on the ground, whether there are signs of fire or camping in the wilderness, and look for clues that poachers may leave.
In those years, the performance of off-road vehicles driven by poachers was often better than that of patrol vehicles driven by police officers. Chasing them rashly on the plateau was like "fishing with coarse nets", and there would be no imaginary competition between chasing and chasing each other. , but stood still in the trapped car, watching the poachers slip away.
"A successful capture often requires patiently waiting for the opportunity, slowly approaching the ruts, and choosing the most suitable net collection plan according to the terrain and wind direction."
Nature is their reliable friend, the towering mountain is a natural cover, they can hide their whereabouts in the night, and they can cover their voices with the wind blowing on their faces.
By being close enough and hiding well enough, they can be confident enough to go hand-to-hand with the vicious poachers.
During an anti-poaching operation in 2003, approaching the camp of poachers, Zhao Xinlu saw with his own eyes the peeled sheepskins piled up next to the camp. Those skinned Tibetan antelopes left only bloody bones, piled up randomly on the wasteland , attracted a vulture.
The air was filled with the smell of blood, while the poachers were still listening to songs and roasting lamb in the camp.
"It was the breeding season for Tibetan antelopes, and many ewes were still pregnant with lambs."
In Zhao Xinlu's eyes, Tibetan antelopes and human beings are "like family members". During the mountain tour, he would always rescue the single lambs and bring them back to the protection station to raise them. Some lambs were not weaned, and Zhao Xinlu put the batter in them. He fed it mouth to mouth, "They are fluffy and have big eyes. After feeding them a few times, they will treat you as a relative and follow them wherever they go." Zhao Xinlu couldn't control the scene where the Tibetan antelope bones were everywhere. "How can one kind of life infringe on another kind of life like this?"
Anger welled up in his chest. Following the command to close the net, Zhao Xinlu rushed forward, almost forgetting the pain of running on the plateau. When he pushed the poacher to the ground, he also lay down on the ground, his breath full of blood. smell.
When cleaning up the scene, Zhao Xinlu saw that the poachers' shotguns were loaded, and there were even fired bullets beside the guns. "I'm a little scared, but in that case, I have to use it. There is no other way."
Today, thanks to the unremitting efforts of the forest police, the gunfire of poachers has not sounded in this land for 14 years. Those years of fighting poachers have gradually become a thing of the past, but Zhao Xinlu and his colleagues still dare not stop patrolling. Mountain footsteps.
Nima Zhaxi told the Beijing News reporter: "I once learned that poachers specially asked someone to guard us at the gate of the Public Security Bureau to observe when we patrol the mountains. If the patrol stops, the consequences will be disastrous."
In 2020, Ma, the poacher who participated in the shooting of Sonam Dajie and absconded in fear of crime, was captured by the criminal police detachment of Yushu State Public Security Bureau. This is a topic that can comfort the police.
Nima Zhaxi couldn't help but think that if Secretary Suo had a spirit in heaven and saw that the suspects from back then were arrested and the reserve was peaceful and peaceful, "he must be very pleased."
Pass on the duty of caretaker
The number of Tibetan antelopes in Hoh Xil Reserve has increased from less than 20,000 in the early 1980s to more than 70,000 now. It’s like a zoo.” Zhao Xinlu felt comforted when he saw groups of Tibetan antelopes, wild yaks grazing leisurely, and Tibetan wild donkeys during his spare time on patrol, “After working for half my life, I feel that my work is valuable.”
In November 2020, the former Provincial Forest Public Security Bureau and its directly affiliated institutions were transferred to the leadership and management of the Provincial Public Security Department, and the Forest (National Park) Police Corps of the Qinghai Provincial Public Security Bureau was established, becoming the first National Park Police Corps in my country.
The work of Zhao Xinlu and his colleagues has opened a new chapter. "Now we are less responsible for daily patrols, and more are responsible for special operations in the protected area and police dispatch for some criminal cases."
After the storm of poaching has passed, preventing and rescuing illegal crossers has become another main line of work for police officers.
According to Qinghai Public Security, on April 25, 2021, a man was trapped in Duck Lake near the Sonam Dajie Protection Station in Hoh Xil.
After receiving the police, Zhao Xinlu immediately led a team to the police. After several hours of searching, he successfully rescued the Henan boy who committed suicide and wanted to commit suicide.
Zhao Xinlu has experienced such rescue operations many times.
In recent years, veteran police officers often feel physically aging.
Nima Zhaxi is 44 years old this year, and his teeth are almost falling out. He has to suffer from burning stomach pains and old waist injuries every day when he wakes up. He is a little worried about what will happen to this group of people when they get old. I plan to dedicate myself here, but the conditions here are too harsh, and the income is not much, many young people are afraid of suffering, can't stand it, and don't want to come, and can't replenish fresh blood."
Now, Zhao Xinlu's son is in college, and when he filled out his application form, he chose to major in veterinary medicine. "He wants to protect small animals and Tibetan antelopes just like me." Nima Tashi's two sons are always there when he returns home. Talking about animals and nature with him, the tone is full of longing.
The fire of inheritance has not been extinguished. Nima Zhaxi looks forward to a new generation of young people who can hear the stories here, understand the spirit here, and relay the protection of this mysterious and pure land and the hope passed down from generation to generation.
Beijing News reporter Shi Hang Zhang Jingshu