Standing at the border of the motherland, I protect my witness - past, present and future
"Creation is silent but affectionate, and every time it is cold, spring is born." Standing on the land where spring is everywhere at the border, using these two poems to describe the new landscape of border defense has a unique charm.
When it comes to the borders with mountains and snow, we immediately think of the long distances on the geographical indications.
However, a piece of news from the frontier, just like the green of the spring and the wild, and the gentleness of the wind, vividly and warmly expresses and witnesses the frontier soldiers' understanding and interpretation of the distance and the near, the pain and the joy, and the youthful atmosphere.
With the arrival of the New Year, the soldiers stationed in the Karakoram looked up to the sky and gave special New Year gifts to the astronauts who were "on business trips" there, and sent them to space in the form of photos.
The gifts are paintings on two "Kunlun Stones", one is a portrait of the three astronauts, and the other is a "group photo" of the soldiers with the Chinese space station.
The message on the stone expresses the unique heroism of the plateau officers and soldiers - "On earth, I am the closest to you."
After the opening of the Winter Olympics, on the training ground of the Xinjiang Altay Frontier Post where the wind and snow were filled, several "Bingdundun" snow sculptures built by soldiers were erected. "Jindundun" and "Yindundun", but the soldiers always proudly carried out "popular science" in the videos with relatives and friends in their hometowns: the earliest rock paintings with skiing scenes in the world came from the Altay region.
After identification, it was from the Paleolithic Age 10,000 years ago.
"The Winter Olympics are very close to us. We must accompany this ice and snow event to the future together with the motherland." Whether it is 10,000 years or 10,000 miles away, in the eyes of the younger generation, the distant time and space are just a "Bingdun" pier", because at this moment, they are "the furthest away from the home and the closest to the country", standing gloriously in the battle position of defending the motherland.
Standing at the border of the motherland, I protect my witness——
Past, present, Future
■Zheng Shuyan
Of course time has color, always smearing the frontiers of thousands of miles with gorgeous spring light;
Of course, the years have expressions, no matter how far away they look forward to the solemn love;
Of course, history has temperature, and fiery feelings continue everywhere in the mountains and rivers.
- Excerpted from a poem by a border guard
"Border Military Language" Witnesses Changes in Frontier Defense
Almost every city has iconic buildings—either floor height, historic history, or cutting-edge fashion in design...and they become a city's dazzling GI in their own right.
On the frontier defense line thousands of miles away from the city, although some outposts are inconspicuous, in the eyes of the people of the motherland and in the hearts of every soldier, they have also become the dazzling symbols of the era of the majestic Great Wall and the iron and steel gates.
For example, Shenxianwan Outpost, of course there are no gods here, but the soldiers live and fight in the snow-capped mountains at an altitude of 5,380 meters. The patrol route must pass through the "Hero Peak" at an altitude of more than 5,900 meters. The fairy is almost there.
Another example is the astronomical point, named because scientists observed and measured astronomical data here in the 1950s, and just based on this, you can imagine the distance between it and the blue sky.
There is also the Ganbala radar station, which is "insurmountable mountain" in Tibetan, but our fighters have surpassed the peak of the ice peak and established the world's highest man-controlled radar station.
Of course, there are more border guard posts, just like the name of a border guard post in the Himalayas - Wuming Lake, which is unknown but indispensable.
Nameless battle positions, nameless figures, the officers and soldiers used nameless dedication and silent perseverance to make many people who approached them for the first time truly understand what it means to be "awe-inspiring".
A few decades ago, when the red flag rolled over the territory of New China, many soldiers who liberated their hometowns waved goodbye to their hometowns again, pointing their swords at border crossings, traveling the world, laughing on ice and snow, and climbing dangerously.
As a result, there are frontier guards in the ranks of the people's army, and the ancient and distant frontier land echoes the new chapter of "frontier fortress poetry" under the emblem of the August 1st Army...
A history of changes in frontier defense, a legend of ten thousand volumes of frontier defense.
Altitude, oxygen content, "forbidden zone of life", "no man's land"... These words are just words that others have read in textbooks, but they constitute unique elements of border and coastal defense. With many plots beyond our imagination, they constitute a Every day of the unknown border guards.
