Source: People's Daily client
The footsteps of digital communication came to the depths of the Qilian Mountains, tenaciously extending their tentacles in this alpine land.
Starting from Qilian County, more than 200 kilometers of cable fiber, supported by more than 4,000 poles, after the diversion and conversion of 21 base stations, climbed mountains and rivers, and finally came to Yanglong Township, which has an average altitude of more than 3,500 meters, setting up a "digital sky road" for the communication and Internet access of the vast number of herdsmen.
Liu Qiang, 34, is the "doctor" of these cables, poles and base stations.
Tall, inch-headed, black-framed mirrors, red sweatshirt with yellow windbreakers on the outside, shoes are the most convenient to walk, coupled with taciturn words, polytechnic man temperament is exposed - as a maintenance staff of China Unicom Qinghai Haibeizhou Branch, this year is his 13th year of work, has become the "master" of the young population, but Yanglong is still the most headache for Liu Qiang.
"The base station in Tolle Village, Yanglong Township, was damaged, and the monitoring showed a failure." A phone call in the background made Liu Qiang get up from the bed early in the morning, open a white pickup truck, call his colleague Xie Zhanyun, bring a tool kit, ladder, steel tongs, guide chain, and me, a "non-staff member", to meet the misty morning fog and embark on the road to Yanglong.
On the way from Qilian County to Yanglong Township. Photo by Jia Fengfeng
"This is the furthest township in the county, equivalent to the distance to Zhangye in Gansu Province, often seven or eight hours back and forth on the road, and repairs only take tens of minutes." After a while of walking together, the chat opened, and the northwest man also opened the conversation box, "But it is this communication line, the most likely to drop the chain, because the line is too long, the natural climate along the way is changeable, the terrain conditions are complex, coupled with the instability of the local power supply, basically two or three times a month." Although it is "complaining", but lighting a cigarette, squinting, Liu Qiang used "Qingpu dialect" to speak out, do not have a sense of humor.
It can be seen that Liu Qiang has a number of family treasures on this line: where to drive the car slowly on the way, which poles need to be checked frequently, he has this account in his heart; his family calls and hangs up without saying a few words, although his mobile phone screensaver is his two-year-old son... In his words, "If the same problem happened to us, would we still think it would be repaired too quickly?" ”
Due to the simultaneous line patrol, customer service, base station equipment maintenance, fault handling and other tasks, an average of dozens of calls per day, Liu Qiang laughed and said that he has suffered from a serious "mobile phone auditory hallucination" - the mobile phone did not ring, they all felt that it was ringing, sometimes the holidays did not ring for a long time, but panicked. "The best way to destroy a song is to set it up as a caller ringtone."
All the way up the Black River Canyon, higher and higher, but there is no shadow of the destination. Watching the fiber optic cable poles outside the window keep passing by, I can't help but ask, "So many poles, can one by one manage it?" ”
"We generally determine the approximate range of the accident cable through background monitoring, and then arrive at the scene, and then check the pole number, one by one to exclude." Liu Qiang said that my question evoked another "occupational disease" of theirs - when troubleshooting, they need to walk all the way along the fiber optic cable pole, the whole process is basically 45 degrees to look up at the sky - take a closer look, he and colleague Xie Zhanyun's heads are indeed slightly raised, "not pride, but a professional habit." ”
Yanglong Township station, an empty town deep in the Qilian Mountains. Photo by Jia Fengfeng
It was almost noon, and after nearly four hours of bumps, we finally arrived at Yanglong Township, the farthest place in Qilian County. The Spring Festival is approaching, pushing several familiar restaurants, all closed. Liu Qiang took us around the empty streets, watched the cooking smoke drift out of the chimney of a pastry, pushed the door in, and finally we could eat a hot meal. A plate of chili fried meat, a plate of onion fried meat, and then added a sauerkraut fried vermicelli without sauerkraut, the taste is not good, but the portion is really solid, Xie Zhanyun, who is a peer, said that he missed his mouth, "Usually we are a bowl of noodles and sent off..."
Because of my arrival, lunch was much more generous than usual. Photo by Jia Fengfeng
After a hurried lunch, continue to drive west, ten minutes later, the car suddenly turned, along a washboard road, and ten minutes later, finally came to the Base Station in Tolle Village: a dozen photovoltaic panels, an optical cable tower, plus a controller, which constituted all of this base station. Liu Qiang and Xie Zhanyun took their tools, climbed over the net fence of the herdsmen's pasture, went straight to the base station, and without saying a word, climbed the fifteen-meter-high communication tower and began to repair it.
The maintenance vehicle took to the gravel road. Photo by Jia Fengfeng
To get to the base station, you need to climb over the net fence on the side of the meadow. Photo by Jia Fengfeng
Liu Qiang helped the handle, and I (right) also flipped over the net fence. Xie Zhanyun photographed
The afternoon sun on the plateau stabbed people to open their eyes, but the cold wind in the wilderness still whistled into the collar, freezing me straight to stomp my feet, but they did not move on the communication tower, their feet were on the climbing hands, one hand grasped the railing, one hand repaired while communicating with the backstage telephone, close to touch, the tower pole was ice to the bone... It is such a tower pillar that radiates more than 600 users within a radius of tens of kilometers, and the Internet, chat, and shopping all rely on its signal transmission.
In order to maintain this small base station, we drove 200 kilometers and 4 hours from Qilian County to Tole Village in Yanglong Township. Photo by Jia Fengfeng
Liu Qiang and Xie Zhanyun carried out on-site operations. Photo by Jia Fengfeng
"Why should we install photovoltaic panels? Wouldn't it be more convenient to connect a wire? I asked.
"The average cost of a base station is five or six hundred thousand yuan, and due to the small number of users on the grassland, if we don't use photovoltaic panels, we can't even earn back the electricity bill." Liu Qiang told me that the erection and operation and maintenance of this "digital sky road" is not only an economic account, but also a development account, a social account, and a people's livelihood account. "Now many herders can enjoy the convenience of digital communication without leaving their homes, the change of lifestyle can be said to be earth-shaking, and even some herders with live brains, with the blue sky and white clouds as the background, have done live broadcasting on their own grasslands, sold beef and mutton, and there are express trucks on the side... This is also a kind of poetry and far away!" Liu Qiang sighed.
Job site. Photo by Jia Fengfeng
After more than 1 hour of busy work, the base station was repaired. It was dark early in the deep winter, and on the way back, the empty grassland flew by, and soon the distant ridge was full of stars, and their thunderous snoring sounded in the carriage...