Draft: Cheng Xuan
In the early days of the founding of New China, the builders of the Corps went deep into the ancient wasteland, holding a gun in one hand and a pickaxe in the other, digging canals to divert water and opening up wasteland to create fields. Courtesy of Visual China
On June 2, in Hotan, Xinjiang, 9 veteran party members of the 47th Regiment of the 14th Division of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps were awarded the "50 Years of Glory in the Party" commemorative medal. Courtesy of Visual China
On August 6, a docent at the Military Reclamation Museum of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps told the story behind the military coat sewn with 296 patches. China Youth Daily and China Youth Network reporter Wang Xueying/photo
The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps Military Reclamation Museum in Shihezi City has a town museum treasure, a military coat sewn with 296 patches of various colors.
At the beginning of the establishment of the museum in 1995, zhang Hongyan, a research librarian, and his colleagues walked the streets and alleys to collect old objects, and found the home of the old man Wang Deming of the Eighth Division, the first two regiments, the old man was an old military reclamation who followed General Wang Zhen into Xinjiang in 1949, and the shelves of the bungalow were neatly stacked with stacks of old military uniforms, covered with patches of different sizes and colors, and the old people cherished these old military uniforms like cherishing military merit badges, and no one would move. Later, it was his wife who quietly donated it to the museum.
Nowadays, everyone who walks into the Military Reclamation Museum to explore the history of the Corps will be moved by the story of the army coat, and behind it is the corps spirit of "loving the motherland, selfless dedication, hard work, pioneering and enterprising" as the main connotation of the long-term practice of the three generations of corps.
---------------
Sand Sea Veteran: Dedicated youth for life
After 72 years, recalling the scene of crossing the Taklamakan Desert, the 93-year-old Yang Shifu can still blurt out the hardships of that time.
At the end of November 1949, a counter-revolutionary riot broke out in Hotan, and the 15th Regiment of the 5th Division of the 2nd Army of the First Field Army of the Chinese People's Liberation Army stationed in Aksu undertook the glorious task of urgent counterinsuguage. In order to complete the mission as soon as possible, the commanders and fighters of the Fifteenth Regiment decisively chose to cross the Taklamakan Desert. More than 1,800 officers and men marched more than 790 kilometers for 18 days and nights, stationed in Hotan in time, and quelled the rebellion.
"On the tenth day of the march, we encountered a black storm in the desert, and when the wind came, the wind and sand blew on the face, and the eyes could not be opened, and everyone was like being dug out of the sand, and the whole body was filled with sand, so they put on their backs and carried equipment, faced the wind and sand, and walked another 110 miles." Yang Shifu, who was still a recruit who had been in the army for three months, recalled: "No one gave up, giving up is a dead end, only to continue to move forward." ”
"But there are still people who haven't been able to get out of the desert." Yang Shifu recalled that Li Ming, the platoon leader of the Second Company, was an old eighth road and a combat hero, because the marching diet was irregular, and Li Ming, who had a serious stomach disease, fainted in the desert and was buried by the wind and sand.
In the Memorial Hall of the 47th Regiment of the 14th Division of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps Chinese the People's Liberation Army March into Hotan, a declassified telegram is preserved: "The 15th Regiment stationed in Hotan cannot be adjusted. ”
The special order of the old chief Wang Zhen allowed these warriors who had experienced the test of the "Sea of Death" to stay in Hotan, a place called "Shelder Wave" (Uyghur, meaning black Gobi Desert), and they collectively changed careers and developed and established the 47th Regiment of the 14th Division in the ancient wasteland, casting swords into ploughs, reclaiming the border, like desert poplars, deeply rooted under the Kunlun Mountains, silently guarding the southern gate of Xinjiang.
The veterans never left Hotan in their entire lives.
On the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of New China, the leaders of the corps went to visit them and asked them what their wishes were; some veterans said that they had never taken a train, some said they had never been to Urumqi, and some said that they had been away from General Wang Zhen for decades and wanted to meet General Wang Zhen...
The veterans were invited to Urumqi and arranged to stay in the best hotels. At night, these veterans looked at the snow white and flat sheets and were reluctant to sleep in bed. The next day, the waiter came into the room to clean. Seeing the beds without a few folds, and the veterans sleeping on the ground, I burst into tears and were so moved that I could not speak.