There are some "frontier military language" that used to be popular in border defense, also known as "little dictionary" for understanding border defense. They use a special way of speaking to witness the chivalrous spirit and enthusiasm of the old generation of frontier soldiers in the special natural environment of the border. Feelings, in just a few words, recorded the development context and vicissitudes of Xiongguan.
"Footboard Road" - In the early days of border defense construction, many boundary markers were still buried deep in the mountains, and there was no road at all during border patrols, but where there are Chinese boundary markers, there must be the footprints of Chinese border guards.
With this belief, the soldiers take their feet as the road, and the footsteps are the road. They are not afraid of the snow, the wind and the mountains. Every boundary monument is a position, and every patrol is a battle that must be won ;
"Ice driving" - every severe winter, all ground passages of the border defense are blocked by the concave and convex ice layers.
In order to ensure border transportation, only thick glaciers can be used.
Driving on this slippery ice is no fun and requires special skills and rules.
Therefore, the "ice driving" training every winter is an indispensable professional course for border transport troops;
"Sunshine" - The first test that northern soldiers have to go through when they come to the tropical border defense is to complete their border duties under the scorching sun.
Sweat all over, a layer of skin a day.
After a summer of peeling skin again and again, the skin is smeared with a dark and shiny color, which the soldiers proudly named "Sun Color";
"Mountain Closing Season" - For officers and soldiers at checkpoints located in Bingfeng Snow Mountain, there are only two seasons each year: the opening season and the closing season.
The closing season tends to take longer.
Isolated from the world in the snow and ice, the years seem to have frozen in one mountain and one whistle.
On the day when the mountain was opened, all kinds of supplies came in hurry, but all of them could not equal the backlog of home letters that had accumulated over the winter;
"Black and white meal" - due to historical reasons, the plateau frontier defense used to be unable to grow vegetables, and the main color of the table was only one white: rice noodles, and two black: dehydrated dried vegetables such as kelp and fungus;
"Following family leave" - the border guards on the island were blocked by the typhoon and couldn't go to the island with fake slips, and the military sister-in-law was trapped outside the island due to the cold wave when visiting relatives in Shanghai.
Husbands and wives who are far away from each other look at each other across the water but can't get together. Looking at the surging sea water, "far away, waiting for the night", the family visit has become a "family holiday"...
The years have passed, and many news has become history, but the border will always be fertile ground for news.
These "frontier military language", which can be called witnessing the changes of the border, have gradually drifted away and become a tearful display in the honor room.
With the rapid development of the modernization construction of the motherland and our army, the historic transformation has become the most magnificent color on the frontier defense line today.
However, in the annual ring scale of frontier defense development, heroes and loyalty, mission and responsibility, glory and dream are the eternal theme words, the eternal bravery and loyalty, and the blood and heroic songs passed down from generation to generation.
Of course, we are looking forward to the "frontier military language" that is more modern, newer and more beautiful.
The vicissitudes of life witness the unchanging magnificent feelings
Frontier defense is an expression of both a geographical concept and a political concept. Historians use academic language to refer to the frontier defense area as a "historical scene"; while storytellers are the first to take the lead, Zhangkou is "a battleground for soldiers."
And I prefer the description in the ancient military book: "The border is the domain, and the soldiers are guarded." Because of the guards of people, the borders of the world constitute the fortress of Xiongguan.
"Every time the sun and the moon pass over the shoulders, the mountains and rivers must be guarded by generations; horizontal criticism: the bright front and the back." This is a couplet copied from the watchtower of a border post.
Yes, earth-shaking changes are taking place in the frontier defense line of the motherland. However, there is an eternal change in the changes, that is, the heroic feelings passed down by the blood of the frontier guards from generation to generation, and the continuous sacrifice and dedication of the frontier defense officers and soldiers from generation to generation.
"Man Family Loyalty and Martyrdom" is not a book legend, but a chapter that embodies loyalty and passion on the frontier.
She deserves the title.
At the release ceremony of the "Most Beautiful Retired Soldiers" in 2020, the 80-year-old heroic mother Wang Changqun has a body that can no longer be described as tall and straight. What she has is not only "the most beautiful", but also another high-level of our national aesthetic concept. - magnificent.
