Every day is our day of remembrance

□ Narration / Zhong Binlong (Police Officer, Fengxian Branch of Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau) Written / Lin Jing

Fast forward to the 30th year of my police career in 2022. On the day of Police Day, I received the police medal of honor awarded by the substation, and on this day, my master Zhou Xiaoping retired honorably.

I sent my master a picture of myself attending the Flag-Raising Ceremony of the People's Police Day at the substation, dressed in a police uniform and holding a police medal of honor. The master quickly replied to me with the four words "spirit boy" and attached a photo of him at the police station, where leaders and colleagues presented him with flowers and retirement certificates. Although the master's two sideburns are white, but the spirit is bright, the flowers are lined with dark and wrinkled smiling faces, which is a kind of "contrasting beauty".

In fact, the master who has been called for decades is only three years older than me, and in the current buzzword, it is also the distance of "a ditch". As his former apprentices, although we are no longer in the same department, we have always maintained this master-apprentice relationship by wechat and telephone. As I looked at the master in the photo, I rubbed the police badge in my hand, and the bits and pieces of the two of us that had been together before appeared like slideshows.

On that winter night 30 years ago, when I was a new police officer, my first duty was to work with the master. At 1 a.m., I received a call to the police that a woman jumped into the river near the village of Luoque. By the time we drove our motorcycles to the scene of the incident, I was already frozen. Before I could slow down, an old woman ran toward us crying and said, "Comrade policeman, save my daughter." In the direction of her finger, I took a looker and found a long-haired woman standing in the middle of the river. In the dry winter, the river only reaches the waist of an adult, and the woman seems to be frozen, stubbornly standing in the water and shivering, but there is no response to the shouts on the riverbank.

"I'm better physically and water-than-water, and I'm going to save people." Little clock, you are responsible for lighting, try to raise the searchlight a little higher, expand the visible range. Lao Wang, you go and take off the prepared inner tube and tie it with a rope..." The master took off his shoes and socks and waded into the water while he was talking.

On the cold winter night in Jiangnan, even if I was wrapped in a thick cotton coat, standing on the shore, I could still feel the biting cold wind drilling straight into my body, and it was difficult to imagine how the master's will stepped into the bone-chilling river.

All I can do is try to lift my hands a little higher, a little higher, and make the lights shine a little brighter, a little brighter. As the minutes and seconds passed, my heart hung in mid-air, my eyes fixed only on the center point of the halo, until the master put the woman on the tire and followed the rope safely back to the shore. The woman was surrounded by anxiously waiting relatives on the shore, and the master collapsed on the shore and gasped for breath, I hurriedly took off my coat and hugged him, tears spewing out, it was a tear of pain.

People grow up in a moment, it is the moment when they know it but others don't know it, their hearts change, they feel the weight of life, and they quietly grow up. For the first time, I had a clearer understanding of my profession and what the words "people's police" meant. The master used his righteousness to teach me the first lesson of the police.

Years have passed, our group of people have gradually reached the age of retirement, and the green teenagers of that year have been dusty and frosty. The master changed from "Xiao Zhou" to "Old Zhou", and I was also called "Old Bell" from "Xiao Zhong", but the original intention is still there, the ambition is not extinguished, and every day in the post has become our anniversary.

【Source: People's Public Security Daily】