The next day, the veterans came to Shihezi City to visit. In front of the bronze statue of General Wang Zhen, the veteran soldiers stood in a row and gave a standard military salute to Commander Wang Zhen. Li Bingqing reported on behalf of the veteran soldiers: "Report Commander, we are soldiers of the Fifteenth Regiment of the Fifth Division of the Second Army, and we have successfully completed the task of reclamation and reclamation entrusted to us by you. You asked us to take root in the frontier and build Xinjiang for future generations, and we did it. Now our sons and daughters have stayed in Xinjiang and in Hotan. We did not leave the Forty-Seventh Regiment. ”
For veterans, the green military uniform is their favorite, and the military hat on Yang Shifu's head has been worn for more than 30 years.
Today, the veterans have passed away one after another, and Yang Shifu has become the last living sand sea veteran, but many of their sons and daughters and descendants have also remained in the Forty-seventh Regiment, continuing the mission of reclamation and reclamation.
From the Gobi Desert to the Pearl City
In the territory of the 152nd Regiment of the Eighth Division, 20 kilometers away from Shihezi City, there is a red tourist attraction of the "First Company of Military Reclamation", where there are remnants of the land nest group and dry fighting base houses in the early days of the reclamation of the frontier of the Corps, displaying wooden wheeled ox carts, wooden ploughs, stone mills and nearly 100 old photos of the reclamation period.
"At the beginning of the founding of the corps, it was faced with the Gobi, desert, and wasteland of 'water to the end, road to the end, and the ground to the end', there were no houses, and the military reclamation people created a 'nest of the ground', they dug a pit in the ground, covered it with firewood and grass, and dug the ground as a hole, which became the home of the first generation of military reclamation people." The narrator Wang Shujun pointed to more than twenty large and small holes in the first company of barren grassy slopes.
Wang Shujun is the second generation of the Corps, and his father came to Shihezi in the 1960s to settle down. "My father pinned his feelings for the corps on his children, and I was the second oldest, and the names of the four of our brothers and sisters were combined to form 'Victory of the Red Army.'"
An old leader of the Corps once made an image analogy to Tunken Shubian: Turning over the map of China, Xinjiang is actually a big circle and two small circles. The big circle is a long national border, two small circles, one is the Tarim Basin and the other is the Junggar Basin. The legion's oases are like gems, set around the long border and the Taklamakan Desert and the Gurbantunggut Desert.
In the early days of the founding of New China, more than a hundred thousand people's troops carried forward the spirit of Nanniwan and, in line with the principle of not striving for profits with the people, went deep into the ancient wasteland, held a gun in one hand and a pickaxe in the other, dug canals to divert water, opened up wasteland and created fields, and from generals to soldiers, dug burrows and lived, drank alkali water, swallowed wheat grains, and threw themselves into the large-scale production movement of fighting against the heavens and the earth. They built bridges and roads, built water conservancy projects, reclaimed land, built a large number of large-scale modern state-owned agricultural and pastoral regiment farms, laid the foundation for Xinjiang's modern industry and agriculture, and built new military reclamation cities such as Shihezi, Aral, Kuitun, and Beitun.
In the Hotan Desert, Zhang Yuanfa, a veteran of the Sand Sea, suspected that the Kantuman sent by the company was too small, and he went to the blacksmith shop to beat a 3.5-kilogram Kantuman, and one person opened more wilderness than two people, known as the "King of Kantuman". The "soil horn" on the construction site shouted Zhang Yuanfa's name every day, and the more he shouted, the more energetic he became, and he had prizes every month. Once the army held a group wedding, he gave the newlyweds 5 vests at a time.
Wang Shujun said: At that time, xinjiang's industrial and agricultural development was very backward, and the soldiers cut back on food and clothing, and took the initiative to demand that the two sets of military cotton clothes issued a year be changed to one set a year. In the pioneering years, clothes were very worn, and the soldiers sewed and mended and then worn, and all the money saved was invested in economic construction.
Under such conditions, the first generation of military reclamation people in Shihezi spun the first yarn in Xinjiang, woven the first cloth in Xinjiang, and created the first square sugar in Xinjiang.
The 68-year-old Sun Yuexian was a member of the "Ordinary People's Propaganda Group" of the 66th Regiment of the Fourth Division, and he was also the second generation of military reclamation. In 1954, her mother took sun Yue, who was only one year old, from Laizhou, Shandong Province, to the side of the Corps.