"A gentleman is in service, I don't know the period." In fact, she never thought that she had retired, but a mother who has closely linked and integrated herself with the border defense, and the small family with the country in the past 40 years.
At the age of 15, she signed up to join the army from her hometown and became a female soldier on the battlefield of the liberation of the southwest.
In the blink of an eye, she retired to the frontier, and her lifelong partner Liu Bin, an old soldier who served as a company commander in the war of liberation, also became the leader of the frontier troops.
At the beginning of my army, it was the subordinate of this chief.
What I didn't expect was that the typical example of my first interview after working in journalism turned out to be the old chief's child - his name is Liu Guang, he joined the army in the border defense, and ended his three-year military academy life in the "tiger and dragon" place, and graduated. He returned to southern Xinjiang and became the deputy commander of the reconnaissance company of the front-line frontier defense force.
The former Kunming Military Region awarded Liu Guang the title of "Model Cadre Dedicated to Dedication to Defense". During the interview, I read the poems left by this martyr whom I met in my youth, which made me burst into tears, and it was difficult for me to write for a long time.
There is this line in the poem: "Leave a word to my mother before I leave: bury me at the border, there is another tomb here, no - that is a barracks."
What was even more unexpected was that, after writing the typical newsletter "Born to fight for the frontier defense, die for the people", he received the most difficult task of collecting and writing in the journalist's career - on July 13, 1984, an agency platoon of a border defense department. Chang, Liu Guang's younger brother Liu Ming, and his brother died in the same scorched-earth battlefield. What's more worrying is that he also likes poetry and copied his brother's posthumous works in his notebook; he is also 22 years old, a young age.
It is completely conceivable that the old chief and his wife’s old tears were flowing, but the choice of this border guard family made us know what it means to be stern and loyal-they took their daughter who just graduated from the military medical school and worked as a surgeon in the army hospital. The doctor's son-in-law was once again sent to the front-line medical team. Commander Liu Bin has been fighting on the front line as the front-line commander, and Wang Changqun has become the front-line leader, running around in the war...
Historians said: "The most exciting history is the history of trying to recreate the lives of the past." And the soldiers at Alashankou, a border guard in Xinjiang, said: "The most exciting history is the entrepreneurial history left by the old sentinel with his life."
Alashankou was once famous as a big tuyere where "a wind blows from spring to winter".
60 years ago, the first sentinel Wu Guangsheng was ordered to station.
He led his comrades to walk more than 80 kilometers against the headwind, came to this windy world, and built the initial outpost by digging "holes in the ground".
"The soldiers of the iron camp and flowing water", of course, the old sentinel also has a day to change his career.
And his hometown is Yangzhou, which is far away from Alashankou.
Unexpectedly, people are in the prosperous and gentle town, but they always remember the place where the wind blows and the sand is flying.
A few years ago, when he died, his only wish was to scatter his ashes in Alashankou and continue to watch the country with his young comrades in arms.
Since then, the company has an unwritten rule that whenever the patrol passes through this section of the border line, the officers and soldiers must stand and pay attention to the old sentinel to pay tribute to the new generation of frontier guards.
Of course, the old site of the "Diwozi" has become a "golden port" today, and the area where it is located is now called the "Eurasian Continental Bridgehead".
At the company's Spring Festival Gala this year, college student Chen Jialong recited a poem he wrote: "We are like the old sentinel, youth has always belonged to the wind, and it has been flying on the bright red flag."
The new generation of frontiers know very well that it is the inescapable responsibility of young people to travel with their youthful footsteps and guard the territory of the motherland with their youthful blood.
The difference is that history is changing, and the responsibilities that need to be shouldered are also changing.
In the 1950s, on the way to enter Tibet, a descendant of a border guard was born.
The child, who was wrapped by his mother in a Tibetan robe and swayed on horseback for several months, later became a Tibetan border guard.
The difference is that his father used to be the chief of the transportation section, but he managed yaks besides mules and horses; and he became the head of the car group. Although he had updated several generations of cars in his hands, he still fell behind. to his own son.
Today, the third generation of this border guard family also continues the task of transporting supplies to border guards, but what is completely different is that what he controls is neither the reins nor the steering wheel, but the control platform of the drone. .
Satellite positioning, intelligent cruise, and fixed-point delivery, this new delivery mode has broken the problem of ensuring the "last mile" of border guard posts.
Historians have said: "History is not about the science of the past, but about the science of the present." History is the passage of time and the focus of the spirit, and the era is the narrative of the years and the coordinates of the future.
I believe--
Age is not the only sign of youth in any age.
In any age, vicissitudes will eventually be a color that ignites feelings.
Dreams are undoubtedly the "navigation map" of life
It is said that the spring at the border is always late, but at a border defense radar station of the Air Force on the Gobi Desert in the west, although the flowers and leaves are still not seen in March, the traditional Spring Festival program for the officers and soldiers has begun - Dou Chun, It is to compare who can plant the earliest spring green.
The words of Zhao Guoqiang, a veteran radar soldier, are more philosophical than those "chicken soup for the soul": "It is said that the predecessors planted trees and others enjoyed the shade. Facing the future, we are the predecessors who planted trees." In everyone's spring breeze-like laughter, I felt To the meaning of youth and dreams.
He did as well as he said.
During his several years of frontier defense, he discovered an "earthwork" that has grown more than 10 jujube trees in the saline-alkali land.
In this regard, he has a green dream that is not "tall", but refreshing - when he bids farewell to the border, he can see jujube flowers swaying and green trees on this saline-alkali land.
Follow the avenue, you can go thousands of miles; look up and see, the road is long.
For these new generation of border guards, facing the future, dreams are undoubtedly the "navigation map" of life.
A dream is a pursuit—Liu Kan, a liberal arts student soldier on the Ili border defense, started out as the company's "party history narrator". He used his major and built a learning platform relying on Qiangjun.com, and tried the "virtual podium". "Scenario sketch" and other teaching forms.
When he stood on the "C position" in the theoretical study of this unit, he began to turn his attention to the "Dragon Tiger List" of military training.
A dream is a kind of target -- Kong Runhui, a technician at a radar station in the border defense, is nicknamed "Eagle Eye", referring to his efforts in radar maintenance and observation.
Originally, he was an infantry squad leader, but with his longing for radar, he became a radar master with stunts.
Every step to success is cushioned with books of knowledge - over the years, he has studied more than 200 professional books and wrote more than 200,000 words of notes.
His dream is to be able to edit and organize his notes into an easy-to-understand "Radar Soldier Collection".
The dream is a kind of perseverance - the wind is blowing like a roar on the small island of Haiphong.
Sun Yan, an instructor who has guarded the island for many years, has never given up his efforts to change the face of coastal defense. His dream is to design the "Island Spring No. 1 Project" to make the "Wind Harvest Field" a "Bumper Harvest Field".
And one of the "backbone projects" - the 2,000-meter thatch windshield is ready to start construction this spring.
Dreams are a kind of sunshine - frontier officers and soldiers are always full of confidence when introducing themselves, and listening to them describe their dreams is like a kind of youthful sunshine shining in their hearts.
Yao Cancan, the squad leader of a reconnaissance squad of a border defense department, has a dream as bright as his name: to design a kite-style "aircraft for mountain and islands" that can fly when there is wind.
Deng Liu, the squad leader who brought new recruits to the frontier for the first time, likes to study the ancient and modern ways of bringing soldiers abroad. His dream is really not small: since the squad leader is the "mother of the army", he hopes that he will be "full of border defenses". Be an enlightened squad leader for many future generals and heroes...
"There is no limit to the vastness, sailing but the trade wind." Although young, although immature.
Perhaps a lot of dreams are just a trickle of water and a cloud of stars.
It is true that not all dreams can ignite the sky, but what can ignite the sky must come from the spark of dreams.
Life trail warrior heart.
Guarding the frontier in youth is undoubtedly the most charming expedition in one's life.
The new generation of border guards, with their dreams and passionate youth, make their lives, and also make the future of the motherland's vast borders and border defenses "flowery, lively and lively" with "unlimited emotions and meanings".
(Ding Zhengren, Qian Chunyan, Ye Ming, Luo Xiaoguang, etc. were greatly assisted in the interview)