"From childhood to adulthood, what impressed me most was that the children who lived in the nest of the ground had frostbite on their hands and feet every winter." Sun Yuexian said: "Now the Fourth Division and the city of Kokdala have been built into a garden city, which we did not dare to think of when we were young. ”
The predecessor of the "People's Propaganda Group" was the "66 Regiment Elderly Volunteer Service Team" established in 2003. The team members included Xie Musen, the former division commander who won the title of "Advanced Individual of Caring for the Next Generation in the Whole Country"; Chen Maochang, a model worker of the Corps; Ye Dingming and Liu Shengshan, retired workers who have been volunteering to maintain traffic safety for 20 years; and Yan Xinqiu, a retired cadre who used the lens to record the truth, benevolence, and beauty.
The oldest person in the propaganda group was Yan Xinqiu, 92 years old. He entered Xinjiang in December 1950 and was transferred to tun and reclaimed the border with the troops.
"During my 71 years in Ili, I deeply appreciated the importance of the Corps in Xinjiang." Yan Xinqiu said, "Kokdala is the eighth city established by the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, and many old comrades like to dress up beautifully, visit parks, dance square dances, play cards, and live a leisure life." ”
Some young people will see this scene and say that "the old people are too comfortable", at this time Yan Xinqiu will always rush up and talk with the youth: "Do you know how they came over?" They were only teenagers when they came, younger than you are now..."
"I am a member of the people's propaganda group, that is, I want to use the people around me to preach to the people, and the development process of the corps is not easy to obtain." Yan Xinqiu said.
Corps Youth: Inherit the spirit of the Corps
As one of the only two universities of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, Shihezi University is located in Shihezi City, a pearl of military reclamation, and its historical origins can be traced back to the First Corps Health School founded Chinese the First Field Army of the People's Liberation Army in 1949. Shihezi University, founded on horseback, is the same age as the Republic, has the same origin as the people's army, and has the same roots as the spirit of the corps.
Shandong girl Shan Ailan, who graduated from Tianjin Normal University in 2014 and came to teach in the fine arts department of Shihezi University, said, "When I came to Shihezi, I often visited the University History Museum and the Military Reclamation Museum, where the pieces of military reclamation cultural relics displayed there made me understand the Corps more deeply. ”
"Freshmen who have just entered the university campus are more impetuous, unable to calm down to study, and need to give spiritual support and ideological support, so I arranged a task to take them to the Old Cultural Relics of the Military Reclamation Museum to paint the old cultural relics of the Corps." Shan Ailan said that in the past seven years, she has led students to create warm theme paintings of the Corps and held a series of painting exhibitions.
"In the process of drawing military coats, military merit badges, and children of the corps, the students subtly recalled the history of the corps and understood the corps, and many students chose to stay in Xinjiang and work in the corps after graduation, continuing to spread the spirit of the corps." Shan Ailan said.
Shihezi University also opened a very popular "Road and Life" ideological and political class, inviting Jin Maofang, the first generation of female tractor drivers of the Corps, Li Mengtao, a young man from Shanghai Zhibian of The Beitashan Ranch, and other veteran soldiers to tell their life experiences and stories of taking root in Xinjiang, building Xinjiang, and dedicating xinjiang, which were welcomed by the students.
In class, Professor Cao Lianpu, who graduated from The Agricultural University of China in 1963 and taught at Shihezi University, recounted how he aspired to breed and plant new varieties for the frontier.
"We have been working hard, looking for every opportunity, and we want to breed new varieties for the Corps. In 1986, the first spring wheat variety 'Shichun No. 1' was finally born. It's only been late after 23 years, and it's not easy! We have added 5 new members to the wheat crop family in Xinjiang. The 'New Beer No. 1' bred in 1997 is the first beer barley variety in Xinjiang to be successfully bred, and the 'New Little Rye No. 1' fills the gap in the breeding of small rye in Xinjiang. Only by experiencing the tribulations of the past can we taste the sweetness of today. Cao Lianpu said.
Qing Tao, deputy director of the Propaganda Department of the Party Committee of Shihezi University, said: "The spirit of the Corps is the foundation for supporting the development of the Corps cause, and it is also the reason why generations of Corps members have chosen to come to the arduous frontier to start a business. Shihezi University has set up a course on the ideological and political navigation of the corps spirit education famous teachers, inviting the inheritors of the corps spirit around them to take the podium, let the people with stories tell stories, students understand why the corps people are cute from the stories, and recognize the corps spirit from the depths of their emotions. ”
China Youth Daily, China Youth Network reporter Wang Xueying Source: China Youth Daily
Source: China Youth Daily